Chat Control passed first round in EU Parliament
Comments
belowavgiq
inigyou
What percentage of EU citizens support Chat Control and what percentage oppose it?
Balinares
> So, if I'm reading this correctly, Chat Control [2.0, implied] is bound to become law?
Nope. This is bad, but not THAT bad.
This is an extension of the existing Chat Control 1.0, which was set to expire (or maybe already has, I didn't keep track). AIUI it gives chat companies permission to scan user chats for illicit content, but does not mandate it.
This is bad, but it's not the much worse still Chat Control 2.0 that was defeated several times already.
belowavgiq
Thanks for the correction! I guess I can live with that.
MaxikCZ
yes. Frog will be boiled tomorrow, no need to panic today.
order-matters
I think their point is that you lose some battles in a war, chat Control 1.0 is a battle that was already lost. While it is still worthwhile to make an effort to retake lost ground there, that can be done strategically and through habitual effort and does not demand immediate attention the same way an imminent threat of losing new ground would be
dgellow
> chat Control 1.0 is a battle that was already lost
That’s not true, the previous instance of it expired, and the parliament rejected it. It wasn’t already lost, it was actually a win for people against the proposal
inigyou
I can't actually think of a good reason that the law should prohibit a company from having the option to automatically scan private messages for CSAM. Can you?
Certain implementations may fall afoul of data protection laws however.
AngryData
Because they shouldn't be scanning private messages indiscriminately no matter for what. Lets rephrase it and look at it from "private companies will scan their users private messages for evidence of crimes and report people to police." Where is the limit here? I think it is naive to assume this will stop at csam and will soon be used as a judicial bludgen to extort random citizens for petty crimes that in any other case nobody would ever care or know about.
rightbyte
A good reason might be that you don't want your private messages to be scanned by any third party in a conversation...
delusional
> or maybe already has, I didn't keep track
Literally second paragraph.
> to reinstate the transitional regulation for Chat Control, which expired in April
ur-whale
> how democratic of the EU.
Really, it's not the first time the EU pulls that kind of shite off.
And summertime is the perfect time, in Europe everyone's at the beach.
They even managed to find a work around an actual referendum.
dgellow
It’s the council. We have to be clear which institution we are talking about within the EU, otherwise that doesn’t make any sense. The European Parliament already pushed back that proposal. The EU is made of a lot of different actors with their own agenda.
Here the council, with the help of the EPP party is doing that undemocratic maneuvering: They made it on purpose so that the parliament is unlikely to be able to push back a third time (all of that leaked a few days ago)
vslira
If the EU as a system has an undemocratic backdoor it's descriptively correct to call it undemocratic. Not to play too hard on the HN user stereotype, but you wouldn't call a computer system that is mostly secure other than a known privilege escalation exploit secure, would you?
dgellow
Every single democratic system relies on norms at some level. Democratic isn’t a boolean flag. When the French prime minister is using the 49-3 rule to bypass the parliament that’s undemocratic, that doesn’t make the system itself undemocratic. When a US president is using an executive order to pass a law that’s undemocratic, that doesn’t make the system itself undemocratic. Here the maneuver goes against the spirit of democracy and against the expected norms, however the EU itself is democratic
inigyou
If France has a way for the prime minister to bypass democracy that's undemocratic.
bigyabai
> you wouldn't call a computer system that is mostly secure other than a known privilege escalation exploit secure, would you?
People do this all the time, regardless of whether or not they're right or wrong. "This product I own is definitely secure because the marketing says so, even if the CVEs prove me wrong" is a common sentiment online and in real life.
Not to play too hard on the computing-detatched normie stereotype, but this type of surveillance is bound to succeed due to their apathy. We've seen this play out in the US before, and it's always a shoo-in for the surveillance legislation. Security, privacy and fairness doesn't even cross most people's minds anymore.
raverbashing
1 - this is about Chat Control 1.0
2 - The vote was on the "Urgency requirement"
> parliamentarians starting their summer break whenever they want will never not be funny
Eh. This is the least problematic thing here. Some MEPs might just be on official PTO.
procaryote
The voting dynamics changing beacause elected representatives can't plan their vacations like any regular work place is pretty silly
raverbashing
Yes it's a dirty trick
isodev
> how democratic of the EU
Well, these are the MEPs elected by member states. We don’t like the outcome but this means chat control is well supported within the government of each country.
CrisMystik
MEPs are directly elected by citizens, not governments. It's the Council instead where representatives (ministers) of all national governments sit
isodev
Yup, edited to clarify I mean the MEPs bring “the will of the people”. Clearly not enough has happened on local level to raise awareness / lobby against chat control. I don’t think many outside tech are even aware if the slippery slope of the surveillance machinery.
dgellow
The parliament rejected the proposal twice. Yes the governments support it, but not the people of European countries
belowavgiq
uhm, the will of the people is often already half-lost with the politicians/parties they directly elect, so I would hardly consider another layer of representative "demo"cracy on top of another layer of representative democracy following the will of the people at all.
But true, I blamed this on the Commission when I should have just started with this criticism of the overall system.
afh1
Is it really supported by the people, or just the politicians?
If the former, the EU is an autocratic democracy. If the later, an autocratic oligarchy.
Either way bad. Only true democracy in Europe is Switzerland where the people actually get to vote on laws.
kennywinker
Representative democracy vs direct democracy is the actual dichotomy you’re looking for.
dgellow
We have representatives in Switzerland, please don’t misrepresent our political system to push your anti-EU agenda. We do not vote on every single laws. It’s a semi-direct democracy. A representative democracy is the most common instantiation of democratic systems.
iamnothere
From a post on Mastodon:
> democracy is when you repeatedly push for unpopular laws until they pass, and the more times you do it the more democratic it is
It is unlikely that 60 additional “no” votes can be found by Thursday to stop this.
ryandrake
They only have to win once. You have to win every time.
charcircuit
To repeal it you only need to win once too.
debugnik
Not quite, the EU parliament can't propose new laws nor repeal existing ones, only amend them and vote on proposals from the commission.
The Stop Killing Games campaign, for example, has noticed that the EU commission keeps repeating lobbyist lies and has given up on new laws there in favour of amending existing law through parliament.
soco
So basically the people we elected will vote yes. How's that undemocratic? Because the majority doesn't vote the way I like it? I'm not even ironic, I truly don't understand those comments. You get what you voted for, garbage in garbage out.
iamnothere
All votes have a certain margin or fluctuation, as individual representatives can be pressured, swayed, or coerced by any number of means. If a vote fails over and over again then eventually passes under dubious circumstances (start of vacation when attention is elsewhere), that seems to be against the spirit of democratic rule. At least to me, but what do I know? Maybe everyone loves this outcome and all the prior rejections were just a fluke.
throwaway27448
> How's that undemocratic?
Because they're not representing the needs of their constituents? Democracy is more than just voting—and if it wasn't, most states we think of as authoritarian would also be democratic.
poly2it
The vast majority (72%) of European citizens are opposed to Chat control. Regardless, the proposal has been brought up and rejected relentlessly, mostly by action of politicians (commissioners) who are not directly elected to begin with. We have more than enough reasons to be furious.
https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/poll-72-of-citizens-oppose-...
tzs
That's talking about a different Chat Control that has mandatory scanning. This is talking about an older Chat Control that allowed sites to scan on their own without getting in trouble due to privacy laws, which has been in effect but recently expired. The thing passing now is reauthorizing that older law.
SpicyLemonZest
What you have to understand about issue polling is that it's very easy to get whatever results you want if you simply instruct the pollster to ask in absurd ways. This was the question posed to respondents:
> EUR02a. Some politicians are calling for the automatic searching of all personal electronic mail and messages of each citizen for presumed suspect content in the search for child pornography. Suspected cases will be notified to the police. An advantage of this could be that more offenders are caught. However, according to police reports, in the vast majority of cases innocent citizens come under suspicion of having committed an offence due to unreliable processes. Please place yourself in the position that your personal electronic mail and messages are searched for suspect content. What is your opinion?
Obviously this is not a good faith attempt to understand if people support message scanning.
iamnothere
Since you don’t consider that “good faith” I have rephrased it for you, in a format you may prefer:
> EUR02a. In the interest of protecting children, some politicians are calling for the automatic searching of all personal electronic mail and messages of each EU subject in the search for dangerous, illegal child pornography. Suspected cases will be notified to the police. An advantage of this could be that more offenders are caught and children protected. According to activists who defend child pornographers, police reports indicate that a few innocent people may be mildly inconvenienced due to unreliable processes. Please place yourself in the position of a law enforcement official trying to catch these evil people, who is currently obstructed due to false questions of “rights” and “privacy.” What is your opinion?
I jest, of course, I’m sure you would prefer something more straightforward and less manipulative like “EUR02a. Do you support child pornography?”
SpicyLemonZest
I understand that you're trying to dunk on me but I don't get what the point is supposed to be. It's certainly possible to come up with other bad ways to ask the question. If someone was interested in genuinely understanding the public's opinion, rather than including a demand to take some particular perspective, they would ask things like "Do you support online platforms scanning all personal messages for child pornography?" or "If you had to weigh the two, would you consider detection of child pornography or the right to privacy to be a higher priority?" And of course for the latter you’d randomize the order in case people are more or less likely to pick the first option.
iamnothere
I suppose the gold standard would be to present detailed arguments from each side with evidence (if any), for context. Barring that, the original question did seem to provide a rough summary of each side’s position. It may be weighted towards the anti Chat Control side, with the formulation “pro says this, but anti says this, and imagine that you are affected”. So perhaps they could have asked a reverse formulation 50% of the time to be more fair. But the poll was commissioned by Breyer, and of course he wanted to bolster his position.
Your context-free formulation on the other hand provides no information for voters to weigh. Privacy or child porn detection? Well I guess I’ll pick child porn detection. Oh, you wanted to do what to my privacy? Never mind!
Even your slightly longer formulation doesn’t really explain what scanning means and how that might affect people and society. Most people aren’t familiar enough with technical and legal details to dig into the implications without added context.
delusional
Did you read the question of that survey? Talk about poisoning the well.
echelon
They keep voting on surveillance state measures that the oligarchy wants that will limit the freedom of the people.
They keep voting and voting and voting until the energy of the people to protest diminishes or they find a way to get it in.
There needs to be a counter-balance where politicians can be removed or even punished by the people for proposing unpopular bills.
yreg
I was curious to see how the MEPs voted, you can check it here.
https://howtheyvote.eu/votes/195338
For once I'm pleasantly surprised that everyone I voted for was against.
mosselman
This is so cryptic that I wouldn't even know if for or against would mean for or against 'chat control'
SpicyLemonZest
I genuinely mean no disrespect here, but if the title reads as cryptic, your sources haven't been fully informing you about the issue. "Derogation from certain provisions of the ePrivacy Directive" is just what Chat Control (or at least Chat Control 1.0) means.
harrisoned
Even if you are not in the EU, this will affect you. Some countries really like to copy such regulations from others. Once services starts complying, other governments will go like "if you did for them, you can do it for us, right? so it's not technically impossible", and things only get worse from there. Not all services will simply block the EU as well, which would be better to send a stronger message if approved.
I really fear where this is headed.
pr337h4m
Centralized messaging services won't last long, their capture is sadly inevitable. In the long run, only self-hosted/decentralized protocols can resist what's coming.
In the meantime though, Signal specifically should not do something stupid like blocking the EU, which is basically surrender. They are a non-profit headquartered in the US, so there are zero business risks to non-compliance - nothing in the EU to fine or seize. And the EU has no jurisdiction over servers in the US, all they can do is build their own Great Firewall. (However, they might pressure AWS to deplatform Signal - hopefully the team is prepared for the possibility that self-hosting will be necessary soon.)
harrisoned
> Centralized messaging services won't last long, their capture is sadly inevitable. In the long run, only self-hosted/decentralized protocols can resist what's coming.
Very much. I also fear they coming for this, we already have instances of where using secure alternatives tags you as a criminal[0], so i don't doubt a future where non-approved applications will get you in trouble. With everything happening around Android locking itself down[1] and Windows being a spyware[2] anybody who wants privacy will be 'different', and can be tagged and excluded from parts of society for not using the same services.
[0]: https://x.com/GrapheneOS/status/1940440326830989549
iamnothere
This is why you should be building parallel networks and even institutions, as the Czechs did under Soviet rule (look up “Parallel Polis”). Mutual aid will become critical.
mikestorrent
The trouble is that most conventional ways of building a new service are trivial to block. What is needed now is unstoppable messaging and social networking built on top of existing services and protocols that won't be blocked right away, services with more legal protection - like email with GPG, or some kind of steganographically encrypted layer on top of Instagram.
Imagine all I ever posted was cat pics... unless I have your public key and then all of a sudden those pics are decoded into messages of dissent
iamnothere
I am speaking beyond services, you need allies who are willing to come to each other’s aid, especially financially, but also for things like physically relaying data from place to place if that is ever needed. And for more mundane things like watching your house when you are out of town. Offline networks are going to become much more critical.
earth-tattoo
If I was signal CEO I would have self hosted years ago! There's many reasons for signal to be not on AWS.
miroljub
I wish you were right, but the EU only needs Google and Apple, both having big EU businesses, to block Signal.
Google is already working on closing the possibility to install apps from outside the app store, Apple has been like that since forever. The fact that a few technically savvy users with rooted phones will still be able to use Signal doesn't mean anything. It will be dead if the EU decides they don't want it.
rollulus
“We decide on something, leave it lying around, and wait and see what happens. If no one kicks up a fuss, because most people don't understand what has been decided, we continue step by step until there is no turning back.”
And
“If it's a Yes, we will say 'on we go', and if it's a No we will say 'we continue'.”
- Jean-Claude Juncker
raverbashing
And the worse part is: they do that because the alternative means you're building a railway on a surface tunnel because some people don't like it (or worse, not building anything)
asxndu
Why are we so passive to the promotion of such scams?
I keep telling people about such things and I am looked at as nerdy, geeky or boring.
But this stupid reaction finally explains to me why human life for ordinary people will always largely be a life of suffering.
dsign
> I keep telling people about such things and I am looked at as nerdy, geeky or boring.
Hm, yeah, we have our work cut out for ourselves. Politicians can't do nerdy nor geeky, but it's their job to talk in a way that moves people. That's why we keep electing absolute idiots that can't even speak that well, all things considered, but who can "charm", for a given definition of charm of course. To be heard we need to remain nerdy and geeky at our core, but talk in a way that moves people.
In this concrete instance, what I do when somebody brings Chat Control to the conversation and other listeners start to roll eyes, is to derail the conversation with colorful yarns about how we did surveillance in the old days of the Soviet Union, and what we did with anybody who was rattled for giving a foul mouth to the Party. "Yes, we didn't have Siberia, but the heat and the savage ants in those sugar cane plantations were damn fine, and honestly you don't need any particular geography for a good old beating... Catching them dissidents was the hard thing, but it all would be so much easier these days... Hey, have you noticed how you talk about one thing and Facebook start popping ads about it almost at once? Does it listen to all our diatribes? I'm pretty sure that's the stuff Chat Control wants..."
kingleopold
average people never have skin in the game too. They barely understand a lot of the things that make things possible
storus
First they tried to approve software patents during an agriculture and fisheries council session, now they are bending procedural rules to hack it in before summer vacations. Some weird form of democracy™.
Zufriedenheit
It is really worrisome to me that such a procedure is even possible. I don't understand all the EU voting rules, they are so complex that it feels to me like if they want to push something through there is always some way to do it even though the vast majority of people don't want it.
iamsaitam
The real joke is that these MEPs leave for summer break like they are school children and their attendance doesn't matter to the whole.
Cider9986
Is anyone working on a "No chat control at all, ever law"? If these can be defeated, presumably one of those could become law.
layer8
A “no ever” law requires a constitutional majority. And for this concrete case, some member states effectively already have that via privacy guarantees in their constitution.
Finally, it’s important to realize that the power of laws is limited to the extent that people are able and willing to enforce them. Some dictatorships have wonderful things in their constitution that are not heeded at all.
pcrh
I would have thought that the right to privacy as a fundamental human right would have been sufficient. But apparently not....
Equally, there is abundant precedent for forbidding interference with old-fashioned postal communications, that seemingly doesn't translate to electronic communications...
theragra
This happened in Switzerland with cash.
jmward01
All new laws should be given a trial period where the lawmakers are forced to live with them for 90 days before the public is subjected to them. At any time during that period lawmakers can change their vote.
dgellow
In addition there should be pretty specific criteria to determine if the law is successful or not. After 90 days it can be evaluated, and either rolled back or extended
mosselman
This is an incredibly good idea. 90 days is too short to feel the effects of some things though. Better make it a year.
The downside is "lets try giving everyone basic income of $100k/week". But apart from that great!
layer8
The other downside is that even good laws would not pass, because it would mean for MEPs having to constantly identify themselves as such.
big85
The Wikipedia entry on Chat Control doesn't go into enough detail on what exactly it does, only the history of its legislative process. Can someone update it?
rsynnott
Part of the confusion is that there are two things involved here; 'Chat Control 1', an existing (but expiring) derogation to the ePrivacy Directive which allows, but does not require, providers to scan messages. 'Chat Control 2', which you'll likely have heard more about, would _require_ providers to do this. The wiki article is quite poorly written and implies that 1 is an earlier version of 2, which isn't really the case.
Anyway, this is about Chat Control 1.
cucumber3732842
It's probably line item 156/289 on some intern's list of things to check once a week and make sure it "looks good". Politicians engage in just as much publicity management as big corporations do.
miroljub
Just assume the worst: all your private messages would be read and shared between all governments and corporations in the world.
big85
No, I want to know specifically.
gmueckl
As I understand it, chat platforms provider will not be held in violation of the data privacy laws if they add automatic detection and reporting of unlawful content to their platforms. E.G. a CSAM detector in a client app for an end-to-end-encrypted messaging service would be lawful.
SpicyLemonZest
You're looking for an answer that doesn't exist. The term "Chat Control" was coined by the opponents of these proposals to express their worst case assumptions; they reject the idea that the specifics matter, because they fear that any kind of chat scanning can be abused in basically the same ways. Supporters of chat scanning proposals don't call them "Chat Control" or view all such proposals as part of a unified whole.
miroljub
The answer is already specific, but not complete.
sucrosesucrose
No one will do anything to stop it, nor ChatControl 2.0 in the future. No one will revolt, or seize the government in response to anything that happens.
The world that Liberal Democracy has built has escape valves (tv/streaming/videogames/entertainment, the illusion of democratic choice, mass media and information overload, public demonstrations) for the anger of the massed which despite in older times caused a government to fall or a revolution to start, today cause nothing and are comfortably absorbed or even assimilated for profit by the system itself.
lukan
In your doomed reality maybe, but in this reality it was already stopped a couple of times and chances are good, that it will be stopped again - unless people believe all is doomed.
iamnothere
If this is true, then the system will eventually collapse upon itself, as its governance feedback loops have been broken. No defeat is permanent.
himata4113
The more people become criminals the harder it becomes to enforce the law. This is especially ironic because criminals that genuinely matter and cause wide-scale harm won't even be impacted by this.
dgellow
Yeah. That’s really the dumbest part. Criminal will be using systems that don’t follow EU rules
himata4113
I think this all came from trying to enforce rules on people that shit talk on the internet which is especially pointless now cause you may be trying to enforce law on a random AI agent.
hlieberman
Is this Chat Control 1.0 or Chat Control 2.0?
MaKey
This is about Chat Control 1.0 (voluntary scanning).
sfdlkj3jk342a
Part of me wants Chat Control to get passed so that there is more incentive for at least the tech literate to start using more decentralized messaging tools.
Cider9986
They won't.
But afaik Chat Control 1.0 was/is in effect but expired. It's not relevant to Signal or Whatsapp because they're e2ee, it's relevant for eBay, Linkedin, perhaps SMS.
xyzsparetimexyz
If we're gonna be undemocratic, can we at least also get have bullet trains and expanded social programs?
dgellow
I wish… instead in Germany we are getting Merz disdain and mandatory doctor approval for sick days…
sensanaty
Hilarious that the politicians, the very people who are pretty much always ousted as some form of degenerate pedophile the world over, are the ones pushing for this bullshit and explicitly carving out enclaves where their messages don't get scanned.
Absolute fucking joke
aquir
Hopefully this could be the first good thing about Brexit...this might not get implemented in the UK or there will be a delay!
Havoc
The way the uk is legislating online stuff lately I’m expecting UK version to be worse than EU
MyMemoryfails
UK already technically banned encryption, causing Apple to remove the encrypted cloud service for UK customers. Check UK's "Investigatory Powers Act (IPA)"
graemep
> Hopefully this could be the first good thing about Brexit
Was having lots of people's lives saved by a much faster vaccine rollout not a good thing?
miroljub
Please mark sarcasm as /s
nekusar
The cypherpunks were right. Rights to encryption are only a part of what we need.
The other part is steganography, or hiding real messages within a innocuous anodyne message stream. And encryption can be used in conjunction as part of hiding said messages.
It can be within pictures with the lowest bit values. It can be constructed punctuation and spaces. Lots of things.
But hidden and plausibly deniable messaging is the ONLY way to defeat a government(s) that want to invade every communication aspect for humans.
__MatrixMan__
The trouble with pictures is that when you share them online the platform will likely compress them before serving them to others, spoiling your steganography. I think text-in-text is the way to go. Decrypt that recipe for brownies into the actual message. For example: https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.20075
Bender
One can host their own private or semi-private forum, chat server, chan board, etc... and choose not to re-encode the images and/or permit .tar .7z .zip archives and so on. Keep the bots away with basic auth to minimize skiddie risk to platform RCE's.
It's unlikely people can move their friends to their own platform but the best way I have found is to call it a "fall-back" platform for when Discord and others are temporarily offline. Get people used to the idea that is the place to share things they do not want leaked when the big platform 3rd parties expose files. The admin can encrypt the storage and periodically zero out files and zero out empty space for privacy.
People with slightly higher opsec may choose to block mobile proprietary devices.
osigurdson
What I don't understand is, what kind of legitimate criminal would not use such techniques? Are bank robbers planning things out on iMessage? If so, presumably they won't be criminals for very long. Therefore these types of initiatives only impact the innocent and inept but still active criminals.
iamnothere
The purpose of these efforts is not to catch criminals, at least not primarily, it’s to map the spread of “dangerous” ideas and the networks behind them. In other words, to prevent effective political change.
Found a new problematic meme? Someone leaked a video of you taking a bribe? Someone published a photo of damage from a missile strike? Add it to the database of forbidden media and quickly track down the source.
cucumber3732842
They'll make sure to catch just enough criminals that when you say it's all bullshit some snooty waste of oxygen on HN can say "well akshually" and link you to some cherry picked news story that makes it all look like a good thing because they caught some small time house painter dumping waste paint in the sewer or nabbed someone for selling vapes to teenagers.
layer8
The past has shown that “legitimate” criminals tend to be more careless and have a poorer technical understanding than you’d think.
This is not a defense of surveillance, just that your argument doesn’t hold as well as you might believe.
mghackerlady
Security is the reason given to us since most of us are too trusting or dumb to look any further into it. It becomes clear security isn't what they're doing it for after giving it more than a few minutes of thought
doublepg23
Epstein used Gmail
osigurdson
True!
nullorempty
That's an excellent take.
Unfortunately, verified devices will close that loophole.
musha68k
This is the anti-EU move but they simply don't understand that.
Authoritarian centralization efforts need to be fought Huang style - with an European twist - as we might be behind on a lot of axis but we "Didn't Wake Up a Loser".
China / US leadership must not be the carte-blanche to formalize whatever low bar in how we handle our own privacy; going straight for the "self own" I guess?
Sorry for prompt mode but I hope this is at least somewhat legible to fellow Europeans, if not please listen to antirez in original Italian or auto translated:
I hear quite a few tangents in there; the main one being: especially in EU we need to go "agentic". Don't wait for politics to do The Right Thing. They should play retrospective backup at best.
I'm thinking they might be actually thankful for having been provided vision / imagination.
Team up with the bureaucrats after the fact but don't listen to them too much - again - to Do The Right Thing. Especially when they are potentially infected by lobbyists...
FFS I hate this timeline; we really need to show up for real. Again and again and again and again...
gmueckl
Huang style? What does this mean?
cherryteastain
Reminder that EU institutions were designed from ground up to smother democracy:
- Members of EU Parliament cannot propose regulation, only the unelected Commission can, MEPs can only vote yes/no
- EU Parliament is the only parliament in the world where an absolute 50%+1 is needed to reject a bill, ignoring how many MEPs are present/voting. In every other parliament, a quorum requirement plus a majority vote is needed to pass a bill.
gmueckl
This is all fixable by changing the treaties. The first step to fixing it, however, is to give up fundamental opposition to its existence and instead support the underlying ideals and approach the shortcomings from a constructive angle.
The alternative is feeding nationalistic right wing extremism, which we really don't want in Europe.
varispeed
Effect of law enforcement not doing their jobs. Chat Control is illegal in many countries including Germany and that includes preparation for the roll out. Just need a prosecutor with a spine.
shevy-java
Lobbyists running the show. It's kind of a copy/paste of the US system.
tadasZ
i'm so tired of this bs, these elected people act as tsars, even when said NO they try again and again while employing shady tactics and there is no way of punishing these a*holes. Elections exist, but when same 35% (number taken out of butt, but point is - it's low) of people vote we get same sht who elects same sht to EU. And i don't know about other countries, but my country sends complete degenerates to EU, like litteraly degenerates.
miroljub
> ... these elected people act as tsars, ...
They are not elected. Even the EU is illegal, since joining the EU was rejected by people of many European countries, but that was ignored.
They just do what they want and do thorough media coverage. In rare cases that doesn't work, people just dissapear.
tadasZ
i'm so tired of this bs, these elected people act as tsars, even when said NO they try again and again while employing shady tactics and there is no way of punishing these a**holes. Elections exist, but when same 35% (number taken out of butt, but point is - it's low) of people vote we get same sh*t who elects same sh*t to EU. And i don't know about other countries, but my country sends complete degenerates to EU, like litteraly degenerates.
zuzululu
Talked to a fellow European coworker recently and they seem very supportive of chat control and that it was necessary to stop "far right nationalism" and then I pressed on for them describe what it is and they got angry and refused to clarify. I think this is a good snapshot of where Europe is right now that chat controls have become politically weaponized and people who are supportive of it seem clueless as to what it actually is proposing.
Future looks very dim for EU as a whole, I'm glad I left it for America
sunshine-o
So now that this is done the first thing we need is a list of platform covered and potentially covered by Chat Control.
It is still unclear to me if Proton Mail, Tuta, SimpleX servers, Signal, etc. fall under this or might.
Do they even have to officially declare if they are complying?
cynicalsecurity
Local governments are likely to block the initiative. We need a Polish based messenger that won't bend to chat control fascist initiatives.
DocTomoe
Nothing is brought to the Commission that local governments do not secretly want, but publically rage against because the voters are against it.
When Brussles then decides, 'there's nothing we can do, it's an EU thing' ... and a moustache-twirl.
The only thing that can stop this is to completely dismantle the EU. Which means, unfortunately, voting for people any good person should rightfully despise.
cynicalsecurity
Dismantling the EU is like burning down your own house to get rid of flies. That is absolutely not the right solution. Without the EU, chat control would already have been implemented in its worst form everywhere, just as it already is in the UK. The UK left the EU and implemented its own version of chat control.
Krasnol
I'm always astonished how democratic politicians willingly allow for tools which might be misused by a future undemocratic party.
I'm not a politician or some civil rights activist but I can see that. It's right there. We have a similar situation in Germany these days. We'll be giving more rights to the Federal Intelligence Service ( foreign intelligence) and the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (domestic intelligence). Basically allowing them to act more offensive (or offensive at all).
We're one or two elections away from having fascists in the government again.
Is it already a conspiracy theory if I suspect them of doing that deliberately because I can't imagine them being stupid?
2847372828273
Are you fascist already back from Erfurt after kicking dissidents in the head? What would the regime do without their terrorist GONGOs to which they funnel millions of taxpayer money?
> I'm always astonished how democratic politicians willingly allow for tools which might be misused by a future undemocratic party.
You totalitarian pieces of shit have no grasp of irony. Fucking scum.
miroljub
[[comment deleted]]
Thanks for the warning. Comment deleted to avoid jail time.
patrakov
I am not a lawyer, but, as a Russian citizen, let me warn you. The very fact that your comment criticizing the EU regime, that you yourself admit could send you to jail, is online and not deleted by Thursday, makes it a "lasting crime". For lasting crimes, it does not matter that the regulation criminalizing the action or state of affairs was not in force when they started. What matters is that the condition defined as illegal (comment existing) is true when the regulation outlawing it is in force - i.e., that you did not cease and desist. Yes, this is a creative way authorities circumvent the ban on ex post facto laws - they say "it is not ex post facto".
Commented on Tuesday, deleted the comment on Wednesday, the regulation is enacted on Thursday => OK.
Commented on Tuesday, did not delete before Thursday => jail (and it does not matter that you can't delete it anymore because it has a reply).
Sarcasm of course, as Russian laws do not apply here.
iamnothere
It’s a good time to download the source code for software that allows locally encrypted messaging, particularly without central infrastructure.
Delta Chat works with any email server and has a rich feature set, Bitchat is also good to have on hand. And of course the old standby GPG, flawed as it may be.
Also NNCP (https://nncp.mirrors.quux.org/) in case sneakernet solutions are ever needed.
raverbashing
And who's to say Drama is dead huh
I love how your average EU left-leaning cybertistic who has less serotonin than Werther and yet thinks all their country needs is more 3rd world "refugees" acts upon a tiny modicum of difficulty or government control (which should not be read as me advocating for it, naturally)
> Any advice from free people of China on circumventing government restrictions and control?
You should look into what goes on WeChat
But anyway the Chinese has way more agency and way less qualms about using air-conditioner so let me make a guess on who's surviving the heat waves
73738384
Gotta love the downvotes. At least we have free healthcare folks (for now lol).
lostmsu
You can't have access to the free healthcare until you get a mandatory calming vaccine.
"The procedure now chosen gives the proponents of Chat Control a significant tactical advantage. Since the law is in its second reading, an absolute majority of 361 votes of all parliament members is required for amendments or a renewed rejection on Thursday. In contrast, a simple majority of the MEPs present is sufficient for the other side. As many parliamentarians have historically already departed by the last day before the summer break, the re-enactment of the regulation is considered almost unavoidable."
So, if I'm reading this correctly, Chat Control is bound to become law? and this is after I think 2/3 rejections, how democratic of the EU.
Oh, and parliamentarians starting their summer break whenever they want will never not be funny.