• termaxima@slrpnk.net
    0·
    7 days ago

    Besides the privacy implications : trying to protect children from grooming by forbidding specific apps, is like trying to treat chickenpox with concealer.

    The real problem is that our society is even producing people who would groom a child.

    But as always, politicians will try to “prevent” crime at the latest possible point in the action chain, instead of going back to the source.

    I dont want to understate the fact that going to the source is extremely hard to do in many cases ; but maybe people would be less disinterested in politics, if we were actually choosing between different treatments - instead of different brands of concealer - to treat our various collective cases of chicken pox.

  • Sizbang@lemmy.world
    0·
    7 days ago

    Just sent it, thanks for the reminder. Sent it before too an one representative actually responded which was nice.

  • arsCynic@lemmy.mlEnglish
    0·
    7 days ago

    I don’t get it. If an email was encrypted with PGP between a friend and myself, how would anyone else without the private keys be able to decrypt it?

    • Kjell@lemmy.world
      0·
      7 days ago

      They can’t, but that is not the purpose. If the chat control passes then all big services will be forced to leave EU or build in a backdoor. That will give them control over more than 90 % of the population and satisfies their goal. You and your friends are a rounding error. And if you would perform a crime, or are suspected of one, they can use the fact that you encrypt your messages against you.

  • lascapi@jlai.lu
    0·
    8 days ago

    That’s not a surprise, but that’s sad!!

    Let’s continue to fight against!!!

  • HaraldvonBlauzahn@feddit.orgOP
    0·
    8 days ago

    Why is this specifically relevant to Linux users?

    Well,

    • controlling end-to-end encrypted messages is only possible if either the keys/certificates are not secret (which is possible with TLS), or the software on the end-users device is not controlled any more by the user (but perhaps by law enforcement, or companies).
    • age verification will typically done by a form of attestation, a highly problematic cobceot. Again, this would require to run software on the users device which can’t be controlled by him or her, which is deceptively called “trusted computing”. (Technically, age verification could be done by other means, but this is not what these proposals aim for).
    • in the world of public-key cryptography, which is what TLS , GnuPG, and most other modern systems are based in, encryption and digital signatures are two sides of the same coin: Who breaks encryption keys necessarily also breaks signature keys. This means it is not possible any more to sign software such as the Linux kernel, or Email clients, or broeser packages. Or even banking apps or bootloaders for smart phones. Which means to give control away to the entities, groups or induviduals controlling these keys.

    To sum up, this is a massive transfer of control.

    • zergtoshi@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      8 days ago

      These politicians really aren’t afraid of those they were elected to represent…
      For their sake I hope they stop this FAFO, before more damage is done.

      • Quibblekrust@thelemmy.clubEnglish
        0·
        6 days ago

        Why would a person choose to use fewer words to relay a thought when using more words is clearly better?

        I propose instead, OP change their comment to say:

        him, her, them, hir, zir, em, xem, xim, per, ve, ey, faer, aer, or thon

  • Zagorath@aussie.zoneEnglish
    0·
    8 days ago

    outlaws anonymous communication by requiring every citizen to verify their age before accessing a service

    This is likely to be the case in practice, but technologically, it does not have to be the case.

    If the age verifiers (which IMO should be the governments themselves[1], but could also be a private third-party, as long as it’s not the same as the social media company) only ever receive a blinded token representing the user, verify the user’s age, and then the user brings that token back to the social media site, unblind it, and present them the signed token, there is no way for the age verifier to track which sites a person visits, and no way for the sites to have any detail about who their users are (other than what they already have).

    1. obviously, it actually shouldn’t be anyone at all: parents should be put in charge of their own kids, and maybe given the tools with robust parental control software to handle it client-side. Government server-side age verification is just not a good option. But if we assume they’re going to do that, we should at least discuss the way it could be done in the least-bad way. ↩︎

    • ObliviousEnlightenment@lemmy.world
      0·
      8 days ago

      We could also require isps to educate and aid parents in protecting their kids, sending guides and offering to send a guy to set it up, ect. Perhaps with a legal penalty for the parents for failing to do so if their kid actually is harmed somehow. Then the onus is where it belongs, which makes it harder to justify this kind of shit

    • MonkeMischief@lemmy.today
      0·
      8 days ago

      parents should be put in charge of their own kids,

      So convenient that governments and their corporate masters take such a keen interest in watching our kids, after making all their parents spend most of their lives at miserable jobs.

    • twack@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      8 days ago

      Or we just sell anonymous age verified serial numbers at gas stations like prepaid phone cards.

  • Tja@programming.dev
    0·
    8 days ago

    Ok, the website says that Germany already opposes it. Is that outdated or what? I don’t want to spam MEPs if they already agree with me.

    • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
      0·
      8 days ago

      Spam them regardless. You want them to stay where they are and to argue firmly. Especially coming from Germany when talking about the evil of the surveillance state.

  • olenkoVD@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    0·
    8 days ago

    Question for a the Fight Chat Control website: My country’s primary language is not English, do I need to translate the e-mail?

    • falcunculus@jlai.lu
      0·
      8 days ago

      Yes you should, and it would be even better to use it as a template to write it yourself.

      MEPs will pay more attention to messages that seem genuine and from their voters rather than mass-produced by foreigners.