The EU High-Level Group (HLG) on access to data for effective law enforcement, also known as the #EUGoingDark group, is consulting non-governmental organisations today. Newly published documents confirm criticism by Pirate Party Members of the European Parliament.

MEP Patrick Breyer (Pirate Party / Greens/EFA) comments:

„The #EUGoingDark work group should be dissolved! I have received the answer to my latest request for documents conceding that this group sees itself as “first step in the preparatory process of possible legislative proposals” (PDF). This makes it clear that undemocratic preliminary negotiations are conducted here with the predefined goal to re-introduce EU-wide blanket data retention of citizen’s communications data, to undermine secure encryption and to introduce the »Security by Design«-concept that should better be called »Surveilance by Design«. The group is undemocratic because NGOs and scientists are prevented from participating on an equal footing. How is equal participation supposed to work if NGOs have access neither to the actual meetings of the group and its sub-groups, nor to other participants nor to the actual work documents? It must be assumed that today’s input of NGOs has no chance of helping to shape the final result in favor of civil liberties. Meanwhile European and US-American police are forging surveillance plans behind closed doors. Belgium, for example, presented its unlawful data retention act as exemplary and spread the false claim that without data retention there is a need to resort to more intrusive methods of investigation. NGOs on the other hand, were only invited to today’s separate meeting after public pressure. The real purpose of this exercise is to keep them away from the table where the actual proposals are drafted. The results of the #EUGoingDark-group, which are to be presented as early as mid-2024, will be undemocratic and non-transparent. They must therefore not be used as legislative or political proposals. As the #EUGoingDark working group cannot achieve a useful result with this working method, the group should be dissolved.“

Marcel Kolaja, Member and Quaestor of the European Parliament for the Czech Pirate Party, comments:

“The right to privacy is a fundamental human right. Yet in recent years we have seen more and more attempts to challenge it. Whether it is the attempt to impose blanket spying on private messages or the legalisation of biometric cameras. The #EUGoingDark group is just another example of the way that many lawmakers see privacy as a burden rather than a priority. If it were a priority, we could observe a transparent debate that actively seeks out all relevant opinions. Instead, only representatives of the police or intelligence services were selectively invited, while representatives of human rights NGOs were left out. I find this practice unacceptable. The debate on privacy should be treated with the utmost respect. The #EUGoingDark group utterly fails to meet this requirement.”

Mikuláš Peksa, Member of the European Parliament for the Czech Pirate Party, comments:

“Activities and goals of this particular group present an attack on everything that keeps us safe in the online environment. We are used to see similar institutions in China’s digital dictatorship, where they persecute, bully and attack Tibetans and their fundamental rights, as well as Uighurs and other groups of citizens. In free and democratic Europe, such a thing has no place. Our private data should stay private, always.

“As Pirates, we call on the Commission to ensure the right to anonymity, free speech, access to information and right to encryption to all European citizens. Those protect not only citizens from data breaches, but also whistleblowers, human rights defenders and other activists.”

Anja Hirschel, top candidate of the German Pirate Party for the 2024 European elections, comments:

“The composition of the committee, in particular the exclusion of NGOs, already clearly shows what kind of encroachments on digital freedoms citizens are to face here: Even deeper and easier access to our data. Every previously private area is to be scrutinised in future. And this is being done by a working group that has its own interests in this data and has also avoided the public eye for the preparations themselves. Instead of the next step towards transparent citizens, we need more transparent EU policy!”

patrick-breyer.de/en/public-go…

Patrick Breyer

2023-11-30 13:37:43

🇬🇧 I received fully ■■■■■■ redacted participant lists of the EU’s #GoingDark anti-encryption group that is also forging plans for resurrecting #DataRetention.

👋 EU Commission
, name those responsible now!
fragdenstaat.de/a/288508 @EP_GreensEFA

June and November Meetings of the HLEG on access to data for effective law enforcement

Dear Sir or Madam, With regard to the meeting of the »High-Level Expert Group on access to data for effective law enforcement« on 19 June 2023 and 21 November 2023, please send me all relevant documents as described below: · documents relevant …

^{fragdenstaat.de}

46 Members of the European Parliament today made a final appeal to the UK Home Secretary to protect Wikileaks founder Julian Assange and prevent his possible extradition to the United States. The day before the final court hearing on Julian Assange’s extradition, the signatories emphasise their concerns about the Assange case and its impact on press freedom, as well as the serious risks to Assange’s health if he is extradited to the US.

According to the letter, the US government is attempting to use the Espionage Act, which was passed in 1917, against a journalist and publisher for the very first time. If the US succeeds and Assange is extradited, this would redefine investigative journalism. It would extend the application of US criminal laws internationally and apply it to a non-US citizen without a corresponding extension of First Amendment rights.

Patrick Breyer, Member of the European Parliament for the Pirate Party Germany and co-initiator of the letter, comments:

“Europe is watching the UK and its respect for human rights and the Human Rights Convention closely. Britain’s relationship with the EU is at stake.

The imprisonment and prosecution of Assange sets an extremely dangerous precedent for all journalists and press freedom. Any journalist could be prosecuted in the future for publishing ‘state secrets’. Representatives of the US government have confirmed to me that the standards applied to Assange would also be applied to any other journalist. We cannot accept this to happen.

The public has a right to know about state crimes committed by those in power so that they can stop them and bring the perpetrators to justice. With Wikileaks, Julian Assange has started an era where injustice can no longer be swept under the carpet – now it is up to us to defend transparency, accountability and our right to the truth.”

patrick-breyer.de/en/eu-parlia…

This morning, the EU Parliament and EU Council reached a trilogue agreement on the extension of the controversial, error-prone voluntary bulk scanning of private messages and photos for suspected content by US internet companies such as Meta (Instagram, Facebook), Google (GMail) and Microsoft (X-Box) until April 2026 (so-called chat control 1.0 or interim ePrivacy derogation regulation). The deal is to be approved in a fast-track procedure before the European elections. The EU Parliament majority originally only wanted to extend the regulation by 9 months in order to switch as quickly as possible to targeted surveillance of suspects and a far more effective approach to protecting children, including by safer default settings and design of internet services, proactive searches for freely accessible CSAM, removal obligations and setting up an EU child protection centre. Instead, the EU Parliament today agreed to extend the status quo by more than twice the period of time originally envisaged.



Pirate Party MEP and digital freedom fighter Patrick Breyer, who is taking legal action against Meta’s scanning of direct messages, criticises: 



”The EU Parliament wants to end blanket chat controls that violate fundamental rights, but with today’s deal it is cementing them. The EU Parliament wants a much stronger and court-proof protection against child abuse online, but today’s deal achieves nothing at all to better protect our children. With so little fighting spirit, further extensions of the status quo are likely to follow and a better protection for our children is increasingly becoming unlikely. Victims of child sexual abuse deserve better! 



The EU Commission, EU governments and an international surveillance-industrial network have unfortunately succeeded in scaring the parliamentary majority about a supposed ‘legal gap’ as a consequence of phasing out bulk chat control mass surveillance. In reality, bulk scanning makes no significant contribution to saving abused children or convicting abusers, but instead criminalises thousands of minors, overburdens law enforcement officers and opens the door to arbitrary private justice by internet companies. If, according to the EU Commission, only one in four reports is relevant for the police, this means 750,000 leaked private beach photos, nude images and intimate coversations of Europeans without any law enforcement relevance every year. Our chats and photos are not safe in the hands of unknown moderators abroad and do not belong there. The EU regulation on voluntary chat control is obsolete and violates our fundamental right to privacy: Social networks that classify as ‚hosting services‘ do not need a regulation to screen public posts to begin with. And the error-prone scanning of private communications by Zuckerberg’s Meta group will soon be a thing of the past anyway thanks to the announced introduction of end-to-end encryption.

As a Pirate, I am working to stop the illegal bulk chat control scanning in court. We will be watching every move of the EU Commission which now has more time to find majorities in the EU Council in favour of the extreme dystopia of mandatory chat control 2.0 to destroy digital privacy of correspondence and secure encryption, including by manipulating critical EU states using infamous PR campaigns and misinformation.”

Today‘s agreement still requires approval by the EU Parliament and EU Council. At the beginning of March, the EU interior ministers will once again discuss the EU Commission’s parallel proposal to destroy digital privacy of correspondence and secure encryption (Chat Control 2.0 or permanent child sexual abuse regulation). So far, there has been no agreement between supporters and opponents among the EU governments, meaning that this project is on hold or possibly even dead.

patrick-breyer.de/en/trilogue-…

The European Court of Human Rights yesterday banned a general weakening of secure end-to-end encryption. The judgement argues that encryption helps citizens and companies to protect themselves against hacking, theft of identity and personal data, fraud and the unauthorised disclosure of confidential information. Backdoors could also be exploited by criminal networks and would seriously jeopardise the security of all users’ electronic communications. There are other solutions for monitoring encrypted communications without generally weakening the protection of all users, the Court held. The judgement cites using vulnerabilities in the target’s software or sending an implant to targeted devices as examples.

Member of the European Parliament and digital freedom fighter Patrick Breyer (Pirate Party) comments:

“With this outstanding landmark judgement, the ‘client-side scanning’ surveillance on all smartphones proposed by the EU Commission in its chat control bill is clearly illegal. It would destroy the protection of everyone instead of investigating suspects. EU governments will now have no choice but to remove the destruction of secure encryption from their position on this proposal – as well as the indiscriminate surveillance of private communications of the entire population!

Secure encryption saves lives. Without encryption, we can never be sure whether our messages or photos are being disclosed to people we don’t know and can’t trust. So-called ‘client-side scanning’ would either make our communications fundamentally insecure, or European citizens would no longer be able to use Whatsapp or Signal at all, because the providers have already contemplated that they would discontinue their services in Europe. It is a scandal that the EU Council’s latest draft position still envisages the destruction of secure encryption. We Pirates will now fight even harder for our digital privacy of correspondence!”

Background: The EU Commission and an industrial network of surveillance authorities are calling for generally searching private communications using error-prone technology, including on end-to-end encrypted messengers, for indications of illegal content. This could only be implemented by undermining secure end-to-end encryption. The majority of EU governments support the initiative, but a blocking minority is preventing a decision. The EU interior ministers want to discuss the bill again at the beginning of March. Under massive pressure from Pirates and civil society, the EU Parliament has rejected the destruction of secure encryption and indiscriminate chat control. However, this is only the starting position for possible negotiations with the EU Council, once it agrees on a position. Meta has announced that it will start encrypting direct messages via Facebook and Instagram in the course of this year and discontinue its current voluntary chat control surveillance on these messages. Nevertheless, the EU is in the process of extending the authorisation for voluntary chat control.

Breyer’s information page on chat control

patrick-breyer.de/en/european-…

Frontex, l’Agenzia della guardia di frontiera e costiera dell’ #UE deputata a sostenere gli Stati Membri gestione delle frontiere esterne e nella lotta alla criminalità transfrontaliera, ha fornito una propria analisi dell’andamento degli attraversamenti nel mese di gennaio.
Secondo questo studio, Il numero di attraversamenti irregolari delle frontiere verso l'Unione europea è sceso a quasi 14 000 a gennaio, in calo di circa un terzo rispetto a dicembre ed è stato più o meno in linea con il totale dello stesso mese dello scorso anno. Quasi tutte le principali rotte migratorie hanno registrato un calo mensile che va dal -71% nel Mediterraneo centrale al -30% nei Balcani occidentali.
In controtendenza è stata la rotta migratoria dell'Africa occidentale, dove il numero di arrivi ha superato i 6 600 nel periodo di gennaio, solitamente tranquillo, quasi il 50% in più rispetto a dicembre e 10 volte la cifra riportata un anno fa. La regione ha rappresentato quasi la metà di tutti i rilevamenti di attraversamenti irregolari delle frontiere a gennaio.
L'anno scorso, la rotta dell'Africa occidentale ha registrato il maggiore aumento percentuale di attraversamenti irregolari.
Negli ultimi mesi, i gruppi criminali coinvolti nel traffico di esseri umani in Mauritania hanno colto rapidamente le opportunità offerte dall'aumento della domanda da parte dei migranti subsahariani in transito nel loro paese che cercano di entrare nell'Unione europea attraverso le Isole Canarie. Negli ultimi mesi, i trafficanti di esseri umani hanno stipato un numero crescente di migranti su piccole barche da pesca in legno conosciute come Cayucos, mettendo in pericolo la vita delle persone a bordo.
I punti salienti dei dati di migrazione includono:
• La rotta dell'Africa occidentale rappresenta quasi la metà di tutti gli attraversamenti irregolari nel mese di gennaio.
• Il Mediterraneo centrale registra il calo maggiore (-71% su base mensile)
• Le prime tre nazionalità su tutte le rotte sono siriani, afghani e maliani, anche se le autorità stanno ancora determinando la nazionalità di un gran numero di migranti in arrivo.
• Sulla rotta della Manica, il numero di rilevamenti di persone che cercavano di attraversare il Regno Unito si è attestato a quasi 3200, più o meno in linea con la cifra di gennaio 2023.

Today, the European Parliament’s lead committees on the Artificial Intelligence Act (AI Act), the IMCO and LIBE committees, approved the trilogue results of the law in a joint vote. In its current form, the legislative text will allow Member States to introduce biometric mass surveillance using flawed facial recognition technology. That’s why Pirate Party Members of the European Parliament are opposing the deal. Nevertheless, the Pirate Party succeeded in protecting fundamental rights and privacy to a huge extent, for instance by banning social scoring systems or including e-proctoring on the list of high-risk applications.

Marcel Kolaja, Member and Quaestor of the European Parliament for the Czech Pirate Party and Member of the Internal Market committee (IMCO), comments:

“Unfortunately, despite the good position of the European Parliament, the national governments managed to cripple the AI Act. Hence, the Pirates cannot support it. That does not mean that the legislation doesn’t have some positive aspects. Thanks to improvements which I proposed, students won’t be discriminated when during exams. The practice called e-proctoring may falsely accuse students of cheating, especially those with disabilities or those with dark skin. And the AI Act will put a stop to that by requiring stricter criteria for such AI usage. I also appreciate the ban on social scoring systems as we know them from China. It is an endless pity how such promising legislation has gone awry at the last minute and that we therefore cannot vote in favor.”

Patrick Breyer, Member of the European Parliament for the German Pirate Party and Member of the Civil Liberties committee (LIBE), comments:

“With this AI law, it appears the EU intends to compete with China not only technologically but also in terms of high-tech repression. Chilling monitoring of our behaviour and ubiquitious real-time face surveillance in public spaces, error-prone biometric identification used on CCTV recordings even for petty offences, racial classification of persons, unscientific AI ‚video lie detector‘ technology – none of these dystopian technologies will be off limits for EU governments, including illiberal governments such as Hungary’s. Rather than protecting us from these authoritarian instruments, the AI Act provides an instruction manual for governments to roll out biometric mass surveillance in Europe. As important as it is to regulate AI technology, defending our democracy against being turned into a high-tech surveillance state is not negotiable for us Pirates.

The EU’s AI Act opens the door to permanent facial surveillance in real time: Over 6,000 people are wanted by European arrest warrant for the offences listed in the AI Act. Any public space in Europe can be placed under permanent biometric mass surveillance on these grounds. This law legitimises and normalises a culture of mistrust. It leads Europe into a dystopian future of a mistrustful high-tech surveillance state.”

patrick-breyer.de/en/pirates-d…

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L’11 febbraio ricorre in tutta la #UE la Giornata europea celebrativa del Numero unico di emergenza (NUE) europeo 1.1.2 (uno-uno-due), istituita sin dal 2009, con l’adozione di una dichiarazione congiunta del #parlamentoEuropeo, del #consigliodellUnioneeuropea e della #commissioneEuropea, al fine di incrementare la conoscenza del servizio e dei suoi vantaggi da parte dei cittadini europei.
Per quanto riguarda l’Italia, Il Numero unico europeo delle emergenze è operativo in 13 Regioni, con 18 Centrali uniche di risposta (CUR), che garantiscono la copertura del servizio ad oltre 38 milioni di abitanti, pari a circa il 65% della popolazione nazionale.
Il servizio permette, digitando l'uno-uno-due sia da rete fissa che da rete mobile, di richiedere il tipo di soccorso di cui necessita (sanitario, Forze di polizia, Vigili del fuoco e soccorso in mare). La chiamata viene raccolta dalla CUR (Centrale unica di risposta) che, dopo le prime verifiche, la inoltra con i dati di localizzazione del chiamante e del tipo di soccorso richiesto alla sala operativa competente (carabinieri, polizia di stato, eccetera) per materia e territorio al fine di garantire l’intervento. I cittadini possono così raggiungere, naturalmente gratuitamente, attraverso un solo numero, tutti i servizi di emergenza forniti dalle Istituzioni pubbliche, con la garanzia di un accesso multilingue.

Tutte le chiamate sono localizzate; una funzione utile in città, che può rivelarsi indispensabile per le chiamate provenienti da aree extra urbane, dove può risultare difficile fornire indicazioni precise e tempestive per essere raggiunti dai soccorsi. A tale proposito, dal 2022 l’Italia si è adeguata ai migliori standard tecnologici aggiungendo ai dati di localizzazione provenienti dalla rete telefonica quelli generati dallo smartphone. In questo ambito, ci piace segnalare una app per smartphone collegata al servizio uno-uno-due: si tratta di < Where Are U>, una app per l'emergenza collegata alle Centrali Uniche di Risposta (CUR) del NUE 112, che permette di effettuare una chiamata di emergenza con il contestuale invio della posizione esatta del chiamante (rileva la posizione tramite GPS e/o rete dati e la mostra sul telefono; al momento della chiamata la posizione viene trasmessa tramite rete dati o tramite SMS se la rete dati non è disponibile. Il doppio canale di trasmissione assicura sempre l'invio della posizione ogniqualvolta sia possibile effettuare una telefonata) che ha l’utilissima funzione della “chiamata silenziosa”: l'app consente infatti di effettuare volontariamente una chiamata muta; con appositi pulsanti è possibile segnalare il tipo di soccorso richiesto. Nelle immagini sottostanti la schermata della app e le città metropolitane/province in cui è attivo il servizio.

Pensate inoltre che le Centrali uniche di risposta effettuano una rilevante azione di filtro delle chiamate improprie (non di emergenza) pari – nel 2023 - a ben il 45% del totale delle richieste. Questo consente di liberare le centrali operative degli enti di pronto intervento da una significativa mole di lavoro, consentendo di concentrare le risorse sugli effettivi soccorsi richiesti.
In Italia, ogni chiamata di emergenza riceve normalmente una risposta in poco più di 7 secondi, con tempi complessivi di gestione della chiamata in linea con il disciplinare tecnico. Nel caso in cui il contatto con la centrale non avvenga per qualsivoglia ragione, l’utente viene immediatamente richiamato. Nel corso del 2023, le Centrali uniche di risposta operanti sul territorio hanno gestito oltre 21 milioni di telefonate, assicurando la ricezione anche delle chiamate di emergenza generate direttamente dalle autovetture in caso di incidente automobilistico grazie al sistema e-Call. Nel 2023, le segnalazioni gestite con tale modalità sono state oltre 120.000, con l’inoltro di 7084 chiamate per interventi riconosciuti dalla C.U.R. come effettivamente necessari.

L’Italia ha sempre avuto una particolare attenzione a garantire l’accesso delle persone sorde al servizio di emergenza. Già dal 2021 è attivo il servizio “112Sordi” erogato su tutto il territorio nazionale con un sistema completamente gratuito, che consente l’utilizzo di una chat testuale in tempo reale, la condivisione della posizione geografica, la possibilità di ricevere immagini utili in attesa dei soccorsi e di rispondere a domande interattive estremamente semplici e veloci. Lo scorso anno 482 persone sorde sono state soccorse con questo speciale sistema a loro dedicato.
Il modello di Numero unico di emergenza europeo sviluppato in Italia, fortemente permeato da tecnologie sempre più sofisticate, messe gratuitamente al servizio della sicurezza dei cittadini, esprime una forte collaborazione istituzionale che vede il governo del sistema affidato ad una regia integrata tra Stato e Regioni.
Tutte le componenti del NUE 1.1.2. (ministero dell’Interno, ministero delle Imprese e del Made in Italy, ministero della Difesa, ministero dell’Economia e Finanze, dipartimento delle Politiche europee della Presidenza del consiglio dei ministri, ministero delle Infrastrutture e dei Trasporti, ministero della Salute e Conferenza Stato Regioni) sono rappresentate nella Commissione consultiva del ministero dell’Interno. A livello territoriale sono le Prefetture capoluogo di Regione a coordinare i gruppi di monitoraggio, nel cui ambito sono rappresentate tutte le componenti istituzionali coinvolte.

Siamo al quarto anno di Darwin Day e anche stavolta cercheremo di festeggiarlo con una (lunga) riflessione che, prendendo spunto da quella teoria del caos che viene fissata per la prima volta nell’opera darwiniana, cerca di applicarla a realtà molto diverse. L’abbiamo fatto con le bufale, con la democrazia e la politica, con la comunicazione e i social in tempi di guerra e oggi lo faremo con…

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informapirata

2024-02-12 06:02:09

DarwinDay: Darwin tecnologia, società e il caso del Fediverso

Per la quarta volta cercheremo di festeggiare il #DarwinDay con una riflessione che, prendendo spunto da quella teoria del caos che viene fissata per la prima volta nell’opera darwiniana, cerca di applicarla a realtà molto diverse. Oggi lo faremo con una riflessione sul fediverso, la tecnologia e la società.

informapirata.it/2024/02/12/da…

Darwin, tecnologia, società e il caso del Fediverso - informapirata

DarwinDay: Darwin tecnologia, società e il caso del Fediverso Per la quarta volta cercheremo di festeggiare il #DarwinDay con una riflessione che…

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