Chat Control passed first round in EU Parliament

https://www.heise.de/en/news/Showdown-in-Strasbourg-The-unexpected-return-of-Chat-Control-1-0-11356680.html

by miroljub • 15 days ago

637 201 15 days ago

iamnothere9• 15 days ago

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.

soco• 15 days ago

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.

iamnothere9• 15 days ago

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.

poly2it• 15 days ago

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-...

echelon• 15 days ago

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.

throwaway27448• 15 days ago

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.

arjie• 15 days ago

Well, you can imagine a bunch of scenarios that match the "try repeatedly until it succeeds".

One good case: The original rule was good but had specifics that made it unpopular. Retrying repeatedly is a pathway to refining it into the minimal valuable version that is acceptable to all.

One bad case: The original rule is terrible and progress was stopped only because of public outrage. The assumption of the public is that a groundswell of opposition will cause a fundamental rethinking. However, because such outrage cannot last, repeated attempts will cause fatigue in the public opinion and resignation to pass anything.

If the situation is closer to the front it's "democratic". If it's closer to the back it's "not democratic". One represents a refinement to match the will of the people; the other relies on our human inability to focus tremendous energies continuously on a broad front. Both match a representative democracy repeatedly tabling (haha) a bill.

boobsbr• 14 days ago

I didn't vote for the person that was elected. Where's my representation?

ryandrake• 15 days ago

They only have to win once. You have to win every time.

charcircuit• 15 days ago

To repeal it you only need to win once too.

dyauspitr3• 15 days ago

I want them to win. The internet is stupid right now. A culture eating its own tail.

p0w3n3d• 15 days ago

If someone's asking too many times it's abuse.

aeternum• 15 days ago

Just as there a counter-suits perhaps we need more counter-laws. When something like this is defeated, a law is instead introduced to make chat control explicitly illegal.

belowavgiq3• 15 days ago

"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.

raverbashing4• 15 days ago

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• 15 days ago

The voting dynamics changing beacause elected representatives can't plan their vacations like any regular work place is pretty silly

isodev2• 15 days ago

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.

CrisMystik3• 15 days ago

MEPs are directly elected by citizens, not governments. It's the Council instead where representatives (ministers) of all national governments sit

afh1• 15 days ago

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.

belowavgiq3• 15 days ago

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.

dgellow11• 15 days ago

The parliament rejected the proposal twice. Yes the governments support it, but not the people of European countries

Balinares• 15 days ago

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.

delusional2• 15 days ago

or maybe already has, I didn't keep track

Literally second paragraph.

to reinstate the transitional regulation for Chat Control, which expired in April

belowavgiq3• 15 days ago

Thanks for the correction! I guess I can live with that.

ur-whale• 15 days ago

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.

dgellow11• 15 days ago

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)

inigyou10• 15 days ago

What percentage of EU citizens support Chat Control and what percentage oppose it?

Frannky• 15 days ago

Why is this answer down voted? Isn't a reasonable question to ask? Are the lawmakers proposing laws the majority of the people want?

lxxxvi3• 15 days ago

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.

Yes, (un?)fortunately that's how democracy works. You keep trying until you get the required majority. No different than elections.

And now, instead of blaming "democracy" or the EU, how about we look at people we all elected to our national and EU institutions who are now making this happen.

And just preemptively, there's is not a single person in a decision-making position on this issue whose power wasn't gifted to them either directly or indirectly by the voters. So let's not blame the EU for people being dumb with their votes.

harrisoned3• 15 days ago

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• 15 days ago

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.)

earth-tattoo• 15 days ago

If I was signal CEO I would have self hosted years ago! There's many reasons for signal to be not on AWS.

harrisoned3• 15 days ago

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

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48801059

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48815196

miroljub4• 15 days ago

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.

einpoklum2• 15 days ago

Signal is quite likely to fail on account being a single organizational entity running the service and refusing to adapt their protocol for federation. In fact, it might already have happened (partially) and you wouldn't know, because they're US-based. The US has the National Security Letters mechanism:

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

the government can compel entities to let them access their systems and keep it a secret.

Also, if Signal runs on AWS, that is another potential vector of surveillance.

watwut• 15 days ago

This is existing regulation being extended. It allows sites to scan messages. Not mandates.

These kind of responses is why it is hard to trust privacy advocates on HN. They are high on rhetorics, but half the time dont know what they are talking about.

philjohn3• 15 days ago

Yes - this allowed companies like Google, Facebook, Snapchat etc to do what they already do (voluntarily) in the US and other territories - scan unencrypted user-uploaded or shared media for matches against NCMEC hashes, and image classifiers trained to find novel CSAM.

When you hear of "person arrested after NCMEC cyber tip" that's what this enables - people sharing or storing CSAM that was caught by this scanning, reported to NCMEC, and then sent to local authorities.

I have zero problems with Chat Control 1.0 as the existing derogation brought the EU into line with the rest of the world. Chat Control 2.0 is problematic however, but again, is not what's being voted on here.

harrisoned3• 15 days ago

I hope I'm being pessimistic about that. If I'm wrong, great.

I did saw it was an extension of the 1.0. To my understanding, "allows to scan" can also mean enabling a pipeline for accepting requests of scanning lawful content because, well, they can. In practice, it creates a mechanism to crawl people's information because when they feel like. While the law do make it explicit that this 'allowance' should not be used for anything else outside of the scope, i can't trust they won't. Once the mechanism is there, and that is valid for other countries, it might be used for stuff outside this scope since it's possible.

I work in the ISP field, and this happened in another context. First, a pipeline was built to block sites without a judge, because doing it only with court orders made it to difficult. After a few months of many ISPs complying the scope grew, now they can target piracy websites at will, and you must comply. Why stop there?

My fear is that this sets an example. I hope I'm wrong, but i don't trust them. There's a reason it was rejected before and it is being passed like that now.

nekusar• 15 days ago

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.

nullorempty• 15 days ago

That's an excellent take.

Unfortunately, verified devices will close that loophole.

osigurdson2• 15 days ago

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.

iamnothere9• 15 days ago

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.

mghackerlady• 15 days ago

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• 15 days ago

Epstein used Gmail

layer83• 15 days ago

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.

__MatrixMan__3• 15 days ago

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

Bender2• 15 days ago

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.

hlieberman• 15 days ago

Is this Chat Control 1.0 or Chat Control 2.0?

MaKey• 15 days ago

This is about Chat Control 1.0 (voluntary scanning).

storus• 15 days ago

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™.

iamsaitam• 15 days ago

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.

cynicalsecurity2• 15 days ago

Local governments are likely to block the initiative. We need a Polish based messenger that won't bend to chat control fascist initiatives.

DocTomoe2• 15 days ago

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.

cynicalsecurity2• 15 days ago

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.

aquir• 15 days ago

Hopefully this could be the first good thing about Brexit...this might not get implemented in the UK or there will be a delay!

graemep• 15 days ago

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?

MyMemoryfails• 15 days ago

UK already technically banned encryption, causing Apple to remove the encrypted cloud service for UK customers. Check UK's "Investigatory Powers Act (IPA)"

Havoc• 15 days ago

The way the uk is legislating online stuff lately I’m expecting UK version to be worse than EU

rollulus• 15 days ago

“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

raverbashing4• 15 days ago

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)

usrnm• 15 days ago

Most infrastructure in Europe predates the EU by quite a bit

big852• 15 days ago

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?

miroljub4• 15 days ago

Just assume the worst: all your private messages would be read and shared between all governments and corporations in the world.

big852• 15 days ago

No, I want to know specifically.

cucumber37328422• 15 days ago

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.

rsynnott• 15 days ago

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.

tadasZ2• 15 days ago

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.

miroljub4• 15 days ago

... 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.

tadasZ2• 15 days ago

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.

varispeed• 15 days ago

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.

musha68k2• 15 days ago

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:

https://youtu.be/cmYiWsFn3GM

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...

gmueckl4• 15 days ago

Huang style? What does this mean?

musha68k2• 15 days ago

Maybe a "lousy analogy" but here you go ;)

https://youtube.com/shorts/u3SY8nvjhQA

Don't give up on core tenets basically; the EU is a (comparatively) great place to live because it's a free place.

We can't have multitudes, be "antifragile" etc through centralization and surveillance.

Even if we were to believe this to be a winning move, it's not how this European project was envisioned and we won't ever be able to truly "compete" at that game.

In these times hence we IMO should be doubling down on the core tenets; freedom being chief amongst them.

Akin to how Huang in that interview alludes to globalization and how it made him / USA a winner.

zuzululu• 15 days ago

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

RamblingCTO• 14 days ago

you're right, the US is totally freedom and stuff. no problemo that you gotta show your social media accounts when entering, so you can get checked for alignment with the regime. no problem at all. both suck atm, that's the truth

asxndu• 15 days ago

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.

kingleopold• 15 days ago

average people never have skin in the game too. They barely understand a lot of the things that make things possible

dsign• 15 days ago

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..."

0dayz• 15 days ago

You have to dumb it down and make it more oriented around some kind of nefarious long game.

Krasnol• 15 days ago

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?

sunshine-o3• 15 days ago

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?

yreg2• 15 days ago

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.

mosselman2• 15 days ago

This is so cryptic that I wouldn't even know if for or against would mean for or against 'chat control'

SpicyLemonZest5• 15 days ago

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.

yreg2• 15 days ago

"For" means that the MEP voted for extension of Chat Control 1.0

"Against" means that the MEP voted against the extension of Chat Control 1.0

sfdlkj3jk342a• 15 days ago

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.

Cider99862• 15 days ago

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.

biglost• 15 days ago

I might be wrong, but i read it as the application reads the message before any encrytion actually happens

cherryteastain• 15 days ago

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.

gmueckl4• 15 days ago

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.

StrLght2• 15 days ago

This is a false dichotomy. There's way more options on this spectrum than 2 extremes.

jmward01• 15 days ago

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.

mosselman2• 15 days ago

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!

layer83• 15 days ago

The other downside is that even good laws would not pass, because it would mean for MEPs having to constantly identify themselves as such.

dgellow11• 15 days ago

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

sucrosesucrose• 15 days ago

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• 15 days ago

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.

iamnothere9• 15 days ago

If this is true, then the system will eventually collapse upon itself, as its governance feedback loops have been broken. No defeat is permanent.

brikym• 15 days ago

Exactly. And don't forget complaining on the internet. But algorithms will ensure few will see it.

Cider99862• 15 days ago

Is anyone working on a "No chat control at all, ever law"? If these can be defeated, presumably one of those could become law.

theragra• 15 days ago

This happened in Switzerland with cash.

layer83• 15 days ago

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• 15 days ago

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...

shevy-java• 15 days ago

Lobbyists running the show. It's kind of a copy/paste of the US system.

xyzsparetimexyz• 15 days ago

If we're gonna be undemocratic, can we at least also get have bullet trains and expanded social programs?

dgellow11• 15 days ago

I wish… instead in Germany we are getting Merz disdain and mandatory doctor approval for sick days…

himata41132• 15 days ago

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.

dgellow11• 15 days ago

Yeah. That’s really the dumbest part. Criminal will be using systems that don’t follow EU rules

himata41132• 15 days ago

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.

sensanaty• 15 days ago

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

Zufriedenheit• 15 days ago

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.

golem14• 15 days ago

Heinrich Heine, 1848 (Vormai) penned this:

"Memories from Krähwinkels days of terror" (my translation - the original is of course leages better)

   We, Burgomaster and Senate,
   Are hereby proclaiming this mandate,
   With great paternal care addressed
   To all classes, east and west.
 
   'Tis mostly nasty foreign folk,
   Who brashly dared to wildly stoke
   Rebellion. Such sinners, let us pray to God,
   Are seldom born upon our sod.
 
   There too are atheists, you will find;
   Those who leave their God behind,
   Who, in the end, will be as prone
   To defy our own earthly throne.

   Obeying authority is the key
   For Jew and Christian, bond and free.
   Let everyone close up their shop
   When twilight falls, head home chop chop.
 
   If three are gathered in the street,
   They must disperse with flying feet.
   And after dark, upon the lane,
   No lightless soul shall walk again.

   All weapons must promptly be surrendered
   To the Guildhall, to be tendered;
   And every sort of ammunition
   Is subject to the same condition.

   Who argues in the street shall face
   A firing squad in an open place;
   Arguing with gestures also must,
   Be punished harshly, as is just.
 
   Put your trust in the Magistrate,
   Who guards the pious, loving state
   Through gracious rule, most wise and kind;
   Your duty: simply to not mind.

It's sad to see we pretty much have forgotten the history leading to this poem and how we are reverting so much as a society.

einpoklum2• 15 days ago

Meta, Google or Microsoft ... to voluntarily search private chats, emails, and messenger services for material related to [excuse]

Look, there are no private chats on any platform or app provided by Meta, Google or Microsoft. They are known to send a copy of everything at least to the US government (the Snowden revelation). So, what's it to them to also do searches on behalf of European authorities? Plus, what do you mean, you don't want to? Are you for the pedophiles? Maybe you're a pedophile yourself! Search his chat logs, tout de suite!

We must really get the people around us to stop using WhatsApp, Teams, GMail, and all of that junk. There are excellent alternatives - we are only a laziness' reach away from actual half-decent privacy.

advisedwang3• 15 days ago

So many comments about the EU constantly re-trying the same law with minor tweaks, and about how legislatures do this in general. I wanted to provide an explanation for this behaviour.

The way legislation is expected to proceed in countries with parliamentary systems, especially with strong civil services, is that

1) a problem is identified. This can be the civil service detecting it on their own, petitioning from groups impacted by the problem (lobbying, the public etc).

2) The government prioritizes problems to solve according to political imperatives.

3) The civil service and/or parliamentary committees gather evidence on the problem and possible solutions.

4) the civil service and/or committee report on the issue. In practice this always finds the solution that the government wanted.

5) A bill is drafted based on the report.

6) The bill then proceeds through parliamentary committee, legislative votes, and whatever else is part of the lawmaking process.

When we see this issues fail, it's typically at step (6). But the problem still exists, and the issue is still on the agenda. It's still a priority to solve. So steps 4-6 are re-tried with different parameters that hopefully allow the bill to pass and the problem to be solved.

Just failing to pass parliament is not enough. You also need the political leadership to redirect their prioritization and implicit preferred solution.

I'm not saying this is good, just this is what happens.

gillesjacobs• 15 days ago

Except the only need Chat control is fulfilling is the governments and bureaucrats need to control and check all civilian communications.

mr_toad• 15 days ago

Step 6 is entirely missing in the EU. The parliament doesn’t form a committee to debate and perhaps refine the law, it just votes on what is put before it.

advisedwang3• 15 days ago

Which makes this effect even strong, because the civil service and it's internal priorities are long lasting and don't change with elections.

CrisMystik3• 14 days ago

The Parliament has many committees that do exactly what you're saying, while the Council meets in various configurations of national ministers depending on the law being voted on

StrLght2• 15 days ago

But the problem still exists, and the issue is still on the agenda. It's still a priority to solve.

People are pushing back on this every single time. Maybe it's time legislators read the room instead? Is there a step for this too?

advisedwang3• 14 days ago

Until legislators fear loosing their seats more than they desire a policy, they're not going listen to the people. That's why political manovering, lobbying, activism etc are part of the political process.

It's even worse for places like the EU that have a strong civil service or with a branch like the EC that isn't elected, because the processes above are very insulated from the general public

11mariom• 14 days ago

But for chat control the problem never existed in the first place.

moomoo11• 15 days ago

Life in EU seems like a mother-in-law simulator.

Like cool you get leftovers you can warm up (never something fresh, innovative), but then you also have to deal with the drama and cringe.

lenerdenator• 15 days ago

So, private companies can't track you, but the people with the state's monopoly on violence can?

This is how everything seems to go with the EU. Great idea followed by something objectionable.

coldtea• 15 days ago

Combine with https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48823557

Orwell

someguyornotidk• 15 days ago

"No means yes" in government form.

okokwhatever• 14 days ago

"perché uno uomo che voglia fare in tutte le parte professione di buono, conviene rovini infra tanti che non sono buoni."

Chat Control passed first round in EU Parliament

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