I am the creator of Fight Chat Control.<p>Thank you for sharing. It is unfortunately, once again, needed.<p>The recent events have been rather dumbfounding. On March 11, the Parliament surprisingly voted to replace blanket mass surveillance with targeted monitoring of suspects following judicial involvement [0]. As Council refused to compromise, the trilogue negotiations were set to fail, thus allowing the Commission's current indiscriminate "Chat Control 1.0" to lapse [1]. This would have been the ideal outcome.<p>In an unprecedented move, the EPP is attempting to force a repeat vote tomorrow, seeking to overturn the otherwise principled March 11 decision and instead favouring indiscriminate mass surveillance [1, 2]. In an attempt to avoid this, the Greens earlier today tried to remove the repeat vote from the agenda tomorrow, but this was voted down [3].<p>As such, tomorrow, the Parliament will once again vote on Chat Control. And unlike March 11, multiple groups are split on the vote, including S&D and Renew. The EPP remains unified in its support for Chat Control. If you are a European citizen, I urge you to contact your MEPs by e-mail and, if you have time, by calling. We really are in the final stretch here and every action counts. I have just updated the website to reflect the votes today, allowing a more targeted approach.<p>Happy to answer any questions.<p>[0] <a href="https://mepwatch.eu/10/vote.html?v=188578" rel="nofollow">https://mepwatch.eu/10/vote.html?v=188578</a><p>[1] <a href="https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/the-battle-over-chat-control-how-eu-governments-and-the-tech-lobby-are-trying-to-overturn-parliaments-vote-a-comprehensive-fact-check/" rel="nofollow">https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/the-battle-over-chat-contro...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/OJQ-10-2026-03-26_EN.html#V-29" rel="nofollow">https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/OJQ-10-2026-03...</a><p>[3] <a href="https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/PV-10-2026-03-25-RCV_EN.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/PV-10-2026-03-...</a>
You're doing God's work mate.<p>It's really surprising to me that this issue keeps coming up time and time again, until I realised that it's non-voted in parties actually trying to pass this stuff!<p>I didn't realise that the EU parliament simply says yes or no to bills and doesn't actually propose new laws, whilst the EU Commission are appointed and decide on what bills to push through.
The EP has the right to make amendments to proposed legislation, its not simply a yes no vote.<p>In fact what is described as "Parliament surprisingly voted to replace blanket mass surveillance with targeted monitoring of suspects following judicial involvement" is exactly the EP voting to amend the Commission proposal on an extension of existing itermim rules with text that explicitly limits the scope.
The Commission consists of the Member States. So obviously they are also voted-in parties since the government of the Member States is democratically elected
True but it's a step removed. The MEPs are directly voted in whilst the EC are not, they're "voted in" on account of "voted in" people assigning them to the EC.<p>I mean nobody argues that the FED governor is voted in, right? In reality a lot of people argue that they're unelected and yet making decisions that affect everyone.
The European Commission represents the interests of the member states, while the European Parliament represent the interests of the citizens. NO LAW CAN PASS without the consent of the citizens directly elected representatives. There is no "pushing through".<p>If you don't like how you are represented at the commission, then blame your government. It is THEIR representative - not yours.<p>Also, don't forget that the commission as a whole needs to be approved by a vote at European Parliament - i.e. by the directly elected representatives.
No, the European Council is suppose to represent the interest of the member states. The European Commission is suppose to be the executive of the European Union. Translating to the USA system, it would be like saying that the White House is suppose to represent the USA states. No, It's suppose to represent the interest of Europe as an entity.<p>Any introduction to democracy explains that the power is separated in the executive, the legislative and the judicial.<p>The European Parliament is suppose to be the legislative body but can't initiate legislation.<p>The Commission is suppose to be the executive, but, somehow can also initiate legislation and is not elected directly by the citizens. And the council that, I suppose would be the equivalent to a senate, is not directly elected by the citizens.<p>And we could talk about how all the important decisions are done in the dark, or how, like in this case, when something is not 'correctly' voted, they just keep bringing it back until it pass, or how they have started to 'sanction' people without judicial supervision.<p>It's time to open the eyes, because this is not going to improve. The EU 'democracy' is a joke.
No, this is a discussion about the "unelected" European Commission. I haven't mentioned the European Council because it is irrelevant.<p>The European Commission is formed of representatives of the individual states. They are NOT representatives of the citizens, other than by proxy.<p>YOUR government can request that THEIR representative raise or support legislation among the commission. If you have a problem with your countries representative at the commission then take that up with your government.<p>Proposals being "brought back" for discussion in some form is just a part of legislation. It happens EVERYWHERE - not just at the EU level.<p>Sanctions are proposed through the commission because it is a consensus of state government foreign policy.<p>How would YOU propose that the EU work to be "more democratic" - while also considering that your government needs to be involved and influential?<p>The whole idea with the current structure is that it "meets in the middle" between national sovereignty and citizen representation.<p>I agree it's not a perfect system, and there is certainly a lot of opportunity for positive change (I would like to have some process for parliament to request legislation from the council. I would like more transparency in what the commission does), but to dismiss it as "undemocratic" makes no sense and is just repeating an uniformed rhetoric.
An empty justification, since a state has no interest apart from its citizen's interests.<p>I hope you agree that elected representation isn't perfect - there is going to be disalignment, ways in which representatives resemble each other more than they resemble their voters.<p>This disalignment can only get amplified with every layer of indirect election. It <i>never</i> gets better.
A states interests are long term and strategic. These aren't the same as an aggregation of citizens relatively short term interests, but should absolutely be influenced by them.<p>I totally agree with what you say about elected representation - but I am also thankful that decisions aren't made through direct democracy given that so many people are often dangerously uninformed and easily manipulated.
This in standard in europe. Most places don't vote for their PM or President either, they're just the leader of the largest party in parliament and chosen by parliament
Wait but the commission is assembled by the PMs / presidents… so it’s elected by people who were elected by people who elect.
Generally a lot of people do vote for the PM i.e. chose the party to vote for based on it's leader(s)
Oh, if unelected officials is the standard, that's fine then. Move along.
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The one who uses foul language and personal attacks is the one who always loose. Even if they don't see it themselves, others do notice.
No, but I vote for the Prime Minister. I don't vote for the European Commissioner or the President of the Council.<p>What's idiotic is presenting these are the same.
As it should be.<p>It's good that both the US Fed Reserve Governor and EC appointees didn't have win popularity contests to get there.
Eh in a way, I can see both sides of the coin. On one hand if Fed governors didn't have independence, the inflation rate would make Venezuela look like a bastion of economic management. On the other hand, you end up with situations like this where the EC can just keep trying to force in poor policy.
You argue that people electing officials who make policies affecting those people is bad?
The commissioners are a few but the people who make the actual bills and policies are clerks and bureaucrats who were never elected neither directly nor indirectly. And while the commissioners do change, the EU bureaucrats never change.
They're just like the civil service in the UK, or any other country. They do the bidding of our nationally elected governments. Nearly all proposals coming from the commission originate from the national governments.<p>So a law:<p>Starts with member states directly elected ministers pushing and agenda or the council (again elected) agreeing to push an agenda
->
Commissioners take this agenda and work with it to propose law (using EU civil service like any other country does)
->
The law then gets voted on by the EU directly elected ministers, who are meant to (and do) represent the people of the states more directly.<p>Everything in that step is as democratic as any other nation (or nearly).<p>Most people really don't understand the EU - and yes, it is confusing. This unfortunately makes it easy for certain interests to weaponise this misunderstanding. I've spent years (and years) explaining these concepts, but ultimately like any other argument, this is not a debate from logic, everyone has already made up their minds on emotion or ideology and nothing will make a difference.
I am always curious when I see these kinds of movement. It seems abundantly clear that the options on any vote in any legislature for a proposed bill are always “yes” and “ask me later”. So when I see things like Fight Chat Control, it feels like the call is “we must tell our legislators to press the ask later button!”<p>Why? Why has your approach not been toward passing active legislation that protects these rights going forward? Genuinely curious. I understand that finding and pressing the “don’t ask again” button is always harder, but I don’t understand why “we punted on this decision!” is a celebratory moment.
Because we can barely stop new legislation we don't like, let alone pass new ones we do. You're out-monied by lobbyists at all levels.<p>Maybe a movement could match a lobbyist in terms of money. I hope so.
> You're out-monied by lobbyists at all levels.<p>What does industry gain from new laws here?
You can always find something. There's always someone profiteering from anything and everything that politicians could possibly do.<p>Politicians demanding total surveillance and population control? Of course there's an industry or two for that. Are they lobbying for this stuff? Absolutely.<p>But what's the causality? That's the ideological question.<p>In my view, it's a bit too convenient to blame all political evils on capitalism. Power is its own aphrodisiac. Bigotry has no prerequisits. Neither does stupidity.
Better advertisement. Like for example this new bill pushed by Facebook in US about age verification by PC. It will create a universally available API of sorts, which any ad corpo can poll and get more private information about PC user.<p>Same with this Stazi 2.0 shit by EU. I'm sure the data produced will be either directly processed by some corpo having ad interests, or freely gifted to such corpos.
> Maybe a movement could match a lobbyist in terms of money. I hope so.<p>That's just more lobbying. Politics needs less money involved, not more.
> we can barely stop new legislation we don't like, let alone pass new ones we do<p>These are literally the same process.
Is it? Stopping is a matter of ground swell support contacting representatives and saying "please don't". Enough people do it to enough receptive reps and they'll vote no.<p>Passing new ones that "you like" requires lawyers to write laws, get those laws in front of reps, get them to agree to try and pass it, stake some of their reputation on pushing it, get the ground swell to support it -- which might be difficult when the current law is "dont scan messages", you can easily say "hey dont scan anything! support that!" vs "hey scan somethings sometimes", cause many people will call that a slippery slope. I don't see how they are at all the same process.
Stopping legislation means organizing a sufficient number of no votes.<p>Passing it means organizing a sufficient number of yes votes.<p>They are the same process and they require exactly the same work. They take place at the exact same moment in time and space, although they are mutually exclusive.<p>You're free to describe things however you want, but your descriptions won't change the underlying reality.
It's far far easier to tear down than to build.
> You're free to describe things however you want, but your descriptions won't change the underlying reality.<p>You should be delivering this advice to your nearest mirror.
> Passing it means organizing a sufficient number of yes votes.<p>EU Parliament can't propose legislation, only vote on proposals from the Commission. We'd have to convince the Commission to propose a law to prevent themselves from trying to pass this bullshit over and over.
Passing legislation is harder. It should absolutely be the goal but it can't be passed if there is already legislation allowing the abuse.
> toward passing active legislation that protects these rights going forward?<p>That's not something the "legislators" in the EU parliament can do. It's effectively a consultative body which can either approve or send back the legislation provided to them so the council and commision can find sufficient workarounds...<p>What would actually help is if a government of a country where this type of Stasi/KGB style surveillance is constitutionally illegal like Germany to speak out and tell the EU (and Denmark which keeps pushing this) that they can go fuck themselves and that they will prosecute any company which is trying to comply with these regulations. (which would be perfectly legal since constitution/basic laws still supersede any type of EU treaty obligations in most countries.
The European """Parliament""" can only reject laws, but not propose new ones.
>Why has your approach not been toward passing active legislation that protects these rights going forward?<p>Maybe because the Commission holds the true power and the commissioners aren't directly elected by the people so you don't have any leverage against the commissioners. You can't just say "behave nicely or we won't support you at the next elections".
That's not true. The commission do the bidding of the Council or other elected national ministers. Re-posting my comment:
---<p>They're just like the civil service in the UK, or any other country. They do the bidding of our nationally elected governments. Nearly all proposals coming from the commission originate from the national governments.<p>So a law:<p>Starts with member states directly elected ministers pushing and agenda or the council (again elected) agreeing to push an agenda -> Commissioners take this agenda and work with it to propose law (using EU civil service like any other country does) -> The law then gets voted on by the EU directly elected ministers, who are meant to (and do) represent the people of the states more directly.<p>Everything in that step is as democratic as any other nation (or nearly).<p>Most people really don't understand the EU - and yes, it is confusing. This unfortunately makes it easy for certain interests to weaponise this misunderstanding. I've spent years (and years) explaining these concepts, but ultimately like any other argument, this is not a debate from logic, everyone has already made up their minds on emotion or ideology and nothing will make a difference.
You kind of can, but you get to only vote for the full package i.e. the party which wins the national elections will get to appoint its own commissioner. Most people obviously only care about the domestic issues and likely will not change their vote regardless of what the appointed commissioner thinks or does.
Also curious, as much as the American amendments are problematic, they do at lease create a hard position on things. We are devolving into a space where I’m genuinely scared that the future will become entirely controlled by big money, and it will be too late to change it.
From my understanding Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union is somewhat similar to US Constitution & amendments. Both do still allow government to restrict the freedoms granted by those in some situations though I do think the US Constitution does tend to set higher bar on the interference.<p>There have been EU laws which get struck down because they violated the Charter (e.g. Data Retention Directive).
The future you fear is already here, sorry.
Thank you for what you're doing, this is an important fight.<p>The story is tragically illustrative of the maxim that you can oppose terrible legislation a hundred times but they only have to pass it once.
Some interesting reads<p><a href="https://balkaninsight.com/2023/09/29/europol-sought-unlimited-data-access-in-online-child-sexual-abuse-regulation/" rel="nofollow">https://balkaninsight.com/2023/09/29/europol-sought-unlimite...</a><p><a href="https://www.ftm.eu/articles/ashton-kutchers-non-profit-start-up-makes-millions-from-fighting-child-abuse-online" rel="nofollow">https://www.ftm.eu/articles/ashton-kutchers-non-profit-start...</a>
You are a beacon of hope man. Please, please, continue the good fight, we need you.<p>We keep seeing the establishment resurfacing and imposing this blanket surveillance globally. What's happening in Brazil, the UK, EU, and has already happened in the US with no legislation or via the 5-eyes is scary.<p>Who are these people pressuring elected politicians and unelected bureaucrats to legislate against their constituents? Who are these lobbyists?<p>I get that there is a large constituency that wants to control dissidents and the narrative in the name of child abuse - see what's happening in the UK where people get arrested in the thousands for posting comments online.<p>Abolishing privacy is not the way to protect children. Police work and prosecution is. For reference see the grooming gangs in the UK, the infamous Eps*% case for which everyone is still walking free, and other cases in various EU countries. This is not whataboutism, it's proof that we have not taken the required steps as a western society to combat this. You don't press the nuclear option as your first action.<p>If it's bot farm meddling that is the true target, then ban bots and get technology to work properly. Creating ID honeypots on poorly protected website operator servers is not the solution.<p>Call your politicians, call your EU MEPs, call everyone you can. This matters because it's about our future.
Great work! There is maybe some bug. When you click on one of the 4 "opposing" countries (e.g. Czech Republic, Poland), it scrolls down and then shows that majority of the representatives from the country actually support it. Is that intended? Won't that make people from those countries "relax" even though they might have an impact by contacting their represenatives?
>let's vote on this proposal<p>>rejected<p>>let's vote on it again!<p>Is it still a democracy if you just keep redoing the vote until you get the outcome you want? The politicians involved in this should be ashamed of themselves.
Sounds a lot like nagging [0] with some trick wording [1] in the nag.<p>I think the website is missing a dark pattern here, spray-and-pray, which is throwing as many reincarnations of the same thing as possible, hoping one eventually sticks.<p>[0] <a href="https://www.deceptive.design/types/nagging" rel="nofollow">https://www.deceptive.design/types/nagging</a><p>[1] <a href="https://www.deceptive.design/types/trick-wording" rel="nofollow">https://www.deceptive.design/types/trick-wording</a>
Only if you have more votes after it passes, to vote on unpassing it again
"Conservatives" feel no shame.<p>But they are first-class in acting like a victim<p>It's the same thing as with your republicans.
Italy, the biggest country opposing this, is composed of mainly "conservative" MEPs from FDI. I think you have a very narrow world view.
Im no conservative, but I thought useres of this site were more intelligent than to throw massive negative stereotypes out about groups of millions of people.
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I swear to god if the UK gives the world yet MORE surveillance state...
Thanks for your work. Just how is it possible for non-EU lobby to make vote a law in EU, and push for it ?
Why this attempt is not treated as terrorism and authors of the proposals are not arrested?<p>Chat Controls fulfil the definition of terrorism wholly.
I've just used it to send email to my representatives (Croatia). Thanks for the effort.
Is there any point in fighting it given that they will rename, repackage and resubmit the legislation in mere days if it doesn't pass?<p>Don't get me wrong: my blood boils reading those legislations, but rationally I don't see a path to victory here.
You're a hero
How can people support your work?
So... if we all care so much about shooting down the bad idea, why is nobody proposing opposite legislation: a bill enshrining a right to private communications, such that bills like this one would become impossible to even table?<p>Is it just that there's no "privacy lobby" interested in getting even one lawyer around to sit down and write it up?<p>Or is there at least one such bill floating around, but no EU member state has been willing to table it for discussion?
Quoting from the <i>Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union</i>, <a href="https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:12012P/TXT" rel="nofollow">https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:12...</a> :<p><i>"Article 7<p>Respect for private and family life<p>Everyone has the right to respect for his or her private and family life, home and communications.<p>Article 8<p>Protection of personal data<p>1. Everyone has the right to the protection of personal data concerning him or her.<p>2. Such data must be processed fairly for specified purposes and on the basis of the consent of the person concerned or some other legitimate basis laid down by law. Everyone has the right of access to data which has been collected concerning him or her, and the right to have it rectified.<p>3. Compliance with these rules shall be subject to control by an independent authority."</i>
It clearly states here in 2 “consent of the person concerned OR some other legitimate basis laid down the law”, any random law will trump personal consent
One of the reasons international human rights law is so worthless in actual practice, is that half of it is framed like this. "Everyone has the right to X, except as duly restricted by law." Cool, so that's not a right at all then.<p>Ditto the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, with its 'notwithstanding' clause. (Though they're presently litigating over that, so we'll see what happens!)<p>Any constitution or human rights instrument full of exemptions, 'emergency powers', 'notwithstanding' clauses, or 'states of exception' is not worth the paper it's written on.
Every contract I have to agree to these days has a "valid until unilaterally invalidated" clause. It feels like we're all just going through the motions.
That's why countries like Austria have enshrined the Human Rights Charter into constitutional law, meaning only other law at constitutional rank could potentially conflict with such clauses. You can get your own country to do it, too.
That is in fact the only way most laws work: freedom of movement, except if you’re arrested and detained in accordance with law. Freedom of speech except when you are falsely yelling fire in a crowded theater or slandering someone. In general all rights have exceptions carved out by law. And any way you carve that exception out (eg to cover those convicted of crimes) can be twisted by a legislature or judicial body that wants to act in bad faith.<p>(That’s not to say laws shouldn’t make a better attempt to circumscribe exceptions)
You're fuzzing the crucial distinction between well defined and narrowly tailored exemptions, which are of course normal, and these exemptions, which are complete blank cheques that effectively neuter the rule they attach to.<p>No laws are absolute, some laws are more holes than cheese, but a law that says <i>"A government must not punish you for doing X, except in accordance with duly passed criminal laws that make X illegal"</i> is almost entirely pointless. It exists solely to make people feel fuzzy when reading the first half of the sentence, which is the only part you'll ever hear quoted, while not actually impeding anything a government may wish to do to you. This is intentional. Those carte blanche exemptions do not consistently appear across international human rights treaties by some accident.
Even if the law included the literal phrase "Congress shall make no law" or "shall not be infringed", there would still be carve-outs and exceptions deemed acceptable and non-infringing because at the end of the day it's the government, and they'll do what they want, because who exactly is going to stop them?
It doesn’t remove the “right to the protection of personal data concerning him or her.” The law cannot be random, it must ensure “fair processing” and be limited to “specific purposes”, and the European Court of Justice as well as the ECHR will decide what constitutes a “legitimate basis” in that context. Furthermore, “Everyone has the right of access to data which has been collected concerning him or her”, which ensures transparency of what is being collected.<p>Last but not least, a number of EU countries enshrine <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secrecy_of_correspondence" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secrecy_of_correspondence</a> in their constitution.
Secrecy of correspondence only applies to sealed physical letters, so it has zero applicability to this law and provides zero protection against scanning of private messages.<p>Also it isn't respected in most types of criminal trials. If a sealed physical letter is opened and proves fraud, for example ...
Secrecy of correspondence doesn't necessarily only apply to physical letters as far as Constitutions go. In Finnish constitution it is defined as "The secrecy of correspondence, telephony and other confidential communications is inviolable" meaning it also applies to any internet message.<p>Unfortunately large majority of parties in Finnish Parliament do not really care about that provision and have passed multiple laws which create exceptions to it. They do it via the proper protocol (which is essentially the same as modifying the Constitution itself) so it's technically legal.
Secrecy of correspondence still has exceptions. That's what is always lost in these discussions -- every right of every person is not absolute. Just because you have a right to personal property, doesn't mean you don't have to pay taxes or store nuclear material in your basement. That's the hard part.<p>But end to end encryption with forward secrecy at no cost to user makes your right to private communication <i>absolute</i>. It's a new thing and the balancers can't balance it against other rights of other people, so this happens.
> But end to end encryption with forward secrecy at no cost to user makes your right to private communication <i>absolute</i><p>As it should be. Governments should have to suck it up. If they want to know things about someone, they should have to actually assign police to follow them around. Not click a button and have the lives of everyone in the entire world revealed to them.
>Governments should have to suck it up. If they want to know things about someone, they should have to actually assign police to follow them around.<p>What you describe is clearly not the only possible policy choice.<p>The opposite doom scenario isn't either.<p>Based on the past experience, government gonna do their government stuff
The ends still have the decryption keys, so the result is the same as with a physical letter: you have to acquire the physical object holding the key material.
No, not any random law. To the extent the relevant law-making is within EU's competence (ie excluding certain areas like national security and similar), the general framework for rules on the processing of personal data has been laid down by the GDPR (and for law enforcement related stuff, a similar Directive[1]), in particular, considerably restricting, limiting and in part downright precluding national law-making within that legislative and policy area, including eg the legal bases available for in-scope processing activities (Art 6 GDPR, also Art 9 for certain sensitive data categories).<p>Anyway, as far as human/fundamental rights go, the encryption and related issues in Chat Control tend to fall more on the Article 7 side of the Charter[2] like many similar questions related to different forms of (mass) surveillance, secrecy / confidentiality of (electronic) communications, including related national regimes with often diverse jurisdiction-specific histories, etc.<p>[1] The main difference between a Directive and a Regulation under EU law is that a Directive requires implementation on the national level to work properly (ie national legislation, usually with some room for discretion and details here and there), while a Regulation is directly binding and effective law in member states wholly in itself.<p>[2] And similar/corresponding language in the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), including the related case law of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). While these are not <i>EU</i> institutions, European human rights law is recognized and applied as constitutional / fundamental rights-level law both by the EU and member state courts.
I feel we need something much more strongly worded to protect our mail, paper or electronic, messages and other communications from being read, not just “respect”.
Let's parse this a little.<p>Article 7 codifies "respect for [one's] private life" and "respect for [one's] private communications". Well, "respect" is a vague notion. This does not clearly imply that the government is not allowed to read your communications, or otherwise spy on you, if it believes it has good reason. It will do so "respectfully", or supposedly minimize the intrusion etc.<p>As for article 8: Here it is "protection of personal data" and "fair processing". It does not say "protection from government access"; and "processing" is when the government or some other party already has your data. In fact, as others point out, even this wording has an explicit legitimization of violation of privacy and 'protection' whenever there is a law which defines something as "legitimate basis" for invading your privacy.<p>You would have liked to see wording like:<p>* "Privacy in one's home, personal life, communications and digital interactions is a fundamental right."<p>* "The EU, its members, its bodies, its officers and whoever acts on its behalf shall not invade individuals' privacy."<p>and probably something about a non-absolute right to anonymity. Codified exceptions should be limited and not open-ended.
> This does not clearly imply that the government is not allowed to read your communications, or otherwise spy on you, if it believes it has good reason. It will do so "respectfully", or supposedly minimize the intrusion etc.<p>Which is... okay? Government gonna government, that's what we pay it to do.
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You know that those pieces of paper mean nothing.
The Charter has been used by the courts to shoot down incoming legislation. So, in a way, those pieces of paper mean everything, as without them legislation would pass without the judiciary branch being a check on the Bloc’s powers. Your comment is merely cynical.
In theory these limit the power of the EU, while anything the EU parliament passes can just be undone as easily by a future EU parliament. If you don't believe the EU charter provides any protection, why would you believe an EU law would be any different?
Thank you for telling them. Governments do not care about anyone.
In theory, governments are made up of citizens. In practice, once the citizens are corrupted into corporate shills, they become politicians. They have traded their humanity for business class seats and dining at restaurants that cater to those whose entire personality is talking about their investment portfolio.
Oh, please, stop this tired ‘victim of corrupt bureaucrats‘ framing.<p>People have real choice in EP elections. There are parties that will always stand up for citizens’ rights. If they had enough seats, they could have voted this item off the agenda.<p>Yet, people continue to choose the same conservatives and radical right over and over again, because they are enraged about immigrants and identity politics. Blame the voters.
Why continue with the increased migration that the majority of the population has generally opposed then? One could have avoided those discussion points.<p>Also what you group as the radical right doesn't tend to be supportive of this idea.
They full well know they are at times at the receiving end of web control legislation and drives atm. Same for 'radical left' groups.<p>It's the conservatives that at times make some fuzz about migration to draw votes from the former whilst keeping said migration going since it favours some of the companies they (and a load of other established parties) draw support from.
There is a famous German comedian that invented a figure known as "The Kangaroo". It once said:<p>"Whether left-wing or right-wing terrorism – I see no difference there."<p>"Yes, yes," calls the kangaroo, "the ones set foreigners on fire, the others cars. And cars are worse, because it could have been mine. I don't own any foreigners."
Chat control is already illegal according to EU law, and has previously been ruled as such by the ECHR when Romania was trying to implement a chat control law that did actually pass, in 2014. But documents are documents (even the Rome statute), and can be rewritten.
It already violates Articles 7 and 8 of the EU Charter which is supposed to prevent stuff like this.<p>The reality is that they'll just keep pushing it from different angles, they only have to get lucky once, we (or EU citizens, we left and have our own issues) need to be lucky <i>every</i> time - much like an adverserial relationship where you are on the defending side from a cyberattack...funny that really.
(I mentioned this in another comment)<p>Because the people voting it down are the elected MEPs, whilst the people putting it up to parliament are the European Commission. The EC are appointed, rather than elected. Which means the powers that be just appoint people who are going to push through laws like this, that they want. The MEPs can't put up bills to be voted on.
And who exactly do you think elected the 'powers that be'? The issue is that voter turnout for EU parliamentary elections is awful in comparison to national elections, especially among more conservative voters - meaning that the political orientation between the parliament and commission is a little skewed.
Sure, but then you end up with stuff like this happening time and time again. If something doesn't pass the first time, put it through again, and again.
The right to private communication is already enshrined in the EU.<p>Article 7, EU Charter of Fundamental Rights: Respect for private and family life (and probably a couple other sections in there as well).<p>The problem is national security exceptions. Chat control and other similar bills are trying to carve out exceptions to privacy laws under the excuse of national security.<p>Also its politically cheap to introduce surveillance or to expand state power, it's comparatively extremely difficult to pass laws that specifically restrict state power.<p>Privacy laws are well and good, but they exist. The problem is we need to stop allowing "public safety" or "national security" to be a trump card that allows exceptions to said laws, and good luck getting any government to ever agree that privacy is more important than national security.
I think the greatest risk to the EU is the sheer volume of communications it allows to travel without end-to-end encryption. Financial, infrastructure, personal political sentiment.. What doesn't a foreign enemy get volumes of minable data on?
Past laws of this type are:<p>- The GDPR<p>- The ePrivacy directive, which is explicitly derogated (sabotaged) by chat control 1.0
If this law, or some future version of it, passes, I will derive great pleasure from a simple bash script sending a gdpr right to be forgotten request to eye European parliament in a daily basis
There’s no point. The only way you can fix this is to pretty heavily market the situation and publicise and shame the lobbyist scum pushing this. And their associated ties.
I don't think that's a very sensical right (like most rights, frankly). Everyone has limits to the privacy they can expect. But we should have a social contract where we can expect privacy between mutually consenting parties intending to have private communication (eg not in a public square) without reasonable suspicion of a crime being committed.
Technology means there is only one truly stable compromise, imo: I am free to use whatever technical means at my disposal to encrypt my communications <i>and those of my customers</i> (!), and you can try to read them as much as you want.<p>Combined with the right to communicate across borders, you can get quite a bit of privacy: a server in both sides of a geopolitical conflict and they've got to collaborate to track you.<p>And yet metadata collection is <i>both</i> unavoidable (if you don't collect it, your geopolitical opponents will) and <i>should be enough</i>. We don't need chat control in a world where I get precision-targeted ads -- it's not even about freedom of speech or privacy, it's about freedom of <i>thought</i>.
> a server in both sides of a geopolitical conflict and they've got to collaborate to track you.<p>With a server on the other side of a geopolitical conflict (actual conflict, not a mere discontinuity in legalscape) you trade a risk of the government reading your chats for a risk of the same government (which you don't trust for a good reason) locking you up for treason and espionage.
>... without reasonable suspicion of a crime being committed.<p>How is that supposed to work with e2e encrypted chats?
You don’t care by writing new legislation, you care by forming boycotts against the corporations that are not fighting back against the scanning. The world is not controlled by democracy, it is controlled by money and the oligarchs.
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The proposal was rejected: <a href="https://chaos.social/@maxim/116294966670838045" rel="nofollow">https://chaos.social/@maxim/116294966670838045</a>
I would like to share here that the author of this site made it very easy to call. If you read this and are in the EU, I urge you to try this.<p>Find a representative you think is at least somewhat likely to change their mind, and call their phone nr listed on the site. I tried one rep and couldn't get through, tried another (their Brussels phone) and I got someone on the line. The site helpfully suggests a call script, which you can take hints from.<p>I got a staffer on the line, who didn't want to share what my rep was planning to vote and generally wasn't very excited about calling with me, but I imagine that if lots of people call lots of these staffers, things actually <i>do</i> get through to these MEPs.<p>Please help.
Okay so I had to look in to it because the site is not really doing a good job explaining it at all. Turns out[0] that they are voting for the extension of the temporary regulation thats been in effect since 2021 (Regulation (EU) 2021/1232). So this is about the "voluntary scanning of private communications" (which is still bad, but has been in effect for almost 5 years already).<p>[0]: <a href="https://www.europarl.europa.eu/sedcms/documents/PRIORITY_INFO/1716/SYN_OJ_March%20II_BRU_EN.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.europarl.europa.eu/sedcms/documents/PRIORITY_INF...</a>
Here is the regulation that will be voted on: <a href="https://oeil.europarl.europa.eu/oeil/en/procedure-file?reference=2025/0429(COD)" rel="nofollow">https://oeil.europarl.europa.eu/oeil/en/procedure-file?refer...</a><p>Note that the amendment was already amended on 11th March to set expiry to Aug 2027 and to also exclude E2E communications.
Yeah so this is about CC 1.0 (which already exists)<p>While it's still worth fighting, it is less worrying<p>The question of course is, why something is allowed multiple votes (and the basic answer is - if it presented some changed - but I don't know if it's the case)
I am not oblivious to the intent behind this push, but even if you focus solely on the technicalities the idea falls apart. Even with only client-side verification this will be a big privacy intrusion. I see current AI's flag prompts for the most stupid reasons for using words that might possibly occur in non-safe contexts too. The human experience is just too complex for a machine to understand.<p>To properly assess something, you need to be bodied in reality, being related to the other human in the same human reality. All the datacenters of the world combined will fail the stated objectives, let alone a stupid phone chip. We should not allow computers to take on the role of policing actors in our human reality, because they even can't perform that role faithfully.
If you're ever unsure about whether a proposed EU regulation may be good or bad, just look at whether Hungary supports it: if so, it's bad; if not, it might be good. Egészségére!
I'm Polish and I was positivity shocked that we oppose it. I remember attending some protests against ACTA which as far as I remember was supposed to be something similar, back in my student days. It was -17°C and people still showed up. Apparently we have some culture of opposing censorship and invigilation by state. May come in handy if the democratic decline keeps progressing...
If we are talking about freedom fighters, Polish freedom fighters/struggles are second most influential to me after my own country especially because of Witold Pilecki.<p>I once wrote a paper about Witold pilecki for my english project for who I consider to be the most influential person or something similar.<p>I picked Witold pilecki because I had read a book which talked about him and it captured so much of my mind.<p>For those who don't know, Witold Pilecki is a polish person who was the first and perhaps only person who willingly entered holocaust/auschwitz and then he was the first person to realize all the horrors happening inside, He then used washing machine parts (iirc) to send the signal to the allies, who COULDN'T believe what Pilecki said was happening. The amounts of Atrocities they thought wasn't possible.<p>When he found out that help wasn't coming, He decided to free himself and He accomplished doing that by taking a job at something bread related who then ends up leaving.<p>He then married an Polish teacher (iirc) and had kids but after Russia had won over Polish, he was fake trialed and he was falsely accused of treason.<p>His last words were, "I've been trying to live my life so that in the hour of my death I would rather feel joy, than fear."<p>On a personal level, when I was writing that project and this line, I genuinely believe that this might be one of the most influential lines to me that I have ever heard which has genuinely influenced me.<p>It was during this project that I found Sabaton from trying to research about Witold pilecki and found so many gems that Sabaton is quite part of my music taste now :-)<p>Sabaton- Inmate 4859: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pc1oSYXlUQ" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pc1oSYXlUQ</a> (This song is about Witold Pilecki)<p>Sabaton Uprising: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzeNBRbWXpI" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzeNBRbWXpI</a> (Another Polish warsaw related song that I found after I had discovered Sabaton from the Inmate 4859 song)<p>I hope that you are proud of your heritage/nation. I am sure that Poland might have flaws too but I do believe that its history is quite rich and something to be quite proud of.<p>I am surprised not more people know about Witold Pilecki but I hope I am doing my part raising awareness about that hero.<p>Within my country, some of the revolutionaries which feel influential on such level to me feel most importantly Bhagat Singh, Subash Chandra Bose, Chandrashekhar Azad. These are also people who have influenced me.<p>There is also the story of how an Indian ruler hosted Polish WWII refugees[0] and helped them within his kingdom, which I am not sure if many Polish know.<p>While I was writing this comment, I discovered a good song about Indian revolutionaries as well which I feel like sharing too: Krantiveer (Revolutionary): <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uXZG0pTxME" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uXZG0pTxME</a> [Turn the subtitles (on)]<p>I think my point can be summarized by a quote from Subash chandra bose, that freedom is not given, it is taken.<p>[0]: <a href="https://indianexpress.com/article/research/the-good-maharaja-when-a-gujarat-ruler-hosted-polish-wwii-refugees-9538140/" rel="nofollow">https://indianexpress.com/article/research/the-good-maharaja...</a>
Do you mean "surveillance" by the word "invigilation" here?
Could be a wordplay due to the fact "invigilation" can be translated to and from the Polish word with a _very_ heavy and long connotations to the USSR state surveillance, oppression and abuse.<p>Surveillance would be a more "modern" (even if more natural or seemingly correct word), without this sort of the implied baggage.
There a practical reason for this? like more alignment with lobbyists, for whatever financial reasons?
Hungary is governed by a Russia aligned autocrat. This generally does not align with the priorities of the rest of the EU.
Over the last two decades Hungary reversed course from a democracy joining the west to an authoritarian dictatorship in bed with the Russians.<p>Hence, everything their government does is the opposite of what a typical European Union member would approve of.
I wonder what it would take to expel them from the EU...
No Hungary is just not joining the collective of western elitists. Instead they joined Slavic group of elitists. But they are as bad as their neighbours. The EU itself is nothing better than a authoritarian state. In the EU you can be put in prison for being pro Russian or pro Chinese. Your company can be made obsolete when not complying with absurt unfair regulations. The whole of the EU is controlled by foreign companies having zero interest in the well being of its people
Orban is a Putin asset.
Orban is an evil politician, and Fidez is an evil party.
It seems the vote passed [1], meaning the existing Regulation [(EU) 2021/1232] was _extended_ until August 3 2027, with some amendments to the previous text:<p>- added targeted scanning requirement<p>- scanning must be “targeted, specified and limited… where there are reasonable grounds of suspicion… identified by a judicial authority”<p>[1] <a href="https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/TA-10-2026-0070_EN.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/TA-10-2026-007...</a>
I'm happy that the Netherlands is still against this. Our currently largest party (D66) was also always pretty strong on privacy. When I contacted them some time back (I think using this initiative), they ensured me that they remained against, but did feel that something must be done (ok fair enough).
Where are all those "as an EU citizen" commenters? You are but a subject of an ultra-national government whose sole objective is ever increased control over your life and euros.
As an EU citizen, I'm happy that the parliament has once again rejected the proposal, which at least gives credence to the notion that it not just there to rubber-stamp what the commission decides.<p>But the price of freedom is indeed eternal vigilance.
As a EU citizen, it pisses me off that the US is (with others outside the EU) trying this hard to lobby to undermine our democracy and freedom of speech.<p><a href="https://digitalcourage.social/@echo_pbreyer/116205371224315359" rel="nofollow">https://digitalcourage.social/@echo_pbreyer/1162053712243153...</a><p>And I’d still take this clusterfuck over the alternative current state of the US. At least this situation we can (and have been) striking down, despite all the naysayers on HN. Here’s to hoping we’re able to do so again!
Freedom of speech is not a European value.
Based on what?<p><a href="https://rsf.org/en/index" rel="nofollow">https://rsf.org/en/index</a><p><a href="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/freedom-of-expression-index" rel="nofollow">https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/freedom-of-expression-ind...</a><p>I would be more worried about police and wannabe police shooting people on the streets, detaining citizens without due process, sending billions to war in Iran while regular people are struggling with day-to-day life. Your universities and primary schools are restricted what they can teach or say either by government or religious movements.<p>Sure, the chat control is a serious privacy issue but acting like US is some sort of bastion of free speech is not based on anything real. And yes, while hate speech is not allowed in europe like in the US, we at least understand that freedom comes with responsibility.
I was reading an essay by Kant called “what is Enlightenment?” It argues that people should be permitted to say whatever they wanted, provided they obey the laws.<p>He bases it on the idea that we should not be subject to be “lifelong tuteledge.” At some point we must speak up and contribute.<p>We can be wrong. Very wrong. We can advise our rulers to do terrible things. The Holocaust hadn’t happened yet, but the Wars of Relgion had - he knew how bad people could be.<p>Europe doesn’t seem to reject lifelong tuteledge any more. There want opinion and thought to be guided and formed by an elite class, not a noisy crowd of peers.<p>This is new. It was foreign to Kant, foreign to Locke, Hobbes, Marx, etc.<p>It’s a bit scary the Europe is leading the way on this. And it does seem they are poking at speech specifically.<p>Most recently the EU is considering a “ban conversion therapy.” Not medical malpractice legislation - just a very specific type of medical malpractice that has a very specific political constituency.<p>Meanwhile people who are subject to quacky things like past life regression or Freudian analysis are left with the normal malpractice system.<p>Really Europe (and other places) are using it as a way to weaken freedom of speech.<p>Maybe I’m connecting dots where there are none, but there seems to be a big international shift away from free speech, with Europe taking the lead.<p>In America this manifests itself as “it would be nice if we could restrict speech like normal countries do, but we have to worry about the Republicans, so let’s not do that - yet.”<p>But it’s pretty clear free speech is going the way of right to bear arms and trial by jury.
What Kant, Locke or Hobbes imagined has only little to do with current societal environment. Our politics and structures are global and the age of internet has mixed it even more. The religions and christianity especially tried to control everything was said under their hemisphere by controlling who could print books or distribute them.<p>The european (or EU in this context) is truly multinational representative political instance (not a government). While it provides lots of opportunities and lets voices from dozens of different cultures to be heard, it also makes decision making hard. The opposite way to rule is authoritan or totalitarian way where there is just one ruler who has not real opposing forces. In that light you could argue that while EU is large political and economical alliance, it also fails to satisfy every political need of it's elected members.<p>what US is showing that less there is political variety (powerful parties) less there is moving space for expression, freedoms and change.<p>As a person who has masters in politics, I appreciate the fact that you brought Kant but more Hobbes and Locke into this. They are excellent reference point for those thinking about origins of societies and liberties. John Locke would have hate everything what current representative democracies are (including US). He would have loved the ideal of ultimate personal freedom but at the same time he would have loathed every control that governments have today over their citizens. There is no separation of state and religion in most of the western nations for example.<p>We are closer to world what Focault said but he is more recent scholar.
this seems like a very delusional take to me<p>> It argues that people should be permitted to say whatever they wanted, provided they obey the laws.
that's exactly how it works<p>> Most recently the EU is considering a “ban conversion therapy.”<p>this has nothing to do with the opinions that are expressed in conversion therapy but with the insane practices - which actually try to enforce people to think like they believe is the "right" way to think about the world, which is far more restrictive than just letting people be themselves<p>> Really Europe (and other places) are using it as a way to weaken freedom of speech.<p>this is unfortunately true, too many extreme right wing politicians have been successful recently<p>> It’s a bit scary the Europe is leading the way on this.<p>it isn't, the US (though not just the US of course) famously collects data and searches through all of it if they need, and recently ICE had a hand full of incidents where they clearly used databases to profile people (just look at their use of AI cameras at protests)
We Europeans have a pathological habit of blaming Orange Man Bad for all our many problems (which are often the fault of the EU and our socialist, collectivist tendencies)
> We Europeans have a pathological habit of blaming Orange Man Bad for all our many problems<p>Might be a different social circle, but I have not met a single European in my entire life of living in Europe who would blame Donald Trump or the US in general for the problems that we are currently facing. It doesn't take a genius to summarize that trans-continental geopolitics is much more complex than that
> We Europeans have a pathological habit of blaming Orange Man Bad for all our many problems<p>Speak for yourself. I don’t even think Trump is to blame for all the US’s problems (he’s a symptom of a much larger system), let alone the EU’s.<p>I also mentioned others outside the EU and US, as does the link I posted.<p>Furthermore, I don’t think I personally know <i>anyone</i> from the EU who blames “all our many problems” on the US.
> socialist, collectivist tendencies<p>Lots of places are socialist or collectivist and have a different set of problems, so the argument that EU problems can be solely attributed to that don't make sense.<p>I'm also not sure "collectivist" is the correct label. We can't describe Japan (and the PRC, Taiwan, Philippines, Vietnam, a couple other SEasian nations) and the EU as both collectivist, considering Japan is the far more extreme version of it (I would say, only Japan is collectivist, not the EU). One or the other needs a different word.
EU is not a government for all EU members. You should look into what EU is and how it works before attacking it. Claiming that it's "ultra national" would mean that all of EU is one nation which shares one ideological, cultural and political sphere. There are 27 EU members with 24 official languages, 20 of those countries are part of the Euro currency zone.<p>But if you are a US citizen, I would refrain talking about increased control of life outside of your own turf. Your education system is controlled either government or religious groups. Your streets are patrolled by uneducated police troops without control and they are detaining even US citizens without due process. Now your government says they will block all foreign made routers. And did you forget NSA Prism program? Your voting system is controlled via gerrymandered maps which are changing constantly depending who's in the control. Lots of your citizens are living paycheck to paycheck and one health issue can bankrupt them and only way to survive is to ask money from strangers via gofundme. All because of healthcare and insurance companies greed and politicians lack of interests of their constituents.<p>Yeah, the EU legislation about privacy and chat control is problematic but saying that US is doing so much better for it's citizens is a stretch.
>You are but a subject of an ultra-national government whose sole objective is ever increased control over your life and euros.<p>Yes, but who isn't? Not the other side of the pond for sure.
As an EU citizen I have to remind you that as a (most likely) US citizen, you've had the Patiot act sanction the NSA to have free reign for this sort of thing for the past 25 years.<p>We've shot it down before, and we'll shoot it down again, regardless of how relentless Palantir lobbying gets.
> you've had the Patiot act sanction the NSA to have free reign for this sort of thing for the past 25 years.<p>This is not true. No part of the Patriot Act required all people all private messages and photos to be scanned or have a backdoor to encryption. You're saying this to minimize what's about to happen to Europe, which is not helpful. The NSA made deals with private companies to tap lines, and used its influence and US intelligence's secret ownership of a Swiss encryption company to encourage us to use broken algorithms.<p>> We've shot it down before, and we'll shoot it down again, regardless of how relentless Palantir lobbying gets.<p>I wish you luck. But there's nothing keeping the EU from doing, and having always done, what the NSA has also done. What you're trying to stop is the requirement to serve your communications to your rulers on a silver platter.
As an EU citizen I hate this but I know it‘s a „when?“ not an „if“ topic.<p>I realise the EU is our only hope to defend ourselves against big players like China and the US and smaller bullies like Russia.<p>But at the same time I realise the EU we have in this timeline is one of the worst possible: a criminal venture, a safe heaven for the corrupt elite + their lobbyists and an organisation that‘s hell bent on harming and controlling its citizens.<p>Majorities for sane parties are not possible. Democracy is too slow, too indirect. Hell, this is barely a democracy at all, just like on the national level. As EU citizens we as powerless as every other citizen in the world.
The EU has always been focused on harming its citizens. This is nothing new, very on brand actually. It's not like we have a choice lol.
That's the problem with electing too many people with law background to a parliament: They think it's a Model United Nations session and if they can get things their way despite many real world consequences, they celebrate with joy as our governance becomes literally ungovernable.
The EU is a horribly intransparent and dubiously democratic institution.<p>As a normal citizen you have no real possibility to hold MEPs accountable other then writing an angry E-Mail.<p>In an actually democratic system politicians would be in their position only by mercy of the people and can be voted down from their position anytime if enough people petition for it. (and not just maybe be called back when elections at home plummet)<p>Politicians should be afraid of the people and not the other way round.
So they will pass it until is a yes?
Exactly what happened when Ireland rejected the Lisbon treaty, they were told to vote again until they voted the "right" way.
Heads I win, tails you loose. :(<p>It takes only one win to remove our rights but once they’re gone you’ll never get them back.
Modern democracy
<p><pre><code> while not pass:
try to pass something stupid, malevolent or that hurts people and democracies</code></pre>
Or, as is also seen elsewhere, wildly popular ideas simply get curiously stuck.<p>Either way those elected to supposedly serve are the only ones winning.
Yes. The anchor chain got broken sometime ago. It's still there, but nobody want it anymore.
They only have to win once. You have to win every time.
Of course. They literally spell their playbook out for you:<p>“We decide something, then put it out there and wait for a while to see what happens.<p>If there is then no great outcry and no uprisings, because most people do not even understand what has been decided, then we continue—step by step, until there is no turning back.”<p>— Jean-Claude Juncker
They never quit.
They just waited for something else to dominate the news, so they could fly it under the radar.
The war started, so, they felt it was now or never.
It's not now or never. It's now, or the next attempt or the next.
Who is "they"?<p>That's the key question!<p>There's a <i>small</i> group of very powerful people that keep pushing this agenda.<p>Who are those people?<p>Find out.<p>Publicize their names. Make their corruption <i>visible</i> and <i>linked to their identity</i>.<p>In case anyone has an issue with this: Remember! This is what they want! For you! Not for them. Only the plebs.
If you consider who is monitoring us, it's obvious that this is for the benefit of those in power.
Great that MPs are apparently exempt from the scanning. As if there aren’t enough high profile menaces in power.<p>Either include everyone, or accept it’s an awful idea for security and exempt everyone.
> The "Chat Control" proposal would legalise scanning of all private digital communications, including encrypted messages and photos.<p>How would this be enforced in practice? In other words, what would prevent E.U. users from using encrypted services outside of the jurisdiction of the E.U., to "illegally" encrypt their hard drives or to run their own private encrypted comms servers?
The same way you can't send money to the best Korea and watch porn on youtube.<p>There is a long chain of actions that ends with you having e2e on your phone (or what not). At the <i>starts</i> of it there is your physical body living in jurisdiction and transacting with (mostly) other people being somewhat present in the same jurisdiction using government-captured money. There are multiply choke points, controlling which will not result in 100% enforcement, but will make whatever you want to do a huge pain in the ass, so most people will not bother (case in point -- jailbraking). Whoever is left self-selects themselves for selective enforcement.
I am not sure I follow. I can't watch porn on YT because YT decides not to host it. But I can absolutely use a VPN and access porn in a jurisdiction that does not block it. I can also, and in fact do, encrypt my hard drives. Even China can't reliably prevent communication over private encrypted networks or services hosted overseas.
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Monitoring and influencing majority is enough for having power over citizens. Real criminals will use other unmonitored channels, of course.
They won’t need to enforce this rigorously. They’ll just need to show some scary examples of people being arrested or having computers seized for using illegal forms of encryption. The mainstream media will go along with the EU, demonising these dangerous individuals, who must have been up to something nefarious if they were using technologies sanctioned by the EU
This is the same EU that blocks and hinders innovation in the name of privacy?
When you say "hinders innovation" do you mean "doesn't maximize shareholder value" ?
regulation doesn't hinder innovation as long as it is equally enforced on everyone competing in the regulated market. it does hinder powerful and rich individuals from making more profit at the cost of the rights of the average population
Which law are you talking about? Genuine question, because I know about EU laws that are "in the name of privacy" and about those that (arguably) "hinder innovation", but I don't know which one fits both
The EU isn’t a single mind. There are a multitude of factions trying to get through all kinds of things.
You are aware that EU is not a single country, right? I know American education is third-world levels these days, so unfortunately I have to ask this.
"for sure"
DONT forget that this legislation is the result of a Lobby of META
It can fail 100 times and it won't count, and the one time this surveillance legislation passes it will become law. Thanks EU, nice show of democracy.
Just a heads up that this is being posted late in the European evening here, so that will affect who's commenting.
Fun fact: the parties that want this are actually those who criticise the EU the most
Yes well, they're running out of good arguments to show how bad the EU is, so they have to force some bad decisions through so that they may have something to cry about.<p>God I love politics
Not really. Looking at Polish MPs for example, there's no clear pattern, rather a "healthy" mix from all parties with some random selection of opposing ones.
Not true. In the UK, the only party that would repeal the heinous “Online Safety Act” are Reform UK, which is headed by notorious Euroskeptic MP Nigel Farage.
You can directly call your representatives by looking them up here:<p><a href="https://www.europarl.europa.eu/portal/en" rel="nofollow">https://www.europarl.europa.eu/portal/en</a>
So EU syill wants to harm children.
Why's there '?foo=bar' in the URL?
Those are Conservatives from EPP group, not some "The EU". Let's be literal.
Yeah that didn't take long. Of course they keep pushing it. I knew the big 'win' of the 11th was a bit premature and overcelebrated.<p>The dark forces behind all this set to gain a lot of profits once it passes :(
They only need to win once, while the public has to fight back every time. Incredibly demotivating
I love this. These are the same people who create think tanks and "international courts" to point fingers at "third world" countries for "authoritarianism," "freedom of speech."<p>Hypocrisy par supreme
What does this mean for a non-eu citizen communicating with an eu citizen? Is it as simple as using signal/matrix instead of whatsapp/messenger?
it's probably best to go with client-side encryption and share keys with friends privately. that pretty much fixes all the privacy issues after the initial registration, but maintaining that extension with all the company and their updates is a bit of a headache.
They want to do what US Big Tech already is doing<p>Y'all are bunch of hypocrites
It's really hard to not become a euroskeptic, despite being involved with so many EU related things from my youth to now in which I believed wholeheartedly, but this is just... I know - they just need to win once, we need to win every time.
But of course it's back.
They should just ask the Americans. If you are not a US citizen you have zero rights, and any old creep in Silicon Valley can riffle through your personal information with impunity.<p>I realize I am just recapitulating the modus operandi of Five Eyes here...
The US doesn't even have to ask, people already give AI providers all their data and full control over all their devices.
Let the damn politicans go first and make all their private messages public. Yes everything from boring I'm stuck in traffic honey over nudes to insider trading and lobbying.
The lack of accountability after what was exposed in the Epstein files illustrates that not one in power actually care about kids.<p>"Save the kids", is just a ploy to run scams.
Nice website! Sadly, url stays the same across all coutries. I can't send anyone direct link.
So much for "digital soverignty".
Being able to make this policy choice in either direction is in fact an example of digital sovereignty. We just don't like what the sovereign has decided this time.
They aid the truth because the complete slogan was about EU's digital sovereignity. Not really your sovereignity nor mine.
so much for 'democracy'<p>keep voting until you get the right answer<p>at least EU are voting I suppose. some governments just go ahead and mass-surveil illegally
Few days ago we had a guy explaining to us at the top of hn page that we should migrate data to europe. Sometimes I miss the internet of before mass surveillance abd ads everywhere
See also: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47522647">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47522647</a>
Reminder: it's not the “EU”, it's the PPE (the union of conservative European parties), and the national governments.
does this violate GDPR?
>GDPR Article 2 Material scope<p>>2. This Regulation does not apply to the processing of personal data:<p>>by competent authorities for the purposes of the prevention, investigation, detection or prosecution of criminal offences or the execution of criminal penalties, including the safeguarding against and the prevention of threats to public security.
Maybe...in a world where lawmakers didn't put huge exemptions into GDPR for governments and law enforcement etc. Which they did.
I absolutely don't understand how anyone can support this in the context of rising authoritarianism. Even people in my country which are talking about this phenomena support it. I strongly suspect that they do absolutely know shit about why it's problematic.<p>I wonder if they would support that every of paper mail would be opened and checked. I strongly doubt that.
It’s a symptom of authoritarianism rising. It wouldn’t be rising if there wasn’t anyone who supports things like that.
That I would understand, but these policies are supported by most liberal politics from my country and opposed by some populists or "strong hand" politicians. I somehow understand that various russian agents are against that, because that can theoretically be used against them but these liberal democrats are somewhat mystery for me.
Because social cohesion is also breaking down (which is also by design). People increasingly do not trust and can not rely on neighbors and their fellow citizens to share similar interests and look out for one another. And they have much less power to organize with other citizens to petition their government.<p>So they feel they must turn to the state for protection.
Because they fall for the "Its for protecting the Children" Bullshit
An encrypted message has never sexually violated and traumatized a child, but I'd bet good money that many politicians have. So, it's quite apparent what we need to protect children from in my opinion.
ofc, they only need to get it approved once. they will try until they succeed
Please, could the bootlickers of the European Union stop downvoting every single criticism of it?<p>Are you so obtuse to be unable to figure out that by being like annoying school marms you are just making people start to pay more attention to the populists?
> Please, could the bootlickers of the European Union stop downvoting every single criticism of it?<p>Hey, let's call this "forum control" :)
I don't think criticisms of chat-control-like legislation attempts are downvoted here?
This guy has gone on a small anti-EU tirade elsewhere in the thread.
If my experience is anything to go by the answer is 'yes':<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47412060">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47412060</a><p><i>> The clearest example of lobbying (chat control) has repeatedly been struck down.<p>They can try as often as they want and they only have to win once. We - as in those who don't want this Orwellian monster to be written into law - have to win all the time.</i><p>That comment was quickly voted down. It is unclear whether this was the usual "don't like this person so I'll downvote all his last posts" or targeted at my statement on how these proposals keep on popping up no matter how often the people - in Greek that spells 'δημόσιο' or 'dèmosio', the root of 'democracy' - have made clear they don't want it.
why are the epsteinists so obsessed with destroying our freedoms and privacy?
Framing this as <i>the EU's attempt</i> is antieuropean propaganda.<p>It is the <i>Conservatives</i> attempt. The EU parliament is the entity that shot it down last time.
EU is not a synonym of Europe. EU propagandists don't get to define what Europe means.<p>Second. Who gave you the right to define antieuropean union propaganda as a sin.<p>Some people may hate it, some people may love it, other want to change it.<p>It was created by vote, surely it can be whatever the fuck the way the people want by vote.
I don't follow EU politics that much, but I know that one of the strongest proponents for it has been from the Swedish Social Democratic party, which has dominated Swedish politics.<p>So, in my view this is not really a "left" or "right" thing, but something that is pushed by people you could call "the establishment".
European Commission is basically as close to being EU's government as it can be, it is fair to say these are the people that represent EU now. Much like it's fair to say that US is bombing Iran even if not all of the US is doing that.
Exactly. EU legislation is <i>currently</i> far more respecting of privacy than is legislation in the UK or the US.<p>For various, and unclear, reasons, there is substantial backing to change this.
In the UK, Apple is now blocking users from using any web browser to access "non-PG" content unless the user submits to privacy violating age verification. Apple blocks you at the OS level, making VPNs useless.
This is how political messaging has worked since I was born.
Can you clarify what you mean? The linked website makes it seem that the majority MEPs of the supporting countries are on board. Are all of the (listed as) supporting countries currently under conservative governments?
The majority of the MEPs are not onboard <i>mandatory</i> scanning, otherwise that would've been passed already.<p>The site is conflating mandatory scanning with voluntary scanning (status quo). The upcoming vote is about continuing the voluntary scanning (which would otherwise expire).
The "voluntary" scanning is still mass surveillance of private messages. We as technologist tend to rely on technical methods to protect our private data. But non-technical people should also enjoy confidential communication, even if they don't actively protect their conversations.
> voluntary scanning<p>What is that? A setting in OS?
To quote the banner on said website:<p>> The Conservatives (EPP) are attempting to force a new vote on Thursday (26th), seeking to reverse Parliament's NO on indiscriminate scanning.<p>The vote itself is being forced by the EPP. This article by an MEP has more info: <a href="https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/the-battle-over-chat-control-how-eu-governments-and-the-tech-lobby-are-trying-to-overturn-parliaments-vote-a-comprehensive-fact-check/" rel="nofollow">https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/the-battle-over-chat-contro...</a>
There are two elements to the EU<p>The Council, which is headed by the government of each member state in equal measure - similar to the Senate in the US<p>And Parliament, which are directly elected by the people, with each member state having representitives in proportion to their population, so Germany has far more than Ireland. This is similar to Congress.<p>Now this site says Germany supports it, but then says that MEPS<p>> 49 oppose, 47 in favor (45 confirmed, 2 presumed based on government stance)<p>I would thus infer that the "most member states" refer to the national governments (that were elected by their population) position and not the direct MEP position.<p>However a quick look at the json it's loading and I can't see<p>Now as the parliament has blocked it, a grouping, the "EPP" (Think Ronald Reagan type republicans) is trying to use their influence to bring it back to a vote.<p>> "The Conservatives (EPP) are attempting to force a new vote on Thursday (26th), seeking to reverse Parliament's NO on indiscriminate scanning. This is a direct attack on democracy and blatant disregard for your right to privacy."
Fight Chat Control is a website maintained by a European. It is no more anti-European than I, an American, speaking about the latest antics of our conservative-led government and saying, "The US government is attempting to ____".
The last version of chat control was pushed by Denmark, which presided the european council until december, and with a social democratic prime minister (coalition government with social democrats the majority). The "conservatives push for chat control" is not really accurate, a bit part of social democrats are also supporting it.
It seems like it is bipartisan to me. Do you have the statistics to back up your claim?
Yeah, it's like saying "USA wants to poison children still!" when a Republican files another deranged bill in their state.
This. There's a very specific group of twisted people that drive this, but equating that with the entire EU is flat out wrong.
The trick here is to make it impossible to do so.<p>Don’t put your shit in the cloud and use proper E2E secure messaging.<p>For me the entire idea of the cloud is dead due to exposure like this.
People on HN but also criminals will know how circumvent this. But the average person will be completely lost in this surveillance apparatus. It's going to affect the wrong people.
I’ve been eternally surprised at how non technical people work around problems. I mean I have a totally technology illiterate family member who worked out how to torrent films and watch them and install ublock and Firefox.
>People on HN but also criminals will know how circumvent this.<p>Criminals in question: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Trojan_Shield" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Trojan_Shield</a>
It's client side scanning.
That's one of the tricks. The other trick is to vote in universal right for encrypted communication once and for all.
Encryption is mathematics -- making this an issue of freedom not only of speech, but of thought.
That’s the best answer. But you’re up against paid up lobbyists.
But don't worry, exceptions for ALL officials are built in. And I do mean ALL officials. In this bill, for example, pedophile gym teachers are perfectly safe from getting scanned.<p>Gym teachers are also the largest group of people convicted for pedophilia. So you can be sure they are keeping their priorities straight. States, and the monopoly telco's are also protected from paying even the tiniest amount of money for companies to do these scans, all costs are entirely offloaded to app developers.<p>So the priorities are clear:<p>1) protecting the state from even the tiniest amount of responsibility, even at the cost of children getting abused<p>2) keeping some 50 foreign states from the same<p>3) keeping a whole list of organizations safe from inspections<p>4) keeping the state safe from actually spending any amount of money on these scans<p>...<p>n) protecting children
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They hate us for our freedoms.<p>A shame the EU is just simulation of democracy.<p>Best case in point: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qatar_corruption_scandal_at_the_European_Parliament" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qatar_corruption_scandal_at_th...</a>
Let’s migrate our apps to the EU!<p>Trump Derangement Syndrome is widespread in Europe. Quality of life has gotten so bad and continuous to decline except for mainly Poland and Hungary.<p>And what do systems cling to especially in situations like these? Surveillance.<p>Another massive not so funny joke once again hit Germany the week ago - a smear campaign and hit piece to justify even more censorship.<p>Germany is going down the drain - and the elite is trying to silence freedom of speech massively while ignoring doing what’s important and what’s right.<p>Have fun migrating your app to the EU. No one is coming to save you especially not your shitty infrastructure. Energy crisis, and devs think it is a good idea to go for 2% uptime in the near future.<p>It is so ridiculous.
Yes, yes, let's all rally around the free speech haven that is Hungary, which only five short years ago banned "the discussion of gender and sexual diversity in schools, the media, advertising, and other public places."<p>Let's all take this person extremely seriously, as they are advocating for free speech.