Glad we could delay it for now. It will come back again and again with that high of support though. Also the German Bundestag is already discussing a compromise: https://www.bundestag.de/presse/hib/kurzmeldungen-1108356. They are only unhappy with certain points like breaking encryption. They still want to destroy privacy and cut back our rights in the name of "safety", just a little less.
uyzstvqs · 49m ago
The bigger issue is that we need to make the EU actually democratic. Start by removing every branch but the European Parliament. That's the only solution.
Vespasian · 45m ago
The EU council is formed by the democratically elected member states. This follows an "upper house" approach used in many european countries.
I'm strongly in favor of giving the parliament the ability to propose laws (directives). Currently only the comission can do that.
lmpdev · 31m ago
As an Australian normally subject to two upper houses (the current state I happen to live in is the only unicameral state) that seems very counter intuitive
The way it seems to work in practice (here at least) is most partisan/normative legislation goes through the lower house upwards
And bipartisan (or broadly unpopular or highly technical) legislation goes from the upper house down
It’s more complicated than that, but a one way flow committee sounds extremely restrictive for meaningful reform
A small number of pathways is a good thing, one lone process is probably not (you risk over fitting on both sides)
Edit: Australian legislation has a lot of flaws, but this multimodal setup from my experience is not one of them
NoboruWataya · 3m ago
I think this is your "intuition" because it is what you are used to, I see no reason why this would be the objectively correct way to do things. The legislative procedure in the EU is a bit more complex than laws simply flowing "up" or "down". There is a trilogue, which is effectively a three-way negotiation between the Council, Parliament and Commission. But ultimately the approval of Parliament and in most cases the Council is required (ie, Commission cannot force laws).
The EU system is also not without its flaws but it's not the worst. Enacting broad, sweeping legislation is cumbersome and difficult which is a feature, not a bug. If we had a more streamlined system we'd probably already have chat control by now.
boxed · 25m ago
I believe the point of the EU structure is precisely to make it hard to make laws, because the EU was designed to NOT be a federalist system.
rgblambda · 8m ago
I think it's less to make it hard to make laws and more to ensure the primacy of the member states governments over the parliament, but for the same reason you gave. To not become a federation.
In theory, if parliament had the power to propose legislation, the council would still be able to shoot those bills down, assuming no other changes to the EU structure.
hnhg · 22m ago
And neuter the influence of deep-pocketed lobbying entities - US entities in particular seem to spend a lot of money on influencing EU politics:
https://www.lobbyfacts.eu/
amelius · 11m ago
Wow, Apple paid 7M for 9 people to have 144 meetings with the EC. I'm in the wrong line of business.
On the other hand, I'm thinking can we find 9 unpaid volunteers on HN to do the same?
NoboruWataya · 11m ago
Parliament needs to approve any meaningful EU legislation anyway. The Commission cannot legislate. The problem isn't that the EU is undemocratic, it's that our elected lawmakers all seem to want to trample our privacy for one reason or another (see: the UK)
tannhaeuser · 23m ago
The postulate for EU structural reform towards perfection is typical of HN and other nerds drooling over their programming language and frameworks ;) but in real life had been tried with the Lisboa treaty to the extent it was deemed possible, and no-one involved with it wants to reopen the case. I'm also sometimes angry at EU as well, but the reality is there are over twenty member states, with their constitutions, languages, democratic and other traditions such as federalism and minority rules, bilateral treatments, special interests, and backroom deals to take care of. It's a miracle the EU exists at all.
somewhereoutth · 41m ago
The highest body of the EU is the Council. Nothing happens without the approval of the Council. In comparison, the Commission is merely the civil service or secretariat, answering to the Council.
Each member state has a seat at the Council, and for almost all issues a veto. Each member state is democratic, therefore the EU itself is entirely democratic. That doesn't of course mean the right decisions are always made!
mytailorisrich · 34m ago
Except the Commission and Von Der Leyen keep pushing to assert themselves as an executive branch.
mytailorisrich · 34m ago
The only solution is to stop the EU level power grab by formally restricting what the EU can do and to make sure member states remain where most of the power lies.
The US have that. The EU does not so as time passes the EU's power keeps creeping up.
boxed · 22m ago
The US has that in theory, just like the limits on the president. But in practice the US has been centralizing power since the start, and the EU has a looooong way to go to come even close.
mrktf · 1h ago
Yes, sad part it will be implemented and I betting even in worse form than it is proposed... And worst part of it "safety" it for current governing party to destroy any opposition.
My wild guess it will voted for with overwhelming majority using "times changed" argument.
FinnLobsien · 50m ago
Let's hope it will be implemented in typical "Germany does anything on the computer" fashion where they endlessly debate into a theoretically comprehensive, but impossible to implement solution.
ta1243 · 49m ago
The only way to win the argument is to win the argument with the public.
In the UK the public overwhelmingly support the age controls, so even political parties who would otherwise oppose it just stay silent, because the public narrative
You have to shift the narrative. Farage does this - he's finally after 20 years managed to get elected to parliament, he's head of a company with 4 MPs, same say as the Greens, about the same as the nationalists, yet for 20 years he has steered the conversation and got what he wants time after time
iLoveOncall · 40m ago
> In the UK the public overwhelmingly support the age controls
This couldn't be further from the truth.
People usually support the idea if asked on the street in passing, but don't support the implementation at all.
> he's head of a company with 4 MPs, same say as the Greens
The election system has been working against him. At the last general election Reform got a larger share of the vote than the Lib Dems, yet the result is that they got 5 MPs while the Lib Dems got 72.
The Brexit referendum and the current national polls that put Reform in first place at 27% (YouGov) show that they are not just "steering the conversation". When people's converns keep being ignored at one point someone will come up to fill this "gap in the market", this is legitimate and how democracy works.
mihaaly · 35m ago
The loudest and the weirdest get the most airtime. Not all conversations are golden. He is a lying, opportunistic, self-existence driven ass. Farage is not a reference for how to do things, not even close, not at all!
It is of course unfortunate that a big part of the population is heavily influenceable by almost anything that has some scary perspective, in whatever size, over-considering dangers to opportunities to the extremes (want to eliminate dangers, hopelessly), also can only hear what is too loud, so the real democratic conversations and resulting decisions are distorted a lot. Better focus on improving this, than put a self centered ass on the pedestal to follow!
ljm · 19m ago
Farage only has this traction because he's financed and platformed by interests (Russia, conservative Christian groups in the US, right wing media) that benefit from the division his inflammatory politics creates. This gives him and his party a disproportionate amount of attention compared to other, larger parties with more MPs.
The playbook that was overwhelmingly successful for making Brexit happen is being used again, but this time for immigration.
The fact he got elected as MP only serves to give credibility to his backers' narrative, given that he does not serve his constituency and is too busy schmoozing the US right wing. At one point in time he would have been forced to resign in disgrace for backroom dealing like this (as previous MPs have before).
timpera · 1h ago
It's not the end of the fight, but it's great to see that the efforts are working! I sent a handwritten letter to my MPs a few weeks ago about this issue but no answer so far...
riedel · 1h ago
They oppose breaking encryption, however, I see no true opposition to on device scanning, which is a bit worrying.
>The BMI representative explained that they could not fully support the Danish position. They were, for example, opposed to breaking the encryption. The goal was to develop a unified compromise proposal – also to prevent the interim regulation from expiring. [0]
There is no on-device scanning without compromising privacy. Scanning that can detect child abuse can also detect human rights activists, investigative journalists, and so on. I imagine this technology can be easily used by the government to identify journalists by scanning for material related to their investigation.
On-device scanning is a fabrication that Apple foolishly introduced to the mainstream, and one that rabid politicians bit into and refuse to let go.
ACCount37 · 14m ago
Some say "Apple got too much shit for on device scanning". I think they didn't get nearly enough.
If you as much as give the "think of the children" crowd an inch, they'll take a mile. And giving them on device scanning was way more than "an inch".
lukan · 1h ago
"Es sei klar, dass privater, vertraulicher Austausch auch weiterhin privat sein müsse."
"Private communication needs to stay private"
I interprete this as not having a dumb police bot installed on my devices checking all my communication. That sometimes by misstake sends very private pictures away, because it missclassified.
This is what chat control means and I believe if most people would understand it, they would not be in support of it. It is no coincidence, that the outcry mainly happens in tech affine groups.
Dilettante_ · 51m ago
I bet what the politicians mean is "we have to make sure our surveillance is safe, like our digital health data, so that no bad actors can tap it". The only one who should be reading your messages is you, the sender, and the government.
Raed667 · 1h ago
Unless there is a law that says that the fundamental right to privacy is protected then we're bound to repeat this ordeal every couple of years.
BSDobelix · 53m ago
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948):
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with their privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honor and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks
_ink_ · 43m ago
It's also in the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). But that has a big loop whole.
Article 8: Right to privacy
1. Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.
2. There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.
silverliver · 42m ago
Are all UN nations bound to this declaration or at least those joining after 1948?
flowerthoughts · 26m ago
No, human rights and children's rights declarations are ratified individually.
tgv · 46m ago
Sounds like the European Court of Human Rights would annul it, but you can't be sure.
baranul · 8m ago
This is correct, but also the problem. Various governments and organizations don't want to respect privacy, because they see it as a means of control and profit.
contrarian1234 · 52m ago
I don't mean this in an antagonistic way, but has anyone clearly articulated a right to privacy in a clear succinct way? Unlike other human rights, the right to privacy has always been a bit fuzzy with a ton of exceptions and caveats
I just find it hard to imagine the right to privacy encoded in to law in a way that would block this. For instance there is a right to privacy in the US, but it's in a completely idiotic way. The 14th Amendment doesn't talk about privacy in any way, and it's some legal contortions and mental gymnastics that are upholding any right to privacy there.
Geee · 28m ago
It's simple game theory. If one player (government) has access to private information of all players (citizens), then it's not possible to keep the government from winning, i.e. becoming tyrannical. Losing privacy equals losing liberty.
zarzavat · 57m ago
Between this and Google locking down Android, one day the only way to get secure communications will be to buy Huawei etc. Thank God for China, bastion of free speech.
mrtksn · 1h ago
IIRC It's Denmark that keeps pushing for this. Is there anyone here to give more background on that?
BSDobelix · 48m ago
>>Return of chat control: Something is rotten in the state of Denmark
The unfortunate reality is that a single largest lobbyist for Chat Control in the EU is, ironically, the US, namely the US intel community-affiliated orgs like Thorn, WeProtect, etc. The EU bureaucrats are gullible, and it's no excuse of course, however there's a reason why every time there's a new driver, a new country behind Chat Control proposals. This has been part of coordinated U.S. signals collection strategy. Nobody in Europe stands to gain anything from this besides the US as all tech solutions for this are provided by US companies and agencies alone. The boards of these orgs are crawling with Washington guys, & their activity is limited to foreign countries. Not once have they attempted anything of the sort on US soil.
Hmm, maybe the anti-chatControl movement should add some anti-Americanism in it then?
tucnak · 37m ago
I reckon that would only serve to play into their hands. There is just enough plausible deniability for conspiracy-theory optics. Moreover, European politicians really hate to be publicly humiliated like that, so it might as well achieve the opposite from desired effect. The Balkan Insight findings, among other journalistic results, were published years ago, and it had little, if any effect. The audience that would resonate with anti-American messaging on the subject are already catalysed contra ChatControl, and the undecided would just read this as conspiracy theory...
tcldr · 59m ago
With a warrant from a judge people should be compelled to provide access to their encrypted files or be in contempt of court with all that entails. Anything else is overreach.
schroeding · 20m ago
You cannot prove the absence of e.g. a Veracrypt hidden volume or similar, though. Even if you honestly give up your key, you could still be either
A) held in contempt of court, if the authorities do not find what they expect for some reason and accuse you of using such techniques or
B) if you specify that such behaviour by law enforcement is overreach, have a clean way out for criminals, codified in law, heavily damaging the impact you may expect of such a law.
Y_Y · 4m ago
What's the difference between that and an incriminating paper document that the police believe you have hidden somewhere in the vast woods?
heikkilevanto · 45m ago
Wonderful idea. All I need to is to create an encrypted file with pedo pictures or terrorist plans or just white noise, send a copy to all my enemies, and tip off the authorities.
boxed · 20m ago
And what happens when your enemies can't produce the decryption key?
Kelteseth · 1h ago
Proud to be a German today, for sure :)
inglor_cz · 1h ago
Yay for Dobrindt and vdL losing this fight :)
She is not called Zensursula without a reason.
riedel · 1h ago
I think the front lines are not that clear. Zensursula was actually a termed coined because she wanted the German equivalent of the online safety act in Germany back in the days. The 'Stasi 2.0' initiative (data retention at ISPs and online 'raids') was backed by some people in CDU and SPD (current ruling coalition). IMHO online safety (censorship) and chat control (privacy invasion) are different beasts, with different lobby groups as well.
Dilettante_ · 39m ago
I mainly remember the Zensursula title in connection with the ISP-level DNS-blocking initiative (the Stopsign thing) which was to combat CSAM.
I remember all the nerds going "That's a slippery slope to blocking other stuff as well though", and being dismissed. Now we got the CUII blocking libgen, scihub, piracy sites and as I recently read on HN, russia today(that's not the cuii I'm pretty sure, but same mechanism).
egorfine · 1h ago
Excellent win!
See you next time.
teekert · 1h ago
Next time, when the proposal is worse, when less people care, and the methods to stop it no longer exist.
portaouflop · 52m ago
The struggle never stops, that is part of the human condition - you should embrace this endless cycle with confidence instead of cynical defeatism
antonvs · 6m ago
Dormammu, I've come to bargain
mutkach · 50m ago
Why would you really need something like that in a non-totalitarian state? Basically, it follows the russian playbook (essentially the same 'language' - safety concerns), but instead of the FSB, who is the beneficiary actor in this case?
pembrook · 43m ago
Many people working in government wish they were administering a totalitarian state, and would be the beneficiary actors.
Government is a job that self-selects for people who either want safety or power more than anything else, given it pays far less than the private sector. Both the safety people and the power people want to reduce public freedom and the ability to do things.
The only way we keep these people from this is the threat of voting them out of their jobs. But they are more motivated than we are, so they usually win over time.
deafpolygon · 22m ago
Happy to see the NL here in opposition to ChatControl! The political climate here is slowly pushing to the right, which I'm not happy about. But there seems to be voices getting louder from the left. So that leaves me with hope!
liendolucas · 1h ago
Apparently Italy will support it. This is absolutely infuriating and it will fail miserably. Encryption can't he stopped no matter what law gets out there and any politician voting in favor shows how ignorants they are.
Instead of discussing WHY "owned" mobile phones have a short lifespan and we can't truly do whatever we want with them (be at the hardware/software level) and forced to choose between the apple and google duopoly, we get into these lousy law debates about privacy.
Why doesn't the EU put effort in paving the way for a more open and free tech world when we rely 100% on propietary technology that comes from the other side of the Atlantic?
guappa · 1h ago
Because USA sends their ambassadors to threaten you if think the free market is free and decide to no longer buy from them.
As long as I remember there has been these initiatives in EU. They have been all blocked so far, or turned into something reasonable, but there will always be a new try.
It's easy to blame EU lobbyism, but as the situation in UK shows, the EU legislative process can also used to save us from ourselves.
That said, how come we haven't seen massive antitrust action against the likes of Google? You only have to follow the money here.
Hamuko · 1h ago
Glad that my country (Finland) is also on the correct side of this. Disappointed that our Nordic and Baltic neighbours are not though. Would've expected more, especially from Estonia.
jeltz · 1h ago
Sweden and Denmark are some of the main drivers of this proposal. As a Swede I am a bit unclear why as while our politicians are quite pro-survelliance they have spent much more political capital than reasonable.
One possible reason seems to be lobbyism and shady connections to surveillance tech companies and various shady non-profits
> Johansson, however, has not blinked. “The privacy advocates sound very loud,” the commissioner said in a speech in November 2021. “But someone must also speak for the children.”
Literal "Won't anybody think of the children" moment.
42lux · 13m ago
Look at it from their perspective. Most critics completely dismiss the 'think of the children' argument and simply respond with 'not like this' or with a meme statement like you. It becomes incredibly easy as fallback position because there's no substantial counterargument or original idea for the problem from the opposing side.
supermatt · 25m ago
> Disappointed that our Nordic and Baltic neighbours are not though
Why do you think the Baltics are in favour? Are there some announcements they have made?
42lux · 12m ago
They argue for national security instead of privacy for the individual with Russia at their borders.
supermatt · 8m ago
Ah, its you... Are you spreading falsehoods again or do you have an actual link to where they have each stated they are in favour of chat control?
inglor_cz · 1h ago
Yesss.
It seems that public pressure pays off.
During the first iterations of Chat Control, I was pretty much the first source (a poor blogger with about ten thousand irregular readers!!) that wrote about it in Czech. It was surreal to break news on something THAT important (and blatantly unconstitutional in Czechia), while all the bigger media just slept ... and slept ... and slept ... Almost bizarre, I felt as if I was watching news from a parallel universe where that thing just does not exist.
The latest round was already much better covered by the media, including the publicly paid TV and radio. It took them three years, but they noticed. It was also more discussed on the Internet. Slovakia flipped its position precisely due to grassroots pressure.
sunaookami · 34m ago
German public broadcaster published a commentary last year after Chat Control was blocked saying that "child safety needs to wait" and lamenting that it didn't get through. Absolutely horrifying how much distance the media has from the people.
kriro · 1h ago
Thank you for doing that nad being a voice for liberty.
andrepd · 1h ago
> It was surreal to break news on something THAT important (and blatantly unconstitutional in Czechia), while all the bigger media just slept ... and slept ... and slept ...
Unfortunately it's the pyramid of Maslow. It's hard to make people care about something that seems academic when there are much more pressing political problems crushing people and making sure they don't have space to think about anything else.
It's hard to make people care about privacy principles when they can't afford a house anymore.
inglor_cz · 57m ago
That too, but my experience was that a huge part of the problem was sheer ignorance.
When informed about those plans, most people actually react with some disgust. But the European Commission was really trying to be low-key around this, and the media usually jump on loud scandals first. Too few journalists are willing to poke around in the huge undercurrent of not-very-public issues and fish for some deadly denizens there.
More publicity definitely helped the freedom's cause here.
ur-whale · 1h ago
Funny how the map shows a clear north/south divide (modulo some nordics).
Looks like latin cultures don't really care about being spied on by they governments.
monegator · 1h ago
* There is absolute ZERO information about this in the news, not even from the privacy authority
* There is little to no faith in our elected officials, especially from _that_ side
* Also people don't seem to care, all invested in the "i have nothing to hide" mentality
xeonmc · 40m ago
Where do Switzerland fall on the map?
Dilettante_ · 37m ago
Switzerland is not a part of the EU.
andrepd · 1h ago
"Latin cultures" is a really wild way to put it, when Denmark has been the most prominent promoter of the initiative.
This is a map of the government's positions, not even the parliament much less the public, and therefore a picture of whatever happen to be the parties in charge at the current time.
riffraff · 52m ago
ireland and latvia, classic latin shenanigans.
reorder9695 · 25m ago
In Ireland this isn't something the public really even knows was proposed, I highly doubt the public would be in support of this, although can't be sure about it. You would think given the country's history they wouldn't be in favour of government overreach in this way but you never know.
izacus · 56m ago
"Some nordics" are MOST of the nordics, meaning - all the north though.
jansan · 1h ago
Even if they did, I am sure this would have been toppled by our constitutional court. You have to know that our police is not allowed to scan number plates of cars entering or leaving the country due to privacy concerns. How on earth would anyone think that lifting our dearly held fundamental right of "mail privacy" is ok?
freehorse · 58m ago
If this was becoming an EU regulation, constitutional courts can decide to overrun constitution to uphold it (as has happened in the past plenty).
What this implies for the democratic values eu is supposed to represent is an interesting discussion.
doikor · 49m ago
This isn’t how EU regulation/directives work as they are not laws.
Only way this can come into force in a member country is that country making their own law implementing it. It is at that point that constitutionality should be checked and the law stopped from being implemented.
freehorse · 6m ago
In the case it is declared unconstitutional, there are two options: take the fight to the eu/amend the law, or change the constitution. The latter is more probable than the former in the political climate of our times. So we are talking at best for some delay in implementing it.
izacus · 55m ago
The claim that this can "overrun constitution" has not been true at all which we've seen in examples of other directives.
freehorse · 10m ago
These are not simple questions, especially for people who have not studied law, but constitutional courts have decided in the past to either disregard or not such conflicts. Even if they don't, this may just result to the constitution been amended after some years by the parliament in order to comply to eu law. There is precedence of eu primacy and I do not see anything that can guarantee that a constitutional court will actually rule this way or the other here.
ManBeardPc · 1h ago
It would probably be toppled by courts, yes. Anyway, meanwhile they already start implementing it, developing the technology and infrastructure they can base on the next time where they basically reintroduce the same illegal laws in a new name. So companies and governments already have to spent huge sums of resources to introduce it and may fall into the sunken-cost fallacy. "If we now already have it we can also use it (for something else)"?
uyzstvqs · 1h ago
Even if it's EU regulation? My experience is that you get told that EU regulation and international treaties are "above our national democratic/justice system", and that we can't do anything about it.
klinch · 1h ago
IANAL - but when EU regulation and national law regarding civil rights conflict then the citizen has the "union set" of all guaranteed rights. Or in other words: A member state can grant additional civil rights (on top of the EU charta) but can't take them away.
wtbdbrrr · 35m ago
someone has to prove illicit connections to private companies and potentially black markets. the data is guaranteed to end up in the wrong hands which will have a worse impact on the lives of citizens, workers as much as educated ones, and definitely officials; how to better gain dirt on someone if the law supports breaking encryption and they falsely believe their state of the art messaging app is worth more than the skeletons in their closets?
at the least the basic human rights and privacy laws should be on everyones' side ... except rapists, the many kinds of violent abusers, murderers, especially the genocidal kind, drug punchers, and these fuckers roofying kids in clubs and bars just to have sex ... I probably forgot some ... sorry I didn't stay on topic.
As Freud wanted to let us know, the ageing rich are perverts with enough means to hide any crime ... then they made him bend over and invent the Oedipus complex, ffs
the only way for them to create an argument for ChatControl is more terrorism or some fucked up crimes against children so this damn thing is a sure-fire shitstorm with recursive, bad yields.
I'm strongly in favor of giving the parliament the ability to propose laws (directives). Currently only the comission can do that.
The way it seems to work in practice (here at least) is most partisan/normative legislation goes through the lower house upwards
And bipartisan (or broadly unpopular or highly technical) legislation goes from the upper house down
It’s more complicated than that, but a one way flow committee sounds extremely restrictive for meaningful reform
A small number of pathways is a good thing, one lone process is probably not (you risk over fitting on both sides)
Edit: Australian legislation has a lot of flaws, but this multimodal setup from my experience is not one of them
The EU system is also not without its flaws but it's not the worst. Enacting broad, sweeping legislation is cumbersome and difficult which is a feature, not a bug. If we had a more streamlined system we'd probably already have chat control by now.
In theory, if parliament had the power to propose legislation, the council would still be able to shoot those bills down, assuming no other changes to the EU structure.
On the other hand, I'm thinking can we find 9 unpaid volunteers on HN to do the same?
Each member state has a seat at the Council, and for almost all issues a veto. Each member state is democratic, therefore the EU itself is entirely democratic. That doesn't of course mean the right decisions are always made!
The US have that. The EU does not so as time passes the EU's power keeps creeping up.
My wild guess it will voted for with overwhelming majority using "times changed" argument.
In the UK the public overwhelmingly support the age controls, so even political parties who would otherwise oppose it just stay silent, because the public narrative
You have to shift the narrative. Farage does this - he's finally after 20 years managed to get elected to parliament, he's head of a company with 4 MPs, same say as the Greens, about the same as the nationalists, yet for 20 years he has steered the conversation and got what he wants time after time
This couldn't be further from the truth.
People usually support the idea if asked on the street in passing, but don't support the implementation at all.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GSKwf4AIlI
The election system has been working against him. At the last general election Reform got a larger share of the vote than the Lib Dems, yet the result is that they got 5 MPs while the Lib Dems got 72.
The Brexit referendum and the current national polls that put Reform in first place at 27% (YouGov) show that they are not just "steering the conversation". When people's converns keep being ignored at one point someone will come up to fill this "gap in the market", this is legitimate and how democracy works.
It is of course unfortunate that a big part of the population is heavily influenceable by almost anything that has some scary perspective, in whatever size, over-considering dangers to opportunities to the extremes (want to eliminate dangers, hopelessly), also can only hear what is too loud, so the real democratic conversations and resulting decisions are distorted a lot. Better focus on improving this, than put a self centered ass on the pedestal to follow!
The playbook that was overwhelmingly successful for making Brexit happen is being used again, but this time for immigration.
The fact he got elected as MP only serves to give credibility to his backers' narrative, given that he does not serve his constituency and is too busy schmoozing the US right wing. At one point in time he would have been forced to resign in disgrace for backroom dealing like this (as previous MPs have before).
>The BMI representative explained that they could not fully support the Danish position. They were, for example, opposed to breaking the encryption. The goal was to develop a unified compromise proposal – also to prevent the interim regulation from expiring. [0]
Edit: source [0] https://www.bundestag.de/presse/hib/kurzmeldungen-1108356
On-device scanning is a fabrication that Apple foolishly introduced to the mainstream, and one that rabid politicians bit into and refuse to let go.
If you as much as give the "think of the children" crowd an inch, they'll take a mile. And giving them on device scanning was way more than "an inch".
"Private communication needs to stay private"
I interprete this as not having a dumb police bot installed on my devices checking all my communication. That sometimes by misstake sends very private pictures away, because it missclassified.
This is what chat control means and I believe if most people would understand it, they would not be in support of it. It is no coincidence, that the outcry mainly happens in tech affine groups.
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with their privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honor and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks
Article 8: Right to privacy
1. Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence. 2. There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.
I just find it hard to imagine the right to privacy encoded in to law in a way that would block this. For instance there is a right to privacy in the US, but it's in a completely idiotic way. The 14th Amendment doesn't talk about privacy in any way, and it's some legal contortions and mental gymnastics that are upholding any right to privacy there.
https://www.euronews.com/next/2025/08/08/return-of-chat-cont...
See https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=44929535
A) held in contempt of court, if the authorities do not find what they expect for some reason and accuse you of using such techniques or
B) if you specify that such behaviour by law enforcement is overreach, have a clean way out for criminals, codified in law, heavily damaging the impact you may expect of such a law.
She is not called Zensursula without a reason.
I remember all the nerds going "That's a slippery slope to blocking other stuff as well though", and being dismissed. Now we got the CUII blocking libgen, scihub, piracy sites and as I recently read on HN, russia today(that's not the cuii I'm pretty sure, but same mechanism).
See you next time.
Government is a job that self-selects for people who either want safety or power more than anything else, given it pays far less than the private sector. Both the safety people and the power people want to reduce public freedom and the ability to do things.
The only way we keep these people from this is the threat of voting them out of their jobs. But they are more motivated than we are, so they usually win over time.
Instead of discussing WHY "owned" mobile phones have a short lifespan and we can't truly do whatever we want with them (be at the hardware/software level) and forced to choose between the apple and google duopoly, we get into these lousy law debates about privacy.
Why doesn't the EU put effort in paving the way for a more open and free tech world when we rely 100% on propietary technology that comes from the other side of the Atlantic?
https://lwn.net/Articles/1013776/
"Think of the children" will never die.
That said, how come we haven't seen massive antitrust action against the likes of Google? You only have to follow the money here.
One possible reason seems to be lobbyism and shady connections to surveillance tech companies and various shady non-profits
https://balkaninsight.com/2023/09/25/who-benefits-inside-the...
Literal "Won't anybody think of the children" moment.
Why do you think the Baltics are in favour? Are there some announcements they have made?
It seems that public pressure pays off.
During the first iterations of Chat Control, I was pretty much the first source (a poor blogger with about ten thousand irregular readers!!) that wrote about it in Czech. It was surreal to break news on something THAT important (and blatantly unconstitutional in Czechia), while all the bigger media just slept ... and slept ... and slept ... Almost bizarre, I felt as if I was watching news from a parallel universe where that thing just does not exist.
The latest round was already much better covered by the media, including the publicly paid TV and radio. It took them three years, but they noticed. It was also more discussed on the Internet. Slovakia flipped its position precisely due to grassroots pressure.
Unfortunately it's the pyramid of Maslow. It's hard to make people care about something that seems academic when there are much more pressing political problems crushing people and making sure they don't have space to think about anything else.
It's hard to make people care about privacy principles when they can't afford a house anymore.
When informed about those plans, most people actually react with some disgust. But the European Commission was really trying to be low-key around this, and the media usually jump on loud scandals first. Too few journalists are willing to poke around in the huge undercurrent of not-very-public issues and fish for some deadly denizens there.
More publicity definitely helped the freedom's cause here.
Looks like latin cultures don't really care about being spied on by they governments.
* There is little to no faith in our elected officials, especially from _that_ side
* Also people don't seem to care, all invested in the "i have nothing to hide" mentality
This is a map of the government's positions, not even the parliament much less the public, and therefore a picture of whatever happen to be the parties in charge at the current time.
What this implies for the democratic values eu is supposed to represent is an interesting discussion.
Only way this can come into force in a member country is that country making their own law implementing it. It is at that point that constitutionality should be checked and the law stopped from being implemented.
at the least the basic human rights and privacy laws should be on everyones' side ... except rapists, the many kinds of violent abusers, murderers, especially the genocidal kind, drug punchers, and these fuckers roofying kids in clubs and bars just to have sex ... I probably forgot some ... sorry I didn't stay on topic.
As Freud wanted to let us know, the ageing rich are perverts with enough means to hide any crime ... then they made him bend over and invent the Oedipus complex, ffs
the only way for them to create an argument for ChatControl is more terrorism or some fucked up crimes against children so this damn thing is a sure-fire shitstorm with recursive, bad yields.