Comment by Yizahi
1 day ago
HN on average is a little behind on the general EU "privacy" stance (though I saw some recent topic about that here). EU was about privacy, a few decades ago. Nowadays it did a complete U-turn and legislates mandatory anti-privacy union-wide laws every year.
- Chat Control law, now all messaging must be intercepted and monitored.
- eIDAS law, mandating that web-browser vendors must now accept state issued root certificates, so that states can selectively and without any legal procedure deploy MITM attacks at will.
- ADDW law, mandating that all new cars must a permanent mandatory camera and microphone surveillance module inside a car, which can't be disabled by law (bye-bye insurance if you will). There also other fun things in it like mandatory autobraking, mandatory auto lane-assist etc.
- ProtectEU laws, demanding backdoors to emails and such (maybe it's the same as Chat Control, not sure).
- AI Act legalizes AI surveillance over CCTV recordings without any judicial approval.
- European Media Freedom (duh) Act legalizes deployment of shit like Pegasus against journalists.
I'm pretty sure I'm missing a lot here too. You get the picture. EU is getting fast track into Stazi 2.0, everyone is fine with it, "because children" /s
Breathtaking levels of misinformation here.
There is no EU law that mandates "all messaging must be intercepted and monitored."
There is no EU law mandating permanent, non-disableable cameras and microphones in cars.
ProtectEU is not a law, not related to email and does not demand any "backdoors."
The AI Act bans real-time facial/biometric recognition in public places... which is a good thing. It does not "legalize AI surveillance"... quite the opposite.
EMFA does not authorize the deployment of spyware and they have publicly condemned the use of Pegasus specifically.
There is always a citizen who honestly thinks that emperor is good and loves the citizens. The reality is that emperor loves the citizens that love the emperor and will do everything to find and destroy the citizens that don’t love the emperor. History books are full of such examples.
Right now I am repairing old car that does not track me, does not film me and doesn’t try to drive me. It’s a such a great joy to drive it without stupid beeping and automatic wheel movements. Especially without suicidal steering in construction sites when the modern system fails.
Two can play this game.
Chat Control - a) it is a law, mandatory in whole EU (because it is a "EU Regulation", and that is a law); b) I was indeed to broad and made a mistake, for now only not E2EE messages must be intercepted and monitored. E2EE is on a the chopping block in Chat Control 2.0 which is being drafted, in progress.
Advanced Driver Distraction Warning (ADDW) - a) it is EU Regulation and so it is a law; b) ADDW mandates a non-disableable surveillance camera (not sure about microphone) inside a car.
ProtectEU is indeed Chat Control plus extra, so here I was incorrect. Encrypted emails are temporarily safe, until Chat Control 2.0 is passed. And given how they bruteforced CC 1.0 in multiple blatant retries, it will eventually pass.
Regarding EU AI Act you are replying to something I didn't write. Sure it doesn't allow real-time surveillance. I wrote that it does allow surveillance over the recorded materials. This technicality allows passing all video through storage, then monitor suspects via AI programs all without judicial approvals.
And finally EMFA does authorize deployment of the spyware against journalists in cases of investigating a crime carrying 3= years penalty. Do I need to spell out how laughable that is? Practically any national security crime carry similar or heavier penalties and govt. can start a very broad and arbitrary investigation for any reason. This means that the matter of starting surveillance is a small technicality really with zero oversight.
> There is no EU law mandating permanent, non-disableable cameras
Too late for that, see the new laws for new cars.
What do you mean no law mandating permanent camera?
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=PI_... https://medium.com/@shahadilh18/your-car-will-soon-watch-you...
ChatControl 2.0 is exactly "all messaging must be intercepted and monitored" ...
Some of it probably is a slippery slope argument however that slippery slope has materialized already in other areas ... And security plays a role here as well. Maybe the camera/software/system is mandated not to identify driver (as is written in ADDS "spec") but atrocious security the modern car has would probably allow for that somehow...