European politics

[Goodspeed]

What's the problem? Data retention rules make a lot of sense. You don't want service providers to throw away their data immediately to save a buck, when you might need it in investigations. Almost every country already has laws about data retention (and the ones that don't should), they're just trying to codify it at EU level which makes sense to me.

We do some service provider stuff at my work and if there weren't laws around data retention we would throw away our CDR records immediately to reduce the size (by extension cost) of our databases.

The important laws for privacy are the ones about needing probable cause to actually access the data. This law doesn't seem to change anything there.

[iNcog]

Investigations on private citizens? For what reason is that appropriate? Asking candidly, do you think you should be forced to give your real name in order to access the internet? Should you be forced to have your every movement stored somewhere? To me that is a huge overstep for anyone to have that sort of information.

Probable cause is a given here in most western societies, but that was just thrown out the window by the USA. What if you have corrupt or racist police/judges/etc. ? Do you think these laws would be good to have in a police state like Russia? I just don't understand or see the need to have data retention on private citizens. We idealize our institutions too much in the west.

[RefluxSemantic]

Government access to data is not necessarily scary, as long as the government is reasonable. But there is no guarantee that the government stays reasonable (see the USA, or consider the German occupation).

I used to be more in the camp of "I've got nothing to hide", which is still true for now. But with recent developments in the world, I am not sure if this will stay true throughout my lifetime. Especially my political orientation could pose a risk here.

[Dolan]

Last year, a Chinese team announced they broke three algos from the AES cryptographic framework using quantum computers. This is what was made public, but I wonder if the USA is really behind or they can already break AES-256 but have no interest in disclosing this. It's already known that the NSA collects data at internet backbones and they need special software to be able to query the massive corpus of data they have accumulated. They must have problems sifting through that planet of data to find just a needle of relevant information in it.

I don't know why anyone expected to have privacy in such a monitored realm like the internet. I always assume everything I do on the internet is on a record, so if I don't want it there, then it shouldn't be done on the internet. And I suppose terrorists think and do the same. At this point, the law are probably only catching some pedo boomers in their nets and that's enough for them to justify having the system in place. So I'm whatever on this subject, but it's clear that in this context, in which politics is no longer about left-vs-right but individuals-vs-system, it does more to amplify people's mistrust.

[iNcog]

Last year, a Chinese team announced they broke three algos from the AES cryptographic framework using quantum computers. This is what was made public, but I wonder if the USA is really behind or they can already break AES-256 but have no interest in disclosing this. It's already known that the NSA collects data at internet backbones and they need special software to be able to query the massive corpus of data they have accumulated. They must have problems sifting through that planet of data to find just a needle of relevant information in it.

I don't know why anyone expected to have privacy in such a monitored realm like the internet. I always assume everything I do on the internet is on a record, so if I don't want it there, then it shouldn't be done on the internet. And I suppose terrorists think and do the same. At this point, the law are probably only catching some pedo boomers in their nets and that's enough for them to justify having the system in place. So I'm whatever on this subject, but it's clear that in this context, in which politics is no longer about left-vs-right but individuals-vs-system, it does more to amplify people's mistrust.

It goes beyond just what you do on the internet though. My credit card company will harvest information about my purchases and send it on. My phone is basically just a monitoring device as well. Google can tell you exactly where I've been probably within minutes. frankly I don't overly like it.

I also operate under the pretense that anything on the internet is basically known (hilariously "incog" comes from "incognito" because as a 14 year old I wanted to remain anonymous).

this video was an interesting watch regarding privacy

[Dolan]

User data collection became a big business model in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. Internet users became averse to spending much and that forced companies to offer more freeware that came with data strings attached. They made you pay with giving them your data. That's when private data became such a coveted resource to mine and a lot of "free" online internet services like social media, email, chat were created as bait for gaining clients and lock them in the system.

GDPR offers some choices, but the implementation is sometimes formulated in such a way that if you really want to disable all tracking by ads companies you have to click through tens of opt-out switches. They do it on purpose to discourage you from disabling their data gathering. Some don't even offer you this choice, they just give you a take it or leave it option: accept all cookies or leave the site.

[Goodspeed]

Investigations on private citizens? For what reason is that appropriate?

If you have good reason to believe they broke the law (i.e. probable cause).

Asking candidly, do you think you should be forced to give your real name in order to access the internet? Should you be forced to have your every movement stored somewhere? To me that is a huge overstep for anyone to have that sort of information.

No and no.

Probable cause is a given here in most western societies, but that was just thrown out the window by the USA. What if you have corrupt or racist police/judges/etc. ? Do you think these laws would be good to have in a police state like Russia? I just don't understand or see the need to have data retention on private citizens. We idealize our institutions too much in the west.

Laws around probable cause is what you actually need. Data is going to be there whether or not it's forced by retention laws. It's access to the data that you need to control.

[iNcog]

The data shouldn't exist in the first place, imo. You can't store the data without putting it physically somewhere, in other words a power hungry data center. It seems to me that we're spending a ton of energy (which comes at the cost of climate change), a ton of money and resources on securing this data. All for what? So that ad companies can fuel relentless and destructive consumerism? So that corrupt police agencies can target minorities or political opponents? For gerrymandering and other political manipulations?

What you're getting out of such big data is far more nefarious than any good I could see. I stand to be corrected given I'm not fully knowledgeable on the topic but I'm just not seeing it.

[Goodspeed]

You say the data shouldn't exist. What are you talking about there? The internet? I kind of like the internet.

Service providers often have to store the data in order to bill their customers and for critical features that their customers want. If you don't store when and for how long John called Jane, how are you going to bill John for the call? Users themselves also want you to store this data. Our enterprise customers want reports on their phone traffic, and even end users sometimes want this. I for one want chrome to remember my history (server-side, so I can access it on other devices), and I want ChatGPT to remember my conversation history so I can refer to it later. I want websites to store cookies because they're actually very useful for certain features that I use. I want ESOC to store my posts, GitHub to store my code, OGS to store my Go moves, IRacing to store my race history, etc.

So you can say the data shouldn't exist, but I'm not convinced that's what you actually want.

Regardless, the data is going to exist, whether you want it to or not. If you strictly regulate access to it (e.g. GDPR), that's not a problem.

[Dolan]

I suppose what Incog was arguing is that there is data collection that is done without user approval and without offering utility to the user. Facebook has been profiling users on the internet for years even when they're not logged in.
This has nothing to do with any service or utility offered through their site, it was done because they could and to feed their AI. And there's no law to punish this or enforce user rights over data collected without consent. Especially during those pre-GDPR years.

Unfortunately this issue only became visible when graphic artists raised the alarm that their works have been used to feed AIs without giving them any copyright royalties. But that's a more egregious example, where parasitic use of creative works comes into conflict with the general principle that copyrightable works should have legal protection. I don't know why people's online traces shouldn't benefit from a similar approach, considering that profiling their personality without their consent is used for extracting the patterns that describe their personality for commercial use. They call this anonymised data and claim it's fine because it's not identifiable, but why should you not have a right to block a company from profiling you for commercial use? After all, this can be used against you.

That's what corporations did in the past when they started using brain research to find the kind of visual stimuli that could induce the sensation of hunger or craving, then structured fast food menus and advertising to get people hooked up on unhealthy fat and sugary food. That was based on profiling human behaviour and used to induce a certain consumption behaviour. And that's how they got the obesity crisis in the USA. Now apply this to AIs and simulating a person's online presence to induce certain behavioural changes in users.

[Dolan]

https://x.com/Schizointel/status/1929399103349276912

[Dolan]

[Dolan]

[Dolan]

[harcha]

[Dolan]

[Dolan]

[fei123456]

I can't imagine that in September Trump may go Beijing, celebrating "the anti farcist war" together with Putin. What a hell joke.