"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."<p>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.<p>Oh, and parliamentarians starting their summer break whenever they want will never not be funny.
> So, if I'm reading this correctly, Chat Control [2.0, implied] is bound to become law?<p>Nope. This is bad, but not THAT bad.<p>This is an extension of the <i>existing</i> 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.<p>This is bad, but it's not the much worse still Chat Control 2.0 that was defeated several times already.
> how democratic of the EU<p>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.
1 - this is about Chat Control 1.0<p>2 - The vote was on the "Urgency requirement"<p>> parliamentarians starting their summer break whenever they want will never not be funny<p>Eh. This is the least problematic thing here. Some MEPs might just be on official PTO.
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This is the anti-EU move but they simply don't understand that.<p>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".<p>China / US leadership must not be the carte-blanche to formalize whatever low bar in how we handle our own privacy; go straight for the "self own".<p>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:<p><a href="https://youtu.be/cmYiWsFn3GM" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/cmYiWsFn3GM</a><p>I see 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.
From a post on Mastodon:<p>> democracy is when you repeatedly push for unpopular laws until they pass, and the more times you do it the more democratic it is<p>It is unlikely that 60 additional “no” votes can be found by Thursday to stop this.
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.
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.
They keep voting on surveillance state measures that the oligarchy wants that will limit the freedom of the people.<p>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.<p>There needs to be a counter-balance where politicians can be removed or even punished by the people for proposing unpopular bills.
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.<p><a href="https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/poll-72-of-citizens-oppose-eu-plans-to-search-all-private-messages-for-allegedly-illegal-material-and-report-to-the-police/" rel="nofollow">https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/poll-72-of-citizens-oppose-...</a>
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.<p>I really fear where this is headed.
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.<p>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.)
> 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.<p>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.<p>[0]: <a href="https://x.com/GrapheneOS/status/1940440326830989549" rel="nofollow">https://x.com/GrapheneOS/status/1940440326830989549</a><p>[1]: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48801059">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48801059</a><p>[2]: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48815196">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48815196</a>
If I was signal CEO I would have self hosted years ago! There's many reasons for signal to be not on AWS.
I wish you were right, but the EU only needs Google and Apple, both having big EU businesses, to block Signal.<p>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.
“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.”<p>And<p>“If it's a Yes, we will say 'on we go', and if it's a No we will say 'we continue'.”<p>- Jean-Claude Juncker
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.
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™.
Is this Chat Control 1.0 or Chat Control 2.0?
The Wikipedia entry on Chat Control doesn't go into enough detail on what exactly it <i>does</i>, only the history of its legislative process. Can someone update it?
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.
Just assume the worst: all your private messages would be read and shared between all governments and corporations in the world.
Hopefully this could be the first good thing about Brexit...this might not get implemented in the UK or there will be a delay!
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.
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.
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<i>t who elects same sh</i>t to EU. And i don't know about other countries, but my country sends complete degenerates to EU, like litteraly degenerates.
> ... these elected people act as tsars, ...<p>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.<p>They just do what they want and do thorough media coverage. In rare cases that doesn't work, people just dissapear.
The cypherpunks were right. Rights to encryption are only a part of what we need.<p>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.<p>It can be within pictures with the lowest bit values. It can be constructed punctuation and spaces. Lots of things.<p>But hidden and plausibly deniable messaging is the ONLY way to defeat a government(s) that want to invade every communication aspect for humans.
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.
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.<p>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.
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
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: <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.20075" rel="nofollow">https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.20075</a>
That's an excellent take.<p>Unfortunately, verified devices will close that loophole.
Local governments are likely to block the initiative. We need a Polish based messenger that won't bend to chat control fascist initiatives.
[[comment deleted]]<p>Thanks for the warning. Comment deleted to avoid jail time.
I am not a lawyer, but, as a Russian citizen, let me warn you. The very fact that your comment criticizing the EU regime, that you yourself admit could send you to jail, is online and not deleted by Thursday, makes it a "lasting crime". For lasting crimes, it does not matter that the regulation criminalizing the action or state of affairs was not in force when they started. What matters is that the condition defined as illegal (comment existing) is true when the regulation outlawing it is in force - i.e., that you did not cease and desist. Yes, this is a creative way authorities circumvent the ban on ex post facto laws - they say "it is not ex post facto".<p>Commented on Tuesday, deleted the comment on Wednesday, the regulation is enacted on Thursday => OK.<p>Commented on Tuesday, did not delete before Thursday => jail (and it does not matter that you can't delete it anymore because it has a reply).<p>Sarcasm of course, as Russian laws do not apply here.
It’s a good time to download the source code for software that allows locally encrypted messaging, particularly without central infrastructure.<p>Delta Chat works with any email server and has a rich feature set, Bitchat is also good to have on hand. And of course the old standby GPG, flawed as it may be.<p>Also NNCP (<a href="https://nncp.mirrors.quux.org/" rel="nofollow">https://nncp.mirrors.quux.org/</a>) in case sneakernet solutions are ever needed.
And who's to say Drama is dead huh<p>I love how your average cybertistic EU leftoid who has less serotonin than Werther and yet thinks all their country needs is more 3rd world "refugees" acts upon a tiny modicum of difficulty or government control (which should not be read as me advocating for it, naturally)<p>> Any advice from free people of China on circumventing government restrictions and control?<p>You should look into what goes on WeChat<p>But anyway the Chinese has way more agency and way less qualms about using air-conditioner so let me make a guess on who's surviving the heat waves
Gotta love the downvotes. At least we have free healthcare folks (for now lol).
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