Well, there certainly won't be any chance of abuse for this

[GreyGeek]

https://rairfoundation.com/big-broth...-action-video/

You'll notice that like all tyrannical governments, they are doing it "for the children".

I might add that some could claim that by posting a msg on KubuntuForums I am "chatting", ergo, they would demand that this forum filter the content of all messages and report those that fit some criteria to some legal authority.

There are ways around even this dystopian scheme. For example, one could open a mailbox, say on Protonmail, and share the login name and password with a selected set of people. One could log on, create a new mail IN DRAFT, but never send it. The recipient could log on later, read a/o C&P the contents locally, then delete the draft and empty the trash. Another way would be to install FreeNet and create a "friends" connection, which is encrypted end to end, through which files could be exchanged, or with IPFS.


Here is an except of the law and proposals:

Mandatory Surveillance


A majority of the Members of the European Parliament adopted the chat control regulation on July 6, 2021, allowing providers to scan communications voluntarily. So far, only some unencrypted US services such as Gmail, Meta/Facebook Messenger, and X-Box apply chat control voluntarily. But this is not the end of the story.

The European Commission announced that it would propose follow-up legislation that will make the use of chat control mandatory for all email and messenger providers. This legislation will be presented on March 30, 2022, and would also apply to so far securely end-to-end encrypted communications services.

This would require the messaging app (WhatsApp or Signal, for example) to create a hash value (digital fingerprint) of the content to be sent, which would then be compared against a database of allegedly illegal content. If the algorithm reports a hit, the message would not be sent and would be reported to law enforcement authorities.

Threatening End-to-End Encrypted Messaging


MEP and civil liberties defender Patrick Breyer (German Pirate Party) explains that if the EU mandates backdoor access in end-to-end encrypted messaging to scan for suspicious content, it is only a small further step to mandate such backdoors for law enforcement interception. Furthermore, this would break end-to-end encryption altogether and expose personal, business, and state secrets to foreign intelligence services and hackers.

Thirty-nine international civil rights organizations are warning against the planned removal of chat room encryption. Destroying safe communications channels would endanger whistleblowers and risk the life of dissidents in dictatorial regimes such as Hong Kong and Belarus.

Therefore, Breyer explains, it may not come as a surprise at this point, given the trajectory of civil rights in the Anglosphere, that the “Five Eyes” intelligence alliance ( UK, U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) now also advocate for chat-control legislation to undermine encryption.

[TWPonKubuntu]

Gee, what could possibly go wrong? <heavy sarcasm

[Goeroeboeroe]

It's a terrible idea. About thirty privacy organizations protested, but that's about all. In the mainstream press there is hardly written about this, because the war in Ukraine fills almost the whole paper/news bulletin.
There was another thing that almost got no publicity: an European identity. You can use that identity in the whole European Union to identify yourself, also on line. Of course it is voluntary. Of course. Sure. And everybody knows things that start voluntary never become mandatory.
I am getting happier and happier I'm already seventy years old an don't have children...

[GreyGeek]

... And everybody knows things that start voluntary never become mandatory.
..

When the income tax was passed by Congress in 1913 some expressed concern that an income tax would be a burden on the lower income groups. Congress assured everyone that the tax would only apply to the top 1% of the population, the millionaires. The middle class now bears the brunt of the income taxes because the rich can take advantage of tax avoidance loopholes and the poor are exempted from paying them. The middle class pays an average of $15,332 per year in income taxes.

When the RICO Act (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) was passed in 1970 Congress assured everyone that it would only be used against the Mafia. Today, it is used over 10,000 times per year against ordinary citizens, by police agencies around the country, to supplement their payroll and equipment purchases. The act allows the police to declare homes, cars, trucks and other assets to be "Guilty Property", allowing them to seize them. They've even been known to seize debit cards and drain the victim's bank account. Generally, however, to avoid lawsuits and legal action most seizures against ordinary citizens are limited to around $10,000 because it would cost the victim more money than that to hire a lawyer and force the police to give the seized property back, minus the 10% handling fee, of course.

https://www.independent.org/publicat...cle.asp?id=215

Much has been written about the RICO statute. Rather than a summary of this vast literature, we offer a view of RICO from another angle, examining how it has revolutionized federal criminal law and how it has been used—with federal judges, members of Congress, and the press acting as cheerleaders—to overturn the protections inherent in due-process guarantees of the U.S. Constitution. Overturn is not too strong a word in this regard, given that in a RICO case, those charged are treated as guilty until proven innocent.

In tracing the development of RICO, we find that the law was little more than a “bait-and-switch” statute that has had little or no effect in stopping or inhibiting the crimes—murder, rape, robbery, and so forth—that most concerned the public in 1970. Instead, RICO has enabled federal prosecutors in effect to circumvent the constitutional separation of powers between the national and the state governments. Since RICO’s passage, the once-clear jurisdictional boundaries between state and federal law enforcement have been erased as more and more individuals find themselves in the federal dock with almost no chance of acquittal.

How is RICO used?

To achieve its objective of preventing the infiltration of legitimate businesses by organized crime, RICO gave the government sweeping new powers, including the power to freeze a defendant’s assets at the time of indictment and confiscate them after conviction. Traditionally, criminal defendants are presumed to be innocent and face punishment only after conviction. RICO, by allowing the government to seize entire businesses connected even indirectly with a defendant at the time of indictment, before any proof of guilt, is a major exception to this general principle. The government is authorized, in effect, to act as prosecutor, judge, and jury in the same case. The government under RICO is also able to make it more difficult for the accused to wage a defense by, for example, seizing the funds that a defendant would have used to hire an attorney. And if a defendant is convicted, RICO provides for onerous criminal penalties.
...
The legal interpretation of racketeering is not much different. Section 1961(a) defines racketeering activity as “any act or threat involving” a laundry list of various crimes as defined by other federal laws or certain acts that would be felonies under any state law. Under RICO, then, racketeering involves other crimes ranging from murder and kidnapping as defined by any state law, to bribery and mail fraud as defined by other federal laws. In legal terminology, these underlying crimes are referred to as the “predicate acts” required by the RICO statute. The statute defines a pattern of racketeering activity to mean “two acts of racketeering activity” committed within ten years of each other.

Given the recent occurrence of "flash mob" shoplifting around the country, where several dozen perps brazenly walk into a store and start stuffing bags they brought in with them full of items from the shelves and counters. This usually happens in areas where prosecutors have redefined felonies to be misdemeanors and then claim that because of their "work loads" they will no longer prosecute misdemeanors. The perps rightly interpret this as a "stay out of jail" card.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/oakland-p...robbery-camera
https://www.bitchute.com/video/331HZZPbmwAE/
https://twitter.com/i/status/1462284757434175488

How does your state use RICO?
https://www.vox.com/2015/7/8/8909133...ure-states-map

What will happen politically is that Congress will eventually exploit the situation to further reduce the rights of all citizens, just the way it happened with RICO.

The Illustrated Guide To The Law shows what can happen if you innocently pick up a bird feather laying on your jogging path. It has eight pages.
http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=1008

[Goeroeboeroe]

Of course for me it's different, because I don't pay (yet...) income tax in the US. But I could also give an endless list of things here that started voluntary and ended mandatory.
Although I've been making websites (and still do sometimes) I don't use a smartphone. ( have three, but only for testing. So for me tracking with phones is no problem. If I start tumbling down or other old-man-thing, I may start carrying one, maybe.)
They introduced here the corona app. For a LOT of money. Critics have doubted the use of it from the beginning, but that's another discussion. In coordination between the European Union, Google and Apple Bluetooth was switched on for registering nearby contacts between people. Anonym, of course. And everybody knows especially Google is a great promoter of privacy, so I really trust them on their blue eyes.
(Don't know if 'trusting somebody on his blue eyes' is an English expression. It means: trusting someone without any proof.)
Now the government wants to stop using this app, because it's not necessary any more. There's a tiny little problem: they can't stop tracking with Bluetooth, because Apple and Google switched that on somewhere deep in the system. (I don't know all the technical details.). The Dutch government has said they can't solve that on their own, the European Union has to do that. A GOVERNMENT that can't stop tracking their own population, because big tech won't cooperate.
For fairness: this app was indeed voluntary. But nobody told that you couldn't switch Bluetooth for tracking contacts off, once you had installed the app.
Ah well, I could go on all day.

Since almost all news is about Ukraine, it's a good time to make all kind of laws without discussion. There's a new proposal in the EU to make providers, e-mail-providers, etc. responsible for criminal content of everything they transport, including even mail. That means, if this is going to be law, my mail provider has to scan all my mail and decide if they will sent it or not, and maybe even if they have to send it to the police. A private company will decide what's criminal or not. And they will be very strict, because the fines are going to be very high.
I know Google (and probably more companies) scans mails for advertisements, but this is the EU forcing them to do it. And not only scanning, but even judging.

So, enough miserie. The rest of the day I hope to be more cheerful. They're expecting here up to 30 centimetres of snow. That's even in the middle of the winter very rare, but end March it's really special. Nice for the kids, so I'm going out to watch that.

[GreyGeek]

Trudeau introduced Bill C-11, which will almost do what Hitler did, i.e., sans the concentration camps.

Confirming many fears, the bill will not just target entertainment content in Canada, but will mainly focus on “news content” and how the content is spread on social media.

Today, Justin Trudeau’s Minister of Heritage announced the tabling, calling it “An Act respecting online communications platforms that make news content available to persons in Canada.” Sounds harmless, right?
According to the Bill, search engines, like Google, will be required to boost news organizations that promote “racialized communities, cultural and linguistic minorities, LGBTQ2+ communities, and persons with disabilities.” Consequently, non-compliant news publishers not focusing on such progressive topics will be punished by receiving lower rankings in searches.
...
As Law professor Michael Geist points out, “In my post today, I make the case that the government’s defence of Bill C-11 has been “cartoonishly misleading.” Assurances that only companies are regulated or that platforms will choose how to contribute mislead on the bill’s implications.”

About the snow. That site mentions Europe:

Europe Freezes


The final word goes to Europe…

After a string of sunny and mild days, the majority of the continent will see a return to wintry conditions this week with low-level snows and widespread frosts bringing the risk of considerable crop damage.

The wintry conditions are forecast to persist for at least two weeks, and all.

And what the latest GFS run is picking up re. snowfall is really quite astonishing:

but you will have to go to that site to see the animated graphics of the stuff that heading your way. I hope you have a reliable source of energy for heating your home.

Can't those who installed the "Corona-Warn-App" merely uninstall it, or does the phone's OS prevent that?

Google does more than scan email for advertisements, and so do the social media sites. FB even announced a couple years ago that it would be following people across the web to determine if FB should shadow ban or cancel them.

The best solution to all of this is to not have a GMail email account, and cancel your FB, Twitter, Instagram and Messenger accounts, and accounts at all other websites that are so repressive that you have to carefully craft your posts in an attempt to express your opinions while minimizing the possibility that your account will be canceled. It is even worse when WOKE corporations like Chase, Wells Fargo Bank, Paypal and other high level financial institutions close your account because their management and board disagree with your political positions because digital transactions are becoming the major means of buying and selling everything.

[Goeroeboeroe]

Thanks for giving me half of an heart attack ) Went to that site and the first picture is a big bulldozer moving snow.
As far as I know (or as they predicted) the snow should stay for only one day. But the cold longer.
Electricity is here pretty good, almost never a failure. Almost every (maybe today even everywhere) all cables are in the ground, so the chance of breaking is small.

But a reliable source for heating, hmmm. I really don't want to start a discussion here about Putin, but The Netherlands is pretty dependant of gas from Russia. And it looks more and more that gas deliverance could be stopped. And then we possibly have a BIG problem. The government says the last few days there's enough gas already here for this year. But until a few days ago they said there wasn't. So it looks for me more like trying to prevent some panic.
Luckily I've got enough pullovers and a warm bed, grin. And I don't have to go out any more for a job.

The promised snow didn't come today, by the way. You can trust nobody today. They really warned for it. If I look on the snowradar it is snowing right now. If I look out of the window it is raining. I guess the radar and the predictions aren't to reliable at the moment.

[Goeroeboeroe]

I forgot your question about the corona app. No, removing the app doesn't work. I don't know the technical details exactly, but Google/Apple did something on a very deep system level to make nearby tracking possible. And even if you remove the app, that still keeps working. It's something like that.. They could simply forbid that, but part of the problem is (maybe, guessing) they first begged Apple/Google to enable that. So it's possibly a bit difficult to persuade a judge to let them stop it now.
Mainly just guessing, but I know for sure it's something Apple/Google have to stop. A simple user can't, for whatever technical reason.

[GreyGeek]

Knowing Apple and Google's history I was fairly certain that once you installed it you wouldn't be able to remove it. That's why I switched to Samsung, even though Google supplies its Android OS. Once I registered the phone with a GMail account, to avoid using my ISP email, I deleted my GMail account so the phone. Most of the software I install comes from F-Droid, which is open source. My previous Android was an Xaiomi Redmi Note 7, which was a fabulous phone. It was rooted at the factor and I had access to every app installed, and every config for those apps. My Samsung is using T-Mobil and they don't like rooted phones.


Weather forecasting here in the states is extremely poor. In my area about the only thing they get right for about 70% of the time is the temperature. They can predict the highs and lows for about 7-10 days into the future, but that's about it. In the last 10 years I can't think of a single prediction they made about rain or snow amounts that were even close, regardless of the number of days in advance they predicted them. If they tell me no rain for the day I'll take an umbrella with me. Such is life.