• When asked about employing mass surveillance, in particular also spying on Journalists, Doctors and Lawyers, the previous German government replied, that it is fine if we do it. After all we are not like Russia, China or Saudi Arabia, so those people have nothing to fear…

      If we could power the earth from Orwell turning in his grave, we would have solved cliamte change long ago.

      •  Endward23   ( @Endward23@futurology.today ) 
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        4 months ago

        After all we are not like Russia, China or Saudi Arabia, so those people have nothing to fear…

        Oh sure. Your anecode is a very impressive symbol for the state of some discussions here. Maybe, even a bit too good to be strict true.

        Could I ask, where and how do you communicate with the German gouverment?

        • There is a regular governmental press conference, usually monday, wednesday and friday where the speakers of the chancellor and the ministries are invited by an independant journalist organization. The organization is called Bundespressekonferenz.

          Since about ten years the journalist Tilo Jung is recording most of the press conferences and uploading them to his youtube channel I highly recommend you to watch the latest video on the massacre in Gaza. The current government called it an “tragic use of shooting weapons”.

          I cannot find the specific video right now, because the topic of mass surveillance through automated scanning of messengers, or by allowing back doors has been a topic since at least the past 5 or 6 years. Please note that i was refferring not to this but the previous german government, albeit the current chancellor party SPD was also in the previous government and the chancellor Scholz was the last finance minister under Merkel.

          If you believe my statement to be implausible without video evidence, i’d like to invite you to meet our former minister of defence in the current government, Lambrecht, who resigned after referring to the war in Ukraine as an opportunity to have met many nice people in a social media video. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-64288267

          Before she was defence minister under this goverment, she was minsiter of justice under the previous government. There she demanded that all websites should hand passwords over to the police as demanded. When it was pointed out that there is no use with hashed passwords, she asked to just safe them in plain text then. Alongside where further demands for extensive backdoors, violation of encryption and automatic scanning. It took months of heavy criticism to get her to drop it, despite the main point being that most of what she proposed was in violation of other laws including EU regulation.

          https://netzpolitik.org/2020/hacker-interessieren-sich-nicht-fuer-stopp-schilder/
          https://www.heise.de/news/Justizministerium-WhatsApp-Gmail-Co-sollen-Passwoerter-herausgeben-muessen-4615602.html

          • If you believe my statement to be implausible without video evidence

            Sorry, I missed it. I thought you speak about some correspondence between a company and authorities.

            Nebenbei, dass die Regierung diese Anschauung vertritt glaube ich dir gern. Darüber müsste man eigentlich einen längeren Text schreiben, aber den liest am Ende eh niemand.

            i’d like to invite you to meet our former minister of defence in the current government, Lambrecht, who resigned after referring to the war in Ukraine as an opportunity to have met many nice people in a social media video.

            I remember that part a bit different. The speech or address was poorly orated but, as far as I remember, his was a usual rhetorical technice to bring something positive after a negative part. The speech as a whole was a kind of summary of the year.

  • Crazy how politicized the internet is now. Not so long ago nobody gave a rat’s ass. I wonder how regulated it will become and if online freedom still exists in say 50 years.

    •  Endward23   ( @Endward23@futurology.today ) 
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      4 months ago

      I’m a bit pessimistic about that point. It seems that the main reason why the Internet was less regulated than, lets say, the TV market was the lack of awareness of the old authorities and policymakers. At the latest with the victory of Donald Trump, things have changed. Now the ruling class is beginning to believe in the world-changing power of the flow of (mis)information on the Internet.

      Its important to note that it doesn’t matter how you think about this changes in terms of ethics or politics. The mayor event was the change of mind in regards to the internet as such. Before, the internet was seen as something new, yet not understond and/or a place were young people does childish pranks. The innocence is over, at least in their eyes.Unimportant is the question whether you believe the the world-changing power of the internet yourself. Maybe, the idea is even false and the internet isn’t that important. But you have the regulation of it on the political agenda. It takes years to come to a better knowleade. Sometimes, even ages.

      •  Elise   ( @xilliah@beehaw.org ) 
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        4 months ago

        Ya I get you but I think in the end it’s nothing really new. It seems like everything is just another rehash of something we already had. E.g. instead of killer bots we brainwashed kids into killing on command. Same with freedom.

  • I wonder how long this ruling will hold if the EU commision comes around with their own chat control. Before somebody write it: I know that the EU and the Human Rights Court are different institution and doesn’t have much to do with each another.

    The Russian state has already left the European agreement, which was the frame in which the court works.

    At least, it should be interesting to check the judgment out. Some aspects are really interesting. As it seems, the european court may development a ruling like Bernstein v. United States. That could be interesting since the european continent lackes such a regulation as far as I know.