How to contact your MEP.
Fourthly, scanning for known, thus old material does not help identify and rescue victims, or prevent child sexual abuse. It will actually make safeguarding victims more difficult by pushing criminals to secure, decentralised communication channels which are impossible to intercept even with a warrant.
This point is huge, and on its own explains why half baked compromises are worthless.
The criminals will use banned chat apps, while innocent people get their messages read.
Well that’s the point, catching CSAM is just a very convenient excuse. Once that’s through, it will just be a matter of extending it to terrorism. Then you can declare anyone a terrorist and bam you have free reign to monitor anyone you want.
Or you could just accuse them of the really dangerous crimes, like copyright violations or insulting politicians.
That requires some kind of proof or bureaucratic fuckery. If you take any ecologist group for instance, you just have to pin a terrorist label on them, and bam, now you can spy on them legally. They’re trying to do it in France right now.
So this is how liberty dies…
I can’t see Signal operating in Europe if this is the case. Telegram has already handed over information, so they will likely adapt and continue doing their thing. Meta/WhatsApp will want to keep that money, so they will find a way to operate as well.
I suppose Signal could have a European server, but that might cut them off from the rest of the world.
Might end up using Briar or XMPP.
I haven’t given the proposition more than a once-over, but I assume this will cover emails too?
Its really really great that in a time where fascists gain more and more influence in several EU states, we also make it possible to massively spy on citizens :)
Well, not the same people. The surveillance people are authoritarian fascists that have been in government parties a lot longer than the newer parties with similar views.
Facism is not the same thing as wanting mass surveillance. Or is your definition fascist = bad?
Europol already said it would use it to fight „illegal migration“ and „human traffickers“ and drug dealers
A french politian demanded to use it against „Drag Queens“ and museums
An italian politian proposed to use chat control against „human traficking“ (in this case a dogwhistle for people, that rescue migrants), organ traffickers, illegal trading of weapons and drug dealers.
Some important german polititians want to expand it against antisemitism, far right extremism and child pornography
A lobbyist and another german politian want to also use it against illegally downloaded movies and music.
https://netzpolitik.org/2023/ueberwachung-politiker-fordern-ausweitung-der-chatkontrolle-auf-andere-inhalte/ (article in german)
Lol guess we can kiss post-quantum TLS goodbye.
This is going to have catastrophically negative effects for the internet in general. And, as others have said, actual bad actors will just keep using the most advanced encryption available anyways. This only makes the vast majority of internet users less secure and easier targets for exploitation.
Time to become a proud criminal. When law becomes tyranny, resistance becomes moral.
The law restricts providing a commercial service in the EU that provides end-to-end encryption without monitoring of the content of communications, not using end-to-end encryption. Unless you’re planning to run some kind of underground messaging service, you probably won’t be the one violating the law.
