I was just alerted to the disturbing news that the EU Commission is apparently planning an Orwellian expansion of their surveillance measures for digital services.
Now your WhatsApp messages and even smart fridges could be monitored by the EU Commission-driving yet another nail in the coffin of your rights to privacy and freedom of speech!
The EU Commission has been waging a war on freedom of speech for a while now. According to the Commission it has been tackling the spread of online disinformation and misinformation to “ensure the protection of European values and democratic systems.”
It believes: “Disinformation is false or misleading content that is spread with an intention to deceive or secure economic or political gain, and which may cause public harm. Misinformation is false or misleading content shared without harmful intent though the effects can be still harmful.”
Ursula von der Leyen proposed a “new Digital Services Act” in her bid for the EC’s presidency in 2019. It is interesting how she obviously never intended to include the monitoring of her own private text messages, for instance, the hundreds sent to Pfizer’s CEO Albert Bourla, as part of the EU vaccine contract negotiations.
On 5 July 2022, the European Parliament approved the Digital Servies Act (DSA) to “govern the content moderation practices of social media platforms” and address illegal content.
However, now we have the possibility of the DSA monitoring not just what you write or say online but what can be picked by your smart fridge in the future!
The following article was published yesterday on the German online news publication t-online and written by Carsten Janz.
The EU Commission is apparently planning a strong expansion of surveillance measures for digital devices. Even household appliances are affected.
WhatsApp, telephones, voice assistants from Google or Apple and even smart refrigerators in homes should be monitored in the future if it comes to the EU Commission. This is the result of a confidential proposal paper, which a group of experts has drawn up on behalf of the EU Commission. This document is available t-online.
The paper proposes 42 points for tighter surveillance on 28 pages. Work is also being done on the possible implementation of these plans. Data protectionists sound the alarm. They fear an unprecedented cut in the privacy of every EU citizen through the plans.
"Backdoors" for investigators
The draft is entitled: "Recommendations from the High-Level Group on Access to Data for Effective Law Enforcement". In German, therefore: recommendations of the expert group on how access to digital data can be regulated in order to ensure effective prosecution. The Commission wants to take action against organised crime and also recognise and combat terrorism at an early stage. In this way, legislation could be adapted to the new technical possibilities of the criminals, who are increasingly operating in the digital space and are planning possible deeds.
The expert group describes how the safety authorities need to be equipped and how manufacturers should be forced to create back doors for the investigators. For example, investigators will be able to cancel the encryption of messenger services such as WhatsApp in the future. With a so-called "general key", which is to be kept by the providers. A judicial decision will probably be necessary for the decryption of the data. Do not cooperate with manufacturers such as Apple, Google or Meta, penalties should also be possible.
Currently, it is not possible to circumvent the end-to-end encryption of messenger services. The data is encrypted on the sender's telephone and decrypted only at the recipient. There is no back door. So investigators can only try to unlock the phones and then evaluate the chats. This can take a long time and does not have to work.
But the expert group is not just about reading chats. The Internet of Things, the Internet of Things, also has its eye. The paper states: "It should be ensured that there is a great standardization and that it also includes the Internet of Things, including connected cars such as all forms of connectivity," says: "They should also ensure that there is a great standardisation." This would also affect home assistants such as Google Home, Alexa or the Apple assistant as well as smart refrigerators or similar devices. It should also be possible to pick up data and use it in case of doubt.
In point 27 out of 42, the expert group once again calls for the introduction of data retention. A statutory regulation on data retention requires providers of telecommunications and Internet services to store the traffic data of all users over a specified period of time and to pass them on to law enforcement authorities if necessary. Depending on the design of the system, this can be traffic data such as the IP address, telephone contacts or location data.
"Everything we do should be enstable without barriers"
WhatsApp and other encrypted messenger services would no longer be secure and openly accessible. On the one hand, for the investigating authorities, on the other hand, possibly also for authoritarian regimes who come into possession of this "general key".
The Federal Administrative Court has previously classified the allowance-free and comprehensive data retention as violent by European law and therefore does not apply to it in Germany. The expert group now appears to be launching a new mating at EU level. This is how the German decision could be undermined.
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Hope to hear you on RCR (Reality Check Radio) again soon .
Our surveillance has established that our pre-bunking hasn't work, turn off their smart meters and restrict their CBDCs until further notice.