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cross-posted from: https://feddit.de/post/12846267
After Sunday‘s European elections, the EU is planning to reintroduce indiscriminate communications data retention without suspicion and force manufacturers to allow law enforcement access to digital devices such as smartphones and cars.
Specifically, according to the 42-point surveillance plan, manufacturers are to be legally obliged to make digital devices such as smartphones, smart homes, IoT devices, and cars monitorable at all times (“access by design”). Messenger services that were previously securely encrypted are to be forced to allow for interception.
The secure encryption of metadata and subscriber data is to be prohibited. Where requested by the police, GPS location tracking should be activated by service providers (“tracking switch”).
The EU Commission has already contributed specific proposals to the surveillance plan, according to two presentations obtained by the Pirates.
Make sure to vote in the upcoming elections!
I look at it this way - people that think the government will use this to spy on them are fucking delusional. How self-important do you have to be to think that out of billions of citizens, any government would give a single shit about the crap you say online?
Tinfoil hat delusions of grandeur in a nutshell
I expect the same people would be extremely vocal if there was a terrorist attack that could’ve been stopped but wasn’t
Yeah, sure, delusional. Until you call a local polititian “so 1 dick” on some online platform, leading to you and also your ex grilfriend getting raided by the police, all electronic devices taken by them as evidence for an undetermined time and the low key threats from the prosecutor about what would happen next. Or until a journalist dares to link to a website, that the state recently criminalized the creators of, though the state itself links to that specific site, too. And depending on how easy the access for the police is: You might wanna refrain from being too popular (like a famous singer or actor) or from being active against climate change or right wing extremism. Your personal data is easily leaked through the police to anyone of their friends.
You might think, that this is overly specific and won’t really happen? Well, it already did. In germany. Sure, most people won’t have the states crosshair on their forehead. But nontheless you might easily be one of the exceptions.
It’s not necessarily just about the government. Built-in backdoors also give malicious actors more ways to access your own private information, whether to steal your identity, transfer money out of your bank account, use your credit for loans, or blackmail you. Also, other governments already use your online speech to arrest you for saying things they don’t like - see China or Russia. Many EU countries are only one election away from having a government that goes in that direction already. This is only going to make it that much easier for them.
#1 I’m pretty important for me and a hypothetical person with some govt connections whom I’d call sheepfscker and SOAB in a heated argument, or just show that I don’t respect them. These are legal, or warrant a fine possibly, but don’t warrant that person using such connections to get at my private communications or something like that, which would become a real possibility.
#2 If they wouldn’t give a single shit, then it’s very strange they are being so swift and stealthy about introducing legislation affecting mostly that. Not targeted attacks at suspects (which are not too hard for competent people anyway), but watching everyone.
#3 Terrorists and whistleblowers and people who need help against domestic abuse or mafia or whatever else are interested in the same tooling here. A healthy society can continue to exist after a successful terrorist attack. It can’t without whistleblowers and ways to have confidentiality in general.