> if some lobbies are pulling the strings
Sure looks like it. Many people don't understand the consequences of the ChatControl proposition (backdoors for governments into all messaging apps) [1].
Politicians insists it is only about protecting kids from predators online, but see for example Sweden:
* Police and secret police will have this access for swedish citizens.
* Secret police have an agreement with NSA about data sharing (see Snowden).
* NSA will end up storing all my DM:s.
* Another country also have an agreement with NSA about data sharing.
* This other country will find out about my sexual orientation or political beliefs the moment I board a plane to their country.
All of this will be outside of control from my country or the laws of my country (Sweden), that is supposed to protect my free speech [2] and anti discrimination laws [3].
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_to_Prevent_and_Comb...
2: https://www.riksdagen.se/sv/dokument-och-lagar/dokument/sven...
3: https://www.riksdagen.se/sv/dokument-och-lagar/dokument/sven...
F*k Ylva Johansson:
> Research by several newspapers led to allegations of questionable connections between Johansson and her staff and companies that would benefit financially from her proposal, including Thorn and WeProtect.
> Johansson rejected the accusations as being untrue, true but not illegal and as not even being accusations.
> Her claim to have given data protection organizations the same access as to the backers of her proposal was rejected as untrue by several organizations and members of the EU parliament. Johansson reacted to growing rejection of her proposal by ordering commercial advertisement on Twitter paid for with EU funds. The advertisement was criticized as being misleading and illegal according to the EU's rules for targeted advertisement. [4]
4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ylva_Johansson#Surveillance_of...
You mention Sweden, I can easily also name Switzerland, the land of generally very decent, moral and polite people. Yet sometimes curtains falls off a bit and one can see how various police departments will do everything possible to track and follow people. Police are generally very nice but I've also seen some unprovoked brutality and generally less-than-stellar behavior by various authorities that should know and do better.
Protect what you can, while you can. No state is your friend, its not normally an outright enemy but rather a party focused on its own interests, your rights or needs be damned.
That is literally going to put people's lives at risk. Crazy.
But the more nefarious issue is that countries that use to uphold human rights and the rights to privacy for their citizens up until 10 to 15 years ago have made a complete U-turn.
And before someone says that this is due to the far-right getting into power, this has really nothing to do with it.
It simply is blatant attempt at muzzling the population. The worst part is that you still have European governments who feel the need to give lessons of democracy to China et al.
I could see how Hungary would want to get this passed because they are well on their way to authoritarianism but this proposal coming from the EU who is supposedly politically in the center, that makes zero sense.
Not much good coverage on it out there apart from the great work by The Rage journalists.
At least in my country, there has been serious laws protecting the users from police opening letters (1962:700; Postlagens tystnadsplikt). This was changed in January 2023 because people exploited it to send drugs thru post office [1].
Of course without any protests in Sweden because again people don't realize their rights to privacy are taken away from them.
1: https://www.svenskhandel.se/nyheter/nyhet/lagandring-ger-moj...
Switzerland is not in EU, not in 12-eyes, not in any of that shit.
I'm sure they are up to no good, too but at least the distance between them and NSA is farther, I hope.
The so-called israelization[0] of the police. Certainly you see that in the US. If you compare the local police, say, 50 years ago with their counterparts today, you definitely notice a strong militarization. That may be appropriate for special units handling dangerous cases, but it should not characterize the rank and file that handle petty crime or public disorder.
> No state is your friend, its not normally an outright enemy but rather a party focused on its own interests
The state is the only recourse of the common man against powerful private interests. In this case (surveillance, etc), private interest has been used as a way to get around the legal limitations of government. Companies like Google and Facebook can track people with greater ease than the government can.
[0] https://www.amnestyusa.org/blog/with-whom-are-many-u-s-polic...
One could argue that they may very well think that this sort of thing could never happen, that the center will always prevail etc... but then again I remember seeing this video compilation of a lot of very confident people in the US saying that Trump would never be president a few months before the 2016 election, let alone be elected for a second term.
So that makes me think, how can they so confident that "the good guys" will always be in charge?
Because from where I am standing there is a massive chance that Reform will win in the UK and that the National Rally will win in France in 2027.
Nobody can say that they did not know.
Secret police definition [1]
> Secret police (or political police) are police, intelligence, or security agencies that engage in covert operations against a government's political, ideological, or social opponents and dissidents. Secret police organizations are characteristic of authoritarian and totalitarian regimes.
Security police definition [2]
> In some countries, security police is the name given to the secret security and intelligence services charged with protecting the state at the highest level, including responsibilities such as personal protection of the head of state, counter-espionage, and anti-terrorism.
Specific example for Swedish 'Security Police'.[3] if you look up any EU agency with similar roles it will be found that they are all security, not secret.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_police
This is the source of some massive disconnects between people and their governments, I think. They had some permission, which we basically agreed on as a society, when their tampering was obvious and/or limited in scale (just due to practical constraints). We gave our consent to be governed with those constraints in mind.
Nowadays they are continuing without those implicit constraints and they don’t want to have the conversation about implementing new explicit constraints. This isn’t the deal we agreed to, really, it is just what they can get away with without permission. You can rule over a populace without their permission, of course—it’s just very different from the sort of pleasant (albeit never perfect) relationship that willing populations and their elected officials have had recently.
The question I have is, why?? I assume some Israelis or people with ties to Israel who wanted Israel to have influence over the US police. (But why?)
I doubt it was a big thing like “gee, you know what Israel can export? Police brutality!” “Hey that’s a great idea!”
But that’s kind of how it comes across.
They implement such systems precisely to always be in charge.
FWIW, the distinction is not as clear cut to me. In the 1970s, the ruling government body (social democrats) passed on information in order to make registers of political opponents in the far left and far right to SÄPO.
More of that part here: https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A4kerhetspolisen#%C3%96ve...
The Nixon watergate scandal was also similar to your first definition there.
Let’s just say it is in a different category than Alexandra Elbakyan.
1: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rational_harm_asse...
All these people created tools that could be used by anyone. Encryption, the Internet, cars. All have legitimate uses cases just like Tornado Cash does.
To me, not wanting to have all of your public blockchain transactions linked to you is actually quite similar to wanting a phone detached from the hivemind - all you want is a bit of privacy.
Why is the creator of this tool being held responsible for how others use it? That's like dragging Henry Ford to court the moment a car driver runs someone over.
Yet I can go to certain neighborhoods in Stockholm and get pretty much every thing under the sun and that's open 24/7.
They need to highlight that we are nothing like as bad a China. We look good in comparison.
> this proposal coming from the EU who is supposedly politically in the center
Is it? Its the only country in the world with a constitutional commitment to privatisation (its in the treaties, which are the constitution, and came close to being called a constitution).
The EU is not a country. It may very well be in 50 years from now but not presently.
> > this proposal coming from the EU who is supposedly politically in the center
I said `supposedly`.
> They need to highlight that we are nothing like as bad a China. We look good in comparison.
Not if they go through with this proposal. You can't claim to be a bastion of democracy and want/need to spy on your citizens 24/7. These 2 notions are just not compatible.
Semantics. its near enough to being one to compare to countries in terms of law, policy and constitution.
> I said `supposedly`.
Depends what you mean by supposedly, I suppose! Its intent is clearly not centrist.
> Not if they go through with this proposal.
Still far better than China. No prison for holding the wrong views, or following the wrong religion, or having the wrong culture. No genocide. Having elections.
I am not happy with where the west is going, but comparing with China its still far better (against a low base).
Palantir, founded by Peter Thiel (currently funding JD Vance), is building a vast person database [1].
I believe their biggest customer is the US government, and is being used by ICE [2].
1: https://beyondthefirewall.substack.com/p/palantirs-new-maste...
2: https://www.404media.co/leaked-palantirs-plan-to-help-ice-de...
Tool != Service
Making and selling lockpicks is very different from running an "I will pick a lock for you" service. The latter is a dramatically higher level of involvement and culpability.
> Why is the creator of [Tornado Cash] being held responsible for how others use it?
Nonsense, they didn't give away (or even sell) a tool, they were actively operating the tool themselves, taking requests to control and aim it in different ways.
> That's like dragging Henry Ford to court the moment a car driver runs someone over.
No, it's like dragging Henry Ford to court because he was the driver of a vehicle that struck people, and his taxi service was advertised as The Light Is Green If The Passenger Says So™.
Driver Ford might not be the only person in the vehicle responsible for manslaughter, but a court case is absolutely justified.
The same reasons Nazis studied American segregation: they admired what they were able to accomplish and want to do something similar themselves.
The bet is that no matter who is in power, the ruling classes won't find themselves under the boot, which is a pretty good bet to make. Beats a revolution, in their eyes.
(I'm surprised anyone still calls it the Arab Spring now that we know how disastrously it turned out.)
> Nonsense, they didn't give away (or even sell) a tool, they were actively operating the tool themselves, taking requests to control and aim it in different ways.
They did give away a tool - they published (open-source, GPL3) a set of smart contracts. They then deployed those immutable (!) smart contracts as a one-time thing. From that point forward, anyone could interact with those smart contracts permissionlessly, that's just how Ethereum works. They didn't afterwards control or aim it in different ways - how could they? The smart contracts are immutable.
All they actually did afterwards is host a user interface (also open-source btw) that made it easy for users to interact with those smart contracts. After some outside pressure they added geo-blocking to the user interface they hosted, which —unsurprisingly— didn't actually stop bad actors from using Tornado Cash. After all, even if they were unable to get around the geo-blocking, bad actors could self-host the user interface or interact with the smart contracts directly.
Think of their user interface as an email client. Would somehow blocking an email client actually stop people from sending emails? No, they could still just use SMTP and directly interact with a server. In the same way, taking down their user interface or implementing any sort of check would not have prevented bad actors from interacting with the smart contracts directly.
Those with that fixation on authority want to maintain the authority. With various post 9/11 movements, the patriot act, tons of military spending, etc, there was both a desire for "security" as well as a lot of ex military gear going to police stations.
Israel just happens to be pros at violently suppressing groups of people, and just happen to be an ally and generally sorted into the "good guy" category. Additionally, Israel exports many "security" type goods and services, from cyber weapons, to traditional weapons. It only makes sense that Israeli physical security companies, where all of their employees have served under the IDF and received the training, would want to start a business offering said training.
So we have a police force who like their authority, are receiving ex-military gear to "protect" either themselves or the population at large, and are fed a constant stream of fearmongering about them being in constant danger. So they begin to act violently first as a means of defense. This creates a feedback loop where the police are seen as violent and corrupt, so criminals are more likely to try their hand at defending themselves or escaping, which makes the Police's job more dangerous.
So now their job is getting more dangerous because people can't trust that their lives wont be ruined by the luck of the draw, if they happen to get a shitty cop that's protected by the establishment. So the police want training to better protect themselves against this agitated populace. There just happens to be an ally known to export weapons and security products who offers training for subjugating a populace, and the police sign up.
