The disguised return of EU Chat Control

https://reclaimthenet.org/the-disguised-return-of-the-eus-private-message-scanning-plot

by egorfine • 8 months ago

854 322 8 months ago

https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/chat-control-2-0-through-th...

The problem is that they can repeat this game indefinitely, Chat Control 2.0, 2.1, 3.0, 231.24, ... Just slightly modify the initial Chat Control proposal, make it sound less harsh, and then resubmit it until they achieve a sufficient majority in the EU Parliament, while the general public gets too tired of the topic to create sufficient resistance.

txrx00003• 8 months ago

This might keep happening if nobody knows who "they" are. Those individuals need to be found and publically shamed.

squarefoot2• 8 months ago

fightchatcontrol.eu published the complete list of all countries stance on Chat Control and all representatives. They can be contacted via mail directly from the site.

demarq2• 8 months ago

That the EU has these “closed door” processes doesn’t sound very democratic.

The frequency, aggression and coordination around chat control, both in the Uk and Eu tells me there is a single entity.

It’s not just by chance

archerx• 8 months ago

The “you voted wrong and will make you keep voting until you get it right” type of “democracy”.

BoredPositron• 8 months ago

Writing about yourself in third person like this is really odd.

sixhobbits• 8 months ago

The site is in his name but it has a lot of content - I don't think he writes it all. The stuff I've seen from him directly is mainly in German so I think often people on his team write e.g. English summaries and quote what he said as a translation

thw_9a83c• 8 months ago

Apparently it didn't work last time, so why not try again with a more vague language, an expanded scope and even slapping the age verification on top of it? And all of this while still preserving our privacy.

This time, we should feel 100% completely reassured (from the proposal):

   Regulation whilst still allowing for end-to-end encryption, nothing in this
   Regulation should be interpreted as prohibiting, weakening or circumventing,
   requiring to disable, or making end-to-end encryption impossible.

doublerabbit• 8 months ago

This.. seriously

“Digital House Arrest”: Teens under 16 face a blanket ban from WhatsApp, Instagram, online games, and countless other apps with chat functions, allegedly to protect them from grooming.

For which I agree.

“Digital isolation instead of education, protection by exclusion instead of empowerment – this is paternalistic, out of touch with reality, and pedagogical nonsense.”

johnisgood• 8 months ago

I completely disagree.

I would not know English or anything about computers, and my childhood would have been quite sad were there such a retarded ban[1]. I do not care about WhatsApp and Instagram, but online games and apps with chat functions? Come on now. "Allegedly" is the keyword.

At any rate, see Roblox and Discord. Do something with those platforms first. :)

[1] I was around 12 years old when I met an older guy IRL who I have met in an online game initially. Can you imagine the safety? :D He showed me his laptop on which he had a Linux distro installed, and the rest is history.

eldgfipo• 8 months ago

So many attempts over the years to infringe upon citizens privacy and civil liberties, I don't know about the rest of EU population but I'm done with it.

Might as well let it go pure evil so when the time comes, the people will be less hesitant to get rid of the whole EU bureaucracy and the armies of corporate lobbyists altogether

r14c• 8 months ago

I'm curious about this mindset. Wouldn't it be easier to reform your system before it has gone "pure evil"? Or do you expect nobody cares enough to do that without the threat of impending doom to motivate them?

kennykartman2• 8 months ago

I believe people will typically not stand for their rights (even less so for other's rights) unless they are significantly bothered or led to think the situation is dire. This is not great, but it is also natural for the human condition: unless one is well-informed and especially conscious about the issues that come with reduction of rights, they will not even realize what is happening until it is happening.

Kim_Bruning2• 8 months ago

I poked my Europarliamentarians. But it's -like- already almost 15:00 on the european mainland, so I'm not sure how much it still helps.

kennykartman2• 8 months ago

Same here. I got no answer. Ahhhh, no: I got one! An automated answer from a deputy on vacation.

dfawcus2• 8 months ago

These things are rather pointless, as one could always use a standalone encryption app, and copy&paste text to and from a non encrypted chat app. i.e. how one originally made use of PGP.

The difficulty which PGP had of key exchange could be handled somewhat like Signal does now, via a personal physical sync of the phones.

At which point, the authorities will still be able to make use of "traffic analysis" as they always have. So they'll be able to tell which parties are communicating, but not what is being said.

dfawcus2• 8 months ago

I find it sadly amusing that the proposed "compromise text" document is marked as "(Text with EEA relevance)" - i.e. they want to push it on the EEA states.

nik_ca2• 8 months ago

Do you know where there is no chat control possible? XMPP / Jabber [1]. Private, convenient, reliable, distributed, free.

[1] https://xmpp.org/

whynotmakealt• 8 months ago

Isn't the same true for matrix as well?

I appreciate xmpp as well but I have actually seen uses of matrix in open source community etc. a lot more so what are your thoughts on it?

Note for anyone interested in matrix, to not use the main matrix.org but other instances as well to actually have more decentralization/distribution

nik_ca2• 8 months ago

Yes, you're right, matrix too. However, I've tried ruining servers for both, synapse for matrix and prosody for xmpp and I should say matrix felt very sluggish and limited, while prosody is fast and insanely flexible. In addition, client software for XMPP is more diverse and feature-rich, I'm particularly impressed by movim (web) and conversations (android). Also, there are variety of bridges for everything, e.g. matrix <-> whatsapp or xmpp <-> telegram, so one is not limited too much while committing to a certain messaging tech.

mrsssnake• 8 months ago

Unless you are going to self-host, you would be required to provide government ID for registration on a server.

Caius-Cosades• 8 months ago

It's a foregone conclusion that it will pass. There is no such thing as saying "no" to EU power encroachment.

kaboomshebang• 8 months ago

This makes me feel pissed off. I used to be Pro EU, now I'm not so sure. (Suddenly I understand Trump voters.)

mrighele• 8 months ago

Same here. If this pass, I may start voting for Anti-EU parties, regardless for my disgust for them. This is too much of an important issue.

Itoldmyselfso• 8 months ago

The eu skeptic partiers, unfortunately, seem to be on quite solid footing on claims of EU bypassing democracy in their decision making. How can the same bill effectively be struck down so many times and then get passed through the back door?!

nowaymo6237• 8 months ago

Privacy needs codified! The illusion of safety is not worth it for the fascist regime who turn keys it into a panopticon.

PeterStuer2• 8 months ago

Eternal vigilance is needed to stop this. Good luck! It will take just one (manufactured) crisis.

ryandrake• 8 months ago

We have to win every time. They only have to win once and it's game over.

ambicapter• 8 months ago

Why can't we put up legislation to repeal over and over until it is repealed?

zelphirkalt4• 8 months ago

There is also an alternative, which is the way problems with governments used to get solved in the past. Not that we should aim for that to be necessary, but it often seems that our politicians are hellbend on getting there quickly. I guess it's all "to hell with the consequences!" for them.

latexr2• 8 months ago

That argument is so tiring. Yes, we know, we all understand this, that’s true of every draconian law proposal. What’s the point of repeating that over and over every time? If you want to give up, do, but let others fight without needless discouraging. If everyone thought like you, this would have passed first time.

ChrisArchitect• 8 months ago

Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45908672

api• 8 months ago

They will keep trying until some version of it passes.

Humorist22902• 8 months ago

  (6) Online child sexual abuse frequently involves the misuse of information society services offered in the Union by providers established in third countries. In order to ensure the effectiveness of the rules laid down in this Regulation and a level playing field within the internal market, those rules should apply to all providers, irrespective of their place of establishment or residence, that offer services in the Union, as evidenced by a substantial connection to the Union.

The article links to the text of the revised proposal. It reads like they're openly planning to push it again, and soon, and worldwide. The UK and EU seem to be setting aside their differences at least.

josteink3• 8 months ago

So they’re asking American companies to repeal the first amendment rights of American citizens on all websites accessible in the EU.

How this not a declaration of war?

progval• 8 months ago

Neither the EU nor American companies are Congress, so they are not bound by the 1st amendment.

petcat2• 8 months ago

"First Amendment Rights" only applies to the State, not private companies.

For example, Hacker News has no obligation to preserve your "First Amendment Rights" on this website. They are free to mute you, ban you, or even just surreptitiously change what you say without you knowing.

eptcyka2• 8 months ago

I was under the impression that the strong and independent Americans had thicker skin than this.

latchup3• 8 months ago

I am going to assume your question is genuine and not rethorical hyperbole.

Every sovereign nation has legal supremacy over its own territory. Any company doing business in the EU, no matter its origin, must follow EU laws inside the EU. However, these laws do not apply anywhere else (unless specified by some sort of treaty), so they are not forced to comply with them in the US when dealing with US customers.

If they still abide by EU law elsewhere, that is their choice, just like you can just choose to abide by Chinese law in the US — so long as it does not conflict with US law. If these rules do conflict with the first amendment, enforcing them in the US is simply not legal, and it's up to the company to figure out how to resolve this. In the worst case, they will have to give up business in the EU, or in this case, prohibit chat between US and EU customers, segregating their platform.

layer83• 8 months ago

worldwide

Laws targeting service providers usually always apply to all providers providing services in the respective jurisdiction. It would be unusual if it was any different.

btown• 8 months ago

From https://docs.reclaimthenet.org/council-presidency-lewp-csa-r... pp 35:

(f) ‘relevant information society services’ means all of the following services: (i) a hosting service; (ii) an interpersonal communications service; (iii) a software applications store; (iv) an internet access service; (v) online search engines.

And via https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELE... pp 8:

(2) ‘internet access service’ means a publicly available electronic communications service that provides access to the internet, and thereby connectivity to virtually all end points of the internet, irrespective of the network technology and terminal equipment used

===

Calling it Chat Control is itself an understatement, one that evokes "well I'm not putting anything sensitive on WhatsApp" sentiments - and that's incredibly dangerous.

This bill may very well be read to impose mandatory global backdoors on VPNs, public cloud providers, and even your home router or your laptop network card!

(Not a lawyer, this is not legal advice. But it doesn't take a lawyer to see how broadly scoped this is.)

chimeracoder• 8 months ago

(6) Online child sexual abuse frequently involves the misuse of information society services offered in the Union by providers established in third countries.

It's quite wild to see child sexual abuse continue to be cited as a justification for far-reaching, privacy-invading proposals, allegedly to empower government actors to combat child sexual abuse.

Meanwhile, we have copious and ever-increasing evidence of actual child sexual abuse being perpetrated by people with the most power in these very institutions, and they generally face few (if any) consequences.

andybak• 8 months ago

This is an asymmetric conflict. The factions who want this to pass have more resources, time and background influence and can keep pushing this until they get lucky.

And once in place repealing it will be tremendously difficult.

How does society resolve this kind of abuse of the democratic process? It is a dynamic that is repeated in many areas.

frogperson• 8 months ago

We stop allowing the rich to become so rich. Billionares are not compatible with democracy or the greater good.

CamperBob23• 8 months ago

What happens when you get what you want, and rather than magically solving every problem confronting society, it doesn't solve anything at all, and in fact creates several more problems, as generally happens when such ideas are put into practice?

What's plan B? Lower the threshold to a million dollars?

afarah1• 8 months ago

This seems to be more about political power and government overreach than money. The narrative seems to be focused solely on concentration of the later, lately.

impossiblefork• 8 months ago

It's too bad we can't withdraw our votes for a politician continuously, with the politician having to leave office if the vote changes enough.

I'm not sure it can be solved without everybody writing down their vote, but this would be one way that would make pushing through unpopular policies, whether because of changing opinions, mismatches where politicians misrepresent their plans or corruption, much more difficult.

hcurtiss• 8 months ago

It seems more likely to me this is being pressed by intelligence agencies than billionaires. Billionaires have secrets too.

imglorp2• 8 months ago

The States are learning the hard way that the disproportionate accumulation of wealth is an irresistible force which will eventually erode all checks and balances, corrupt all systems, and ultimately capture the entire government. We we were doing mostly okay with "constrained capitalism" but as soon as we let our guard down, money flooded into politics and that was the end of restraint.

samdoesnothing2• 8 months ago

Chat Control isn't something being pushed in the States though, so your criticism just seems like you're taking a random shot at the USA rather than accepting the uncomfortable truth that the EU is becoming increasingly authoritarian.

HPsquared• 8 months ago

Constitutions are a pretty common way to say "no to this kind of thing".

yoz-y• 8 months ago

Indeed. It seems that the only way out is to elect a government that would have that on their program. Dubious that this will happen.

egorfine3• 8 months ago

Constitutions have a lot of "except in cases prescribed by the law" exceptions which makes it possible to pass into law all kinds of abuses.

wartywhoa234• 8 months ago

How does society resolve this kind of abuse of the democratic process?

Other than hoping for a large meteorite or the second coming to end this misery, or stirring up the bloodbath a la Nepal - then, by recognizing the power of large numbers of people doing little things, like sabotaging the system at the personal level. But that implies unity, and unity and mutual support have been deliberately annihilated in this society for too long. Thus, this outcome is even less probable than the first two.

soulofmischief3• 8 months ago

I'm downvoting you because complaining against downvotes like this is against site guidelines. Your comment would have a better foundation if that part was omitted.

stackedinserter3• 8 months ago

Agree completely. We're like sheep that are cluelessly watching other sheep being slaughtered.

enricotr• 8 months ago

This.

the_mitsuhiko2• 8 months ago

How does society resolve this kind of abuse of the democratic process? It is a dynamic that is repeated in many areas.

A lot of society wants this. A lot of parents are asking for this.

soulofmischief3• 8 months ago

That doesn't mean anything, because they're not necessarily educated on the topic, and yet are making decisions that affect everyone.

When it's so cheap to enact mass propaganda, selective omission and manufactured intent, it becomes impossible to just say, "well, the people want it." Their decision making process is compromised by the same people pushing these policies through.

Democracy is indeed broken, and we have to take that seriously if we're going to fix it.

dns_snek2• 8 months ago

Please quantify "a lot". What percentage of the population wants all private communication between adults to be monitored and censored by a government agency? Can we put it to a vote - right after publicly discussing (debunking) all of the false beliefs that its proponents have?

alex1138• 8 months ago

This is true and yet we managed to kick SOPA to the curb (one of Aaron Swartz's finest hours)

echelon_musk• 8 months ago

That was more than a decade ago. Think how many normies have come online since then that have only ever used a smartphone. Sadly the average computer literacy of those times are gone.

egorfine3• 8 months ago

Did you notice that SOPA reappears every couple of years since then?

whitehexagon• 8 months ago

How does society resolve this kind of abuse of the democratic process?

Swiss style democracy with public referendums?

egorfine3• 8 months ago

"Think of the children" buys a lot of votes of common people.

iso16313• 8 months ago

plebiscite -> populism -> bad outcomes

People are not able to be experts in everything they are asked to vote on, thats why we delegate it, just like people delegate their healthcare, plumbing, flying to a holiday destination, growing food, etc.

People en-mass are just as easy to manipulate as elected members, if not easier.

stackedinserter3• 8 months ago

How does society resolve this kind of abuse of the democratic process?

By choosing "people-vs-individual-politician" fight over "people-vs-government-system". Like, literally, make politicians personally responsible for this bs.

blibble2• 8 months ago

And once in place repealing it will be tremendously difficult.

as in: not possible

the EU parliament can't legislate to remove it, at least not without permission from the two organs (commission, council) that keep pushing this

EU parliament is the only legislature in the world that needs permission to legislate

iso16313• 8 months ago

On paper the UK house of commons can pass a bill. In reality bills are driven by the executive. The same executive that (until brexit) drove the bills via appointing the EU commissioner and being the EU council.

The reason that EU Parliament can't pass bills is because constituent governments don't want to lose power to parliament.

Muromec10• 8 months ago

EU parliament is the only legislature in the world that needs permission to legislate

It makes sense, because EU law is mostly technical stuff that commission has to draft and all the national governments have to agree to.

With the commission being elected by the parliament itself and vote of no confidence being a thing, it's not like the parliament doesn't have power -- the power is intentionally nerfed to not overreach where national governments don't want it to.

Lutzb• 8 months ago

The people that push this agenda reside on secrecy. We need to expose the people involved and let the press do their jobs.

okokwhatever2• 8 months ago

Which press? The same that keeps this war in the shadows?

wartywhoa234• 8 months ago

Agree, but it's rather "expose the people involved and DON'T let their pocket press puppets do their jobs!"

nom• 8 months ago

It's just Ashton Kutcher trying to save our children.

Kim_Bruning2• 8 months ago

For one, we can try to get laws passed that point in the opposite direction: explicitly ban the things being proposed here as broadly as possible.

SilverElfin• 8 months ago

I’ve seen this strategy many times in the US. For example, in blue states they will repeatedly propose the same gun control laws that restrict the rights of law abiding citizens and violate the constitution, which guarantees a right to own firearms. Each time such a law is proposed, people have to show up to hearings, submit comments, pressure legislators, protest, and all of that. Those laws may then be pulled back, but the same laws will get brought up every single legislative season, and citizens who have other responsibilities in life have to give up time and money repeatedly to fight for their constitutional rights.

I’m sure there are other examples of such legal abuse of different political biases - I’m just using this as an example because there is such a long history of it. Eventually, legislators will pass whatever they want anyways. And then your recourse to regain rights is to go through an expensive years-long legal battle that ultimately requires the Supreme Court to take the case. This type of “attack” is a serious flaw in many modern democracies.

I think the fix is to have personal consequences for legislators, judges, etc that make bad decisions that violate the constitutional rights or fundamental rights of citizens. The idea that people are immune from consequence just because they’re serving in an official capacity is insane. This shouldn’t be the case for anyone serving in political office or other public roles - as in, you shouldn’t get immunity whether you are a lawmaker or policeman or teacher or whatever else.

marginalia_nu3• 8 months ago

How does society resolve this kind of abuse of the democratic process?

You need a means for citizens to hold the powers that be accountable. Unfortunately, the EU is largely designed without such a mechanism, as its initial scope and ambition was much smaller than the superstate it is growing into it wasn't deemed necessary.

Every branch except for the European Parliament risks consequences only if they fuck up so badly that the majority of EU citizens in their home countries (or in some cases, the majority of member states) deem their actions so reprehensible that they consider punishing the EU more important than electing their own national government, since it's effectively the same vote.

This is technically still a means of accountability, but it's not really a threat in practice.

pokot03• 8 months ago

Honestly I think privacy is lost. Regardless of what side you were (big fan of privacy here) I feel we have nothing to do but move on and think how to live in a world without privacy.

I never wanted privacy anyway: I wanted no discrimination, inclusion, healthy democracy, etc, etc.

Privacy has always been a tool for me.

At this point, selective privacy like we are experiencing today (we cannot know what’s in the epstein files, but google can send a drone and look into my backyard) serves none of the things I am interested in!

whatshisface• 8 months ago

The basic structure of your argument is equivalent to, "I've given up on being allowed to leave my house, I just want to go to the places I need to go."

binary1325• 8 months ago

what a ludicrously insane take. how can you not believe in privacy? do you think what you do in your home should be private, or do you think it’s fine for someone to put cameras in there? If you do, please feel free to invite them to do so; do not feel free to invite them to put cameras in my home.

iso16313• 8 months ago

Whether you or I want it or not is irrelevant

Over the last 5000 years it's been very rare for plebs to have any privacy. For a brief period from ww2 through to the early 21st century power shifted to the plebs, but since the 1980s that power has shifted back to the feudal barons, and our rights will eventually regress.

But the SP500 will be at record highs so everyone will be told they should be happy.

pokot03• 8 months ago

Privacy for me is not that important. I have nothing to hide, nothing I am ashamed of. For me it's more of a way of protecting from abuse that a need of its own. I realize it's just me and I do advocate for privacy, but if you look around: we lost. Our data is everywhere and there are no consequences whatsoever. PS: I did mention in my original comment that Google and many others already send drones with cameras to spy on your backyard and that is considered "fine". I am not inviting them to come to your house; they are already doing it. Just check Google Maps.

binary1325• 8 months ago

what is it they’re so concerned about people talking about these days exactly anyway?

FranzFerdiNaN• 8 months ago

Gotta make sure you aren’t saying the wrong things, like criticising rich and powerful people.

binary1325• 8 months ago

people have been doing that for a long time, but the level of urgency from the system hasn’t been at this level.

wartywhoa234• 8 months ago

That they're so damn tired being milked and oppressed by the organized crime groups calling themselves governments, maybe?

HeinzStuckeIt3• 8 months ago

That strain of libertarian rhetoric is overwhelmingly encountered on American-dominated fora. I won’t say it doesn’t exist in Europe, since Europeans can pick up on American internet culture, too, but it is too marginal in Europe to affect politics much. There is no significant libertarian party in the EU. Some of the far-right parties stoking and benefiting from popular discontent even promise to uphold the welfare state, but simply deny it to immigrants.

Muromec10• 8 months ago

The usual stuff.

- members of opposition of the wrong kind (as defined by incumbent);

- journalists investigating the government;

(if the incumbent is brazen enough, those above can be and already are selectively targeted with paid exploits)

- political opponents of the wrong kind (aka the extrimists, which kinda overlaps with #1);

- actual enemy combatants (aka the terrorists), spys and traitors;

- organized crime of the day with unwarranted delusions of grandeur (R. Taghi, his antics and aspirations to kill the Dutch PM);

- immigrants and immigrants to be of the wrong kind and people who smuggle them;

Havoc• 8 months ago

Dystopian BS. It's unfortunate that we've got people in society that are keen on mass surveillance

sMarsIntruder• 8 months ago

This Chat Control 2.0 nonsense has to be killed off once for all.

pcrh9• 8 months ago

The right to privacy is enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights, article 8 [0].

It escapes me how politicians can repeatedly attempt to violate this.

[0] https://fra.europa.eu/en/law-reference/european-convention-h...

pfortuny• 8 months ago

Think of the children.

You want the police to solve crimes, right?

If you are against this it is because you have something to hide.

Also it is more than possible that those politicians do not agree with that Convention.

crest• 8 months ago

Only boring people have nothing to hide.

ntoskrnl_exe2• 8 months ago

Wow, it’s always crazy how the folks who have nothing to hide get mad when the lock on the stall door in a public bathroom doesn’t work…

sitzkrieg2• 8 months ago

"having something to hide" or defending a human right. who cares. easy to tell where this one gets their feed

karhuton• 8 months ago

”2 There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right EXCEPT such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.”

Are we reading the same thing?

This linked statement clearly authorizes invasion of privacy by public authorities, in the name of any of the very vaguely listed reasons – as long as there’s some law to allow it.

pcrh9• 8 months ago

Mass surveillance has already been ruled to be in contravention of the Human Rights act:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_8_of_the_European_Conv...

A 2014 report to the UN General Assembly by the United Nations' top official for counter-terrorism and human rights condemned mass electronic surveillance as a clear violation of core privacy rights guaranteed by multiple treaties and conventions and makes a distinction between "targeted surveillance" – which "depend[s] upon the existence of prior suspicion of the targeted individual or organization" – and "mass surveillance", by which "states with high levels of Internet penetration can [] gain access to the telephone and e-mail content of an effectively unlimited number of users and maintain an overview of Internet activity associated with particular websites". *Only targeted interception* of traffic and location data in order to combat serious crime, including terrorism, is justified, according to a decision by the European Court of Justice.[23]

marginalia_nu3• 8 months ago

Yeah the whole thing is full with these loopholes. Your rights are rights only as long as we wish at some point to add laws that inhibit them.

realusername4• 8 months ago

It depends the version of the declaration, the french one has zero exception listed.

Muromec10• 8 months ago

The way it's written and the way ECHR court works, the government has to actually argue it's way, not just say "national secirity".

ECHR court however can't repeal the law, only fine the governmemt for actual violation of convention rights.

jayess• 8 months ago

Good god what a meaningless "right" where all of the exceptions eat the rule.

encom• 8 months ago

First time?

Am4TIfIsER0ppos• 8 months ago

Gotta find those with illegal opinions somehow.

rambojohnson4• 8 months ago

it escapes you because all these treaty clauses read like safeguards, but in practice they’re just friction. Once a government decides it needs mass surveillance for ‘security,’ the law bends. The real question isn’t what the ECHR allows... it’s why people still think legal frameworks can meaningfully restrain a state that has already decided not to be restrained.

it escapes me hwo so many can be so naive.

disgruntledphd24• 8 months ago

it’s why people still think legal frameworks can meaningfully restrain a state that has already decided not to be restrained.

The EU isn't really a state, though. The members are states, but not the EU.

WhyNotHugo• 8 months ago

It escapes me how politicians can repeatedly attempt to violate this.

There is no penalty for doing so.

If something is outlawed but there is no negative consequence for doing it, then it’s not really outlawed in practical terms.

aleph_minus_one• 8 months ago

It escapes me how politicians can repeatedly attempt to violate this.

You make use of the silent assumption that politicians are not criminals. :-(

MarsIronPI• 8 months ago

And it's not just EU politicians who ignore their constitution. US politicians have been ignoring the US Constitution for oh (checks history books) at least 85 years.

piekvorst• 8 months ago

You can’t defend any rights by reference to legal authority. As long as it’s a legal domain, any exceptions are permitted, even on the “human” rights level. Rights can only be defended on moral grounds, like rights to freedom or self-defense.

psychoslave6• 8 months ago

Because they don't get banned from being able to either take a sit in a political position for life after they went to jail for a few years for high treason agaisnt the people.

constantcrying• 8 months ago

The idea of constitutional guarantees, which should be defended absolutely and in their strongest sense only exists inside the US.

Especially the EU, with limited democratic oversight, does not have to be too concerned about things like this.

some_random• 8 months ago

You have no right to privacy from authorities. In fact, you'll find that Europeans have very few actual rights.

layer83• 8 months ago

Article on Breyer’s own site: https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/chat-control-2-0-through-th...

dang• 8 months ago

Thanks, we'll put that in the toptext as well.

stackedinserter3• 8 months ago

Society can't win this without fighting the personalities who drive it. In the end, there's a individual that pushes this, so this very person should be targeted personally.

Someone said it's an asymmetric conflict, so we need to pull it to our (human-size) level and fight on our chessboard.

mrtksn• 8 months ago

Denmark has a month and a half as EU presidency to go. I still don't get why they want this to be their legacy so badly.

throw-qqqqq5• 8 months ago

Denmark mostly has authoritative politicians in government. Pragmatic and without ideology. The misguided tools believe they are doing us all a big favor.

They handwavingly dismiss all privacy-related criticism with “well our experts say something else!” and insist there are no privacy issues - but at the same time require exemption for their own caste.

dmix• 8 months ago

The EU and European parliaments are very much on the technocracy side, where they defer to experts and studies for everything instead of focusing on the popular interests of the public

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocracy

Y-bar• 8 months ago

Denmark is a strange nation with regards to liberty and personal belongings:

https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/4963/Denmark:-Exemptin...

zelphirkalt4• 8 months ago

Presumably someone is paying really well to push this over and over again.

thewebguyd3• 8 months ago

There are monied interests and special interest groups behind it. No matter who is at the head, it will continue to be pushed by these interests.

Europol, Julie Cordua (CEO of Thorn), Cathal Delaney, former Europol who now is on Thorn's board, Alan Parker, billionaire and founder of the Oak Foundation that's been bankrolling the fake charities lobbying for chat control, Chris Cohn, another billionaire and hedge fund manager who has been funding anti-encryption lobbying in both the US and the EU, Sarah Gardner, former Thorn employee and part of the network of fake charities lobbying to ban encryption. SHe also focuses on lobbying in the US as well, and Maciej Szpunnar, Polish Advocate General and the European court of justice, wants to use chat control for prosecuting copyright infringement.

And don't forget Peter Hummelgaard: "We must break with the totally erroneous perception that it is everyone's civil liberty to communite on encrypted messaging services."

So you have a few billionaires running lobbying organizations disguised as fake "for the children" charities that operate in both the EU and the US, Europol, and a group of powerful people that are fundamentally opposed to privacy.

phba• 8 months ago

Adding to that from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorn_(organization):

Thorn works with a group of technology partners who serve the organization as members of the Technology Task Force. The goal of the program includes developing technological barriers and initiatives to ensure the safety of children online and deter sexual predators on the Internet.
Various corporate members of the task force include Facebook, Google, Irdeto, Microsoft, Mozilla, Palantir, Salesforce Foundation, Symantec, and Twitter.

Apparently Thorn scratched that list from their current website, but the Wiki page has an archive link.

WinstonSmith84• 8 months ago

Genuine question: is that Denmark reintroducing this proposal? It's not clear when it's mentioned "the EU commission's revised proposal..." - and second question, if it's "Denmark", who from Denmark has the authority to do so? Any elected Danish member from the EU council?

Muromec10• 8 months ago

EU council works like US senate worked before senators were elected. So the right answer for who is Danish PM.

Not to be confused with EU parliament which is elected by popular vote and EU comission, which is the executive branch of EU and us voted in by Parliament

throw-qqqqq5• 8 months ago

Denmark holds the EU Presidency. That means they chair the Council of the EU, set the agenda, organize meetings, and drive forward legislative work in that period.

shevy-java• 8 months ago

I remember that back a few weeks ago on reddit, before I left it, I warned people about this.

Well - colour me not so surprised. The lobbyists are back at it.

I think we need to permanently crush them now. They attack us here. This is a war.

okokwhatever2• 8 months ago

My Europe doing european stuff...

xyzal• 8 months ago

The GDPR, DMA, DSA are good.

varispeed2• 8 months ago

This is an ongoing terrorist attack and authorities fail to stop it. Please report these people to the police as attempted terrorist attack. People behind Chat Control should be arrested.

A snippet I posted before:

If terrorism is defined as using violence or threats to intimidate a population for political or ideological ends, then “Chat Control” qualifies in substance. Violence doesn’t have to leave blood. Psychological and coercive violence is recognised in domestic law (see coercive control offences) and by the WHO. It causes measurable harm to bodies and minds.

The aim is intimidation. The whole purpose is to make people too scared to speak freely. That is intimidation of a population, by design.

It is ideological. The ideology is mass control - keeping people compliant by stripping them of private spaces to think, talk, and dissent.

The only reason it’s not “terrorism” on paper is because states write definitions that exempt themselves. But in plain terms, the act is indistinguishable in effect from terrorism: deliberate fear, coercion, and the destruction of free will.

probably_wrong• 8 months ago

While I agree with the sentiment, I don't think hyperbole is the solution.

This legislation, while reprehensible, is not terrorism. Defining terrorism is particularly difficult (the UN has been trying since the 60s and is trying again this year), but if all intimidation for political gains is terrorism then so is every other political ad from the last 30 years. Banksy would probably argue that regular advertising also qualifies - after all, that's what the "F" in "FOMO" stands for and beauty products are definitely pushing an ideology.

You don't have to like the official definition of terrorism, but that doesn't mean that you alone get to decide what it should be.

varispeed2• 8 months ago

The irony is that we only get stuck in semantic arguments because the authorities refuse to treat this as the kind of act it actually is. If prosecutors applied their own standards consistently, we wouldn’t be debating vocabulary on a message board.

Germany’s criminal code already recognises coercion of a population for political ends as a serious offence. If a private organisation tried to impose a system that eliminated private communication, criminalised encryption defaults, and created a permanent climate of fear around ordinary speech, they wouldn’t get a policy debate. They’d get an arrest warrant.

The only thing making this “controversial” is institutional hesitation. Everyone knows issuing warrants against EU-level actors would cause political embarrassment, so we pretend the behaviour is something milder, something safer to acknowledge. That gap between what the law says and what the state is willing to enforce is exactly where tragedies start.

This isn’t about inflating the meaning of terrorism. It’s about refusing to downgrade coercion just because it comes from people in respectable offices. Words shouldn’t shrink to protect those in power. They should describe what is happening.

edit: and whilst we are at the semantics - the word “terrorism” comes from the French Reign of Terror, where the state used fear as an instrument of governance. The original meaning was quite literally state-driven intimidation of an entire population to enforce ideological conformity.

maybelsyrup• 8 months ago

If I'm an EU citizen, who do I call and email to yell at about this? I assume my relevant MEP, but anyone else?

butz• 8 months ago

https://fightchatcontrol.eu/#contact-tool

klabb3• 8 months ago

This can backfire bigly for the EU. The whole union is sustained on shared values and interests. Sneaking in surveillance is extremely offputting for the sentiment towards EU in many circles. Every member state has plenty of skeptics who want to brexit and this is gasoline for them. And rightly so. This isn’t a fluke from some misinformed non-technical stray politician who ”wants to save the children” (yes, they exist too), but rather a deliberate anti-democratic sabotage of core human rights.

In a nation state, it’s easier to pull off authoritarian shifts, because citizens will not usually revolt over such things alone. But the EU relies on sustained support and a positive image. There are already at the very least 10s of thousands EU skeptics created from the last wave alone, and probably much much more to come.

Zooming out, I think this is the time when the EU is needed the most, given the geopolitical developments. Both Russia and China are drooling about a scattered Europe consisting of isolated small states. That makes it more infuriating. Someone, ideally the press, needs to dig into the people behind this and expose them.

ntoskrnl_exe2• 8 months ago

This legislation has a potential to "radicalize" a lot of people. I don't agree with many of the decisions by the EU, but at the end of the day the pros do outweigh the cons and in a hypothetical Brexit-like referendum I wouldn't consider agreeing with leaving.

If this passes, however, the pencil in my hand would definitely hover above the YES checkbox for a while and, actually, maybe even tick it. This alone would be enough of a straw to break the camel's back.

0dayz2• 8 months ago

Unfortunately I don't think so, it'll be more the writing on the wall or the canary ik the coal line but it wont radicalize a lot of people I think because this legislation won't rock the boat enough unless they fuck it up a la UK age verification law.

andix7• 8 months ago

If they really ban everyone under 16 from texting, this would also become kind of a time bomb. A lot of those affected teens will be allowed to vote very soon. And they might have a very different mental image of the EU than the generations before. The EU used to be a gate to all of Europe, free traveling, no cell roaming fees, Erasmus student exchange. The next generation of voters might perceive the EU as some dystopian institution that takes away fun and freedom.

pcrh9• 8 months ago

Agreed.

The strength of the EU is based on the EU institutions not having too much power. It's why the EU does not attempt to expel, hopefully temporarily, reprobate nations such as Hungary.

ThrowawayTestr3• 8 months ago

After Brexit no one's ever leaving the EU

nmeofthestate• 8 months ago

I guessed the term Chat Control had to be made up by opponents of the legislation, so searched for the real name. The official name of the legislation is: “Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council laying down rules to prevent and combat child sexual abuse” (COM/2022/209 FINAL). It is often referenced more simply as the “Child Sexual Abuse Regulation” (CSA Regulation).

cheschire• 8 months ago

Oof good luck trying to convince a popular vote against that.

MrNeon• 8 months ago

How Could You Possibly Be Against This?!?!? Regulation

psychoslave6• 8 months ago

Good, where do we start our "Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council laying down rules to prevent and combat mass surveillance and protect children from authoritative abuses through legislative threats on their fundamental right to grow in democracy"?

baal80spam• 8 months ago

It will eventually pass, it's EU after all.

christkv• 8 months ago

I guess pretty much all of us will become criminals if this passes. Have a phone that is running GrapheneOS you are a potential criminal. Running linux probably also a potential criminal.

esbranson• 8 months ago

The "risk-mitigation" loophole in EU Chat Control uses the same vague, discretionary language in the Digital Services Act that Elon Musk and others warned lets regulators coerce platforms into censorship and surveillance.

I think "oops" or "d'oh" are the phrases we're looking for here.

mk892• 8 months ago

Elon Musk said just the truth about EU until now. Why did he do that, I don't care, but that's a fact.

Plus, when you see politicians react the way they did, it's like a code smell.

oever• 8 months ago

The original article says: "The legislative package could be greenlit tomorrow in a closed-door EU working group session." That was November 12th.

On the 13th, Breyer wrote:

Yesterday, EU gov'ts rejected changes to mandatory backdoor #ChatControl & anonymity-destroying age checks.

https://digitalcourage.social/@echo_pbreyer/1155418089245415...

isodev• 8 months ago

Nothing greenlit in a “closed-door EU working group session” can become law. These things need to go through all phases of legislation including the approval of parliament.

So yes, if you don’t like chat control, talk to your MEPs and stop voting in populist ministers and council members/presidents.

mk892• 8 months ago

It seems it was a matter of time.

Germany first voted against chat control 2.0, then they clarified why they were against it, became "undecided". And now "Denmark" came out with a (lighter) version "some others" are more willing to vote for. [0]

What a joke. In front of our eyes.

Then they wonder why people hate their guts and are becoming increasingly violent, euro-skeptical, etc.

[0] https://euperspectives.eu/2025/09/germany-backtracks-chat/

hollowturtle• 8 months ago

to scan every private message, including those protected by end-to-end encryption.

Then it's no end to end, or at least end to end while traveling but easily collectible at rest, I mean it already is, who would stop meta from collecting messages in clear on the whatsapp ui? We should opt for a peer to peer solution or implement one

Cupprum2• 8 months ago

I sort of hope someone will leak all private information about Peter Hummelgaard. He is one of the people behind this proposal, just so he would get a taste of his own medicine.

wmf2• 8 months ago

That would only "prove" that government officials should be exempt from government surveillance.

mszcz• 8 months ago

Isn’t it (ChatControl) also „marketed” as „safe and secure”? If they (politicians) don’t have their comms backdoored and still get their data stolen, then why would I trust them to secure (read „safely snoop on”) mine or even know what they’re talking about?

Cupprum2• 8 months ago

God, thats a hard fight in that case :(

trallnag• 8 months ago

This shady approach of trying it again and again is so disgusting to me. Just be upfront about. If you will do it anyway at some point, just fucking do it. It's not like other countries like China that are much further than we are in this regard are in constant turmoil over it. I guess we won't be either.

Instead we take a moral high ground over Russia banning and blocking what are basically non-compliant messaging platforms and pushing Russian citizens to Max, which is controlled by the government. All the while these legislations in Europe will lead to the same end result.

How am I supposed to to argue against chat control in Russia when we are doing it too, just with a different twist.

bergfest3• 8 months ago

I second this. And it would only be half as bad, if there was a chance to democratically undo this, when people realize the consequences. But no, this will stay forever and only become worse.

amarant• 8 months ago

Again? Seriously? We shut them down, what, last week? They really are going for the activism fatigue approach aren't they?

I wonder if one could train an LLM to automatically protest all the new chat-control? This is getting ridiculous.

tomsmeding• 8 months ago

According to Breyer, the existing voluntary system has already proven flawed, with German police reporting that roughly half of all flagged cases turn out to be irrelevant.

A failure rate of only 50% is absurdly good for a system like this. If we have to:

Imagine your phone scanning every conversation with your partner, your daughter, your therapist, and leaking it just because the word ‘love’ or ‘meet’ appears somewhere.

then apparently either there are so many perpetrators that regular conversations with partners etc. are about as common as crime, or such regular conversations don't have such a high risk of being reported after all.

I don't think chat surveillance is a good idea. But please use transparent and open communication. Don't manipulate us just like the enemy does.

Humorist22902• 8 months ago

It is probably a reference to the report mentioned in this article from September https://reclaimthenet.org/germany-chat-control-false-reports...

  According to the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), 99,375 of the 205,728 reports forwarded by the US-based National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) were not criminally relevant, an error rate of 48.3%. This is a rise from 2023, when the number of false positives already stood at 90,950.

Indeed 50% false positive rate sounds surprisingly good, but this is under the "voluntary scheme" where Meta/Google/MS etc are not obligated to report. Notably missing from the article is the total number of scanned messages to get down to 200k reports. To my knowledge, since it's voluntary, they can also report only the very highest confidence detections. If the Danish regime were to impose reporting quotas the total number of reports would rise. And of course -- these are reports, not actually convictions.

Presumably the actual number of criminals caught by this would remain constant, so the FP rate would increase. Unless of course, the definition of criminal expands to keep the FP rate low...

b112• 8 months ago

I feel this is a good place to add something...

I recall a half decade back, there was discussion of the quit rate of employees, maybe Facebook?, due to literal mental trauma from having to look at and validate pedophile flagged images.

Understand there is pedophilia, then there's horribly violent, next level abusive pedophilia.

I used to work in a department where, adjacently, the RCMP were doing the same. They couldn't handle it, and were constantly resigning. The violence associated with some of the videos and images is what really got them.

The worst part is, the more empathetic you are, the more it hurts to work in this area.

It seems to me that without this sad and damaging problem fixed, monitoring chats won't help much.

How many good people, will we laden with trama, literally waking up screaming at night? It's why the RCMP officers were resigning.

I can't imagine being a jury member at such a case.

gus_massa• 8 months ago

OK, 50% "not criminally relevant".

How many of the other 50% were guilty and how many innocent after an investigation?

beefnugs• 8 months ago

Absurdly good? What are you talking about, it means entire company processes of trying to identify this has cost so much time and effort and tracking and lost trust from the public and finally reporting... and then they still screw it up half the time

periodjet• 8 months ago

But I was told that the EU was the good guys…

srcreigh• 8 months ago

Isn’t there precedent for many other governments secretly or openly doing exactly this? Snowden etc?

There’s an arms race element to this that I don’t see people discussing.

Do EU citizens have any privacy from US tech? Is there anything to protect?

Do we want the USA to have exclusive right to spy on the world?

Is it better to have 1 Big Brother or 10?

psychoslave6• 8 months ago

It's better to have zero big bully. It's actually the sole sane desirable state of affairs.

rambojohnson4• 8 months ago

the comment thread here is obnoxiously naive, and speaks to the privilege some people having been raised under the calm of supposedly democratic societies.

you're all arguing about the syntax of rights while governments rewrite the grammar. once a state decides ubiquitous surveillance is necessary, it’ll find or fabricate a justification. the "law" doesn’t restrain power, power instructs law where to kneel.

stop treating the ECHR like some talisman that keeps the wolves at bay, as if authoritarian drift politely obeys paperwork. stop playing with this whole “actually, the loophole is X,” “no, the loophole is Y,” like you're debugging a bad API instead of staring at the obvious: when a state wants to expand surveillance, it does, and the justifications are retrofitted later, be it "public safety", or "keeping your children safe."

JumpCrisscross4• 8 months ago

once a state decides ubiquitous surveillance is necessary, it’ll find or fabricate a justification

This is defeatist, fatalist nonsense.

squigz5• 8 months ago

How?

demarq2• 8 months ago

You do realize the headline matches what you just quoted?

pksebben3• 8 months ago

Alternative take: OP meant that we ought not to trust any justification for the expansion of surveillance like posted.

thrance• 8 months ago

Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.

No, this is just being pragmatic and realizing that against a sufficiently powerful authoritarian push, legal arguments fall short. Until you address the root causes of something like Chat Control being tried again and again until it passes, any victory is just a brief respite.

You need political will to ensure freedom is respected and wanted by all. After decades of media and reactionary propaganda about crime scaremongering, it's hardly surprising that politicians are able to draft such laws with a straight face.

Centigonal2• 8 months ago

Let's be pragmatic about this. Chat Control and this new thing are not post-hoc rationalizations, they are attempts to justify a proposed change.

If this posited wannabe-surveillance state wanted to institute ubiquitous surveillance, it would just unilaterally do so a la PRISM. To our knowledge, they have not done this and are instead trying to rationalize the creep of surveillance somehow, which indicates that public opinion around these initiatives still matters. Public opinion is something we can all influence. Maybe discussing the legalese is a waste of time, but discussing the rhetoric and how to combat it definitely isn't

pksebben3• 8 months ago

I don't think it's about public opinion so much as pushing the goalposts. The whole erosion of privacy since the 60s (maybe further but at least since then) has been a 'boiled frogs' situation.

What I think the endgame is here is to be able to do surveillance out in the open, so you can have more human resources doing it, and so you can use that surveillance legally more often. If you have a clandestine surveillance operation, you can only employ people you trust not to squeal and you have to engage in parallel construction (or resort to extralegal execution of force).

A lot easier if you can just point to a piece of paper and say "but you said we could"

rambojohnson4• 8 months ago

across "democratic societies" around the world, they're pushing the goalposts while the elected officials are arguing for pragmatism, which inspires that servile middle of the road idealism in the voting bloc, while everybody knows that in times like these pragmatism is another form of cowardice.

psychoslave6• 8 months ago

States are not all mighty entities acting without any restriction. Wannabe rulers have to go through that kind of abstract notions to manipulate people at scale, but they have limited skills and abilities to use these tools that people about m accept only under certain conditions.

ECHR is on same ontological level as the notion of state. If no one concrete is willing to enforce it, it has zero agency.

Politicians can ignore constitutions like citizen can ignore laws. Politicians can send military forces on manifesters, and people can make politicians meet the guillotine.

andix7• 8 months ago

I just don't believe they would be able to roll it out. A lot of messaging services won't implement chat control. If half of the messaging apps are getting blocked, people will get angry.

There will be massive backlash towards EU. Texting is just so embedded to the daily life, if the EU causes inconveniences or trouble with texting, this might create massive anger. It could start off Brexit-like campaigns in some countries.

I'm not saying that it is impossible this is going to be implemented. But I think it's just some bureaucrats dreaming.

ThrowawayTestr3• 8 months ago

A lot of messaging services won't implement chat control.

Why not?

andix7• 8 months ago

Signal already announced they won't add back doors, even if it means they are going to be blocked.

Which is really funny, because the EU commission recommends to their employees to use Signal for texting.

andix7• 8 months ago

Will it possible to "DDoS" those systems?

It can't be illegal to role-play a grooming situation between consenting adults in a private conversation. If millions of people do that, they must be buried in reports.

squigz5• 8 months ago

If you can coordinate millions of people to do... that, couldn't you coordinate them to do something arguably more productive, like voting against politicians/parties that try to enact this stuff?

andix7• 8 months ago

There are millions of people voting against that stuff. But it would require hundreds of millions to stop it.

txrx00003• 8 months ago

A device-side IP filter locked behind a password that parents can configure in the device's settings would be much more effective and easier to implement than censoring the Internet. This should be the default solution, yet it's not proposed by governments. These online content censorship laws for kids are wrong in principle because parents are supposed to be in control of how they raise each of their own kids, not the government or other people.

The other excuse being used to push these laws is CSAM scanning. But CSAM scanning ignores the actual problem, which is the trafficking of children in physical space, not the tools used to transmit and store child porn, which are general purpose tools used to transmit and store anything. A society's efforts and resources, as a matter of priority, should be spent on preventing children from being trafficked in the first place.

These attempts for more surveillance and control are being pushed under the guise of these very bad excuses, and we need to call them out in every conversation to reduce the number of gullible dorks that might vote for it.

People need to actually understand that governments are very close to having the tools needed for authoritarian governance all around the world. It might not happen immediately, but once the tools are built, that future becomes almost inevitable.

We can't just hope to rely on technological measures because we can't out-tech the law at scale all of the time. But we can and should fight back on both fronts. On the technological front, the first step is securing VPN access to ensure anonymity on the Internet. The best effort at the moment IMO is SoftEther, which is VPN over Ethernet wrapped in HTTPS.[0] It's open-source. It has a server discovery site called VPNGate.[1] You can host a server to let somebody else use, then use a server someone else is hosting.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoftEther_VPN

[1] https://www.vpngate.net/en/

We're really only missing a few things before there's decentralized VPN over HTTPS that anyone in the world can host and use, and it would be resistant to all DPI firewalls. First, a user-friendly mobile client. Second, a way to broadcast and discover server lists in a sparse and decentralized manner, similar to BitTorrent (or we may be able to make use of the BT protocol as is), and we'd have to build such auto-discovery and broadcasting into the client itself. Third, make each client automatically host a temporary server and broadcast its existence for other clients to discover.

If we can make and keep the Internet a free place, these discussions can keep happening without fear of censorship and prosecution, and people can coordinate to fight authoritarianism and create better technologies to guard against it in the future. This is very much doable if we tried. So let's ensure the free flow of information is not a temporary blip in the long arc of humanity's history.

NumberCruncher• 8 months ago

I wish I would not have a standard post for topics like this:

Every time a surveillance system and violation of privacy rights is advertised in the EU as a solution against child abuse and trafficking I ask myself how such a system could have changed the outcome of a case like Dutroux. Would have been the dozens of witnesses and police officers involved in the investigation suicided a way sooner, later, more silently, or at all? We will never know...

themafia• 8 months ago

Surveillance, as typically deployed, cannot _stop_ the acts of abuse. It may be helpful in locating evidence that they occurred, but by that point, you've already allowed nearly irreparable harm to a child.

Even if it did work it would be completely ineffective at reducing the number of victims. Even if it somehow did by proxy then criminals would simply get smarter and find new ways to completely evade this system.

I have a large amount of disrespect for people who should know all this yet push these types of solutions anyways.

mvdwoord• 8 months ago

Sad but true. Many such cases as well not only limited to this field. There is a huge scandal in the Netherlands where it has been shown that Tax officials have repeatedly, and knowingly, did unlawful things which literally drove some people to suicide, and did irreparable damage to lots of people / families. They also repeatedly lied to parliament about this.

We have the proof. We do fuck all about it. And yeah, the Dutroux case (as well as e.g. Rotherham c.s.) hit hard. Too hard for most regular people to even properly come to terms with it.

Vera_Wilde• 8 months ago

Grateful for Breyer's consistent excellent work tracking and opposing these proposals.

The Zombie proposal just keeps rising from the dead. The technical/mathematical objections don’t change.

I still haven’t seen a counter-argument stating why a mass-scanning architecture should be expected to work, given the base rates and error rates involved.

zkmon• 8 months ago

So, you want to negotiate on how much privacy you are willing to give up in order to have a strong state-level control. But what do you have at your disposal, to influence that negotiation? Vote? Technology? Tariffs?

martin82• 8 months ago

At this point I 100% see the EU as a failed experiment and I would love to witness a mass exodus of the slavic countries, and then Germany and France. Burn this thing to the ground. Nothing good came out of it.

bradley13• 8 months ago

They just try and try again. They only have to succeed. Once. The people who care about privacy have to succeed every time.

The only real solution is to counterattack. Get legislation through the EU parliament that guarantees a right to privacy and anonymity.

Dunno if there's any chance of that happening.

xcf_seetan• 8 months ago

How about applying this kind of surveillance to the government? After all we are paying for them to rules us, so why not publish all government, politicians, law enforcement, military messages for everyone to read? Why everybody must be treated as a criminal, because they cant do their job of keeping us safe?

Snild• 8 months ago

We have that in Sweden and Finland: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_public_access_to_...

The principle says that information is non-confidential by default, rather than the other way around.

We can request almost any information held by government agencies, including copies of communication like email and documents.

One thing that has surprised European acquaintances is the fact that this includes government-held info about individuals, e.g. address and tax returns.

Gud• 8 months ago

Although this has been eroded, at least in Sweden.

https://www.publikt.se/debatt/insynen-maste-varnas-26420

CrazyStat• 8 months ago

When I was in Sweden many years ago I was very surprised that you could just call a phone number and they would tell you the name and address of the person or company a vehicle license plate was registered to.

nicce• 8 months ago

Current Finnish governent is trying hard to hide what they can, unfortunately.

xaxaxa123• 8 months ago

Is the EU still democratic? serious question...the public is obviously against it, but they want this authoritarian law, no matter what.

The disguised return of EU Chat Control

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