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Meredith Whittaker @meredithmeredith.bsky.social · 5h

So we remain vigilant & deeply grateful to our allies.

For Signal, Chat Control is an existential threat. If we were *forced* to choose between building surveillance into our services or keeping our integrity, we would choose integrity & leave the market. We hope it never comes to this. 7/

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Meredith Whittaker @meredithmeredith.bsky.social · 5h

The technical consensus is clear: you can't create a backdoor that only lets the "good guys" in. However they're dressed up, these proposals create cybersecurity loopholes that hackers & hostile nations are eager to exploit. 6/

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Meredith Whittaker @meredithmeredith.bsky.social · 5h

The reality is that scanning any content before it is encrypted (or after! or during!) negates the very purpose of encryption and is a dangerous backdoor. No amount of tinkering or word games can change that inescapable reality. 5/

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Meredith Whittaker @meredithmeredith.bsky.social · 5h

In particular, we must be wary of "new" proposals that allow scanning of "known content" while claiming to protect privacy by proscribing "indiscriminate" surveillance. We must also look out for those that mandate only scanning for “hashed images or videos.” 4/

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Meredith Whittaker @meredithmeredith.bsky.social · 5h

The war is not over, however. Now we move to the European Council, where the issue is unresolved. We expect closed-door negotiations to engage in rhetorical arbitrage--claiming to support privacy via word games and bespoke definitions--while in practice undermining it. Tedious & dangerous stuff. 3/

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Meredith Whittaker @meredithmeredith.bsky.social · 5h

Defending privacy isn't easy. Those in power always want more access+more info. It's especially hard when emotionally charged args are used to advance surveillance
❤️ to those doing the work 2/
bsky.app/profile/ccc.de
bsky.app/profile/d-64...
bsky.app/profile/digi...
bsky.app/profile/figh...

bsky.app

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Meredith Whittaker @meredithmeredith.bsky.social · 5h

We're so relieved to see Germany reaffirm its opposition to the dangerous Chat Control proposal--the one that would mandate mass scanning of communications. Germany's long been a solid champion of privacy, and the news that it was considering backing mass surveillance was alarming. 1/

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Maria Farrell @mariafarrell.bsky.social · 2d

FWIW I've written to the Irish Minister for Justice - an enthusiastic supporter of Europe's hideous "chat control" phone-scanning proposal - asking him to imagine when that technology is used against him.

If you're German, please, PLEASE write to your justice/interior minister today.

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ctrlaltwin.bsky.social @ctrlaltwin.bsky.social · 2d

I think you completely misunderstand what this bill represents. Read up on it www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/cha...

Chat Control: The EU's CSAM scanner proposal

🇫🇷 French: Traduction du dossier Chat Control 2.0, stopchatcontrol.fr🇸🇪 Swedish: Chat Control 2.0🇩🇰 Danish: chatcontrol.dk🇳🇱 Dutch: Chatcontrole The End of the Privacy of Digital Cor...

www.patrick-breyer.de

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Fight Chat Control @fightchatcontrol.bsky.social · 2d

Take action!

fightchatcontrol.eu to contact your ministers, permanent representation, MEPs, and, if you are German or Italian, your national MPs!

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Gabriel @gm0stache.tigerente.dev · 2d

feel free to join this petition against #chatcontrol here:

weact.campact.de/petitions/ch...

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olgacronin.bsky.social @olgacronin.bsky.social · 3d

Here's a video explaining how Chat Control surveillance would work by the Max Planck Institute for Security and Privacy...

fair.tube/w/72DCPMByyS...

#speirgorm

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Meredith Whittaker @meredithmeredith.bsky.social · 3d

The debate may, but my arguments don't. In fact, they are made with exacting attention to power and how our current tech ecosystem shifts it, and to/from whom.

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Meredith Whittaker @meredithmeredith.bsky.social · 3d

There are many guys with wild views from the early days of commercial networked computation. And? Still not an argument.

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Meredith Whittaker @meredithmeredith.bsky.social · 3d

No, my message is that govs are containers for power, which can be exercised brutally or w wisdom, & tech is a collection of methods that can be abused or leveraged for good.

TLDR tech and gov aren't stable categories. Validate both (like, by examining Signal's open source code) before you trust.

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Doug Saunders @dougsaunders.bsky.social · 3d

This is an EU proposed policy with the benign-sounding name "Child Sexual Abuse Regulation" which proposes to screen private online communications using sketchy image-scanning algorithms. It is technically unworkable, and would be a privacy catastrophe, especially for those in authoritarian states

Meredith Whittaker @meredithmeredith.bsky.social · 3d

📣 Germany's close to reversing its opposition to mass surveillance & private message scanning, & backing the Chat Control bill. This could end private comms-& Signal-in the EU.

Time's short and they're counting on obscurity: please let German politicians know how horrifying their reversal would be.

Signal @signal.org · 6d

We are alarmed by reports that Germany is on the verge of a catastrophic about-face, reversing its longstanding and principled opposition to the EU’s Chat Control proposal which, if passed, could spell the end of the right to privacy in Europe. signal.org/blog/pdfs/ge...

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Meredith Whittaker @meredithmeredith.bsky.social · 3d

This is a collection of facts, some of them a bit fuzzy, but w/e. It's not an argument, though.

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Meredith Whittaker @meredithmeredith.bsky.social · 3d

No, my message is that govs are containers for power, which can be exercised brutally or w wisdom, & tech is a collection of methods that can be abused or leveraged for good.

TLDR tech and gov aren't stable categories. Validate both (like, by examining Signal's open source code) before you trust.

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Meredith Whittaker @meredithmeredith.bsky.social · 3d

Re-read, that's not my argument.

My argument is that the architectural shift you gesture to needs to be understood as the novel and alarming shift to mass surveillance that has been instrumented via the commercialization of networked comms, over the last ~3 decades.

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Meredith Whittaker @meredithmeredith.bsky.social · 3d

OK, by this logic...the surveillance of every facet of life--from comms to movement to social relationships to etc--which has become the norm over the last decades c/o the surveillance biz model, makes LE surveillance MORE possible than it's ever been in history.

But somehow e2ee is the problem?

Wessel van Rensburg @wildebees.bsky.social · 3d

The problem with digital speech activists’ one sided framing of this debate is that they don’t acknowledge that digital architecture has shifted what is possible. End-to-end encryption makes it impossible for law enforcement to do targeted surveillance, just as lack of it makes filtering trivial.

Meredith Whittaker @meredithmeredith.bsky.social · 3d

📣 Germany's close to reversing its opposition to mass surveillance & private message scanning, & backing the Chat Control bill. This could end private comms-& Signal-in the EU.

Time's short and they're counting on obscurity: please let German politicians know how horrifying their reversal would be.

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Meredith Whittaker @meredithmeredith.bsky.social · 3d

📣 Germany's close to reversing its opposition to mass surveillance & private message scanning, & backing the Chat Control bill. This could end private comms-& Signal-in the EU.

Time's short and they're counting on obscurity: please let German politicians know how horrifying their reversal would be.

Signal @signal.org · 6d

We are alarmed by reports that Germany is on the verge of a catastrophic about-face, reversing its longstanding and principled opposition to the EU’s Chat Control proposal which, if passed, could spell the end of the right to privacy in Europe. signal.org/blog/pdfs/ge...

signal.org

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John Scott-Railton @jsrailton.bsky.social · 4d

NEW: breach of Discord age verification data.

Including some users passports & DLs

Age verification is a badly implemented data grab wrapped in a moral panic.

Mark my words, as age verification mandates expand, we'll end up more surveilled and less secure. 1/

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Signal @signal.org · 6d

We are alarmed by reports that Germany is on the verge of a catastrophic about-face, reversing its longstanding and principled opposition to the EU’s Chat Control proposal which, if passed, could spell the end of the right to privacy in Europe. signal.org/blog/pdfs/ge...

signal.org

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Meredith Whittaker @meredithmeredith.bsky.social · 7d

I joke because haha vibe work AND the history of labor automation being applied to justify paying the workers subject to it less/treating them poorly is clear and consistent and not up for debate. So I'm also serious.

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Meredith Whittaker @meredithmeredith.bsky.social · 7d

Setting the table for vibe paychecks

www.theverge.com/news/787076/...

Microsoft launches ‘vibe working’ in Excel and Word

Vibe working is all about Office’s new Agent Mode.

www.theverge.com

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