Free speech is only really a thing in the US. Many in the EU love to prosecute and control speech they don't like usually with the vague and legally undefined "hate speech" knock out argument.
Is this an active "undecided" or a "we restarted the count so everyone is undecided again" situation? France flipped, but Macron is more geopolitically mercurial than the average world leader.
I really don't get it. It's against the German constitution and yet there are still politicians pushing for that, again and again. We should make it mandatory that when something is clearly against the constitution you loose your job as a politician. It won't work anyway. It's the same spiel wasting so much money and time.
Do we know which lobby group/party is pushing for that yet again?
Time to move to self hosted messaging platforms or go back to GPG encrypted messages.
And politicians complain that democracy is losing it's appeal! What's the difference between what the EU wants to do and what is being done in autocracies like China and Russia?
Snooping on all messages and conversations, even the Stasi did not have this much power!
They make it really difficult to fight any of this.
You have to, individually
- find a representative, their contact info, state your case, hope it's the correct person, hope your mail doesn't go unnoticed, hope that it will be properly read, hope it changes their mind.
This is "lobbying" by the people in a disorganised way, trying to fight organised lobbying.
This is a barrier that puts lots of people off, even if they have strong feelings about it.
I wish there was an easier way for people to say they are against this
I donate to an org that supports free speech. They do a good job for me. If there’s something they need a signature on I’ll generally follow their instructions and sign it.
I was told by a Brussels lobbyist a long time ago that the EU was by design made for them. I then was shocked how in your face it is within the EU walls.
In a sense citizens also have legitimate lobby groups, they are the political parties we know.
Foreign countries also lobby. Now recently what should worry Europeans is they don't bother anymore and just wipe the floor with the EU representative in front of everybody like Xi and Trump did last week.
So you can vote and lobby but I don't think it is enough today. We should first opt out of a lot of things and defend ourselves digitally:
- Buy some cheap LoRa devices and give some to your friends. Get into meshtastic and reticulum
- Buy some cheap HaLow WiFi devices and get into things like OpenWrt and B.A.T.M.A.N
- Self host as much as you can (It is worth doing just to avoid the Cloudflare " verify you are human" thing)
- Look back into things like Ethereum and good projects, they slowly made some real progress. Crypto is not only about price, annoying bitcoin bros and memecoins. It is still bad but banks and credit card companies are worst.
- Get some useful skills.
We have entered some kind of world war already and it will most likely include some ugly cyberattacks. In that context ChatControl matters much less and you can kill two birds with one stone.
I am still looking for a realistic solution to the email problem. If you have a suggestion I am really listening.
There is no way to resolve these problems. Every answer involves capitulation to governments with loss of personal freedoms.
One has to admit the system is fundamentally broken. Once this is accepted, and people stop investing themselves further in the political system, then we will see change.
Sadly, the change is already planned for and will likely be a jump to some sort of communistic, ai-managed technocracy. However, it is also an opportunity to make the point that force should be no part of a future system. People should be able to opt-in or opt-out. That's freedom.
Ultimately if you want politicians not to do this then you need to start pooling your resources and just paying them not to, because it's pretty obvious with how all this stuff is getting rolled out in a month that someone someone has bankrolled it.
Argh, red and green colors are not great for accessibility, I had to look hard to find the countries that were opposed/neutral (Poland, Austria and Netherlands, afaict)
It's actually scamier than that. They only propose if they know they have enough votes to win. Last time they withdrew when they realized they would lose.
Selfhosting Matrix might be a solution if this passes. The surveillance is to be installed at the app level, imposed on the distributing companies (say, the Signal front-end), this is not a ban on. But if you're booting up your own application, it might at the very least be a legal grey area whether or not you need to implement chat control, so you could just not and the data will still be E2EE in travel for now. Easier than asking everyone you know to use GPG
Technically minded people and criminals will know how to use this technology. The general innocent population will be surveilled. This law is useless at fighting the objective at protecting the children.
It is very unlikely that E2E encryption will be available anywhere except decentralized protocols. You should already have been assuming any centralized actors are just pinkyswearing. The real question is — what do you really need E2E encryption for, in the sense of being resilient against ALL actors?
More money for militarization, 5% NATO tax, money towards buying fossil fuels from the US. More moves towards surveillance of its own people. Europe is starting to look pretty unappealing.
I've been fighting for our right to online privacy since the late 90s. And frankly, I feel burnt out. Politicians keep coming up with the same harebrained ideas. Their slippery slope is never as slippery as that of the oppressive regimes of yore. They will always use their powers for good. They will protect us, whereas the evil regimes wanted to control us. Sigh. And who knows, maybe they actually mean well .... but the slope remains just as slippery.
Aside from the infamous privacy aspects, I'm wondering about the feasibility and the energy cost of running continously ML algos to scan content on a phone.
Given that the private malware providers aren't accountable for it, I guess that it will noticeably degrade the average battery life for phones in the EU.
Ironically, one comment a legislator made was: if you can quantify the carbon cost of this proposal, they’re much more likely to take it seriously than any arguments about privacy.
That chat control attempt is a direct result of the paradox of tolerance.
The thing that makes me sick to my stomach is that some of the worst of worst intolerant discourse is going to be allowed and protected because it's "religious": because we are open, tolerant, societies we are tolerant with intolerance.
If you have a holy book that calls for killing non-believers and taking their wive and daughters as sex slaves: that's fine because, see, it's religious.
If you want to discuss that holy book online with your fellow believers: that's fine because, see, it's religious.
But any talk criticizing that is going to be criminalized, crushed, pointed out as "far right" or any non-sense like that.
It's shooting the messenger.
Guess what's one of the issue concerning many people in a great many european cities at the moment? People feeling that religious extremism and obscurantism, middle-age style, is making a comeback.
And people are organizing marches all over the EU.
The last thing the EU wants is people on social media organizing themselves and protesting because they don't want the EU to become the next Syria or Somalia: most in the EU do not want the EU to become an intolerant continent.
You could say that any chat control is bad. But that chat control is going to be used prevent the criticism of intolerance.
It's really sad: I already moved three times, lived over four different countries (all in the EU) and now I'm planning to leave the EU while I still can (not that there are that many great places where I can realistically go).
P.S: for those in the US you should cherish your first amendment
'ChatControl' = proposed EU-wide framework for detecting and reporting text keywords, images, and videos in all digital private communications, nominally to prevent CSAM.
Note to poster if they happen to see this: as pointed out there's alt text... But it's plain wrong, saying "Countries like Germany, Poland, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, and the Netherlands are in green, indicating opposition or neutrality" when only the Netherlands, Poland an Austria are opposed; it's probably just been copied from an older version and could use updating.
46 comments
[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 77.7 ms ] threadLeak: Many countries that said NO to #ChatControl in 2024 are now undecided—even though the 2025 plan is even more extreme!
The vote is THIS October.
Tell your government to #StopChatControl!
Act now: https://chatcontrol.eu
Original:
https://netzpolitik.org/2025/internes-protokoll-eu-juristen-...
Translated to English:
https://netzpolitik-org.translate.goog/2025/internes-protoko...
tldr: A US based surveillance company called Thorn has been lobbying for this for years.
‘Who Benefits?’ Inside the EU’s Fight over Scanning for Child Sex Content https://balkaninsight.com/2023/09/25/who-benefits-inside-the...
Chat control & Kutcher: Ombudsman criticizes secrecy https://www.heise.de/en/news/Chat-control-Kutcher-Ombudsman-...
And politicians complain that democracy is losing it's appeal! What's the difference between what the EU wants to do and what is being done in autocracies like China and Russia?
Snooping on all messages and conversations, even the Stasi did not have this much power!
You have to, individually - find a representative, their contact info, state your case, hope it's the correct person, hope your mail doesn't go unnoticed, hope that it will be properly read, hope it changes their mind.
This is "lobbying" by the people in a disorganised way, trying to fight organised lobbying.
This is a barrier that puts lots of people off, even if they have strong feelings about it.
I wish there was an easier way for people to say they are against this
In a sense citizens also have legitimate lobby groups, they are the political parties we know.
Foreign countries also lobby. Now recently what should worry Europeans is they don't bother anymore and just wipe the floor with the EU representative in front of everybody like Xi and Trump did last week.
So you can vote and lobby but I don't think it is enough today. We should first opt out of a lot of things and defend ourselves digitally:
- Buy some cheap LoRa devices and give some to your friends. Get into meshtastic and reticulum
- Buy some cheap HaLow WiFi devices and get into things like OpenWrt and B.A.T.M.A.N
- Self host as much as you can (It is worth doing just to avoid the Cloudflare " verify you are human" thing)
- Look back into things like Ethereum and good projects, they slowly made some real progress. Crypto is not only about price, annoying bitcoin bros and memecoins. It is still bad but banks and credit card companies are worst.
- Get some useful skills.
We have entered some kind of world war already and it will most likely include some ugly cyberattacks. In that context ChatControl matters much less and you can kill two birds with one stone.
I am still looking for a realistic solution to the email problem. If you have a suggestion I am really listening.
That's gighting against an organized crime syndicate. It requires coordination, resources and aim.
1984 is coming in its worst scenarious.
There will be no win for the people, no hope. Freedom is gone.
One has to admit the system is fundamentally broken. Once this is accepted, and people stop investing themselves further in the political system, then we will see change.
Sadly, the change is already planned for and will likely be a jump to some sort of communistic, ai-managed technocracy. However, it is also an opportunity to make the point that force should be no part of a future system. People should be able to opt-in or opt-out. That's freedom.
https://community.qbix.com/t/the-global-war-on-end-to-end-en...
It is very unlikely that E2E encryption will be available anywhere except decentralized protocols. You should already have been assuming any centralized actors are just pinkyswearing. The real question is — what do you really need E2E encryption for, in the sense of being resilient against ALL actors?
I've been fighting for our right to online privacy since the late 90s. And frankly, I feel burnt out. Politicians keep coming up with the same harebrained ideas. Their slippery slope is never as slippery as that of the oppressive regimes of yore. They will always use their powers for good. They will protect us, whereas the evil regimes wanted to control us. Sigh. And who knows, maybe they actually mean well .... but the slope remains just as slippery.
Given that the private malware providers aren't accountable for it, I guess that it will noticeably degrade the average battery life for phones in the EU.
Only charging your phones if you have 3+ AI subscriptions and comply with all anti encryption laws of course
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
It's all about the paradox of tolerance.
That chat control attempt is a direct result of the paradox of tolerance.
The thing that makes me sick to my stomach is that some of the worst of worst intolerant discourse is going to be allowed and protected because it's "religious": because we are open, tolerant, societies we are tolerant with intolerance.
If you have a holy book that calls for killing non-believers and taking their wive and daughters as sex slaves: that's fine because, see, it's religious.
If you want to discuss that holy book online with your fellow believers: that's fine because, see, it's religious.
But any talk criticizing that is going to be criminalized, crushed, pointed out as "far right" or any non-sense like that.
It's shooting the messenger.
Guess what's one of the issue concerning many people in a great many european cities at the moment? People feeling that religious extremism and obscurantism, middle-age style, is making a comeback.
And people are organizing marches all over the EU.
The last thing the EU wants is people on social media organizing themselves and protesting because they don't want the EU to become the next Syria or Somalia: most in the EU do not want the EU to become an intolerant continent.
You could say that any chat control is bad. But that chat control is going to be used prevent the criticism of intolerance.
It's really sad: I already moved three times, lived over four different countries (all in the EU) and now I'm planning to leave the EU while I still can (not that there are that many great places where I can realistically go).
P.S: for those in the US you should cherish your first amendment
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_to_Prevent_and_Comb...