European Commission's Metsola Overrides MEPs to Force Through Chat Control

https://www.politico.eu/article/president-vs-parliament-roberta-metsola-overrides-meps-bid-force-child-abuse-law/

by miohtama • 29 days ago

86 47 29 days ago

politico.eu

antiloper• 29 days ago

With democracies like this, who needs dictators?

baal80spam• 29 days ago

I am shocked, I tell you, SHOCKED!

vovavili• 29 days ago

Slipping in censorship under the "think of the children" pretext is so cliché, I am not sure how EU thought this is going to convince anyone.

logicchains• 29 days ago

The EU is destroying the decentralization that once made Europe the global apex of freedom, equality and prosperity, and turning Europe into a bloated, schlerotic and authoritarian bureaucracy like the Chinese and Ottoman empires that it once defeated.

IsTom• 29 days ago

So if I get this right all she can force is conciliation, which needs the parliament to agree on it in third reading anyway?

miohtama2• 29 days ago

Guess who is funding and lobbying this?

Robert Metsola met Ashton Kutcher (co-founder of Thorn, which develops message scanning tech) in March 2023 and posted a photo on Instagram. Kutcher lobbied MEPs hard in favour of strong detection measures.

Schlagbohrer• 29 days ago

I never imagined Ashton Kutcher's pivot to evil tech titan back when he was being goofy on That 70s Show or Dude Where's My Car?.

miohtama2• 29 days ago

Well it gets worse: Ashton Kutcher’s primary connection to Palantir Technologies is through Thorn, which uses Palantir’s AI and data-processing software to scan messages.

deltoidmaximus2• 28 days ago

Ashton Kutcher wrote a letter of support for Danny Masterson and his character when Masterson was convicted of multiple counts of rape. When this showed up in the media his defense was he thought this letter would be private even though it was sent to the judge in a criminal trial. Apparently, he and his friends should be able to use their fame/connections to quietly help their rapist friends get reduced sentences but everyone else should have their private communications scanned.

schmorptron• 29 days ago

We're moving towards total surveillance slowly but surely. Age verification. Chat control. To an extent also the digital euro. It all seems hopeless, they're pushing this through despite what semblance of a democratic process we have clearly being against it. [that is not to speak of how undemocratic the european system is and how badly it needs reform. Von der leyen should never have been able to get the role she holds]

iLoveOncall• 29 days ago

We're moving towards total surveillance slowly but surely

We're actually speedrunning towards total surveillance.

I don't believe in democracy at all anymore.

microtonal2• 29 days ago

Non-democracies speedrun towards surveillance even faster. Democracy is the best we have and this action is anti-democratic.

The other part of the story is that as long as Europe continues to vote radical rights + conservatives, we are going to get more and more of this. Most greens and progressives fight this tooth and nail.

mghackerlady• 28 days ago

Once again, democratic centralism proves superior

delegate• 29 days ago

This is and has always been inevitable with tech. Politics can only postpone people's inherent desire to control and dominate and powerful tech makes this easier and cheaper.

We (the tech people) have built the perfect tools to centralize and automate control and we're still doing it, mostly for free.

The way things are going, our imagination is probably too poor to visualize the kind of dystopia this can/will eventually grow into.

It's highly unlikely that the general population will revolt against this - fear makes most people docile and compliant, self censoring and obedient. There are many examples of this in the world right now and it's only going to get worse.

We can only push back to postpone this, but the tide is against us and too few really care about these things.

RetroTechie• 29 days ago

This is and has always been inevitable with tech.

Keyword here is "centralized". Financial interests have pushed gatekeeper-style setups into a crapshoot.

Therefore (part of) the solution is decentralization. P2P everything, web of trust, etc. 'Benevolent' dictators don't cut it anymore.

agarsev• 29 days ago

Original title: President vs Parliament: Metsola overrides MEPs in bid to force through child abuse law

Content from TFA:

Ambassadors on Friday will consider an “invitation of the President of the European Parliament [to] proceed with the Council’s first reading position” on the proposal to allow tech companies to choose to scan for CSAM
The European Commission proposed the temporary CSAM bill as a stopgap measure to allow companies to scan while legislators agreed on a more permanent solution.
Tech firms continued to scan, despite the legal limbo.
If capitals choose to adopt their position, the law does not automatically pass: The Parliament would need to either accept it or re-enter negotiations. “There is no certainty that [the Parliament] would adopt the legislative act in second reading in line with the Council’s first reading position,” Cyprus wrote in the note.
Gregorová rejected the suggestion that lawmakers would budge. “The Parliament mandate is clear: A majority voted it down, meaning that we reject the extension.”

ReptileMan• 29 days ago

Her, Kaja Kallas and Ursula Von Der Leyen ... who is the fourth horsewoman of the stupidocalypse?

nonamesleft• 28 days ago

Henna Virkkunen

khurs2• 29 days ago

This is one of the main reasons UK left EU.

National politicians use the EU to bypass national democracy and then blame the EU publicly to deflect of their true involvement.

Uk was a leading EU country via being one of the largest financial contributors, and UK was behind many of the decisions they later blamed on 'EU Bureaucrats'.

ggm2• 29 days ago

No, it wasn't. It was fundamentally about freedom of movement and little Englander racism, and lies about farming, the nhs and fishing.

Very few people voted on ID issues or chat control.

khurs2• 29 days ago

I said 'one of the' not the leading one.

"unaccountable EU' and 'taking back control' were key slogans.

And UK were behind the freedom of movement in question, namely the widening to eastern European countries.

danaris• 29 days ago

It would've been a good reason to leave the EU, but a) Chat Control was barely a concern in 2016, and b) no the fuck it wasn't, the main reasons the UK left the EU are racism and being lied to about being able to get sweetheart deals.

account422• 28 days ago

Completely right, the UK left the EU because the EU wasn't moving fast enough to their desired dystopia. They have now managed to sprint quite a bit ahead on their own.

Ekaros• 28 days ago

Main reason for UK to leave was to give middle finger to those in power. Burn it all down approach.

ChaosOp• 29 days ago

To clarify for fellow readers, since this is a messy situation:

This is about a new temporary measure to legally allow instant-messaging providers to scan their users' messages. Providers lost that legal right when the previous interim act (the Interim Derogation of the ePrivacy Directive, sometimes called "Chat Control 1.0") expired on 4 April 2026. Several large providers have said they'll keep scanning regardless.

This is only one piece of a bigger effort. For years the Commission has been trying to put a more permanent regime in place (the CSA Regulation, or "Chat Control 2.0") without success.

As both a lawyer and a software engineer, I don't understand why big tech and EC want to scan messages, if they actually want to combat online abuse. The research points the other way:

- Most messages on these services are end-to-end encrypted, so they can't be scanned at all (assuming the E2EE is implemented correctly). The Commission itself says 70% of messages on popular chat platforms are E2EE [1].

- Instant messaging isn't the main distribution channel for CSAM in the first place, per data from the US National Center for Missing and Exploited Children [2].

So the evidence points to low overall efficacy for message scanning against its stated goal of combating online child sexual abuse.

I don't think it'll pass this time. What worries me more is the spread of mandatory age-verification laws worldwide. That train is already going full steam ahead..

[1] https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/policies/internal-security...

[2] Page 18, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELE...

eska• 29 days ago

As both a lawyer and a software engineer, I don't understand why big tech and EC want to scan messages, if they actually want to combat online abuse.

They don’t want to combat child abuse, they want to improve their advertising fingerprints.

deltoidmaximus2• 29 days ago

I'd say this is more about being able to identify and crush any nascent political movements that threaten the status quo in their infancy, but no reason not to let the implementers wet their beak to get buy in.

surgical_fire2• 28 days ago

This is actually the correct answer.

I don't think the concern here is scanning messages for "incorrect political thought", when people willingly yell their shitty opinions through Twitter/Reddit for maximum exposure. It's not like people are discreet with this shit.

What huge tech companies and the comissioners they lobby with actually want is more avenues of data collection, particularly people that they can't reach as easily.

The ad money gotta flow.

spwa4• 29 days ago

You could additionally point out that most EU states are DEfunding helping actual victims of CSAM. Because they are. So is the UK, for what it's worth.

This supposed goal of the legislation never even gets mentioned in the discussions about these laws.

Which seems to go further into that direction you're pointing to as well: this is about scanning all instant messages across the entire EU, for reasons other than protecting children. They don't even discuss actually protecting children.

jeroenhd• 29 days ago

I don't understand why big tech and EC want to scan messages

I believe that's a form of corporate greenwashing. If you can prove your claims that you do everything in your power to prevent abusive materials, you're going to get less attention from annoying authorities next time a pedo network/terrorist cell hits the news.

Aside from that, there are a lot of well-meaning people who want to try every little thing to help stop horrific abuse. Police investigations are happening too slowly (if at all); if the police won't help solve the problem, going the civil route may help, even if just a little. I think it's an act of desperation rather than malice. Plus, just like there are plenty of people who say "they've got nothing to hide, I don't need encryption", there are plenty of people who feel like a tech panopticon is worth it if it catches some abuse cases. Besides, in cases like these, scientific evidence often doesn't matter as much as the emotion behind proposals, and most messaging providers couldn't appear more devoid of emotion if they tried.

I don't agree with the idea to scan every message for various reasons. If the police won't investigate criminals with the massive amount of power they already possess, overwhelming them with "abusive" material from an algorithm is only going to make it harder to filter out the real criminals. Plus, if a few large providers do it, that will put pressure on all the other providers that don't do it (see, for instance, that time they arrested the CEO of Telegram for not volunteering information without a warrant, like other messaging providers seem to do).

But, as much as I disagree, I do understand where those people are coming from. And then there are also the blatant comic-book villains that just want totalitarian government control over all information exchange, of course.

Saline9515• 28 days ago

Given the insistance to pass this and the will of EU enforcement agencies to be able to monitor all communications in a Stasi-like manner, there is a large chance that the EC is applying the "salami technique" here.

First, install a monitoring system "for the kids", then you can expand for surveillance, and repression of incorrect political thought. Just like what China and Russia are doing, which has started the same.

bestouff• 28 days ago

This is the correct answer.

goobatrooba• 28 days ago

The title is incorrect and editorialised, Metsola is the president of the parliament, not the commission.

A conservative from a highly Catholic country (Malta), pushing conservative/far right values. Not surprising but still disappointing, that's what happens when the populace thinks voting far right is a "protest vote" and the election hands them 1/3 of the assembly.

Joyniness• 28 days ago

It's just sad what happens in the world. It's awful. But most likely it's one of the "zombie" projects. That will never be removed until they are passed

onel• 28 days ago

This is a push by one individual, or maybe a small group. I don't think we should generalize this to the whole European commission, or the whole EU. Hopefully and most likely it will be shut down if put up for a vote.

vrighter• 27 days ago

As a Maltese person, I'm sorry. I feel embarrassed to be one right now

European Commission's Metsola Overrides MEPs to Force Through Chat Control

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