I really wish somebody (or a lot of people) would write a hit movie/book where an innocent person on the run from a stasi-like state in 2035 has to face an interrogator who could read their whatsapp messages and google searches dating back to 2021.
Without art or literature that draws out the terror I don't think most people can really envisage the danger we're all being put in. Without popular consciousness of the problem, it's all the more likely to happen.
In the 80s we had cyberpunk dripping from everywhere, in the 90s we had movies like The Net from 1995: ( https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113957/ ), and just recently(ish) we had Black Mirror.
It's a good idea. But I don't think the impact will be as big as you hope. The "it can't happen to me" bias (optimism bias [0]) will make sure of that.
I would expect the impact to be the way in which it would shape conversations afterwards by serving as a cultural touchpoint. Much like 1984 does.
I'd really like to simply reference a classic movie or book as a conversation ender every time this shit cropped up rather than explain abstract risks from scratch in a less than engaging fashion.
Do note that they can already do that now. A stasi-like state just has to force Google/Apple to store/give them the history, and Google/Apple will oblige. They already do so regularly in "non-stasi" states without much fanfare.
That’s genius. The Circle (with Emma Watson and Karen Gillan) started out really promising but ended up drifting in silliness towards the end. Also I seem to recall the movie having a really wooden quality despite the emotional content and having competent actors.
Hunted, a Dutch TV series, is a reality show featuring exactly this kind of investigative resources. A lot of times, the players (the hunted) are tracked down because they used some form of communication that is compromised by the hunters.
I think what is sad is such a movie would literally have to use Google and WhatsApp in the movie as opposed to some fictional search engine or fictional social network for people to make the connection these days.
Honestly, 1984 should be enough as it's not a big jump from 1984 telescreens to Google/Facebook.
Honestly it’s nothing new. Dystopian stories about modern social media (or technology in general) gone wrong? Did I dream that Black Mirror was a thing?
Black Mirror is just an example. And the whole “social media ruined the life of this one unsuspecting person” plotline is pretty boring and on-the-nose by now.
Combining some recent news in which a company is attempting to claim at least common words for their new identity, I would just tweak the story so that the "Web" corporation in 2035 is at some point disclosed to be merely a rebranding of those we know today. One character will mention it to another in a casual side-remark.
"Yeah, I never did feel great about the time that old search engine company renamed themselves "Web", but I guess the name stuck"
The danger is from companies building massive centralized archives of people's interpersonal comunications, behaviors and ideas. The data is already available for nefarious purposes internally. I'd be more interested in knowing how rampant the abuse of the data already is.
The games Orwell: Keeping an Eye on You and Orwell: Ignorance is Strength explore this aspect, the player is an investigator that can read "whatsapp messages and google searches" to prosecute (or, in some cases, protect) people on the run from a stasi-like state.
But at the same time, if a [big-budget Hollywood] film like this were to be made, some might be tempted to think that it was a form of Predictive Programming.
I changed my mind a bit on this issue. of course I still think its better with as little surveillance as possible, but I don't think what you are describing is actually "terror". If you are really an innocent person, there will be nothing in your history. I mean can you give me some examples of things this stati-state will find about you? Your porn history? or random wiki page about explosives? If there is a stasi-like state and they really want to get you, they don't need your history from 2021, its enough to just beat a concession from you about anything. Just see what the current stasi-like states are doing. Otherwise "Enemy of the state" is a pretty good movie.
I want to agree with you... the problem arises because you're applying your values to those items... e.g. "yeah they're embarrassing/bad, but not really that bad"...
However, it becomes scary when the people with access are much less level-headed. There are people who think gay people or watching porn should require treatment. There have been power changes where people with drastically different views have an agenda to push, and your innocuous "not really that bad" is all of a sudden an imprisonable offense because you "think differently" and you might encourage others.
This sounds like the nothing to hide, nothing to fear argument.
The history allows such a state to construct a narrative where everybody else thinks you're guilty, based on your messages and porn history and so on. Cherry-picking, quoting out of context, etc. This allows the state to legitimise their actions, where torture would fail to do so.
> If you are really an innocent person, there will be nothing in your history.
It's only not about things that are incriminating. Suppose you were a witness to something nobody was supposed to know about and now you're to be disposed of.
If they have your message history, they have your full contact list, your relationships with them, who you trust the most, where you like to hang out, who owes you money or favors you could call in. You're completely isolated. For sure you can't use any kind of ATM or credit card or find work anywhere they'd expect you to provide a social security number.
How far can you get if you can't buy gas or travel tickets? What do you do for food?
> I mean can you give me some examples of things this stati-state will find about you?
I think it’s a bit unfair to ask someone to throw away their (assuming American) 5th Amendment rights to make a point.
To paint with a broad and nonspecific brush, the UK government has regular surveys asking about drug use[0] which show that in the year ending March 2020, 7.4% of young adults used a class A drug. Possession of that class carries a maximum penalty of 7 years and an unlimited fine, supply and production up to life and unlimited fine.
Even for more mundane things like road traffic laws, if they were fully enforced then the only people with licenses would be those who didn’t drive.
(And are your memes fully licensed from the original copyright holder?)
Let's see, drone research, bomb research, gunmaking and ammunition possibilities, research on fires, explosions and incendiary devices, quick suicide methods, drugs, legality and punishment for a lot of shit, etc.
I'd rather have the ability to filter what I don't like in my feeds, but having the government do this is totalitarian. Who knows what they will search for, I lived under communism for 15 years, thank you, don't want back to the reign of terror.
It's not even about your feeds. It's about your private messages. Crazy stuff, Gestapo and KGB wouldn't even dream of this level of surveillance of ordinary citizens.
If modern day tech had been available to the stasi they absolutely would have used it. They were already beginning to collect hair samples from people in the late 1980s in anticipation of widespread DNA testing being available 5, 10, 15 years down the road.
I don't see how this won't pass. It's the EU. In the minds of many people the EU can do no wrong. And if they do something wrong it's okay and a small thing. And if it's not a small thing then you're just a conspiracy theorist that hates democracy.
In the past the EU passed a directive that required all ISPs to save what websites you visited. This was overturned years later, but it seems now they're trying again through a different angle.
well now it's child pornography which they use to push such things trough. all people hate child pornography, but I mean, who would use whatsapp for such things? I mean seriously what are they even thinking? making such a thing go trough a official directive probably makes things go worse, way worse.
a lot of people in germany, basically do not care they thing they do not have anything to hide (which is probably right) but there are so many crimes which are just done in front of everybody and nobody did care (cum ex, wirecard, just to name some). it's like once the rich or politicans are involved they start to care.
This is definitely coming down the pipe. I think it's extremely imported to come up with an alternative to the existing centralized systems; which I believe primarily exist in order to mitigate spam.
Some people have been working on an interesting solution called StampChat which has a similar topology to email, but the messages are encrypted by default and the spam mitigation is done via sending tokens to the recipient (ala Hal Finney's RPoW) idea.
> I think it's extremely imported to come up with an alternative to the existing centralized systems; which I believe primarily exist in order to mitigate spam.
I think spam and abuse are definitely significant problems.
The centralized systems are like medieval walled cities.
They exist because, for an average individual, there is no practical way to live outside their walls.
It's difficult to run your own email server. But, while the technical challenge may be difficult, the greater difficulty is in preventing your email server from becoming a bot in a spam network.
As far as I can tell, no EU organ has actually published any actual proposal or recommendation to introduce such mandatory screening as described in the OP.
My guess is that the actual proposal, when it comes, will not include industrywide mandatory screening or breaking end-to-end encryption.
This is really interesting coming from the Pirate Party. While I remember them for the protests against ACTA some 12 years ago, their biggest success - the Czech Pirate party is extremely pro-Brussels and has hardly breathed a word against it.
Otherwise, my opinion is that this would be either impossible to enforce or the cost to do so would outweigh the benefits in a massive way.
> the Czech Pirate party is extremely pro-Brussels and has hardly breathed a word against it.
I find "pro-" or "anti-" Brussels to be a false dichotomy. You can be _for_ the existence of the EU, but be critical of how it works, of the proposals coming from one of its institutions, and actively participate in improving the organisation.
>This is really interesting coming from the Pirate Party. While I remember them for the protests against ACTA some 12 years ago, their biggest success - the Czech Pirate party is extremely pro-Brussels and has hardly breathed a word against it.
Well, Marcel Kolaja, who was voted from the Czech Pirate Party to the european parliament certainly comments on these things - like on an earlier round for this in July:
The Czech pirate party was built on internal democracy without any failsafety and got swathed by hundreds (thousands today) of leftists/statists indifferent to the original ideas.
Basically none of their voting base (young adults, mostly) has any idea about the origin of the party. They were lured to the party because it supports green and social statist politics.
Note: I don't think statism in itself is wrong, but I don't like the particular kind of state they're pushing for. I think their goals could be accomplished by supporting people more directly e. g. by supporting independent social organizations, which I think would be more in line with the original pirate ideas.
However I must say that their latest program (for the parliamentary elections) was acceptable to me. But they're nearly (4/200) out of the parliament now.
A friend of mine was the leader of the Norwegian Pirate Party. He proposed a new way to organize society in a decentralized, professionalized, yet accountable way. His main issue was that politicians would promise a bunch of nonsense, and then get voted in based upon those promises, but after the fact they would never do anything about it. Even after breaking all the promises, most politicians never have to answer for lying or not accomplishing what got them into a position in the first place. One of the concrete tools he alluded to when speaking about these flaws was the FixMyStreet app and website.
My problem with the Pirate Party is that they are part of the Greens group = anti nuclear activists, let alone not being represented at all in my country. I'd probably vote for them even ignoring this, because at least if feels like choosing the lesser of several evils. Voting is like choosing between the four horsemen of the apocalypse.
I remember talking about such scenario like decade ago and people were telling me I am a conspiracy theorist and the EU would never do something like this as it breaches human rights. I guess it's too late now. Too much money and powerful people involved.
Readit News
Without art or literature that draws out the terror I don't think most people can really envisage the danger we're all being put in. Without popular consciousness of the problem, it's all the more likely to happen.
People don't realize how deep the shit is becoming despite all these. We have successfully amused ourselves to death. (as per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death )
Links:
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimism_bias
I'd really like to simply reference a classic movie or book as a conversation ender every time this shit cropped up rather than explain abstract risks from scratch in a less than engaging fashion.
Anyway. This isnt a problem I can solve.
[1] https://daily.jstor.org/sharks-before-and-after-jaws/
Even under totalitarian communist rule, the vast majority of population were not political prisoners.
Honestly, 1984 should be enough as it's not a big jump from 1984 telescreens to Google/Facebook.
Black Mirror is just an example. And the whole “social media ruined the life of this one unsuspecting person” plotline is pretty boring and on-the-nose by now.
"Yeah, I never did feel great about the time that old search engine company renamed themselves "Web", but I guess the name stuck"
"Slaughterbots" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fa9lVwHHqg) shows a terror angle for some of what technology can do (drones).
And, if he writes a screenplay about it that probably means it already happened.
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However, it becomes scary when the people with access are much less level-headed. There are people who think gay people or watching porn should require treatment. There have been power changes where people with drastically different views have an agenda to push, and your innocuous "not really that bad" is all of a sudden an imprisonable offense because you "think differently" and you might encourage others.
This sounds like the nothing to hide, nothing to fear argument.
The history allows such a state to construct a narrative where everybody else thinks you're guilty, based on your messages and porn history and so on. Cherry-picking, quoting out of context, etc. This allows the state to legitimise their actions, where torture would fail to do so.
Make everyone fear each other.
It's only not about things that are incriminating. Suppose you were a witness to something nobody was supposed to know about and now you're to be disposed of.
If they have your message history, they have your full contact list, your relationships with them, who you trust the most, where you like to hang out, who owes you money or favors you could call in. You're completely isolated. For sure you can't use any kind of ATM or credit card or find work anywhere they'd expect you to provide a social security number.
How far can you get if you can't buy gas or travel tickets? What do you do for food?
I think it’s a bit unfair to ask someone to throw away their (assuming American) 5th Amendment rights to make a point.
To paint with a broad and nonspecific brush, the UK government has regular surveys asking about drug use[0] which show that in the year ending March 2020, 7.4% of young adults used a class A drug. Possession of that class carries a maximum penalty of 7 years and an unlimited fine, supply and production up to life and unlimited fine.
Even for more mundane things like road traffic laws, if they were fully enforced then the only people with licenses would be those who didn’t drive.
(And are your memes fully licensed from the original copyright holder?)
[0] https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeand...
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Yep, I'm fucked :D
They were doing that exact thing to selected citizens. So did FBI for alleged communists.
Bugging apartments, planting their own spies, opening up private letters, etc.
In the past the EU passed a directive that required all ISPs to save what websites you visited. This was overturned years later, but it seems now they're trying again through a different angle.
Edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Retention_Directive
a lot of people in germany, basically do not care they thing they do not have anything to hide (which is probably right) but there are so many crimes which are just done in front of everybody and nobody did care (cum ex, wirecard, just to name some). it's like once the rich or politicans are involved they start to care.
Some people have been working on an interesting solution called StampChat which has a similar topology to email, but the messages are encrypted by default and the spam mitigation is done via sending tokens to the recipient (ala Hal Finney's RPoW) idea.
It's still a prototype, but there is one deployment over here: https://web.stampchat.io
The whitepaper on the protocol is here: https://www.stampchat.io/whitepaper.pdf
There's a faucet here if anyone is interested https://faucet.lotuslounge.org/
We're not doing an ICO or anything, happy to give out more tokens out.
I think spam and abuse are definitely significant problems.
The centralized systems are like medieval walled cities.
They exist because, for an average individual, there is no practical way to live outside their walls.
It's difficult to run your own email server. But, while the technical challenge may be difficult, the greater difficulty is in preventing your email server from becoming a bot in a spam network.
https://thehelm.com/
As far as I can tell, no EU organ has actually published any actual proposal or recommendation to introduce such mandatory screening as described in the OP.
My guess is that the actual proposal, when it comes, will not include industrywide mandatory screening or breaking end-to-end encryption.
Otherwise, my opinion is that this would be either impossible to enforce or the cost to do so would outweigh the benefits in a massive way.
I find "pro-" or "anti-" Brussels to be a false dichotomy. You can be _for_ the existence of the EU, but be critical of how it works, of the proposals coming from one of its institutions, and actively participate in improving the organisation.
Which is exactly what this MEP is doing.
Well, Marcel Kolaja, who was voted from the Czech Pirate Party to the european parliament certainly comments on these things - like on an earlier round for this in July:
https://european-pirateparty.eu/parliament-approves-chatcont...
He is in generally pretty active also in other important topics such as content filters or gatekeepers and other stuff:
https://european-pirateparty.eu/tag/marcel-kolaja/
As for the Pirate Party being "pro Brussels" it rather seem to to that they are ready to get involved in EU matters & possibly improve things.
Other parties anti-EU rhetoric is often not very constructive and populist, especially if the EU calls then on their shady deals.
Basically none of their voting base (young adults, mostly) has any idea about the origin of the party. They were lured to the party because it supports green and social statist politics.
Note: I don't think statism in itself is wrong, but I don't like the particular kind of state they're pushing for. I think their goals could be accomplished by supporting people more directly e. g. by supporting independent social organizations, which I think would be more in line with the original pirate ideas.
However I must say that their latest program (for the parliamentary elections) was acceptable to me. But they're nearly (4/200) out of the parliament now.
According to Wikipedia, the Pirates and Mayors group got 15.6% of the vote at the last election last month and has 37 seats. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Czech_legislative_electio...
Is that not correct?
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