| ▲ | superxpro12 5 hours ago |
| The paradox between supporting consumer rights with actions like universal usb-c adoption, but also complete elimination of any privacy rights at all. Like the surveillance state is insane. No e2ee chats, backdoors in everything. |
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| ▲ | niklasrde 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| There are e2ee chats. There are some parties/politicians who want to get rid of them, but so far they are proposals. If/when these things go beyond committee stage, politics and democracy need to do their job and be sensible. PATRIOT, FISA and Bush's surveillance programme imho give more powers to certain agencies today already than are codified in EU law. |
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| ▲ | qeternity an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | > PATRIOT, FISA and Bush's surveillance programme imho give more powers to certain agencies today already than are codified in EU law. This is not true. Whether you believe that FISA courts have teeth, or whether 3 letter agencies abide by the law, in most of Europe you do not even have the pretense of this. UK/FR and to a lesser extent DE are all much worse. The worst parts of Patriot Act were undone in 2015, and the "F" in FISA stands for "Foreign". Europe continues to push policies like Chat Control and attempt to backdoor/ban E2E encryption for domestic surveillance. The present day and trajectory in Europe is far far more grim than in the US. | | |
| ▲ | palata 32 minutes ago | parent [-] | | > Europe continues to push policies like Chat Control and attempt to backdoor/ban E2E encryption Some politicians in Europe push for that, until now it has been refused by the others. Unlike in the US, there are many different parties in European countries. And Europe is made of politicians from many parties from many countries. > The worst parts of Patriot Act were undone in 2015 So the NSA doesn't do any kind of domestic surveillance anymore, is that what you believe? > the "F" in FISA stands for "Foreign". [...] Europe continues to push policies [...] for domestic surveillance. So if it's surveilling allies, it's all good in your opinion? > The present day and trajectory in Europe is far far more grim than in the US. "Far far"? Do you even realise that Europe is not one single country? The US elected Trump, twice. | | |
| ▲ | qeternity 22 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Yes, I am an American living in Europe. I have pretty good insight into all of this. > Some politicians in Europe push for that, until now it has been refused by the others. Unlike in the US, there are many different parties in European countries. And Europe is made of politicians from many parties from many countries. And yet neither party in the US is pushing for it... > So the NSA doesn't do any kind of domestic surveillance anymore, is that what you believe? Do you have any evidence to the contrary? Or if you believe this without evidence, do you have any evidence this is not occurring in Europe? > So if it's surveilling allies, it's all good in your opinion? Lol, lmao even. Yes, of course it is. Allies spy on each other. The Europeans do it to each other massively and have done since the dawn of Europe. Good lord, go read some history. > "Far far"? Do you even realise that Europe is not one single country? The US elected Trump, twice. Again, I live in Europe. I am well aware, but thanks for the classic European condescension. I don't like Trump. But how has he weakened privacy rights? And yes, beacause I don't want to write dozens of caveats for each teeny tiny member state, I consider Europe to be dominated by happenings in DE + FR + UK. I don't care what Latvia does. |
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| ▲ | rdm_blackhole 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > but so far they are proposals That is false. They are not proposals, they are being actively discussed in trilogues which is way way past proposal stage. Chat control V2 trilogue negotiation was last week and it included mass scanning of messages and private data. Thankfully the EU parliament rejected the idea but every 6 months like clockwork it comes back. The next trilogue is in November. https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/chat-control-2-0-trilogue-u... If this was passed, it would force every single cloud provider and e2e chat provider to keep, filter and pass on your private information to Europol and other security agencies. | | |
| ▲ | layer8 an hour ago | parent [-] | | The trilogues are the standard informal step when the Commission submits a proposal. It remains a proposal until it is rejected or approved. The formal next step after submitting a proposal is the Parliament’s first reading [0], which hasn’t concluded yet (the Parliament hasn’t adopted a position yet). So it’s still in the proposal stage. [0] https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Consolidated_version_of_the_T... Quote: 1. Where reference is made in the Treaties to the ordinary legislative procedure for the adoption of an act, the following procedure shall apply. 2. The Commission shall submit a proposal to the European Parliament and the Council. First reading 3. The European Parliament shall adopt its position at first reading and communicate it to the Council. [many more items] Item 3 hasn’t happened yet. |
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| ▲ | aqme28 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Isn't that just the recent highly controversial Chat Control push? Generally speaking, the EU has some quite strong privacy protections relative to the US. |
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| ▲ | qeternity 42 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | > Generally speaking, the EU has some quite strong privacy protections relative to the US. Please, like what? GDPR? | | |
| ▲ | isbvhodnvemrwvn 7 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Let's just say you won't find my name, address, my yearbook pictures, history of where I lived, anywhere on the internet. I can quite easily get this information for all distant cousins in the US. And that has been the case long before GDPR was a thing. The culture around privacy is simply different. |
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| ▲ | Forgeties79 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Privacy in certain domains is better protected than others. |
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| ▲ | GuB-42 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The US, at least in spirit is all about individual freedom, including freedom of being an asshole, and also the freedom of punching that asshole in the face, metaphorically speaking. Europe values freedom too, but not as much as making sure people are not assholes. So, freedom of being an asshole is not a thing in Europe, and the government does the punching in the face so that you don't have to. Which is best is honestly debatable. It is the usual question about the individual vs the collective. The US is on the individualist side, East Asia is on the collective side, Europe is somewhere in the middle. |
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| ▲ | mcmcmc 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | > the freedom of punching that asshole in the face, metaphorically speaking. This is not at all a freedom
in the US. “The right to swing your fist ends at someone else’s nose.” You don’t get to harm someone else just for being “an asshole”. You can be an asshole back but you don’t get to violate their rights. | | |
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| ▲ | randomNumber7 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Also you can get to jail for making fun of politicians where saying the same thing would be free speech in the US. |
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| ▲ | touwer an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | Depends on how you define 'fun'. If making fun is something like 'he should be killed', yes, you could end up in jail. Good | |
| ▲ | ctolsen 27 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | In the US you just get thrown in immigration detention for a few weeks instead. | |
| ▲ | jLaForest 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | on the other hand europe doesnt have roving gangs of masked gunmen violently abducting people based on ethnicity (at least not not in the last 80 years....) | | | |
| ▲ | vanviegen 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | ? | | |
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| ▲ | mcintyre1994 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I can't think of any e2ee app that's banned in the EU. I know Signal and WhatsApp are not. |
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| ▲ | layer8 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| You have a very distorted perception of the state of privacy rights in Europe. |
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| ▲ | qeternity 38 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | As an American living in Europe, it's generally Europeans who have a distorted perception. Most Americans know the bill of rights and the 1st/4th/5th amendments. Many Americans will know of the Patriot Act/NSA/Snowden revelations. The same is not true of Europeans and they generally believe their rights are much stronger than they are. Most Brits are not aware of the true nature of the Investigatory Powers Act. Most Frenchmen are not aware of Article L851-3. | | | |
| ▲ | zelphirkalt 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Well, the GP is describing, what soon might be. | | |
| ▲ | throwa356262 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | In the mean time, this is the current reality in the states: One Piece of Flock Camera Data Put This Innocent Woman in Jail for 13 Days https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49852065 And Anthropic reported diary entry to police, woman faces felony charge https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49961057 I dont buy this "europe not free" nonsense. | |
| ▲ | layer8 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | That’s quite unlikely, given the constitutions of various EU countries and the EU’s Charter of Fundamental Rights. | | |
| ▲ | zelphirkalt 32 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | There are forces pushing for chat control again and again and again, until one day people are not vigilant enough to prevent this BS from happening. Then it will take ages to repeal and repair the damage done. Once there is some chance to vacuum up some personal data, businesses, government, and security forces will be very quick to grab that chance, and very slow to give that data up again, should it turn out, that the whole damn thing was illegal all along, due to some constitution. The malpractices might continue for years even after things have been declared illegal. | |
| ▲ | ctolsen 23 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | To add some practical results to that: the Data Retention Directive[1] was struck down by a bunch of national constitutional courts before being completely annulled by the EU Court of Justice. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Retention_Directive | |
| ▲ | yeahforsureman 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Not to forget the European Human Rights Convention as interpreted by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), although it's not an institution of the EU but the Council of Europe, spanning all EU states and then some. The Court's case law is recognized as is by EU, and includes some landmark privacy rulings, e.g., against access to contents and metadata of electronic comms without a court order (or comparable legal safeguards), or any forms of bulk surveillance. | | |
| ▲ | rdm_blackhole 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Yes, the court can overturn laws that are deemed to infringe on privacy rights but this path takes years. The last time a privacy invasive law was enacted it took something like 8 years to be overturned. Are you willing to live in the EU knowing that for the next 8 years the EU agencies will have access to every single message, email and picture you send your loved ones just in case one of those could be CSAM? Even if that was overturned, how will one know if he data they intercepted and illegally obtained will be destroyed or if the text messages you sent to your wife/husband are not going to end up sold to the highest bidder on the darkweb? |
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| ▲ | rdm_blackhole 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/chat-control-2-0-trilogue-u... > given the constitutions of various EU countries EU law superseded any state law by default and that's by design. Even if the EU law is immoral and dangerous like the Chat Control law. So a country's constitution will not save you if tomorrow all chat apps are doing client side scanning. | | |
| ▲ | zelphirkalt 26 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | In practice it _might_ still save you, if the country is willing to pay annual fines to the EU for not implementing some law or policy. But communication tools are always at least a 2 way thing, where you communicate with someone else. If that someone else has their chats leaked due to living in another EU country, where chat control is implemented, then even your constitution will not protect you. Scenarios like these make me consider, whether one day I need to vote for my country to also leave the EU, as it might become a surveillance nightmare. The moment chat control impacts me and my chats on my devices, I think I will have had enough of this. But the economic consequences are scary of course. So damned if you leave and damned if you don't. Sucks. | |
| ▲ | 43 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | [deleted] |
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| ▲ | muvlon 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I don't think it's a paradox because the EU is not a single actor. Just like any government, they do some good and some bad things. |
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| ▲ | kolinko 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| What? I I’m in Europe and I use e2ee daily. The reason you hear about this imho is that we have strong protections and you hear when someone tries to break them. |
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| ▲ | blahblaher 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| dude, yes some countries in the EU are "trying" to include backdoors, and e2ee chats are not going away. Meanwhile in the US, you have literally cameras watching everywhere you move, snitching to the police and Palantir and probably all the other 3 letter institutions, and you complain about privacy rights in the EU? With so many other stuff you could have pointed out? lol, rofl even |
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| ▲ | touwer an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I'm sorry, but you should really read up about the laws in the US and in Europe. U laws are a lot more easy on spying agencies and spyware companies like Google and Facebook than European laws. Backdoors: ask the CIA about random number generators. Surveillance: heard of the cloud act? |
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| ▲ | ascorbic 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The much maligned GDPR gives stronger privacy rights than anything the US has |
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| ▲ | gobdovan 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| In EU, it's politician > industrialist >>> EU citizen > outsiders. It's almost never only about consumers. Via tech regulations, they protect European incumbents first in effect. They see US is ahead and make laws to destroy their moats. If Apple was in EU, you wouldn't have saw universal usb-c, because it would have hurt an EU company. But the more you look at how tedious is for a non-EU company to sell to EU customers, the exemptions they don't get, the specialists fees they got to put on the table, you'll see EU is more coherently described as protectionist than pro-consumer. |
