It's questionable whether Chat Control would have survived an engagement with the EU's can't-believe-it's-not-a-constitution (to avoid annoying eurosceptics, efforts to recast the treaties as a constitution were abandoned); other mass-surveillance-y stuff, notably the Data Retention Directive, were nuked by the ECJ.
> However, Finland cannot support the most recent compromise proposal because it contains a detection order that has been found problematic from a constitutional standpoint.
Agreed. Some people say “I don’t have anything to hide”, but the actual fact is they don’t have anyone to hide from. It just takes one election, or a couple of years of political distress leading to a coup and you can find yourself on the other side from the government. You might find that the “normal” things “everyone” believes aren’t so well tolerated anymore, and things like laws turn out to be a little less powerful than you were promised. Once the infrastructure is built out, it’ll turn out the bad guys are perfectly capable of using it to suit their needs.
Good call, it is a weasel argument. Our current government coalition in Germany that is "against" it for publicity reasons use the exact same terminology. It just postpones the chat control issue though.
Slamming the door and making noise here is the way to go because your officials are dishonest about their intentions.
How do you make sure that "suspicion based" Chat Control can't be exploited? All client side scanning must be explicitly banned. The EU had an opportunity to do just that with their AI Act.
The "rule of law" like the "rules-based order" in geopolitics, in the net result. is a facade for the rule of the powerful who are usually corporations and oligarchs whom are protected by the gov because they control the politicians. We all heard about the E[stein files, and who is being protected. And we heard about the pedophile who was arrested in Las Vegas then allowed to flee. We all know that the law does not apply if you hold power. It's all about power.
Surveillance is the occupation of the mental space and results in modification of behavior. Default mass surveillance, or in other words suspicionless surveillance, then leads to the end of mental sovereignty and, therefore, freedom.
That is not a state governed by rule of law, but instead, a peoples being ruled by the power of surveillance.
I am an information totalist. The web/world would be a better place if ALL information was free and available to all. You could actually make informed decisions for yourself without being played by anyone.
A lot of negative comments here, many of which I agree with, but Germany opposing this is a net-good thing given how influential they are within the EU.
Good for Germany and the EU, but how (or why) is the rule of law supposed to make it a taboo? Is it thrown in just to sound nicer, or did they skip a few steps in the reasoning?
I heard "rule of law" being used to justify roughly the opposite (Russian laws, including mass surveillance and censorship), and neither that was clear; apparently it worked simply as an universal justification.
The usual definition is that there are written laws that apply to everyone equally, as opposed to a rule by decree and some kind of tyranny, and the laws do not change too often, are not made for particular occasions (so they do not turn into decrees effectively). So I'd think "suspicionless" -- that is, universal -- sounds closer to it, rather than selective/arbitrary surveillance on a suspicion. Unless such suspicion is at least decided by a court, without rubber-stamping.
Never seems to matter how many horror stories are written or have actually happened regarding totalitarian states, people just seem drawn to them, like they can't help themselves.
What absurd news to be hearing in 2025, that "western liberal democracy" states are discussing whether to have the power to listen in on everyone's conversations - something Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia could have only dreamed of.
19 comments
[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 36.9 ms ] thread> However, Finland cannot support the most recent compromise proposal because it contains a detection order that has been found problematic from a constitutional standpoint.
https://valtioneuvosto.fi/en/-/ministerial-committee-on-euro...
(Now the challenge is just holding politicians to it.)
The notion of encrypted private communication didn't exist a couple of decades ago and people are talking about it as necessary for rule of law.
There's a missing logical link in there somewhere.
There must not be a way to backdoor user devices, under any circumstances.
Slamming the door and making noise here is the way to go because your officials are dishonest about their intentions.
That is not a state governed by rule of law, but instead, a peoples being ruled by the power of surveillance.
we got any of those? please tell me so i can move there
Where should I send my money?
I heard "rule of law" being used to justify roughly the opposite (Russian laws, including mass surveillance and censorship), and neither that was clear; apparently it worked simply as an universal justification.
The usual definition is that there are written laws that apply to everyone equally, as opposed to a rule by decree and some kind of tyranny, and the laws do not change too often, are not made for particular occasions (so they do not turn into decrees effectively). So I'd think "suspicionless" -- that is, universal -- sounds closer to it, rather than selective/arbitrary surveillance on a suspicion. Unless such suspicion is at least decided by a court, without rubber-stamping.
What absurd news to be hearing in 2025, that "western liberal democracy" states are discussing whether to have the power to listen in on everyone's conversations - something Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia could have only dreamed of.