On Thursday October 26th, MEPs in the European Parliament held press conferences outlining the compromises reached within the EU Parliament negotiators on the controversial Chat Control proposal.
Thankfully it appears that progress is being made in the fight to preserve privacy. According to MEPs, Parliamentarians have agreed to remove the clauses that would give law enforcement the power to demand end-to-end encrypted platforms hand over users messages, emails, and files as part of criminal investigations.
EU is doing a lot of good work to protect the privacy of citizens against corporate surveillance, but continues to propose regulation that would increase government surveillance. News such as this is good, as it seems to show that there are protection measures within the EU to stop such legislation from being effectuated. Another example is the Data Retention Directive, which was first passed back in 2006, but then later declared invalid by the European Court of Justice in 2014. However, while the intent when it comes to corporate surveillance seems aligned with the public interest, the intent when it comes to government surveillance is not. Such privacy violating proposals will continue to be proposed.
I certainly do not have a good overview over all of this. We are completely beholden to the great work of pro-privacy organizations and corporations to keep exerting pressure and making these pieces of legislation known and understandable to the public. But unfortunately, most people can’t even begin to consider the implications of such overreach, which is why the “protect the children”-rhetoric is so effective - “I am not doing anything illegal and thus have nothing to hide, so if we can protect the children from abuse by removing encryption which is only something criminals use anyway, I’m fine with that”. I am clueless to how I can best contribute here, but I am luckily seeing a shift among friends and family in the awareness on these topics.
I don’t understand the pro privacy argument as well as I would like to, and feel like if I were to lose mental faculties which works like an intuition in regards to why this can be bad I might end up on the opposite side.
I am writing this comment to invite explanations which can work on even the most naive person to someone with a higher level of understanding. Also because usually these reasons are given to bad faith actors or in a heated argument, so they don’t get to be as well put together (or at least that’s been my experience and why I feel I don’t understand it as well as should by now)
P.S. I’m Pro privacy just to be clear
Oh, I think this is very difficult. First of all because it is not a single reason why a future where privacy has eroded is a very bad thing, but rather many different reasons. This makes it difficult to know where to start, as it will depend on the person you are talking to what they are more receptive to. Concepts such as security, privacy, secrecy and anonymity are often confused. You have different actors you would want protection from, including corporate and governmental entities.
I don’t think most ordinary people you meet will be bad faith actors though, but I do think many tend to take offense if you are outspoken against something that is proclaimed to be about protecting children. Why wouldn’t you want to save children?
Some of the reasons below, but not an exhaustive list. As I said, difficult to know where to start.
You do have something to hide, even though you might not be doing anything illegal (to your knowledge). Most people dislike people staring into their living room from the street, and will install curtains or other ways to prevent it. Most people closes and locks the door when they go to the toilet. Most people do not say every single thought they have out loud. I think the disconnect comes from people not actually knowing what data is collected, and even if they do, they do not understand how this data can be used / misused to learn things about you or manipulate you, and the privacy threat of having this data stored anywhere even if it is not being used (i.e. risk of data leaks). In terms of manipulation, I think that the story on how Facebook nudged people to vote in the Scottish referendum highlights the creepy influence such a company can have on society, and this was already in 2014. Who’s to say the owners of such platforms will not use it to sway elections their preferred way by using such nudging tactics on the population they want to vote, and not on the ones they’d rather stay home. We shouldn’t have to trust that they don’t abuse such a power.
What today might be perfectly legal, might not be legal tomorrow. Case in point are the draconian abortion laws implemented in various states of the US. Facebook had to comply with government requests to hand over chat logs..
What today is illegal, should perhaps not be illegal. We do not want 100% law enforcement, as that would mean that we consider today’s laws final, however we are constantly evolving our laws. A recent example is legalization of weed in the US. How many have been incarcerated and had their lives ruined on charges related to weed? Yes now the same activities are in many states considered legal. Or homosexuality? Sodomy laws are not a very distant past in many countries (and still exist in other places of the world). If you had Apple or Google scanning your phones and flagging you to law enforcement for illegal activities. Effective mass governmental surveillance (and corporate surveillance that can be passed on to law enforcement) could potentially send countless people to jail on charges that could be legalized in just a few years.
Building an infrastructure for mass surveillance is not future-proof. You might trust your government not to misuse it today, but what about after next election? There are countless examples of less-than-democratic forces gaining power in Western democracies in recent years. We need strong protections against potential oppression/suppression, and not just soft protections that are easily swept aside.
We are dependent on journalists and whistleblowers exposing wrongdoing in our society. Lack of tools that ensure privacy and anonymity prevents this.
Even if our societies are not oppressive regimes today, many around the world are. Political opponents and resistance groups in such regimes need ways to protect themselves. Otherwise authoritarianism will have an too easy time to crack down on dissidents, making organized opposition impossible.