“While indiscriminate backdoors might be cheaper for the State than alternative investigative measures, they were expensive for society at large on account of the security risks they produced,” EISI told the ECHR.
It’s great when someone with some sway actually gets it.
EU institutions are pretty great, but sooner or later they’re going to lose the fight against the technofascist nightmare that’s constantly getting pushed on us
Luckily this is not an EU institution, this is an international treaty above the EU. For example, Azerbaijan is a signatory.
Point is, you can’t easily get it through EU legislation to overturn this, as it would need to cross the ECHR, which it won’t do.
Can’t wait to see the brexiteers’ faces when they realise Britain is still a signatory.
For example, Azerbaijan is a signatory.
And doesn’t really care, because there’s no punishment for, say, being a member of something with “human rights” in the name and Azerbaijan simultaneously.
They even occasionally pay fines for torturing someone to death or things like that. Those fines are not that big.
I feel like Europe is the only place actually making an effort to protect personal privacy these days.
That’s because Europe has actual experience with having their privacy invaded and it wasn’t just to show you relevant ads. During the war my grandparents burned letters and books after reading them. And they had nothing to hide either - and all of the ones they burned were perfectly innocent and legal… but even those can be taken out of context and used against you during a police investigation.
The UN formally declared privacy as a human right a few years after the war ended. Specifically in response to what happened during the war.
A lot of the data used by police to commit horrific crimes was collected before the war, for example they’d go into a cemetery home and find a list of people who attended a funeral six years ago, then arrest everyone who was there. You can’t wait for a government to start doing things like that - you have to stop the data from being collected in the first place.
Imagine how much worse it could be today, with so much more data collected and automated tools to analyse the data. Imagine if you lived in Russian occupied Ukraine right now - what data can Russia find about you? Do you have a brother serving in Ukraine’s army? Maybe your brother would defect if you were taken hostage…
Well, it defers a lot from country to country.
For example, populations in the Scandinavian countries have high trust in their governments and let them collect a lot of private data. They have personal identification numbers that contain lots of personal information that many institutions (e.g. banks) have access to unless you ask for privacy protection. All of this also makes interaction with institutions very streamlined and easy, but it comes at the cost of less privacy.
In Norway and Sweden, for example, anyone can access personal income data about anyone living in the country. Full transparency, more or less.
On the other hand, a country like Germany does not issue personal identification numbers because the population is highly skeptical of data collection and registration, a remnant from the wars. Germany is much more bureaucratic and its government less efficient, but Germans prefer the arm’s length approach to government data collection and almost no data is publicly accessible.
In Germany you have to show some kind of ID - which gets registered in a system - to buy a SIM card, something I never had to do in other countries I lived in, in Europe.
There is no other point in having such a requirement for stores to record people’s ID when they buy SIM cards than to associate phone numbers with people for surveillance.
The UK too doesn’t have ID cards or ID numbers for people and yet has the biggest densitity of surveillance cameras in Europe, automated license plate reading cameras in major roads and highways and, as shown by the Snowden revelations, has an even more broad civil society surveillance system in place than the US and, by the way, when that came out the political response was simply to retroactivelly make legal any part of it which weren’t.
ID numbers are just one big “look over here” distraction from what’s really going on.
For example, populations in the Scandinavian countries have high trust in their governments and let them collect a lot of private data.
And that’s very stupid.
But psychologically this may be a good thing - people learn to not be ashamed of saying “yeah, you can get all this information about me, but it’s simply not your concern, so fsck off” from the very beginning.
And they had nothing to hide either - and all of the ones they burned were perfectly innocent and legal… but even those can be taken out of context and used against you during a police investigation.
If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.
Cardinal Richelieu
Such a big win. What a fantastic week.
This is incredibly funny for people who followed this. Everybody and their grandma told the European Commission that there was no way that breaking end-to-end encryption was compatible with the law. Yet they constantly pushed for it anyway and now look at this mess.
I am almost certain that the European Commission will claim that there are still ways to break end-to-end encryption, only to defeated in court yet again. Like they tried with data preservation for law enforcement purposes. They just can’t stop themselves.
The commissioner responsible for the chat control was thoroughly corrupt by a company which created the scanning system. She was also either unbelievably dense or very, VERY dedicated to her role of a pearl-clutching, think-of-the-children granny. To the point of arguing with IT specialists on TV.
To the point of arguing with IT specialists on TV.
Could you please link it or just name that person? I want to see that and be offended.
Ylva Johansson. She’s Swedish and late last year went on tour around Swedish media about chat control. The media, however, were prepared so hilarity ensued.
https://nordictimes.com/debate/many-misleading-claims-about-chat-control-2-0/
It is difficult to get someone to understand something when their salary depends on them not understanding it.
Ah my never ending love for EU . Is there a way to donate to the EU ?
Never idolise. Courts simply apply the laws, and good laws were likely written by inspired people and approved in a good political climate. These two conditions are not static.
In this case, the title is misleading. It’s not the ECJ, it’s the ECHR. The ECHR isn’t part of the EU even if the EU and the EU members recognize it.
The ECHR rules according to the ECHR and not the EU regulations. The court can overturn EU regulation when violating the Human Rights.
I know i guess i wanna support so they have motivation to go forward. But yes you are absolutely right.
We are always on the brink of ruining everything nice that we have been slowly building.
You can read here about the plans of the European Commission to enable service operators to mass scan all the users’ private messages in search of illegal materials.
The Commission is the same super-government body that signed privacy-oriented things like the General Data Protection Regulation.
Maybe buy stuff there? A lot of vpns and other privacy companies and orgs are European.
Move to EU and pay taxes there. Or buy European products, they pay taxes and some of it go to the EU.
Trust me, the UE have enough money. Please donate to your local homeless shelter instead :3
I say that because, well, I live near Brussel, I intimately know the insides of the european parliament. Corruption is rampant. Maybe not to the point of the US, but look up lobbying in the european institution and you will see what’s up. The UE might seem progressive on the IT front but they are also the ones that forces us to sell public services to banks.
Didn’t find anything quickly, but if you want to donate towards Germany paying back its debts: IBAN DE17 8600 0000 0086 0010 30, put “Schuldentilgung” in the purpose field.
Don’t. They already get way to much taxes and while these are the shining examples of what the EU should be and are beacon of hope…there are other utterly ridiculous laws and stupid regulations we have to deal with. Don’t get me wrong, I’m proud to be European and so on, but it’s not the bright haven some people make it to be…
Can you name any ridiculous laws or regulations that negatively affect you? I have a hard time recalling any EU law or regulation that directly affects me without a good reason.
Also, can you name a nation without laws that negatively affect you or could be considered stupid?
One of the most prevalent examples that affect me - it’s a horrible system and most car makers are not able to do it properly, because the camera systems are not cheap enough to be good enough. Mercedes, BMW and so on do it relatively decent, but they’ve gotten so expensive, even the base models are out of my reach now.
This could go on for a while, but to make matters short: The basic idea is cool, but mandating it like they have makes it a nuisance and will make most people turn it off. All of the people I know that have a car that has that system turn it off immediately starting.
