EU Commission refuses to disclose authors behind its mass surveillance proposal

High-Level Group (HLG) recommendations:

https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/document/download/1105a0ef...

11. "The creation of a platform (equivalent to SIRIUS51) to share tools, best practices, and knowledge on how to be granted access to data from product owners and producers. Building further on SIRIUS, this should be expanded to include hardware manufacturers in its mandate and to create and map law enforcement points of contact with digital hardware and software manufacturers."

22. "Developing a technology roadmap that brings together technology, cybersecurity, privacy, standardisation and security experts and ensures adequate coordination e.g. potentially through a permanent structure, in order to implement lawful access by design in all relevant technologies in line with the needs expressed by law enforcement, ensuring at the same time strong security and cybersecurity and providing for the full respect of legal obligations on lawful access. According to the HLG, law enforcement authorities should contribute to the definition of requirements, but it should not be their role to impose specific solutions on companies so that they can provide lawful access to data for criminal investigative purposes without compromising security."

26. "Establishing a research group to assess the technical feasibility of built-in lawful access obligations (including for accessing encrypted data) for digital devices, while maintaining and without compromising the security of devices and the privacy of information for all users as well as without weakening or undermining the security of communications."

I could quote the entire PDF but it's too long. In short, they want to expand surveillance on all fronts and mandate backdoors both in software and hardware. Read the PDF.

they're still saying the old thing about accessing encrypted data and protecting privacy while it's obvious that it wouldn't be possible to access encrypted data and for that data to still be "secure" at the same time

The European court of justice could still deem such practice to be unlawful

Out of curiosity, despite its flaws and setbacks, what countries or organizations are in a better position to lecture others on those matters?

Russia? China? Iran?

>founded on core values including respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law, and respect for human rights

For that reason it would be more embarrassing than anticipated if the authors were disclosed . . .

Also: "Going Dark expert group – EU's surveillance forge" https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/going-dark-expert-gro...

> The EU Commission is hiding the participants of the #EUGoingDark group meetings. I have requested lists of participants several times, but so far have only received completely redacted documents. (My Toot on Mastodon.) All that is known is that police forces and secret services are represented. Despite the highly sensitive topics in terms of data protection and fundamental rights, the EU Data Protection Supervisor only has the status of an observer. NGOs are not allowed to take part in the group’s meetings. While fundamental rights are muted, the #EUGoingDark group is planning to influence the EU Parliament with targeted surveillance PR.

To make things worse, Denmark will take hold of the Presidency of the Council of EU from July to December. They are one of the main forces behind Chat Control.

> the efficacy on the data provided by thorn, but we don't have any actual information about the trustworthyness of this claims

Why would we doubt these claims? North Korea, China, (Soviet) Russia, all of them were and are very effective at using surveillance against their population. Feel free to expand the examples, the list is not meant to be exhaustive.

See, the thing is, the reason that they want privacy for what they do, we want privacy for the exact same reason.

People in less developed countries are already more free. Some of their governments would like to or do push for laws like this but the infrastructure or power to force international companies to implement it is not there.

You reminded me of "Consciousness Explained" [0], where Dennett makes a metaphorical distinction between the Orwellian and Stalinesque approaches, such that in the former, "wrong things" are allowed to happen and are then reconciled by changing history, while in the latter, everything is enforced and handled on the spot, before wrong information ever reaches the news [1]. I am concerned that we're headed into both dystopias at the same time, with some countries going further into the Stalinesque approach.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness_Explained [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_drafts_model

Yes, it's interesting that whilst they're not happy with Trump's version of authoritarianism, rather than moving in the opposite direction, they've just decided to switch to a parallel track.

Not if they're importing American tech stuff: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/12/apple-admits-to-...

that's the right question to be asked.

extreme capital concentration breeds this, and we had it happen everywhere.

They will complete each other. Large websites and apps will be forced to implement age verification and thus your online identity will be tied to your real identity. No privacy from government spying and the end of anonymous accounts.

I don't see the connection. It's true, as others say, that extremist's use of surveillance tool poses the greatest danger, but the desire to monitor the population is present across the political spectrum. Since you mention Wilders: the centrist, and most liberal Dutch party D'66 actually supported a surveillance "drag net" for the Dutch intelligence services.

As a data point, the largest political parties in Norway (Arbeiderpartiet / Høyre), are now both seeking to introduce age limits backed by national BankID login systems to access social media, which would be a massive invasion in the right to privacy online.

The same parties voted in 2011 to introduce mass data storage, where all international internet traffic can be stored and kept for 6 months by the state.

I see no reason to believe that either party would protect the right to private communication or internet use.

Is Ursula von der Leyen "extreme right"? Because it was her (and her commission) who established the group responsible and it was the commission's decision to not disclose its members.

Yeah, I don't think enough of the centrists consider the question of how intrusive state powers might be used by a far-right government. Despite having several demonstrations at the moment.

I don't think the extreme right is pushing this. They are typically anti-EU.

I speculate that this is a result of centrist/neoliberal establishment wanting to solidify control.

The extreme right is typically using failures like this as a political attack vector.

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There's always a joker somewhere :-)

Try calling up, E-mailing or anything else with Dutch politians. No one will talk to you, answer your E-mails, allow you to call them. They make themselves unreachable.

Representatives don't care as much as you'd like them to, unfortunately.

Tried that with MEPs for my country of Denmark: no reply.

I tried that with my MEPs on the Copyright Directive. Nearly all of them replied with parrotted talking points from the EU Commission, as opposed to any kind of understanding of the issues I raised.

At the end of the day, EU Parliament representation is dilute and indirect. Unlike the democratic systems of most nations, elected EU parliamentarians cannot originate any new law. Only appointed (unelected) individuals within the EU Commission/Council can do so, behind closed doors if it suits them.

MEPs are on a lucrative gravy train and they generally don't want to rock the boat. If the Commission doesn't get a "yes" from Parliament, it simply makes superficial amendments and retries Parliament until the "yes" is received.

With the Copyright Directive, after a "no" vote in Parliament in 2018, the Commission literally put the same contentious articles (11 and 13) back in again for the second vote - this time under different article numbers (15 and 17), so all the public activism and criticism linked to the original article numbers would be orphaned. MEPs voted "yes" the second time, like the good, obedient MEPs they are.

I’m sure they will have a good laugh. At your email I mean. They won’t pick up the phone.