Germany will not support Chat Control - a law which proposes to scan all messages people send even on end-to-end encrypted platforms - Justice Minister said today. German stance likely dooms the measure. Signal had threatened to leave the EU if Chat Control became law
therecord.media/chat-control...

This is our opportunity to take the awareness of #ChatControl and turn it towards the domestic plan.

This book is hugely enjoyable, and a must read for anyone interested in technology and democracy.

Under Article 21 of the DSA, out-of-court bodies review moderation disputes. One such body, Appeals Centre Europe, has released its first transparency report.
@ramshajahangir.bsky.social spoke with Thomas Hughes and Paddy Leerssen about what these early findings suggest.

And the German rejection of chatcontrol is official.

Last week, a Dutch court ordered Meta to give Facebook & Instagram users the right to set a chronological feed by default - one of the first EU cases applying the DSA in civil proceedings.

To unpack what this means, I spoke with @bitsoffreedom.bsky.social:

www.techpolicy.press/what-a-dutch...

I mean how can such a body be considered a court within the meaning of EU law...?

cc @kimlanelaw.bsky.social @rdanielkelemen.bsky.social @profkochenov.bsky.social @grabowskamoroz.bsky.social
@tjmcintyre.com

Important but arguably flawed ruling with rule of law implications as this is possibly the 1st time a non-EU body manifestly lacking characteristics of a court IMO - US Data Protection Review Court - is nonetheless recognised as a court within meaning of EU law...
www.politico.com/news/2024/01...

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.

The court records show that the facts of the case are far worse than we initially reported. It was a "death investigation" into a "nonviable fetus," the police asked the district attorney if they could charge her for taking the pills. The search happened TWO WEEKS after she took the pills

This story is completely insane. After our first article, Flock and the police have aggressively asserted that the woman "was never under criminal investigation by Johnson County." Flock has used it as an example of "clickbait journalism" and its CEO has attacked the reporting multiple times

EFF found the documents, here's our blog:

If you create a massive surveillance network, it will most assuredly be abused.

I say this with the bluntness it requires: they will get people murdered if this continues. This is not just populism anymore either: it’s completely unhinged and a deliberate choice that does endanger lives. I am not saying this lightly at all.

I just emailed Minister of Justice Jim O'Callaghan demanding Ireland does not support the new Chat Control bill which lets the EU read all of your WhatsApp and Signal messages without encryption. Will you do the same? action.uplift.ie/campaigns/st...

Screenshot from their website shows where a person is, and where they were on what previous days.
Google and other major RTB players are shown as sources for their worldwide data.
www.iccl.ie/wp-content/u...

After 8 years of inaction, the DPC now claims that RTB adtech does not provide location data to dodgy firms.
Wrong.
Meet "Patternz" for example:
An Israeli surveillance tool built on RTB data that provides a targeted individual's coordinates and "driving path" www.iccl.ie/wp-content/u...

Is this what they mean by the permanent bureaucracy?

Trump administration wants Irish Government to press EU for more political speech protections

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

New Gist: Jim Bows Out

“For anyone who has ever had to deal with a landlord who took their cash this is the stuff of legend. You would let the monkey paw get you for it.

“Who needs a soul?“, Faust would have said as he traded for this outcome.”

www.thegist.ie/the-gist-jim...

📣 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.

the mere mental image of a sundowning man, with control over a nuclear arsenal, being kept in this AI-generated reverie is immensely disturbing to me on a visceral level

It’s so fascinating, there’s a moment in this where they notice the crowd shift and decide they have to gtfo immediately