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▲ derefr 3 hours ago

So... if we all care so much about shooting down the bad idea, why is nobody proposing opposite legislation: a bill enshrining a right to private communications, such that bills like this one would become impossible to even table?

Is it just that there's no "privacy lobby" interested in getting even one lawyer around to sit down and write it up?

Or is there at least one such bill floating around, but no EU member state has been willing to table it for discussion?

▲triska 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Quoting from the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:12... :

"Article 7

Respect for private and family life

Everyone has the right to respect for his or her private and family life, home and communications.

Article 8

Protection of personal data

1. Everyone has the right to the protection of personal data concerning him or her.

2. Such data must be processed fairly for specified purposes and on the basis of the consent of the person concerned or some other legitimate basis laid down by law. Everyone has the right of access to data which has been collected concerning him or her, and the right to have it rectified.

3. Compliance with these rules shall be subject to control by an independent authority."

▲narmiouh 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It clearly states here in 2 “consent of the person concerned OR some other legitimate basis laid down the law”, any random law will trump personal consent

▲troad an hour ago | parent | next [-]

One of the reasons international human rights law is so worthless in actual practice, is that half of it is framed like this. "Everyone has the right to X, except as duly restricted by law." Cool, so that's not a right at all then.

Ditto the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, with its 'notwithstanding' clause. (Though they're presently litigating over that, so we'll see what happens!)

Any constitution or human rights instrument full of exemptions, 'emergency powers', 'notwithstanding' clauses, or 'states of exception' is not worth the paper it's written on.

▲svachalek an hour ago | parent [-]

Every contract I have to agree to these days has a "valid until unilaterally invalidated" clause. It feels like we're all just going through the motions.

▲layer8 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It doesn’t remove the “right to the protection of personal data concerning him or her.” The law cannot be random, it must ensure “fair processing” and be limited to “specific purposes”, and the European Court of Justice as well as the ECHR will decide what constitutes a “legitimate basis” in that context. Furthermore, “Everyone has the right of access to data which has been collected concerning him or her”, which ensures transparency of what is being collected.

Last but not least, a number of EU countries enshrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secrecy_of_correspondence in their constitution.

▲spwa4 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Secrecy of correspondence only applies to sealed physical letters, so it has zero applicability to this law and provides zero protection against scanning of private messages.

Also it isn't respected in most types of criminal trials. If a sealed physical letter is opened and proves fraud, for example ...

▲ 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]
[deleted]
▲blks 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I feel we need something much more strongly worded to protect our mail, paper or electronic, messages and other communications from being read, not just “respect”.

▲layer8 2 hours ago | parent [-]

This exists in a number of EU member states: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secrecy_of_correspondence

▲thewebguyd 2 hours ago | parent [-]

The problem is, in all of those member states, they all have carve outs for "national security."

Germany, for exmaple, has secrecy of correspondence that extends to electronic communications, but allows for "restrictions to protect the free democratic basic order" and outlines when intelligence services can bypass the right to privacy.

Italy, France, and Polan also have similar carve outs.

Having it as a right isn't enough. National security and "public safety" carve outs need to be eliminated. So long as those exist, we have no right to privacy.

▲localuser13 22 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

>National security and "public safety" carve outs need to be eliminated. So long as those exist, we have no right to privacy.

This is overly absolutist, or maybe idealistic view. National security and public safety IS more important than individual right to privacy. As an extreme example, if your friend was dying, you had a password to my email, and you knew that you can use information in my inbox to save that person i really hope you would do it.

In general I think that police with a court order should be able to invade someone's privacy (with judge discretion). I mean they can already kick down someone's doors and detain them for several days - checking email doesn't sound too bad compared to it, does it? I think they should also be legally obliged to inform that person in let's say 6 months that they did it.

The problem is that modern world is drastically different than the old world when you needed to physically hunt down letters. Now you can mass scan everyone's emails, siphon terabytes of personal data that stasi could only dream of, and invigilate everyone. This is something that is worth fighting against.

▲layer8 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Rights are never absolute, they always have to be weighed against each other. The weighing can and should be debated, and needs strong protections when put into practice, but demanding an absolute is not reasonable.

▲kelnos a few seconds ago | parent | next [-]

[delayed]

▲soraminazuki an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That's how human rights abuses are justified though. Every single time. This whole thread is talking about exactly that.

▲derefr 44 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I dunno; I think in practice an absolute sometimes shakes out just fine.

In this case, I see no reason that we would want to draft constitutional rights such that we consider a government's actions taken in pursuit of their national security to be, per se, legal — i.e. warranted, unable to be sued over, etc.

Imagine instead, a much weaker right granted to the state: the right to maintain laws or regulations which require/force government or military employees to do things that violate people's rights and/or the law of the land. But with no limit on liability. No grant of warrant. Just the mildest possible form of preservation: technically constitutional; and not immediately de-fanged the first time the Supreme Court gets their hands on it.

So, for example, some state might introduce a new law saying that soldiers can come to your house and confiscate your laptop. And then the head of that state might actually use that law to invade your home and take your laptop.

Given that the law exists, it would be legal for the head-of-state to give this order. And it would also be legal for the soldiers to obey this order (or to put it another way, court-martialable for the soldiers to disobey this order, since it's not an illegal order.)

But the actual thing that happened as a result of this law being followed, would be illegal — criminal theft! — and you would therefore be entitled to sue the state for damages about it. And perhaps, if it was still reporting on Find My or whatever, you might even be entitled to send police to whatever NSA vault your laptop is held in, to go get it back for you. (Where, unlike the state, those police do have a warrant to bust in there to get it. The state can't sue them for damages incurred while they were retrieving the laptop!)

The courts wouldn't be able to strike down the law (the national-security provision allows the state to declare it 'not un-constitutional", remember?); but since obeying the law produces illegal outcomes, you would be able to punish the government each and every time they actually use it. In as many ways as the state caused you and others harm through their actions.

There is absolutely zero reason why the state shouldn't be expected to "make people whole" for damages it has caused them, each and every time it does something against the people's interest in the name of national security.

And the simplest way to calculate that penalty / make the claiming and distribution of those rewards practical, would be to just not remove liability for these actions taken on behalf of the state, by not granting the state the right to do them in the first place. Just put them in the position of any other criminal, and force them to go to court to defend themselves.

Change my mind!

▲dmitrygr an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

I disagree. A right to privacy not only can be demanded, it should be demanded.

▲g-b-r an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

"to protect the free democratic basic order", the irony.

It's incredible how even with the current surge of autocracy, most politicians can't see that the surveillance tools they crave for, could come under control of people much worse than them.

And can't see what they could do with them.

I think that many current governments in Europe are convinced that more surveillance will stop the autocratic surge. It's insane that they don't see how this is far from guaranteed, and how it will go if they're wrong.

▲weslleyskah an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The deal is that hiring a lawyer is costly and in civil cases each side has to carry his own expenses. These privacy laws keep shifting the focus every time and you need a good legislation for protection no matter what.

Rather than arguing in court whether you did something, you will be arguing whether there is just enough reason to think that you could have based on data harvested on you by big tech.

▲einpoklum 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Let's parse this a little.

Article 7 codifies "respect for [one's] private life" and "respect for [one's] private communications". Well, "respect" is a vague notion. This does not clearly imply that the government is not allowed to read your communications, or otherwise spy on you, if it believes it has good reason. It will do so "respectfully", or supposedly minimize the intrusion etc.

As for article 8: Here it is "protection of personal data" and "fair processing". It does not say "protection from government access"; and "processing" is when the government or some other party already has your data. In fact, as others point out, even this wording has an explicit legitimization of violation of privacy and 'protection' whenever there is a law which defines something as "legitimate basis" for invading your privacy.

You would have liked to see wording like:

* "Privacy in one's home, personal life, communications and digital interactions is a fundamental right."

* "The EU, its members, its bodies, its officers and whoever acts on its behalf shall not invade individuals' privacy."

and probably something about a non-absolute right to anonymity. Codified exceptions should be limited and not open-ended.

▲petermcneeley 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You know that those pieces of paper mean nothing.

▲port11 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The Charter has been used by the courts to shoot down incoming legislation. So, in a way, those pieces of paper mean everything, as without them legislation would pass without the judiciary branch being a check on the Bloc’s powers. Your comment is merely cynical.

▲ 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]
[deleted]
▲Macha 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

In theory these limit the power of the EU, while anything the EU parliament passes can just be undone as easily by a future EU parliament. If you don't believe the EU charter provides any protection, why would you believe an EU law would be any different?

▲rvz 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Thank you for telling them. Governments do not care about anyone.

▲rolandog 2 hours ago | parent [-]

In theory, governments are made up of citizens. In practice, once the citizens are corrupted into corporate shills, they become politicians. They have traded their humanity for business class seats and dining at restaurants that cater to those whose entire personality is talking about their investment portfolio.

▲Pay08 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Chat control is already illegal according to EU law, and has previously been ruled as such by the ECHR when Romania was trying to implement a chat control law that did actually pass, in 2014. But documents are documents (even the Rome statute), and can be rewritten.

▲noir_lord 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It already violates Articles 7 and 8 of the EU Charter which is supposed to prevent stuff like this.

The reality is that they'll just keep pushing it from different angles, they only have to get lucky once, we (or EU citizens, we left and have our own issues) need to be lucky every time - much like an adverserial relationship where you are on the defending side from a cyberattack...funny that really.

▲follie 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think the greatest risk to the EU is the sheer volume of communications it allows to travel without end-to-end encryption. Financial, infrastructure, personal political sentiment.. What doesn't a foreign enemy get volumes of minable data on?

▲thewebguyd 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The right to private communication is already enshrined in the EU.

Article 7, EU Charter of Fundamental Rights: Respect for private and family life (and probably a couple other sections in there as well).

The problem is national security exceptions. Chat control and other similar bills are trying to carve out exceptions to privacy laws under the excuse of national security.

Also its politically cheap to introduce surveillance or to expand state power, it's comparatively extremely difficult to pass laws that specifically restrict state power.

Privacy laws are well and good, but they exist. The problem is we need to stop allowing "public safety" or "national security" to be a trump card that allows exceptions to said laws, and good luck getting any government to ever agree that privacy is more important than national security.

▲dgxyz 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

There’s no point. The only way you can fix this is to pretty heavily market the situation and publicise and shame the lobbyist scum pushing this. And their associated ties.

▲vaylian 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Past laws of this type are:

- The GDPR

- The ePrivacy directive, which is explicitly derogated (sabotaged) by chat control 1.0

▲amarant 2 hours ago | parent [-]

If this law, or some future version of it, passes, I will derive great pleasure from a simple bash script sending a gdpr right to be forgotten request to eye European parliament in a daily basis

▲throwaway27448 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I don't think that's a very sensical right (like most rights, frankly). Everyone has limits to the privacy they can expect. But we should have a social contract where we can expect privacy between mutually consenting parties intending to have private communication (eg not in a public square) without reasonable suspicion of a crime being committed.

▲tekne an hour ago | parent [-]

Technology means there is only one truly stable compromise, imo: I am free to use whatever technical means at my disposal to encrypt my communications and those of my customers (!), and you can try to read them as much as you want.

Combined with the right to communicate across borders, you can get quite a bit of privacy: a server in both sides of a geopolitical conflict and they've got to collaborate to track you.

And yet metadata collection is both unavoidable (if you don't collect it, your geopolitical opponents will) and should be enough. We don't need chat control in a world where I get precision-targeted ads -- it's not even about freedom of speech or privacy, it's about freedom of thought.

▲Noaidi 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You don’t care by writing new legislation, you care by forming boycotts against the corporations that are not fighting back against the scanning. The world is not controlled by democracy, it is controlled by money and the oligarchs.

▲JoshTriplett an hour ago | parent [-]

We can do more than one thing. Do not cede the weapon of lobbying to be used solely by opponents. You can get a lot done by talking to people.