CHAT CONTROL 2.0 THROUGH THE BACK DOOR – Breyer warns: “The EU is playing us for fools – now they’re scanning our texts and banning teens!”

[anon57862721]

Like Thor, we should go for the head! No resurrections then.

[anon39279085]

someone for once they do that yah.

[Trader76]

Hello everybody,

I saw this chat control proposal just few days ago and I was little bummed as we’ve been building p2p messenger which doesn’t rely on any central servers. This might be a blow back to us if all images should be scanned before sending…and that basically destroys the whole idea behind our app.

So I decided to come here and ask your opinion on this : It’s possible that they could block our app from app store, but is there some way they could block people from installing it via website or download via tor maybe?

It uses distributed hash tables (DHT) for key exchanges and if those are located across the world… I don’t know if its possible to stop people from using it. Any ideas?

Cheers,

Trader76

[kalium]

As mentioned in this thread, the obligation to scan encrypted chats thankfully seems to have been removed from the proposal.

Patrick Breyer (@echo_pbreyer@digitalcourage.social)

[Labfox]

If the communications aren’t encapsulated in another general purpose encrypted protocol, it’s one of the easiest things to do: just block the port/handshake used for the DHT.

[Trader76]

Yes, I noticed that too. But as this was already take two, there will come a third one. In some form or another. I would just like to be ahead of them in order to plan our app / protocol accordingly.

Thanks.

[Trader76]

ISP blocking your port would be pretty effective…unfortunately.

What other general purpose encrypted protocol did you have in your mind? Like some blockchain?

[Labfox]

Tor proxy methods, HTTPS servers (websocket), Minecraft servers, etcetera. Anything encrypted with streamed communications and an open source specification.

[anon57862721]

Relevant:

I Told You Guys To Fight Back... Now It's Getting Too Late...

[anon39279085]

The title is very clickbaity by muta standards considering the content is actually friendly enough but yeah

[dngray (Daniel Gray)]

Mullvad put a good one out:

Mullvad VPN presents And Then? | Mullvad VPN

It does seem to be corruption, I wrote about it actually on this HN thread as it does seem some proponents of this idea have absolutely no clue whatsoever.

a short essay

There are solutions for anonymous payments using homomorphic encryption. Things like Zcash and Monero exist.

The main problem is there are no products that solve the problem Chat Control aims to solve without infringing massively on everyone’s privacy, (including children). Any suggestions that do exist come with serious risks or have complexities, eg homomorphic encryption is a generally new area that has expensive computational requirements.

The reason for that is because it’s easier to encrypt data than develop some kind of system with a magical key only authorized people are able to use under certain circumstances.

What Mullvad highlights is that the whole chat control proposal is mired in corruption. A particular individual with an agenda to sell something has adjacent financial interests to being part of the solution. No doubt they will want funding for “research”, because they don’t actually have a solution everyone can use. They try to make it appear as if they do (grift) to get the politicians on board. Then there’s a harassment campaign component (specifically the EU Survivors Taskforce) portion which aims to apply public emotional pressure on any remaining politicians who have concerns.

In the end everyone else (companies, developers etc) will have to do the heavy lifting to try to find some way to comply by their legal interpretation with whatever vague brain fart is passed into law.

Make no mistake about it, this proposal has nothing to do with child protection but rather is all about demonizing the use of encryption. Law enforcement would love to be able to simply argue the presence of encryption means there is likely to be offending. This is why they fight so hard in the UK in regard to Apple having default encryption on ADP. You can’t make the argument to a court owning an iPhone means you’re a criminal for instance.

The end game, and goal post movement will simply be to argue they used non-compliant software/products. If they do have something on the person then this will be used to argue that further offenses were likely concealed, (even if that is not the case) and they went to effort to do so (premeditation). It’s a gift that keeps giving all along the trial process.

EDIT: Here is one idea I had: Sign images/video with hardware-secured chips (camera sensor or GPU?) that is traceable to the device. When images are further processed/edited, then they will be subject to differential-privacy scanning. This can also combat deepfakes, if image authenticity can be proven by the device that took the image.

And there obviously will be totally like no way to like not do that and then have an anonymous photo. What are you going to do, confiscate all the computers, phones and cameras that already exist and don’t have this special “hardware secure chip”. Honestly at this point I think you’re a troll.

If your position is that governments (who represent us,voters) should accept the status quo, and just let their people suffer injustice, I don’t think I can support that.

Things can be always worse, and you shouldn’t assume that the powers that be will use these things to prosecute the things you find morally offensive. Which is another problem as well.

Mullvad is also in for a rude awakening. If criminals use Tor or VPNs, those will also face a ban. We need to give governments solutions that lets them do what they claim they want to do (protect the public from victimization) while preserving privacy to avoid a very real dystopia.

The space will innovate regardless of what governments want, so that’s the rude awakening. Criminals always will be criminals and they’ll just get better at doing what they want to do regardless.

Freedoms and liberties must not come at the cost of injustice. And as i argued elsewhere on HN, in the end, ignoring ongoing injustice will result in even less freedoms and liberties. If there was a pluralistic referendum in the EU over chat control, I would be surprised if the result isn’t a law that is even far worse than chat control.

Okay then guess we can all “think of the children” whenever anyone is worrying about the injustice caused by abuse of these new powers.

I understand that you seem to think that adding systems like this will placate governments around the world but that is not the case. We have already conceded far more than we ever should have to government surveillance for a false sense of security.

Placation of government and law enforcement is never complete. For them every goal post moved is perceived as making their job easier. They only have one job, and that’s to convict people of things. That is the only metric they care about. That includes making up new offences to charge people with, including “the defendant used non compliant products to hide their offending which may or may not exist” - not a crime in the EU right now, but you can bet that will be the next step if people refuse to use compliant products.

Let me post a longer reply later. But for your last point, we do have automated machine generated alarms in form of smoke detectors. We’re legally required to have them in our homes.

A smoke alarm has very little room for abuse as it only does one thing which largely aligns with the occupant’s interests. A more comparable argument would be that you must have cameras in every room in your house to record burglars, home invaders and potential child abductors. We need not look any further than the abuse of door bell cameras in the US to see how that plays out.

Funny how nobody has ever made that argument.

[anon57862721]

Yeah I shared this up above 3 days ago. Still funny (and a little sad).

Excellent essay though.

[any1]

Imo his content has taken a large nosedive in recent years, and I just ignore him whenever he pops up.

[dngray (Daniel Gray)]

That Mullvad article provides some interesting context

First, Ashton Kutcher (yes, the actor) convinced the EU Commission that they could scan everything on an EU citizen’s phone or computer (messages, photos, emails, phone calls, all of it) for child sexual abuse material without, at the same time, looking at the content of other types of communication. This could be done in a secure way, Kutcher told European politicians, and he would know (sure), since he was running a tech organization called Thorn.

Further wikipedia article:

In September 2023, Kutcher resigned from the organization after sending a letter to a judge requesting leniency in the sentencing of his former costar Danny Masterson who was convicted of two counts of rape.[5]

So I guess you need to know a wealthy actor when you need leniency from the law then.

In 2024, Thorn’s hiring of two former Europol officials in 2022 was the subject of an investigation by the European Ombudsman for potential violations of the conflict of interest rules by Europol.[6]

Nothing to see here.

Thorn works with a group of technology partners who serve the organization as members of the Technology Task Force. The goal of the program includes developing technological barriers and initiatives to ensure the safety of children online and deter sexual predators on the Internet. Various corporate members of the task force include Facebook, Google, Irdeto, Microsoft, Mozilla, Palantir, Salesforce Foundation, Symantec, and Twitter.[7].

Oh yeah nothing to see Palantir would obviously have nothing to gain out of being able to ingest everyone’s communications. Salesforce has had some serious data breaches in the past so obviously nothing wrong there.

I wonder what encourages a company to even want to be a corporate member? There would have to be something in it for them.

[anon39279085]

Fight Chat Control - Protect Digital Privacy in the EU

so I just took a look at the website, everyone except 4 countries are supporting the new danish proposal

This is BAD

Patrick Beyer analysis

Unfortunately the template provided by fight chat control is the same as it was when the new proposal was going to be debated, Let’s get more people to email/call your MEPs/Government where we can!

Relevant GIF Describing my reaction when I first saw it:

(guys seriously this is not a small number, (S/O) 23/4 is really REALLY HIGH, Alarming shall we say)

[kissu]

Damn, feels good to be in
But yeah, definitely alarming…

[Encounter5729]

I honestly don’t know how to argue against this new proposal.

[anon57862721]

Is it because you agree with it or do you disagree with it so much that it’s leaving you ineffable?

Your comment is not clear.

[anon39279085]

Here’s one

The age verification mandate

[Blackbird]

I’ve done my part by sending an email to the MEPs. I wonder how many times I’ve done this already..