this does not affect Google, Meta or any other Big Tech at all. This law was trying to break encryption or do some sort of client side scanning. And it didn’t got approved.
This does not force Google or Meta to encrypt your chats if they weren’t doing so. Or to remove their own backdoors in the encryption if they had them. It’s just a law that was not passed. So your comment does not make any sense.
PS: it’s not like Google or Meta care too much about encrypting the contents. They’ll happily take your metadata which is super valuable. This is what Meta does with WhatsApp.
This is basically like Domain Keys-Identified Mail (DKIM) but for a specific email address, without needing to own a domain to set it up. I’m gonna call it “P(ersonal)KIM” for short.
If this is implemented correctly it’ll be a few clicks to set up and then just work in the background to make it harder to impersonate you via email, even if you have a free email address.
Unfortunately my senator is the traitorous Sinema, so she’s worse than useless. Just got an email from her rationalizing this power grab today after writing her and asking she not support it a few months back. 🙄
First, KOSA would pressure platforms to install filters that would wipe the net of anything deemed “inappropriate” for minors. This = instructing platforms to censor, plain and simple. Places that already use content filters have restricted important information about suicide prevention and LGBTQ+ support groups, and KOSA would spread this kind of censorship to every corner of the internet. It’s no surprise that anti-rights zealots are excited about KOSA: it would let them shut down websites that cover topics like race, gender, and sexuality.
Second, KOSA would ramp up the online surveillance of all internet users by expanding the use of age verification and parental monitoring tools. Not only are these tools needlessly invasive, they’re a massive safety risk for young people who could be trying to escape domestic violence and abuse.
I'm so skeptical of companies, that I almost instinctively distrust any company which directly advertises to me. I would be doubly so if that ad came soon after discussing a need.
So is it willful ignorance on your part then? Or have you some explanation for not paying attention to the myriad avenues of data collection and exploitation for the last fifteen years?
To use a very old example which pales in comparison to things which are possible now, here's a story from 2012 wherein Target's marketing efforts outed a pregnant teenager to her family with targeted coupons. Luckily her family was supportive in this case, however it's not hard to imagine real harm being done if the circumstances were different.
“[...] we found out that as long as a pregnant woman thinks she hasn’t been spied on, she’ll use the coupons. She just assumes that everyone else on her block got the same mailer for diapers and cribs. As long as we don’t spook her, it works.”
So to bring this to a slightly more relevant topic for 2023: are you really okay with mass surveillance being used to uncover and prosecute women who have been forced to travel out of states with abortion bans to seek lifesaving medical care? Just because you don't have to worry about it personally?
This is just one of many, many examples of the abuse of data collection in the modern day. Before you try and discard this post as an alleged strawman (or some shit) I encourage you to actually open your eyes and look, because these entities are not nameless, many of them are household names. Your "spooky bedtime stories" argument is an absolute farce and I honestly would prefer you to be trolling than genuinely this ignorant.
Holy shit, you pull in a massive edge case from 10+ years ago that has nothing to do with the topic at hand? Thank you for really driving home that you can’t name a consumer device that uses this tech.
Eh. Gotta let them dig the hole long enough to eliminate all doubt, plus pushing back on their nonsense is potentially valuable to third party readers later. Thanks for looking out, though.
What if they don’t have time? What if they don’t want to read a 10 page EULA? It is their choice, but they most likely don’t know what they are accepting. You know what this means therefore you have the power to do something against this (if it is reasonable).
You hear that, plebes? The governments of the world have already won, so you shouldn’t even try being an independent human being with a sliver of privacy.
You’re not entirely wrong but the defeatist attitude screams “I love the flavor of this boot.”
“The “Overlords” of this world are that smart and special, maybe you should just let them be in charge” is a real wild fuckin take. Especially when the last fifteen years have been nothing but evidence that the “Overlords” of the world are absolute fucking dipshits just like anyone else.
This is BS. It’s a 3rd rate marketing group trying to game SEO for lead gen.
Go ahead and contact them, claiming to be a prospective client with a few hundred (insert niche retail or service here) stores and that you’re interested in their product.
At best they’ll end up revealing they have a SDK or some crap to do the active listening in your own app if you have one.
If this were real, more than this company would be doing it, and you’d see actual case studies around it.
Also, it’s 1000% not legal in half the US states given two party consent wiretapping laws unless the users are agreeing to it in some way, which again brings us back to that at best this is some shoddy SDK (and unlikely even that).
Edit: Looking at it closer and given the way it isn’t linked at all from elsewhere and is a one off mention of the services, I’m actually wondering if this was an April Fool’s page that they just never took down. It’s pretty funny if that, especially given the ridiculousness of a lot of the buzz word heavy language in the bullet points. Like the idea that they are actively listening to the voice data and then having AI analyze the purchase history of the users to then cross attribute ROI using your “tracking pixel” is hilarious.
Even just one of those steps is such a pie in the sky claim even for most billion dollar agencies.
Also, it’s 1000% not legal in half the US states given two party consent wiretapping laws unless the users are agreeing to it in some way, which again brings us back to that at best this is some shoddy SDK
You are talking about advertising business, you know? They do business as long and as far as it isn’t yet illegal.
At least tracking via ultrasonic is a thing. calculator/game just needs to have the respective library.
Btw, store chains use Wifi/Bt for tracking, just so you know.
I think the headline is missleading, if I understand it correctly.
ChatControl is already possible, and implemented for major communication service providers that most of the people use. It’s just not mantadory.
Currently a regulation is in place allowing providers to scan communications voluntarily (so-called “Chat Control 1.0”). So far only some unencrypted US communications services such as GMail, Facebook/Instagram Messenger, Skype, Snapchat, iCloud email and X-Box apply chat control voluntarily (more details here). source
The article states that they decided that they will not blanketly require it, but I don’t think it says anything about rolling back the first version of ChatControl that’s already in effect.
EDIT: I was wrong, the article actually does mention it, even though on pretty vague terms:
The current voluntary chat control of private messages (not social networks) by US internet companies is being phased out. Targeted telecommunication surveillance and searches will only be permitted with a judicial warrant and only limited to persons or groups of persons suspected of being linked to child sexual abuse material."
The new law would have required breaking end-to-end encryption (E2EE) as the companies would be required to scan messages. CSAM is just the pretext they use to compromise all communication. Same as “think of the children” is used to steal other rights.
That is true, but can’t they (a company that wants to, not the goverment) do that already if they want to, under ChatControl 1.0? And I wouldn’t say that whether a service is E2EE or not makes any difference here - scanning private user messages shouldn’t be allowed, whether they are encrypted or not. IMO if ChatControl 2.0 passed and was made mantadory for everyone, the fact that it is mostly noticable on E2EE apps is only a side-effect of blanket surveilance, and not the main issue with the proposition.
What’s the point of them agreeing that they will let the 1% of users of E2EE services keep their privacy, while they already scan 90% of communication (I mean, just GMail + FB/IG + iCloud, that is already being scanned, makes for most of the worlds communication) for the past year or so?
Now I’m curious whether Facebook/Instagram, who does offer encrypted chats and also scans all your content under ChatControl 1.0 voluntarily, also scans the encrypted chats or not. I’d vager they do, but that’s just a speculation.
But they did briefly mention that they will begin “phasing out” chatcontrol 1.0. I wonder what does that means, and how long will it take.
That’s the goal of end-to-end encryption. To make it impossible to scan. With E2EE company doesn’t have the decryption key, so there is no legible content to scan.
P.S. It’s still possible to collect metadata like when or who the message was sent, which is why services like WhatsApp which have E2EE are not recommended, but the content is safe.
the fact that it is mostly noticable on E2EE apps is only a side-effect of blanket surveilance, and not the main issue with the proposition.
Isn’t it though? We moved past the non encryption communication being safe a long time ago. And just because they will phase the old law, it doesn’t remove the ability of companies to still scan the messages or cops to request that data from those companies. Those companies still have access to the server and your encryption key where your messages are stored. E2EE on the other hand makes it technically impossible even if they want to do that or court orders them to do that.
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