In this case, the phrase “consumer protections” is almost insulting when the things it’s supposedly protecting us from are a triviality compared to the horror show being introduced.
I see a significant distinction between these two things. And I see chat control as a significant intrusion in my personal life.
Laws and democracy is a constant fight, no democracy was complete and perfect the day it was announced.
We lost a battle now. And unlike people like you who only resort to insults I am not willing to give up just because of this setback. I will continue to fight for these rights.
Roberta Metsola's actions this week jeopardise the legitimacy of the EU project as a whole.
It's clear that member countries use the EU as a blame-laundering mechanism to pass domestically unpopular laws, but the forcing of this vote under the urgency procedure that requires absolute majority to reject, on the last EP session before summer break is so blatant that it might awaken people that might've overlooked the structural failures of the EU and finally radicalise them
It's absolutely legitimate to be upset. However, identifying a lawfare trick in a close vote to a dictatorship is serious hyperbole. I'm afraid that's counterproductive.
Many of us find it difficult to be relentlessly positive as we watch organizations that constantly paint themselves as the epitome of democracy act in a way counter to the repeatedly-expressed will of the people. I cannot smile my way into fascism.
If it's indeed the case, it adds more value than 100 comments explaining non-happening course corrections, and revolts, and backlashes they believe we'll see.
It's useful to add some cynicism in the mix (or in this case, pragmatism)
To understand whether/to what extent this is brazen, I'd be interested to learn the reasoning why urgency procedures are possible, and in particular, why the apparent majority against shouldn't have been enough, and what is needed to classify something as urgent.
Afaik, EU rules provide for urgent procedure only for proposals at first reading, while here it was used to compress a second reading vote and skip committee, just perfectly timed for the last sitting before recess.
The absolute majority seems to be an anti-paralysis instrument, where the onus is on the Parliament to reject something put in motion by the Council. I think the the asymmetry is that a vote to trigger the urgency procedure only requires a simple majority, whereas a rejection of that same legislation requires absolute majority.
To my reading, this reinforces the idea that Parliament is designed to be more of a rubber stamp for the Council.
The urgency procedure is not the issue here, the problem is that this was Parliament's second reading, and the treaties (article 294 TFEU) say:
> Second reading
> 7. If, within three months of such communication, the European Parliament:
> (a) approves the Council's position at first reading or has not taken a decision, the act concerned shall be deemed to have been adopted in the wording which corresponds to the position of the Council;
> (b) rejects, by a majority of its component members, the Council's position at first reading, the proposed act shall be deemed not to have been adopted;
> (c) proposes, by a majority of its component members, amendments to the Council's position at first reading, the text thus amended shall be forwarded to the Council and to the Commission, which shall deliver an opinion on those amendments.
It was the second reading, but was it also treated as such? (Because if so, it sounds like this would have been a rejection?) If not, what is the steelmanned reason for doing so?
I'm really surprised at the hurry. The EU, and many EU governments, have been ramming through deeply unpopular legislation at a breakneck pace for no apparent reason, lately.
It feels like the last turn in a board game where everyone is busy taking points with no regard for the impact of the decisions on the theoretical next turn - because there is no next turn. Its really weird.
Whenever you see people complaining that the EU is "too slow", more often than not it's because they benefit directly from EU rushing things without thinking.
At least in some member states, that's a well used pattern when the soccer world cup is on (as in: people are focused on something else).
Which at least has been going on in the last weeks.
for some godforsaken reason left-lib parties in europe think accepting infinity migrants forever is the most important thing to do
this is becoming more and more unpopular with the voters, leading to right wing parties surging across europe (Denmark, which has an immigration restrictionist left wing government doesnt seem to have an issue here, true mystery)
obviously the solution here is total control of the internet, so that you can suppress dissent
> for some godforsaken reason left-lib parties in europe think accepting infinity migrants forever is the most important thing to do
This is completely BS. Nobody wants to let in unlimited migrants.
The left wing parties just wish to honour existing international treaties which we have signed to allow genuine asylum seekers. There's processes in places to determine whether they deserve this. The right just want to turn their boats back as they approach (pushback) which is literally illegal.
It's important to realise though that asylum seekers are not the root cause of most of our issues even though they are portrayed as such by the right in deflection from the real issues. For example here in Holland the biggest societal issue is the farmers who pollute too many nitrogen compounds and that causes housing projects to be put on hold. The number of asylum seekers has been steadily decreasing over the years.
But farmers make up a huge piece of the right wing so they'll never take ownership of the problem. Better to deflect on someone else.
Numbers are going down, but in my area there are now 4 buildings with asylum seekers. Started with a hotel, then an office building, then some newly built expensive houses that were first up for rent and now rented for asylum seekers, and now another office building. Honoring existing treaties out of principle can also be put on hold when the situation changes.
If they are only asylum seekers, it means they are still in the validation process.
Unfortunately the hard-right has also defunded that process for many years, and have thus created this problem themselves. The agencies tasked with figuring out if asylum seekers have a legitimate claim are overwhelmed with all the work. This is purely a self-created problem (intended to gaslight the population in there being a huge 'immigrant problem').
From what I can tell, a big part of the problem in Europe is that people seeking asylum are prohibited from making a living (due to widespread belief in the lump of labor fallacy) and so have to be dependent on welfare.
Yes and when a government tries to do something about that (like Spain granting temporary permits so they can work and pay taxes) it angers the right even more.
The issues here are the same as they have been forever in every country; Spanish people simply are not going to do the jobs the immigrants are doing. This is the same in every country I lived in or visited, including the US. In Spain, most my uneducated neighbours feel too high to even work in bars, let alone pick fruit, shovel shit, pick up garbage etc. So who is going to do that besides immigrants who are eager to do it; a few generations later, they will vote right and complain about immigrants and will say they are too good to shovel shit, of course.
Look, you can either let people make a living and manage their own lives while contributing to society, or you can not let them make a living and ensure they're housed and fed. You can't be angry at A and also be angry at B.
Nice framing. How about C: not letting in financial refugees in in the first place or at least send them back at some point instead of giving them free citizenship and all its benefits?
> just don't want to see brown faces in the street?
They could be pink for all everyone should care about. The actual relevant distinction with real word implication is criminal statistics and per capita rates. Not to mention everyday real life bad experiences for people living outside of the sheltered silicon valley world view.
>countries they're from won't take them
That is just wrong. In many places it literally results in a brain drain.
> That is just wrong. In many places it literally results in a brain drain. Your position literally hurts already poor countries just because you want to see less white faces in the streets.
Countries are not entitled to keep their citizens by force to prop up their economy. If the person doesn't want to stay, why should they be forced to?
You might want to contemplate the fact that you're literally rehashing the same arguments that Soviets and East Germany used to justify their exit visas. Except you're doing it from the other end of the pipe.
> The left wing parties just wish to honour existing international treaties which we have signed to allow genuine asylum seekers.
But these are treaties are no longer fit for purpose, as can be seen by the boatloads of mostly young male economic migrants turning up in the UK to 'claim asylum'. People who've got thousands of euros to pay the small boats traffickers.
If they were refugees fleeing war or other dangers, you'd expect a lot more families - women, kids, the elderly - to be making the journey.
(Of course, legal migration to the UK is vastly higher than illegal arrivals. And this is the larger issue putting pressure on housing, healthcare, transport, and more. But the small boats are a glaring example of a broken system being exploited)
Well, don't forget some of these wars are caused by us. The Western countries invaded Iraq under false pretenses so Dubya could make his Halliburton buddies happy. As a result and pure neglect to form a legit democratic government after the war a power vacuum ensued which caused the rise of ISIS which contributed to the war in Syria. Which directly caused the mass migration on foot from Syria.
In this way we do have responsibility towards them. The migration from Africa is a different issue but it is already possible to quickly reject asylum-seekers from known-safe countries.
> Of course, legal migration to the UK is vastly higher than illegal arrivals. And this is the larger issue putting pressure on housing, healthcare, transport, and more.
Well exactly but nobody is talking about that. Everyone is talking about the asylum seekers. Which are only a small part of the issue.
And the pressure on housing is very multifaceted. A lot of NIMBYism when it comes to new construction, and boomers who have invested in the housing market and don't want to see their investment evaporate by more supply on the housing market. So the parties backed by those with money are always obstructing new construction and other means to make housing cheaper. This is a much bigger problem when it comes to housing than those few apartments granted to asylum seekers.
> The Western countries invaded Iraq under false pretenses
True, but I would say the current refugees are not those who most need refuge. Religious minorities who are the most threatened by ISIS are under-represented.
> it is already possible to quickly reject asylum-seekers from known-safe countries.
It does not happen though. it happens in the end, but the system in ridiculously slow and inefficient.
> And the pressure on housing is very multifaceted. A lot of NIMBYism when it comes to new construction, and boomers who have invested in the housing market and don't want to see their investment evaporate by more supply on the housing market.
Moral responsibility is not real responsibility that can be enforced at the point of a gun by anyone or any nation, and so this responsibility does not have to be assumed
1. highly inefficient: its slow and badly run.
2. seriously considers applications that clearly false - people from Canada and the EU do not need to claim asylum! Those numbers are tiny but it illustrates a winder spread problem. people who feel safe enough to return to the country they "fled" on holiday also clearly do not have a genuine claim.
3. It fails to provide a route for a lot of people who do have a genuine claim - e.g. religious minorities in the Middle East.
It is no longer true that the numbers of legal migrants are vastly higher because the government have decided that they need to cut the numbers of immigrants and the easiest way to do this is to cut legal immigration.
In Canada, there's been a lot of talk about how immigration, "broke the Canadian consensus," around immigration as a good thing.
The problem is, there never was a consensus around immigration. The Liberals own stats prove that. What there was was a consensus around multiculturalism and tolerance.
Immigration itself, was always split evenly among three camps in Canada: those who want more, those who want less, and those who think we have the right amount.
Trudeau & his fake leftist brigade many have ruined multiculturalism for a large portion of Canadians, permanently.
The promise (for the non-insane majority) was that immigration was going to save our economic bacon. That's the orthodox economist viewpoint after all.
Well, it didn't.
The minimum anyone would have to accept is that the economy went to shit while mass immigration was happening ... (in both EU and Canada). So I guess you don't have to accept causation, but they were happening simultaneously, so this reaction by the population is justified in that sense.
It's not even that some migration is need to save the economy.
You'd need pronatalist policies or you're going to be doing that "some immigration" for ever and ever.
Hm well then perhaps it's time to focus on saving "people," over the economy. Perhaps...states are actually best used to serve their people, instead of endless growth.
>for some godforsaken reason left-lib parties in europe think accepting infinity migrants forever is the most important thing to do
be warned citizen, you are committing a serious wrong and hate think and will hence be labeled nazi, fascist or any other dehumanizing word to legitimize violence against you. Please correct your mistake to protect our democracy.
War is less imminent now than ever. Ukraine has caused a ton of damage to Russia and at this point the Kremlin has more to worry about than EU countries (pretty much every Russian government ever is brought down from within).
No, leftist governments in the EU have failed to provide prosperity and failed in all their promises, now they're going for total control to try to stay in power.
Look at France, as soon as Le Pen was cleared to run for the presidency they start talking about anti "misinformation" laws...
I don't share this outlook, sadly - given that military figures especially around the Eastern side of EU keep saying military conflict with Russia is "inevitable" in the next 4 years. Of course - they are in the military, their job is specifically to look at the worst case scenarios. But I wouldn't be so sure the risk is not there.
I do think there's the possibility Russia attacks a NATO country in an attempt to save face. I don't think they have the manpower or equipment to sustain an assault that would require any level of mobilization from EU countries.
It's true. Rearming and mobilizing troops will cause a reciprocal reaction in your neighbors. Whether or not war is or was imminent is irrelevant; europe will manifest it regardless.
Leftist? Look at who voted for this before spewing such bullshit[1]. This is on socdems and conservatives. The whole reason this was up for vote again is because the conservative commission ignored the rules and scheduled it.
I presume hes using it as a shitty euphemism for pro mass migration. Conservative governments have kind of taken side on that front despite rethoric (see Boris wave of the conservatives, CDU and such)
"Conservative" parties in the EU are largely left by US standards... Like, Macron is conservative by Euro standards but Le Pen is obviously way further right.
The point is that the actual far right is rising all over Europe and will likely be ascendant in the next round of elections, the establishment is trying to stay in power.
I quite like my left wing social policy. It's benefited me greatly and the more desperate even more so. Sure I now pay more tax than I would in the US, but my school was free, my university education was practically free, when I got diagnosed with chronic disease, the process of diagnosis was free and even expedient as it was an emergency.
My friends are allowed to be as queer as they want to be, and those who don't want to see them are free to look away.
Those with mental issues are free from destitution as their employers weren't free to just fire them.
The state should work for the most people to live the most comfortable life possible. We would have the money for it, if it weren't for the trickle down virus that's still infected half our politicians.
And I can't in good conscience judge anyone for coming here, I would do the same and would want to be treated well as well. Not be put in a concentration camp paid for by the EU, or get my dinky shot by Frontex at high sea, just before reaching the border.
Are you calling Macron a "leftist"? It does help your argument because it's a tautology that "the leftists failed to provide prosperity" if the entire political spectrum counts as such.
They will rapidly reindustrialize when the first shots are fired. The EU's goal is the strategic defeat of Russia. What the common people think or want is irrelevant. All environmental and climate legislation that gets in the way will be waivered indefinitely until the war is over 5+ years of drone warfare and 100s of thousands dead.
This does not even make sense as a conspiracy theory.
Had "EU" wanted to hurt Russia there were was a thousand ways to do that. But they didn't. Instead they traded and built infrastructure. Most EU countries saw Russia as a partner before they invaded their neighbour in the most gruesome way possible.
If anything, the EU should have reacted sooner. It was shameful they didn't. You can't really pretend like nothing while an all out war is taking place on the same continent.
And then stop people from being able to afford cheaper stuff from china (without european middlemen) by implementinh a 3eur customs fee on an 1eur phone case!
That's a good thing. We complain about lack of industrialisation. China has historically protected their fledgling industries, if we want industrialisation back, we need to as well, to the detriment of mindless consumption of cheap stuff
But we want cheap stuff, we don't have unlimited money.
This law didn't open a phone case factory in europe, it just made the 1eur case cost ~5euros (vat is paid on customs too). The only alternative is to go to a local mall and buy a case there for 10-15euros, and it's the same chinese case, just more expensive, but the reseller pays a lot less tax, since they can buy 100 cases for 1eur and still pay just 3eur of customs on them.
So I, the consumer get 300% customs on that 1eur case (+vat on huge customs fee), while the mall kiosk gets 3% customs fee, how is that fair? And how will that build a phone case factory in europe?
Why not build the factory first instead? Have it make 2eur phone cases, and then the price raise would make me buy the european one, but for now, it's just makes me pay more for the same chinese stuff, and I can't spend the leftover money for a local beer at a local bar anymore, so stuff actually made in europe.
That's why the EU is a neutral pushover bowing down to US, China, Iran, India, Turkey, etc. They're trying to avoid any conflict since they have no energy and hard power to counter any confrontations, so they smile and nod to anything happening worldwide or push some stern words to social media, depending on the situation.
They thought climate change was the next war-level crisis, and worked towards that. They didn't anticipate the Ukraine invasion, or the Middle East blowing up again.
> They thought climate change was the next war-level crisis, and worked towards that.
Did we though? At least in Germany a bunch of anti-climate-change projects and changes have been and are being canceled and we're going back to coal and diesel. It seems we're optimizing to have no results and negative progress at the moment.
It's a US data pump, and the EU is a bunch of vassal states. That's the hurry, shutting down the data flow because the permissive legislation runs out is not allowed.
I think that's a little naive. This sort of legislation is much more useful in terms of managing the local population and what they are allowed to talk about than it is in terms of profit—except, I suppose, in the sense that holding companies liable for what is said with their software is unprofitable.
So long freedom, it’s been nice living in STASI free society for a while. Too bad power attracts the people who will make sure they keep it in their hands.
Honestly where do you even go if you want to get out from under this? The US was the option, but is clearly circling the drain. The EU is democracy theater at best, a democratic mandate that can be set aside any time it's inconvenient for Ashton Kutcher, and speedrunning the rebuilding of a new Soviet Union. Feels like a matter of time until they start building a new wall to keep you from leaving.
In all these places I imagine the people making these decisions are members of the populace. They need to be gently reminded that they are not more equal than others and people do not like their decision-making habits. The way anyone else engaging in anti-social behavior would be reprimanded.
Are you going to take your phone and laptop with you? If so, then it doesn't really matter where you're going. You'll be populating multiple surveillance systems regardless of where you choose to live.
Well, once you realise that the so-called "EU parliament" is nothing
but a lobbyist group (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qatar_corruption_scandal_at_th...) it is no longer surprising. To me nothing here is surprising, neither the
hurry nor any slowness.
My guess is that with non-left political movements on the rise better surveillance tools were needed to prevent them from winning the elections around europe.
I really don’t but any other reason, as other tools (legal and technological) are already in place.
If you look at who voted for chat control approval you would find that it's majority the currently in power centre right parties. The more far right or left you go the more likely they were against. It's like the one issue where AfD, die Linke and Greens are aligned. That suggests that it's most likely hard lobby that bribes the established class.
Nt being able to scan personal communications would break big tech platforms main monetisation strategy (selling peoples data).
To me it seems like the minority would be far more interested in implementing surveillance tools so they can target the majority in order to try and gain and maintain power.
None of these will be used to attack the far-right parties on the right though. They barely investigate those parties in the individual countries, but they focus more on the moderate left already.
Every time HN posts another one of these privacy-invading EU regulations, a bunch of pro-bureaucracy people are in here cheering on regulations and knocking down anyone who suggests that maybe this time they've gone too far.
Do they? What I read now and in the past is mostly Americans being proud somehow (with Trump doing whatever he feels like to fill his family's pockets).
Is it not comparable in this case? Two western rich nations being undemocratic. At least in the EU there is voting (pointless in this case, but often effective); the US dude just does whatever he wants while the people are against it (ratings and wars which were promised would not happen etc).
Multiple active wars on the global stage, huge changes in tariff and job impacts, large scale shipping and oil impacts.
I’m not saying this legislation impacts any of this positively or negatively, but we can’t pretend the prior world order isn’t making some drastic changes lately. Governments are slow to change laws but I would expect much of the current push has actual ties to the larger global shifts.
> ramming through deeply unpopular legislation at a breakneck pace for no apparent reason, lately
It's only a matter of time before EU-skeptical opposition parties achieve absolute majorities in critical EU constituency states. They're aware of this fact and are trying to adopt as much of their agenda as possible in the time they have remaining.
What should worry everybody is the big picture (trying to abstract from politics, ideologies and specific situation). In recent years we had:
- Europe is now at war with Russia (neighbor)
- Its relationship with the US is rapidly deteriorating (main partner, de facto protector)
- Its relationship with China is also rapidly deteriorating
- It is getting very antagonistic with it own citizen and some individual member countries (such as Hungaria or Romania recently)
So there are a lot of justifications in each case but the overall picture is worrisome. You can't be antagonistic with everyone.
There is a reason why the North Korean regime is still around, they never forgot they need to keep a good relationship with at least one powerful ally.
EU is doing some concerning moves but, looking at your points, Russia attacked Ukraine. EU is not at war with Russia, only supporting Ukraine.
Second, the relationship with US is deteriorating due to Trump. As a matter of fact all US relationships are deteriorating for the same reason. Where have you been the past years? Im not going to bother to respond to the following points because you mix some reality with propaganda and seem to live in a paralel reality.
Yeah US is threatening to invade and take over Canada, Greenland, I mean no wonder the alliance is no longer strong right?
And the internal struggles are indeed a problem, this is due to the extreme right which has completely taken over America (and is sponsored by Russia). It was good to see the Hungarians came to their senses but it's worrying that the EU doesn't have a mechanism to expel countries.
The problem is who do we ally with that we can trust now. Russia and America obviously not. Canada yes but they're not big. China just serves its own interests, they will never care about a partnership. They just want our money to buy their products, nothing else.
I think South America is another potential one and the EU is trying to connect there with eg Mercosur. But America is sponsoring the extreme right there too as you can see in Honduras and Colombia recently. And in Venezuela of course.
Indeed, this happens when you sacrifice public dialog for short-term gains calling everyone who does not agree with your points "far-right", "nazi", "russian asset". There will be literal fascists and people will support them just because they promise(probably bait-and-switch, but does not matter) to address public problems instead of gaslighting that problems are non-existent.
We call them that because it's true. The far right parties don't want to solve problems. They thrive on anger and hate. If they actually would solve something people would stop voting for them. Because anger and hate are the only things they have to offer.
They don't care about solving problems around migrants. It really boils down to people just not wanting brown faces in 'their' streets.
> The problem is who do we ally with that we can trust now.
"We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow."
― Lord Palmerston
There are lots of possible allies, but no one single ally to depend on. India to counter balance China, Canada to have an ally in North America, etc.
> it's worrying that the EU doesn't have a mechanism to expel countries.
Well yes the US has wanted it but never actually threatened to invade it before.
And no I don't think it's a good idea for Europe to become a federated state. The US' current situation shows how bad that could turn if the wrong person is elected.
At least we have the national governments here as a safeguard and we can also leave the EU if needed.
And yeah I didn't name India as a possible partner because they're too close with Russia. The EU is trying to make some deals with them but it's a bad idea while Modi and the BJP in general is in power in my opinion. They're similarly bad to minorites as the Chinese.
Isn't it interesting that if you remove the US from that list, it all aligns with US foreign policy? How fortuitous that EU interests just happen to coincide so well with our American friends.
Then you are not paying attention, he satisfied his Murica-First Cult like a circus clown. The US is the biggest arms dealer in the world, the Europeans are delivering weapons from their stockpile to Ukraine, then the US is filling those stockpiles up. Works like clockwork, just like under Biden, there is no actual change in policy towards Russia/Ukraine.
The urgency procedure has nothing to do with the absolute majority requirement. It's necessary because, in the second reading, the Parliament should have an absolute majority to reject or amend the Council (i.e. the governments of the member states) position but only a simple majority to approve it
Its honestly a bit sad that this in particular got people up in arms on social media, nobody gave a single shit when they sacrifice millions of people and entire nations on the periphery to their death cult of market orthodoxy.
The media is barely covering it at all, the sheep are well asleep, online some just lucid dream about the democracy they never had.
I think I'm one of those to whom you refer (except that I'm already "awake", or at least I like to think so). I'm normally pro-EU but this chat control is anathema to me. I'll be voting anti-EU in future I think.
Yeah, this is also a step too far for me. The EU has also done good things, like GDPR, right to repair, fining big tech again and again ... but it rarely follows up as much as it needs to.
The problem is though, that countries in the EU by themselves are economically not powerful enough, to hold up any ethical values against the giants US and China. So we need some alternative to the EU, some other union, that at least contains the economically most powerful EU countries, so that we have enough economical weight, that the other big players cannot simply push us around. Currently, the EU seems to be hellbent on losing its support. But how to prevent that other union to go down the same road?
Anyway, it seems clear, that we can no longer allow EU decision makers to make rules for us. They are not to be trusted.
The alternatives are also not to be trusted: if the EU falls we will have war between EU countries and hitlers and francos back in their seats but now with mass AI; Hello Frank, we detected in your email sent 21 years ago that you made fun of Mr Klein, his son, our glorious leader, has auto signed the documents for you to be sent to NeoWitz where you will spend the short remainder of your life.
I'm wondering when we will get the hint that voting isn't fixing these problems. our systems of government appears, to me, that they have been taken over by special interests. If we want things to change, we have to get involved. I'm sure that looks different for everyone but we clearly need people we can trust in government institutions.
I don’t understand how a governing system requires a majority to reject a change to the status quo. The status quo must be maintained unless a majority decides to change the status quo.
It is the equivalent of having a gas pedal in a car that is fully activated unless you put your foot down.
This article seems to make good points about how useless and invasive Chat Control 1.0 is, but then posits Chat Control 2.0 as the answer. Is the latter not also terrible for privacy, demanding backdoors in all encrypted chat tech?
Or you can just host your own server like IRC. This is beyond idiotic, if they think that pedophiles will begin to suddenly use WhatsApp then I very much doubt about their basic literacy.
Such a weak reasoning and method which they used to push this is ridiculous agenda lead me to strongly suspect there must be something else behind it.
I genuinely wondered the other day how long before we see some country try to regulate the new self-hosted radio mesh messaging solutions like Meshtastic etc. Eventually some crime group somewhere is going to be busted using a homebrew encrypted radio system for messaging - they are so plentiful and easy to build with dirt cheap ESP32s etc, and it's so easy to deploy repeaters to extend range.
The defence against this is to vote these MF MEPs out and kick asses of non–elected Eurocrats. Not going to happen.
Tech solution: Open GPG with PQE protocols. There is nothing else left (other than One Time Pads.)
And this is just the beginning. With LLMs and AI they will have resources to scan every character we type.
What changes with the return of Chat Control 1.0—and what stays the same:
*What is coming back:*
US tech companies are once again allowed to scan private messages without a warrant or prior suspicion. This affects direct messages on platforms like Instagram, Discord, Snapchat, Skype, and Xbox, as well as emails via Google’s Gmail and Apple’s iCloud.
*What remains unchanged:*
Public social media posts and files hosted in cloud storage could already be scanned without this law. Furthermore, private messages can always be reported by users, or monitored by authorities using targeted, court-ordered wiretapping.
*What is still NOT being scanned:*
End-to-end encrypted chats, such as those on WhatsApp, have always been exempt from these scans. Additionally, European providers of messaging and email services have never implemented chat control measures.
The Internet Watch Foundation, the group, funded almost entirely by big tech, who pushed for this vote to be held under emergency procedure, is already at work lobbying for the end of E2EE [1].
In a couple years time, Chat Control 2.0 will come about, and the same tyrants will use the EU admission [2] that there is no evidence that suspicionless scanning of private communications has led to an increase in criminal convictions or in rescued children to argue that we need to go further, and break E2EE.
The top 25 contributing members (£90k+; big tech are here) contributed between £2.25M and £4.37M. The other 110 members contributed between £2.26M and £4.46M.
Honestly they have a lot of members including the BBC for some reason, Apple is one of them. It seems like it might just be good practice to support them, it signals ‘we are against child abuse’. Dropping support could lead to some bad headlines. Seems like an NGO that is really good at sales, probably putting some pressure on it’s members rather than the other way around.
I get that if you are an ngo that really wants to solve online child abuse you’d want a law like this. It may be mostly the ngo pushing for it, not necessarily big tech. I could be wrong.
Why would big tech be in favor of having to scan message content? It puts more regulatory requirements in place on their activities. Would they not be in favor of _less_ regulation so they can provide services to their users with fewer legal considerations?
If big tech _wanted_ to they could already backdoor their encryption and scan the message content, they don't need regulation to do that. The only thing that changes with regulation is that they now _have_ to, which cannot possibly be in their favor.
I think this is basically correct and aligns with Facebook’s massive push toward e2ee in Messenger. They don’t want to be on the hook, and didn’t do e2ee just for the fun of it
The Internet Watch Foundation is one of these NGOs that makes lists of hashed child porn images and URLs. All the big tech companies subscribe so they can coordinate on blocking child porn, as they are legally required to do.
Unfortunately the IWF is also a "charity" and thus engages in political lobbying. Because like all such NGOs they have a single purpose, they lobby for making that purpose easier irregardless of other costs, which they view as out of scope. It's obviously easier to watch the internet if tech firms are forced to watch everything all the time, so that's what they're in favour of.
People actually working at tech firms on messaging systems don't want to do this, however. So they end up funding people who are undermining their own policies. This is very common whenever NGOs get involved e.g. governments funding NGOs that directly undermine the government's own efforts.
The fix would be for tech firms to leave the IWF and set up their own alternative organization that doesn't engage in lobbying activity. However, that would require a lot of cross-org agility that is difficult for big companies to achieve even internally, let alone across the industry, and the leadership is all thinking about AI anyway not EU stuff where they already just assume the EU is going to regulate them all the death anyway. So inertia carries the day.
> What is coming back: US tech companies are once again allowed to scan private messages without a warrant or prior suspicion. This affects direct messages on platforms like Instagram, Discord, Snapchat, Skype, and Xbox, as well as emails via Google’s Gmail and Apple’s iCloud.
They are already allowed to do this, and already are doing this. When you provide data to the service provider in a non-e2ee fashion, it's their data as much as it is yours. They can scan it, data mine it, analyze it, whatever.
This is the whole point though. They are allowed to do this because of the original chat control from 2021 which was temporary and expired in march. Without chat control it is very debatable what companies can legally thanks to eprivacy directive.
They aren’t allowed to do whatever they want with your data, there’s strict restrictions on requiring consent for things you want to do with user data.
After the whole internet lost its mind about Apple CSAM scanning and being horribly off target, I'd recommend to ignore news reports and go to the sources when making an opinion.
The only issues I can see is the error rate for non-CSAM scanning and how the latest vote was conducted.
Although the scanning part, it is still law enforcement that has to review that information and determine if there is a case. Most of the those are teens sharing naked photos with other teens.
> End-to-end encryption is a term used to describe blocking or preventing any third-party recipient from viewing, reading or becoming aware of information that one individual has sent to another. In response to growing concerns about online data security, many technology companies are adopting this strategy with potentially dire circumstances.
> The use of end-to-end encryption would prevent the companies or any third-party from detecting illegal activity occurring on their platforms, including the activity of people who use the internet to perpetuate online demand for graphic sexual abuse material of children.
> We believe personal security is extremely important and support efforts to improve online privacy. But, if this solution is implemented with no exceptions for detecting child sexual exploitation, millions of incidents of abuse will remain hidden, leaving these young victims without any help or protection from these horrific crimes.
They're liars, or they're useful idiots, and I think that by the end of this thing that's going to be a very popular opinion. They chitter and tut and construct the illusion of safety because they find the actual, human mess of child abuse to be an inconvenient truth.
Because what actually happens is you learn to handle it yourself, particularly if you're a boy. No one wants to hear it.
There's no dogma because there's no inherent connection between survivors: abuse creates the need for understanding and care while destroying your ability to trust in the reality of human kindness.
The first bit you have to do on your own. Because someone has spoken to your body in a private language, but they're not interested in speaking to you as you understood yourself, and this is like being told to speak without vocal chords.
There's no catharsis in talking about it. Then and now that has always been the cruellest irony. It is deeply uncomfortable to hear a man describing this kind of abuse. You become marked, for lack of a better word, even if no-one lets you know the reason why. You lose friends before you learn to stop talking.
All the adults just seem to hope you don't remember. Sometimes secrets can be made to move in slow motion, and there are years between the day they're said and the day they are heard. Avoidance always turns to guilt, and so the shame falls upon you for shaking the tree. A child can understand the simplicity of rage, but not shame.
Now return to the thousands of sudden voices. They're from everywhere, yet somehow nowhere at all, and they all really do care about shouting that childhood abuse is everywhere too, it's invisible, you probably know someone it happened to. They're glossy, loud, funded, and they need you to care too... or else, well, you must be on the side of the other guys, right?
Well, I hate them. I hate them for their emptiness and their venality. They have a vampiric relationship to the abused, masquerading as ‘activists’ or ’safety influencers’. They outright lie at this point because we’re either naïve enough to believe them... or zealous enough to think their ends justify their means. We’ve seen it before, we know how this spirals. If you finance a company which depends on a constant throughput of ‘baddies’… what happens if, after some time, there aren’t enough?
We're all collectively just... cowards. Lightly applauding, bored or brow-beaten: aloof for the sake of personal safety. Someone once said I was a kid with an 'old soul'... and that was the most helpful thought anyone ever handed me. I was never conscious of the juxtaposition with my minority; at the time, I was just happy to have an excuse not to talk to people.
And your REALLY think E2E is going to "protect" you?
If the "services" want to watch, don't worry they will, "they don't need your password". But I guess they "do" that only for the very baddies, aka child exploitation, human trafficking, terrorists, killers, drug dealers, etc.
We all know here that "information system security" does not exist, this is a fantasy: there is only some "best effort" with a wide spectrum of compromises. If somebody talks to you about "deliverable security", that guy wants to sell you something.
E2E will protect you only against John Doh, "hacker only on Sundays". And we better keep that in mind.
What are you talking about. You think service providers can backdoor aes-gcm? There will always be technology that they cannot get around. The only way to backdoor is to explicitly change the encryption.
This is not specific to 'backdooring aes-gcm implementations' at all. Read again what I wrote, namely this is the general status quo on 'information system security': they don't need your password or aes-gcm key to watch if they really want to. You would be a fool to presume anything else.
innocent men cannot be ruled over. authoritarians want a population of such "criminals", because then their power becomes the choice of which law is executed on whom.
> What changes with the return of Chat Control 1.0—and what stays the same:
> What is coming back: US tech companies are once again allowed to scan private messages without a warrant or prior suspicion. This affects direct messages on platforms like Instagram, Discord, Snapchat, Skype, and Xbox, as well as emails via Google’s Gmail and Apple’s iCloud.
> What remains unchanged: Public social media posts and files hosted in cloud storage could already be scanned without this law. Furthermore, private messages can always be reported by users, or monitored by authorities using targeted, court-ordered wiretapping.
> What is still NOT being scanned: End-to-end encrypted chats, such as those on WhatsApp, have always been exempt from these scans. Additionally, European providers of messaging and email services have never implemented chat control measures.
> In these talks, the EU Parliament is pushing for a paradigm shift in how we approach online child safety, demanding: [..] Strict security standards for messaging apps (“Security by Design”) to prevent cyber grooming.
It's dispiriting to see a supposedly pro-privacy politician launder backdoors as "strict security standards".
This was overwhelmingly approved by "The Left in the European Parliament" (that's their actual coalition name) as well as the Greens. It was overwhelmingly rejected by the European People's Party (AKA "The Right"). And mixed among other groups (S&D and Conservatives).
Indeed. The vote, however, was about stopping Chat Control. The key term is "derogation" in the title.
A "yes" vote was a vote against Chat Control. It failed because it needed an absolute majority of 361/) votes to defeat the "urgent procedure" lawfare by Metsina, a conservative.
- It was supported by two big groups on center-right and center-left and rejected by all the other groups (left and right).
- Conservatism preserves traditions, limited government, rule of law, and individual rights via gradual change. Fascism is revolutionary totalitarianism: one-party state, leader cult, suppression of dissent, militarism, and rejection of liberalism/conservatism. Totally different.
I'm curious where I can go to see real regularpeople who support this, is there like a different side of reddit, comments section? I don't know anyone who is blatantly anti-privacy and I want to hear their reasoning. Otherwise this just seems to be the EU rolling into a weird distributed autocracy without anyone blinking an eye.
It's not so much "support" as "not caring." Most "regular" people, when they hear about measures like this, say "oh no, the government can see my boring text messages to grandma, who cares", much they same way they shrug off the dangers of having a robot vacuum live-streaming the inside of their house to China ("there's nothing interesting in my house, who cares").
State owned news will follow orders or people be removed. Arrrrr!
They will have their incentives, even if people at the top of news reporting institutions are highly paid. Wouldn't want that dirt they have hidden be uncovered, now would they? Better dance to the tune and keep an overpaid job living by leeching off the tax payers.
Example: Look at Germany and how many Rundfunk Intendanten there are and how much they make a year, plus how little coverage such topics get.
"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". -- Jean-Claude Juncker, VDL's predecessor
Here's a quote from the article itself, which works for both pro and con arguments:
"What is still NOT being scanned: End-to-end encrypted chats, such as those on WhatsApp, have always been exempt from these scans. Additionally, European providers of messaging and email services have never implemented chat control measures."
As I'm not trained in law, I have no strong opinions on if this proposal is a net positive or negative, almost any big name LLM will do a better job than me looking at the legal text, stroking my goatee and saying "I recon…". But what I can say that I've just seen a headline about a class action lawsuit in the USA due to grok making CSAM and the company failing to assist the police in their investigations, and another about Meta facing a lawsuit in India for delivering advertising for CSAM on Instagram.
My steelman in favour of the legislation:
The regulation closes a legal gap that would otherwise force platforms to stop using existing CSAM detection systems; a temporary framework that doesn't require universal mandatory scanning or ban E2EE, just keeps the legal basis for companies which choose to use detection/scanners while lawmakers continue negotiating a more comprehensive longterm solution.
My steelman against the legislation:
Scanning private communications, even allowing companies to "voluntary" do this, sets the precedent that the confidentiality of private correspondence is conditional rather than fundamental. Also, automated scanning inevitably has false positives. Also, has chilling effect on free speech, undermines trust in encrypted messaging.
Also, situationally, that it's "voluntary" means offenders can migrate to platforms which don't "voluntary" do this.
Given that big tech firms keep getting fined for doing stuff like this ("anything 3rd party want with undisclosed criteria"), clearly the answer is "yes, eventually".
No, this is not better question - govts were multiple times caught by hand in cooperating with private companies for surveillance or just breaking the law without any consequences(i.e. germany MITMing jabber.ru hetzner nodes)
Real time notifications here would solve a lot of issues...
Imagine Alice, an 18, 19yo girl, having a boyfriend, Bob, and since Bob is on a student exchange, she decides to send him a boob photo. Since alice is skinny, her boobs are on the smaller side.
Now imagine Alice hitting 'Send', and getting an automated message from whatever CSAM AI bot:
"Your message has not been sent, the system detected the breasts in the photo to be probably underage, the photo was forwarded to <your local police station> for manual review"
And half an hour later
"Detectives Rob Johnson, John Robson and Bob Bobson from police department XY, have done an extensive manual review of the photo of the breasts and have 2:1 decided that they're probably not underage, so the photo was sent to the intended destination. Than you, your friendly CSAM AI bot!"
I think you're probably wildly overoptimistic about the ratio of police officers to private nudes.
No government really wants to be fully enforcing all their own laws, just because it's way too expensive to hire that many cops. I think the closest anyone got was the Stasi, and they had a lot of "volunteers": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unofficial_collaborator#Other_...
Such systems are unfortunately trivially defeated by, for example, adding rings of colourful blocks around the edges of the image. If the scanning systems are then updated to notice rings around the image, bad actors will start cutting images in half and adding the colours there, etc. It's a never-ending arms race that's bound to leave regular people worse off.
Don't you think modern image analysis tools such as llms will be easily defeated by measures such as adding colored rings?
A couple of years ago you could add some pixels to an image to change it's automatic classification from cat to ostrich. But the tech has improved and I think the race has now firmly been won by the side trying to de-obfuscate images, and only in rare scenarios can images actually be obfuscated efficiently and consistently.
> Don't you think modern image analysis tools such as llms will be easily defeated by measures such as adding colored rings?
The LLMs think one specific mystery plant in my garden hiding behind the hedge is velvetleaf; no, wild cotton; no, linden; no, hibiscus; no, mulberry; no, knotweed; no, paulownia; no, catalpa; no, hydrangea; no, grape vine; no, pokeweed.
Many of these claims were trivial for me to falsify with a quick image search, they don't look much like each other or my mystery plant. The things the AI "identified" were often simply not true of the photo.
Basically, even with current tech, you go straight back to false positives and false negatives: https://arxiv.org/abs/2111.06628
I'm unsure how these databases work, although it could simply be a database of hashes, with the file contents deleted. That sounds like the sane, safe way to handle this.
"a measure it had rejected twice in March. Although a majority of voting Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) actually opposed the regulation (314 against, 276 in favor, 17 abstentions), the motion to reject it failed to secure the required absolute majority of 361 votes. As a result, mass scanning is now permitted again until 2028."
"Oh no we can't get a majority to pass the law!"
"Have you tried getting a majority to not pass the law?"
"Worth a shot!"
"It worked, should we also do this multiple times?"
What I don't understand, based on this: https://howtheyvote.eu/votes/195775 the votes are the other way around, with the majority being for. I'm guessing that site has it reversed then or I don't fully understand the proposal? Looking at which politicians from my country voted "no" on this site it seems to be mostly the ones that I'd expect to vote "yes", so that would support this site just having the options reversed.
On 7 July, MEPs voted 331–303 to fast-track the return of Chat Control 1.0 mass scanning. A binding vote follows Thursday, 9 July, where an absolute majority of 361 MEPs is needed to stop it. Take action now to demand they defend your private messages.
Assuming "yes" means stop control, parties in favor of chat control were:
- European People’s Party and
- Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats.
The whole thing also played like a game. 6 months ago the vote was signaled as pretty safely against chat control. You could watch how one by one the MEPs switched their positions. I assume they realized the vote wont hurt them because it's under the radar of general population. So it was safe to follow the lobby money.
I don't know about the other countries, but in Romania most politicians are aligned with our secret service (quite a few even in the upper echelons are literally undercover agents - which sounds like a conspiracy theory but is well documented in some cases), so they are quite naturally aligned with this initiative.
Hmm most MPs from Renew, Greens and eurosceptics (ECR) from my country voted yes. I'm a bit surprised since some of those are hardliner Christian conservatives that I'd never vote for under any circumstances.
They have one job (with a high salary), a lot of personal assistants and technical support from specialist from their own party. They only have to remember if they have to press the red or the blue button.
Democracy is when you just try and try again and again until it passes with 51/49. Then its democratic and legitimized and only evil terrorists would oppose those laws we have all democratically agreed upon.
Also, see the case of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%BCseyin_Do%C4%9Fru - if you aren't liked by the EU courts, they just accuse you of "collusion with Russia" and ban your bank account via "sanction policies". The ECJ doesn't have to provide any evidence of crime, you have to provide counter-evidence of the absence of crime (and good luck defending yourself without money). The ECJ judges, who interpret and impose these laws, are also not democratically really elected or anything, yet they hold power over your bank account. Makes ya think.
I do not think this is true. Do you have any proof? I‘m aware only of a decision by German court not to apply urgent procedure to unblock his bank accounts. The sanctions were applied not that long ago for him to get decision by German courts or ECJ.
No, this is a valid point. Court cases are usually playing out slowly amd carefully. So, in order to prevent harm to the parties involved caused by that slowness, injunctions can be issued by the court that can provide reasonable relief from immediate damages from the dispute that can't be compensated for or reversed later. In Germany, getting relief through an injunction really is about proving that lasting damage is caused while the case drags on. The full merrits of the case are explicitly excluded from consideration.
>Redfish forced to cease operations as an official subsidiary of Ruptly/RT
>Immediately after Red Media gets founded by the guy, but now in Turkey
>Redfish social media presence gets renamed to Red Media
>Red Media kept staff, equipment and reused content from Redfish
Tbh I'd be pissed if sanctions could be bypassed by simply changing your logo and handle.
I'd go further and suspect the Russian disinformation apparatus just threw them under the bus for "EU bad" points.
It's such a textbook and standard Russian propaganda practice to finance and push divisive and partial views I'm even surprised people keep falling for it.
Another "journalist" the far left (in Spain at least) considers a martyr. The whole coverage of his arrest was a shitshow (Freedom of expression! Poland is fascist! Freedom for Pablo!)
Then it was shown he spied on Nemtsov, Polish journalists... and he even hugged uniformed GRU officers upon arrival in Russia as part of a prisoner exchange, while wearing a "my empire needs me" t-shirt.
Anti-immigration, anti EU narratives, solid antisemitic (not just anti-Israel) stances, interviews with all sorts of sketchy characters, the whole set. Luckily for de Vlieger, he had sold the operation to literal Viktor Medvedchuk (and then the platform took a further Russia victim, Ukraine bad turn), so he remains unsanctioned.
There are plenty of things to complain about here, and that is one of them. But that authorization was passed by our elected representatives by a super majority and reauthorized by them multiple times. It was not done by a sneaky maneuver where the majority of congress voted against it but somehow it still became law.
"The right of equal suffrage among the States is another exceptionable part of the Confederation. Every idea of proportion and every rule of fair representation conspire to condemn a principle, which gives to Rhode Island an equal weight in the scale of power with Massachusetts, or Connecticut, or New York; and to Deleware an equal voice in the national deliberations with Pennsylvania, or Virginia, or North Carolina. Its operation contradicts the fundamental maxim of republican government, which requires that the sense of the majority should prevail. Sophistry may reply, that sovereigns are equal, and that a majority of the votes of the States will be a majority of confederated America. But this kind of logical legerdemain will never counteract the plain suggestions of justice and common-sense. It may happen that this majority of States is a small minority of the people of America; and two thirds of the people of America could not long be persuaded, upon the credit of artificial distinctions and syllogistic subtleties, to submit their interests to the management and disposal of one third. The larger States would after a while revolt from the idea of receiving the law from the smaller. To acquiesce in such a privation of their due importance in the political scale, would be not merely to be insensible to the love of power, but even to sacrifice the desire of equality. It is neither rational to expect the first, nor just to require the last."
Any time now even the most pro-european EU defender will realise that what was once a trade union has slowly transformed itself into an undemocratic, bureaucratic monster.
Only in some bubbles. But most normies I know are massive EU fanboys and showing them the negatives the EU is doing, they just shrug at best, or call you a Putin supporter at worst.
They'll only realize this when the jackboot is on their neck. But probably not even then because in some EU countries government obedience is like a religion.
I'm neurodivergent, and on various nerdom bell curve tails, including know more than averga bear about technology societal implications and misuses, but I still wouldn't use that term; here in particular, it seems a strong pejorative for anybody who disagrees with your world view :-/
I recommend my own personal democracy metric: your level of democracy is proportional to how easily you can shout “moron!” at your representative and have them hear you. Do you know who they are, can you find them at a public meeting, and will they be able to hear you? For the EU, all three combine to give a pretty low score.
As we’re seeing in the UK right now, if you stump up £500 and find ten people to counter-sign your candidacy, you can even run against your MP as a novelty candidate. If you choose your novelty name right you also get to stand next to them at the alphabetically-ordered result announcement.
Compare with comatose Kentucky senators on their deathbed or EU commissioners based in a country with French train signs. Neither are insurmountable obstacles to democracy — hold up a sign? Google Translate? — but, by my metric, they are lesser options to something more local and accountable.
I’m sure, back in the day, rural folk took umbrage at having to ride their donkey to the local town just to be able to throw cowpats at their despised burghers. We of course can do it on TikTok nowadays but nothing beats yelling in person.
EU commissioners are similar to minsters/secretaries in national governments. My chance of getting within earshot of German federal minister are only slightly better than those of an EU minister - especially those that are not also members of parliament.
But if I’m unhappy with EU policies I can talk to a member of the EU parliament (and yes I know two of the members from my city) or I can talk to a member of the Bundestag since national governments have a large role in the EU.
In the end, my voice is tiny. Which is expected, after all I’m just one of over 450 million people living here.
That's implementation details though; one can absolutely think that "EU is a good idea" and "specific EU systems need improving" simultaneously, without contradiction.
It's like thinking "I like Canada and am a proud Canadian, though I think there's still a lot of inequality and many policies can be improved upon and we can certainly be more efficient".
I think parallel comment has a much better answer than I could provide - EU is a set of heterogeneous political units which each have multiple nested political units within. Given complexity of USA states rights and legislative bodies, vs municipal and county governments, and then vs the federal judicial executive and legislative branches, including a complete house and a complete Senate, all permeated at all level by two binary polarized parties, all within a single country, I'm not sure EU system is that different or suboptimal anymore.
In the US, the state government has absolute power over the municipal and county governments in its borders, which is a very simple legal structure. For example, the NY state legislature can override any law made by the NY city government and can even replace the NY city government with whatever entity it wishes.
There's the internal reality and external perception.
As an outsider, it feels all levels of USA government are constantly fighting and going back and forth and back and forth over big topics like minority rights, marriages, religion in schools and public matters, funding, environmental concerns, police approach, rights and freedoms, spying, choices of utilities, etc.
>Why do you need a system with seven different bodies more than one of which can make what’s effectively laws?
because the European Union contains more than 600 million people and almost 30 very diverse countries (and is a supranational, not federal body). It's institutions also do mirror the structures of most other large unions.
The Commission is an executive body, the parliament is a legislative body, and the council is comparable to the state bodies in bicameral governments. You may as well ask why you have a Senate or Bundesrat when you have a Congress and Bundestag. Because minoritarian and majoritarian interests need to be balanced, even more so in the EU. If even actual nation states a fraction the size of the EU and bona fide countries aren't governed in unitary fashion, why do you expect anybody would centralize so much power in the EU.
If the purpose is to avoid centralizing power, why can the Commission make regulations that have the force of law without consent from either Parliament or the Council?
it can't. Any new regulation goes through the parliament and council as a legislative act. What the Commission can do, if a legislation already exists, is pass regulation that doesn't modify essential elements. There's a direct analog to this in the US, Federal Agencies which end up doing a lot of the actual technical rule making work.
If the FAA decides to make some aviation regulation that's binding through the entire country, and likewise if EU parliament and council have adopted legislation for say, the emission rates of cars the Commission then goes and decides the actual rules.
These kinds of institutions, and really in most countries they do most of the implementation work are necessary because you can't have your legislative vote on thousands of technical details of how cars or planes work, that's just a technocratic reality regardless of where you are.
> Did leaving the EU actually fixed anything for the UK?
Yes - it fixed the attribution of our problems. Politicians, leaders, judges, etc will find it harder to "blame the EU" - when then blame is squarely on them.
A surprisingly large amount of people are quite alright with that as long as they perceive that those undemocratic processes are producing the end results they desire. It's not unique to the EU, though they do play this game very well, or even to this time period. Once the powers have been granted, the public has only limited ability to revoke the power, with many of them easily swayed that it's good for this power to exist by having a red meat issue thrown to them to chew on as a distraction.
Reddit is one of the few remaining platforms where reach is determined democratically. You demean that populous by calling it the singular "reddit", as if it's a single hive mind. But you'll probably get your way, I imagine the billionaire censorship campaign will come for it too eventually. Then you'll only ever get to hear thoughts you agree with, glorious day ey?
Reddit is the most censored platform out there… posts and users that are not aligned with subreddit mods get banned or deleted prolifically. Subreddits that do not align similarly soon find themselves banned
Idk if many people remember how Reddit was when it started, its whole draw was that it was a bunch of relatively intelligent/friendly western internet people who liked to kinda role play as a hive mind.
I wouldn't call it the most censored platform, but it still has vestiges of its old self, particularly with respect to philosophy and politics.
Subreddits get banned for egregious shit. Reddit stays on the side of letting subs up, rather than banning.
Reddit has made it harder for mods to find out which subs you are active in, so that you can’t be banned for activity in subs that are in cold wars with each other.
It wasn't really a trade union. It's purpose was to stop the re-emergence of something like the Nazis and to prevent wars. I don't think it's instincts were ever really democratic.
Not only was Chat Control 1.0 already rejected twice by the European Parliament but:
- This vote took place on last day of the session when many MEPs had already left for Summer vacation - 112 MEPs of 719 didn't vote.
- The vote was called only two days before as an "Rule 170 - Urgent procedure" - 73 MEPs missed the vote making it "urgent". Normally it takes months of procedure to come up for a final vote.
Exactly. The issue is them being automatically in favor, that’s a really extreme measure I as an eu citizen did not know about, even though I’d say I’m probably more informed then the average and was made to study eu history, structure and laws in school. That kind of stuff is really weird, even weirder is that such an emergency measure can be activated without countries being in active war or the like.
This is beyond retarded. It's not a loophole, it's too f stupid to count as a loophole. This interpretation is a violation of the law. They should jail every EU parliamentarian who claims that this is a valid interpretation.
Sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from malice.
It completely perverts the entire system. With this approach, any law can be passed by a minority; just phrase as a negative.
I propose a new law: "The EU is hereby not not not abolished" ohh look, it failed to gain majority vote! EU is over! Everyone go home! Look at how clever I am finding loopholes!
For doing actual work? Getting in touch with constituents, listening to them, faction internal coordination, working on committee specific stuff, understanding proposals and motions of others, maybe filing their own... when taken seriously, this can be an intense job.
> Plenary sessions of Parliament take place 12 times per year in Strasbourg and last four days
There are 48 days in sessions over a year. You're saying that it's too much to ask MEPs not to take holidays during those 48 days? Am I missing something here?
Most of the work of an MP is not sitting in plenary sessions looking bored. The normally important bits are in-between - committee and office work. This specific event here is an example of a plenary session suddenly being made extremely important by a procedural trick.
Do you those 48 days are the total number of working hours these MEPs have? Of course not. Something always needs to give when going on vacation. And usually missing a a plenary session is not weird or the end of the world. The problem here is that in this case the rules were abused.
The idea behind _representative_ democracy is that _we_ take holidays and our representatives do the work of upholding _our_ democratic values. These MEPs took their holidays before the parliamentary session was complete.
If we're talking about _direct_ democracy then we have to do the work ourselves but because we don't want to do that (because we want to go on holydays), we give up our rights to those who _want_ to represent us.
That, of course, falls apart once those representing us start to only represent themselves.
It cannot. EU laws are completely useless and must be implemented by every government as a local law, which won't be more powerful than the constitution.
The problem is that constitutional courts should then say the law was against the constitution and cancel it, but will that happen?
In theory, it can't. But in reality, it does in important cases.
Germany has implemented EU sanctions against a German journalist, which deprive him and his family of the ability to conduct basically any economic activity in Germany or even to leave the country. He is not allowed to work. No one is allowed to pay him money. He has to petition the government every time he wants to access even a small amount of the money in his own bank account. The same restrictions apply to his close family members, because they are suspected of helping him survive financially. He is barred from crossing any border in Europe, including to leave.
He has not been accused or convicted of anything in court. The only procedure that was required to hand down an economic death sentence was for the EU Commission to put his name on a list.
The German government claims this is all okay, because the journalist can proactively challenge his sanction listing in Brussels. It's a years-long process that will require paying lawyers - using money he is not allowed to access.
Needless to say, this is all highly unconstitutional. But the German government simply doesn't care. They just say they're implementing EU sanctions.
Very weird case. I don't think anyone can survive here in Germany on a 503€ allowance he gets, and let alone having some probable but unproven ties to a state considered an enemy since only recently, I would find crippling someone to that degree harsh even for a convicted war criminal. He's apparently not even allowed to pay rent!
It's not that weird. There are other cases like it. Jacques Baud is a Swiss guy and was sanctioned by the EU Commission for "spreading Russian propaganda". At the time he was living in Brussels and the EU became a prison that he's not allowed to leave.
The sanctions imposed on December 15 by the European Union against Jacques Baud and eleven other people include the freezing of their assets, a ban on doing business and bans on entering the EU.
“I don’t have the right to return to Switzerland, or even to travel within the EU. I’m essentially being held against my will,” says Jacques Baud.
Thanks for the example but there being other cases and me as an average person who follows the news having no idea about all this make it even weirder for me.
European media is extremely pro EU and generally doesn't publish anything that might undermine support for it. This is one reason so many across Europe were baffled by Brexit. Their media kept them in the dark about problems the British media and politicians had spent decades highlighting.
The British media is also happy to investigate and attack their own government.
Regardless, the UK is still run by the same pro-EU loyalists it was run by for decades, and they largely continue EU policy. You will notice that a lot of people are very unhappy about that, but it takes time to completely replace the entire political class of a country - especially when that class bought time by pretending they were going to make a break with EU ideas and demands, whilst secretly planning to do the opposite.
Genuinely thank you for linking to him and his case.
I’m living in Germany and am -principally- a massive advocate for and proponent of the free (or liberal) democratic basic order ("FDGO" [0]) we have had here for the last decades, and apart from Chat Control, I’m usually very highly pro-EU, too.
But reading this has genuinely left me in a bit of a shock now, and created some (for lack of a better word) FUD I haven’t felt before with regard to these two, eh, institutions governing us.
> EU laws are completely useless and must be implemented by every government as a local law
This isn’t true. Regulations are directly applicable and don’t require national legislation; directives generally do. Individuals affected by a failure to implement a directive can complain to the European Commission, which can bring infringement proceedings against the member state and potentially seek financial penalties.
EU law also has primacy over conflicting national law, and the CJEU’s position is that this includes constitutional provisions. Courts in Germany and Poland have challenged that position, but refusing to comply can put the countries in breach of their EU treaty obligations and lead to infringement proceedings and penalties.
I'm not sure any country actually has a Constitution with rights that are not up for a vote. There is generally a separate, harder procedure for changing the "basic law" or Constitution of a country -- for example, 2/3 of delegates or a 2/3 of states or something of that nature -- but I'd be surprised if there's a country where they have literally no way to change it at all.
The US constitution doesn't grant rights. It's sort of the whole deal which the rest of the western world doesn't really understand, much less Americans themselves.
Those are the same thing, with no difference existing between them in any context. You're complaining about the difference between a document that describes party A buying something from party B versus another one that describes party B selling the thing to party A.
Think about what it might mean for
(a) the government to give me the right to live in your house; or
(b) the government to restrict you from expelling me from your house.
The difference is whether you say "thank you" to the government that does (a) or "screw you" to the government that fails to do (b). It's the difference between me not killing you and me granting you the right to be alive- if I am doing the latter, you are my subject rather than my equal. It implies that I have the right to take it away. Welfare, the FDA, and protectionism are examples of (a) while your basic human rights fall under (b).
Everything in the US Constitution is amendable, though -- in other words, the whole Constitution can be changed with a vote.
The US is founded on certain ideas about natural rights -- hence not granted, per se -- but that's somewhat orthogonal to this whole issue. Even if there were an unwritten constitution, a country could base its institutions, philosophy of lawmaking, jurisprudence, &c, on natural rights doctrine (and for a time, the British did exactly that).
The earlier post mentions "That's why you have a constitution with rights that are not up for vote." but if what they mean is natural rights, that goes well beyond any procedural issue around the basic law.
Amending the US Constitution takes a lot of voting, with very large majorities in Congress / Senate and state legislatures. This has been achieved a number of times, and some of these decisions were rather unwise, like the Prohibition (18th amendment).
The page you link contains many interesting examples; but many of them are simply cases of making the vote harder -- requiring unanimous consent to change English-French bilingualism in Canada, for example -- rather than cases where the law simply can not ever be changed by a vote.
With regards to Germany, the page says:
...if a constitution provides for a mechanism of its own abolition or replacement, like the German Basic Law does in Article 146, this by necessity provides a "back door" for getting rid of the "eternity clause", too.
It's really hard to have a legal system that literally can not be changed by any legitimate vote -- only by revolution -- because what sits at the bottom of most of them (all of them?) is that the consent of some body politic is necessary and sufficient to legitimate a law.
Ultimately it doesn't matter what the constitution says if a large enough supermajority is unhappy about it. Constitutions by themselves are pieces of paper, they only work when society as a whole chooses to treat them as more than that.
our rights have largely held up even in the absurd world we live in, and the constitution continues to be a thorn on the side of those trying to abridge them. what we are seeing now is the conclusion of decades of eroding our rights and the tower still refuses to topple. though of course we're going to have a lot of work to do fixing it up after all is said and done.
Have you heard of ACLU v. Clapper, HLP v. DoJ, Doe v. Ashcroft, or US v. Moalin? Parent acknowledges decades of degradation and points to thorns like these.
I think that means those MEPs are not doing their jobs. They are the representatives of their people, but somehow they left for vacation before the last day of the session. They failed in the most important part of their duty.
Around ten years ago I watched some MEPs on YouTube talk about their jobs. A lot of them were scathing. The EP isn't a real parliament and the people in it don't have any real power, so it fills up with cheerleaders and hecklers.
Attendance isn't just low before the summer break, it's low all the time. MEPs miss votes for reasons as trivial as there being a football game on, because why not? It's not like their votes matter much anyway. Everything important is decided upon long before they get involved, they aren't allowed to actually write laws or pass them or repeal them, and so nobody with any political ambition goes there unless they're using it as a springboard to national politics.
> "Mr President, our parliament in the United Kingdom sat for 142 days last year and it was criticized widely for only sitting for that amount of time yet we in Brussels and Strasburg in the plenary and mini plenary, we sit for just five days a month and on three of those days it's only part of a day that we actually sit for. So we end up with debate in this chamber where microphones of speakers are cut off after 60 seconds, 90 seconds or 2 minutes, and we have no way of expanding on a point, we have no way of properly challenging a speaker, we have no means of proper scrutiny of proposed legislation that comes through. Surely it would make more sense to have sufficient time allocated to proper debate to reason debate and those who actually believe in the structures and institutions of this place should surely welcome that. I think my 60 seconds is up."
You can tell it's a joke institution because they regularly penalize MEPs for the content of their two minute speeches. Britain has the concept of parliamentary immunity but the EU does not, so you get "politicians" who are told what they can and cannot say by the leaders of other parties.
As much as Brexit was a footgun, this has always seemed to me a very valid criticism of the EU that the remain side of that debate never really tackled. There is a huge democratic deficit in the organisation.
The Council, made up of heads of state, set the direction.
The Commission, made up of whoever is nominated by those heads of state, usually some mate of theirs with no democratic accountability or mandate of their own (see: Peter Mandelson), is the body that decides on and creates legislation.
The Parliament, made up of the actually elected members, seems to exist just to rubber-stamp the output of the other bodies. Or occasionally not, but look what happened here, they were asked again until they did * .
Don't get me wrong, I think there's a lot that's good about the EU too, but it's in need of serious reform before it can claim to be a truly democratic set of bodies.
(* Which is incidentally another criticism of the EU, mostly centred around the time of the Lisbon treaty, which was first put forward as the new EU constitution but, after rejection in some popular referenda in some countries, was renamed the Lisbon Treaty and pushed through again. In the UK this caused waves because the populace was not asked at all about the treaty and Gordon Brown was reported to have snuck-off and signed it into law on the quiet)
> because the populace was not asked at all about the treaty
Well, the UK has only been asked about Europe twice - once to join and once to leave. Unlike many other European countries that frequently ask their populace as a way of standard governance.
The only other UK referendum in my lifetime was the 'alternative vote'
The UK government (no matter the party) just doesn't seem to like asking the public's opinion, on things. And after 2016, I'd be very surprised to see another referendum on anything, any time soon as the outcome of that was opposite to what the 'establishment' wanted (cue the last decade of squabbling). They will instead use the excuse: 'you gave us the mandate choosing us at the General Election'.
Both EU referendums were about whether to leave. Labour took Britain in without a referendum and only held one on reversing it due to the outrage that caused.
It's a push by oligarchs to establish total surveillance and control of the masses to protect themselves from the coming environmental (climate change) and economic (mass unemployment) collapses.
In a functioning democracy, the masses would demand higher taxes on the wealthy to fund social support. The oligarchy has already bought out democracy in the US and other places to ensure that doesn't happen. So to keep the masses in line, a system of totalitarian oppression is required.
It's amazing more people don't recognize this and judging from some posts in this thread as a solution they will support oligarch backed alt-right like that will fix the problem.
And then people wonder why there’s so little faith in the EU and why there is a perception of them being disconnected from the real interests of the people.
Honest question: when Europeans give so much power to EU and usually favor regulations by the government, isn't it natural that the government will try to implement more control? And it looks EU officials do not have to accountable for anything. They will not suffer personally even when their policies wreck havoc. I don't quite understand why Europeans can trust EU at all. Case in point, EU HQs shut down its air conditioning on floors 1 through 7 to prevent electrical overloads, leaving the upper levels used by top officials unaffected. Yet did anyone like Leyen get punished? Note I'm not naive enough to believe politicians don't have special treatment in other countries. But at least in some countries, politicians will not be so shameless that they'd do it in broad day light.
> Europeans give so much power to EU and usually favor regulations by the government
This antecedent is far too broad; what regulations, benefiting whom? It's pretty obvious in this case that the majority of their representatives do not favor at least this type of regulation. In other cases, the majority of representatives favor regulation which prevents private corporations from selling their PII to the highest bidder. So you're going to have to reckon with the nuance of the real world if you don't want to make obviously leading statements like this.
The question I would ask next is that if a majority don't actually favor it, who will vote to sanction member countries that refuse to implement it in protest? Giving a central authority significant power likenthis inevitably leads to autocracy per Montesquieu.
You're right, there are nuances in different policies. I was referring to the general power and consent that Europeans grant to the EU council. In my naive view their power is unchecked. As a result, we can start with good intent and good regulations, but eventually they will abuse their power as its the nature of power.
The power is checked in multiple ways: confirmation by the parliament is required in many cases and the court can overturn council decisions. The only issue is that one check is weak amd the other one is very slow.
Representatives are different to all of the EU bureaucracy and NGOs that make up the long-term powerful influentials in the EU. Representatives come and go.
Let's be honest, like for national assemblies, lots of members of the parliament are quite dumb.
I think most of them will not even look at the biggest part of the laws they are supposed to vote. They will vote for whatever they are told to vote for by the party or carefully crafted lobbying.
For something like chat control, you don't see it but there are probably a dozen lobbyist that went to see them in turn, feeding lies and propaganda that they will not challenge because they have other "important" political subjects they are busy looking at.
The commission is leading the game with lots of tricks like what was done here to get what they want in the end.
Just look at the fact that very very few of member even realized or complained to have been played fool by the last vote.
Yeah, it always strikes me when this crazy, obviously stupid stuff ends up "49 to 51" like either there are active forces fighting each other ending in an equilibrium, or the equilibrium is arising passively, everyone and their representatives are just randomly scribbling in the circles.
I don't understand either but just for reference on your point:
Trust in the EU is at its highest in 18 years
'52% of Europeans trust the EU, the highest result since 2007. The level of trust is highest among young people aged 15-24 (59%). Setting another 18-year record, 52% of Europeans say they trust the European Commission, with scoring again particularly high among young citizens (57%). At the same time, 36% of Europeans say they trust their national government and 37% say they trust their national parliament.Three quarters of respondents (75%) - the highest level in more than two decades - say they feelthey are citizens of the EU.'
Who was asked, i.e. tourists visiting Brussels? How many were asked? How were they asked, i.e. leading questions such as "you do like the EU don't you"? Who didn't respond?
And more importantly, who is doing the asking? Oh, the EU itself is doing the asking. They are, of course, not biased in any way at all.
These numbers are then provided by the same folks that just timed a vote on our privacy when a) MEPs were known to be on holidays b) reversing the vote procedures, i.e. the 'no's have reach a set minimum c) are happy to sign away our collective privacy.
All that for 52% - all time high. When I was going to school, 52% wasn't a score that I went home to my parents with and told them how good things were going - even if it was an "all time high".
Crazy, how the EU have mixed up mediocrity with democracy.
Adding the reminder that these votes and majority rejecting are of unelected bureaucrats, so the way that it was framed was approved from above while making practically impossible to reject but still theoretically possible so people are forced to swallow it.
You're right, I meant the Commissioners which are the ones essentially designing how to legislate, which is the traditional name for "engineer society behavior"
Wow does it become law if the majority of those present opposed it? The American Congress might be utterly dysfunctional, but we’ve never had a law pass despite the majority of members voting against it. What am I missing?
Some will disagree with this, but this is neither new or surprising behaviour from the EU. In the EU if the political class want something, it doesn't really matter what the public want or vote for.
In the US a lot of your dysfunction is from the fact that your political system actually "works". You maniacs actually can vote for someone like Trump (twice), and he can do stuff regardless of how unpopular he is among the political class.
Here in Europe things like democracy and freedom of speech are only permitted if our political class approves. We can decide things like tax rates, but some things we're not allowed to express opinions on, and some things we have no power to vote for or against.
With some exceptions most European democracies work like this and EU is really the gold standard of this system. They have lots of ways to do what they want regardless of how popular it is, and regardless of what the opinions of our elected representatives are.
In the US, it seems more obvious how corporate money pulls the political strings, but my impression is that corporate influence is a lot weaker in Europe..
Highly educated people, often from wealthy backgrounds, who are very globally orientated.
They are generally not representative of the average person in Europe.
They are the people who European government appoints.
> In the US, it seems more obvious how corporate money pulls the political strings, but my impression is that corporate influence is a lot weaker in Europe..
I agree, but not sure that directly contradicts what I said?
> I agree, but not sure that directly contradicts what I said?
I wasn't disagreeing with you; I just added that to explain why it wasn't obvious who the political class is there because their incentives are more opaque to me.
What do you think is the main reason these highly educated people act against the interests of the common people?
For example with Chat Control, are they worried about preventing populism from taking hold? Or do they personally gain something financially?
EU cant claim the moral high ground anymore with the way this was done. They've joined the rest of the world now. This was a win for foreign companies and makes me wonder if the EU has been infiltrated by outside interests.
Can it be undone? One of the key aspects of any society is that it can in fact change law/policy/leaders/etc without war/rebels. yes harm happens when bad crap gets in but if the system still supports change, it is working.
For all the bad in trump era like roe vs wade among many others. The same mechanism are what allowed roe vs wade to exist. A double edge sword but better than alternative variants of totalitarian multi decade long regimes.
Once you realise the age group that are in that bracket of european law making you realise it's gen X AKA the helicopter parent generation and it all becomes less shocking.
More interesting that that mostly childless politicians are in favor of such things. That's makes sense since those legislations are NOT about children.
How do we design such apps? Let's rule out age attestation (to allow only some age ranges) or scan of content because they are orthogonal to apps. What are the design patterns that prevent adults to meet kids? No messaging?
From Google: "The law seeks to require digital platforms and messaging services (like WhatsApp and Gmail) to automatically scan users' private messages, emails, and photos to detect and report illegal content"
-- EU policy makers are really honest people, hats off to them. There's no way politicians in my country allow their chats to be scanned, because they're very corrupt.
The passing of laws that affect technology platforms has always been on topic on HN. That shouldn't be surprising on a site that's specifically for people interested in technology and tech industry topics.
I do not believe solutions to these issues will be found with government regulators. I believe they can be enabled by new technology that is designed to balance interests on all sides and actually enforce the guarantees IN CODE AND PROTOCOLS.
Having said that, I don’t think the tech industry is what it once was, dominated by cypherpunks working to create a better world. It has been captured by greed and “moving fast and breaking things”, as well as infighting. Greed (both in the form of web3 numbers go up, and benefiting from the greater fool while delivering no utility) and moving fast (web2 facebook / VC / dump shares on the public / lock in / extract rents). So no wonder the government eventually steps in, when the industry spends a decade without adults steering the ship. We have giant platforms controlling everything, and the rest has devolved into zero sum games and memecoins. The tech industry hasn’t led or even organized enough to get behind technology that can liberate users. Instead it’s been captured by for-profit interests. Mozilla and Apache are rounding errors.
Here is what open source can do when it comes to mass surveillance, and this would also solve the Flock problem here in the States, too:
> new technology that is designed to balance interests on all sides and actually enforce the guarantees IN CODE AND PROTOCOLS.
They will just call your code illegal in law. And if you will run it anyway, use deep packet inspection to drop your protocol packets, like they do in Russia
Today they already analyze the SSL handshake and traffic patterns in Russia. And if your valid https traffic crosses the border but doesn't behave like https (I don't know how they do it. Frequency of TCP packets and their size and the delay between?) your IP-address will be blocked
I want to stress that I'm speaking from experience. I personally installed a telegram proxy project which aimed to mirror the pattern of traffic and fool the censors
If the EU just were to redirect the resources they're currently allocating to regulations like AI and Chat Control rather towards developing a genuinely competitive OpenAI or Anthropic alternative …
There are at least two options to verify age without humiliating procedure of taking a selfie with a passport like a porn actor.
Also, employees who do verification, sometimes create internal chats where they post pictures of clients and mock their appearance. If you look funny you might end up there.
First, there are USB tokens that can hold a private key and sign messages. Such tokens could be sold at places accessible only to adults and verify that they are indeed adult. Obviously every token should hold the same private key.
Second, OS could implement "parent mode" which allows installing only white-listed, government approved apps (no Telegram or Whatsapp or other dangerous apps, but school apps are ok) and opening only white-listed government-approved websites. Put in jail the parents who did not set up a parent mode. Problem solved without passports and verifications.
If, however, the government insists on selfies, it means they just want to identify users and compile lists of "untrustworthy", "rebelious" and other persons of interest. In Russia, for example, every online account must be linked to a phone number or a passport, and all messages in social networks or messengers must be accessible in unencrypted form to the government. The access is automated and the government does not need to provide any documents (like court orders) for getting the data. Messengers that do not provide access, are illegal and are banned.
So much effort and emotions wasted. EU should have a mechanism that disallows repeatedly pushing for things until they are greenlit. Lack of this type of measure renders whole governance incapable of being taken seriously.
Good. Usually, I would be against this like any other normal human being, but I can’t lie I’m gloating about this one.
We have had lots of similar cases where people not only blindly followed new regulations (for example, regarding cash) but also encouraged them — and the justification was always the same: "Why do you use cash? Are you hiding something? Cash is for criminals!" Now that the government is about to monitor their chats, they suddenly complain. Why are you bothered by chat control? Are you hiding anything? Encryption is for criminals!
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[ 0.24 ms ] story [ 127 ms ] threadWelcome to the Brave New 1984 We World. Big Brother loves us.
We are living through the time best described by Zamyatin, Orwell, and Huxley.
There can exist strong consumer protections against misuse of their personal data by various entities.
And there can simultaneously also exist governmental overreach against citizens private data.
The world is complex, few things are truly binary.
Laws and democracy is a constant fight, no democracy was complete and perfect the day it was announced.
We lost a battle now. And unlike people like you who only resort to insults I am not willing to give up just because of this setback. I will continue to fight for these rights.
It's clear that member countries use the EU as a blame-laundering mechanism to pass domestically unpopular laws, but the forcing of this vote under the urgency procedure that requires absolute majority to reject, on the last EP session before summer break is so blatant that it might awaken people that might've overlooked the structural failures of the EU and finally radicalise them
If it's not a dictatorship, a regime, a shithole, a kleptocracy, or whatever name they use for a government they don't like, I don't know what it is.
Haha, no. As long as there is bread and circus, nothing wil happen.
It's useful to add some cynicism in the mix (or in this case, pragmatism)
that's the reason they are busy igniting a war by the time the defaulting begins, so that there's some external boogieman to blame instead of them...
The absolute majority seems to be an anti-paralysis instrument, where the onus is on the Parliament to reject something put in motion by the Council. I think the the asymmetry is that a vote to trigger the urgency procedure only requires a simple majority, whereas a rejection of that same legislation requires absolute majority.
To my reading, this reinforces the idea that Parliament is designed to be more of a rubber stamp for the Council.
> Second reading
> 7. If, within three months of such communication, the European Parliament:
> (a) approves the Council's position at first reading or has not taken a decision, the act concerned shall be deemed to have been adopted in the wording which corresponds to the position of the Council;
> (b) rejects, by a majority of its component members, the Council's position at first reading, the proposed act shall be deemed not to have been adopted;
> (c) proposes, by a majority of its component members, amendments to the Council's position at first reading, the text thus amended shall be forwarded to the Council and to the Commission, which shall deliver an opinion on those amendments.
It feels like the last turn in a board game where everyone is busy taking points with no regard for the impact of the decisions on the theoretical next turn - because there is no next turn. Its really weird.
> blame-laundering mechanism
Also, I'm stealing this.
This isn't surprising to me at all.
The World Cup is on, and it draws attention away from politics. This has been a pretty common observable pattern for as long as I can remember.
for some godforsaken reason left-lib parties in europe think accepting infinity migrants forever is the most important thing to do
this is becoming more and more unpopular with the voters, leading to right wing parties surging across europe (Denmark, which has an immigration restrictionist left wing government doesnt seem to have an issue here, true mystery)
obviously the solution here is total control of the internet, so that you can suppress dissent
This is completely BS. Nobody wants to let in unlimited migrants.
The left wing parties just wish to honour existing international treaties which we have signed to allow genuine asylum seekers. There's processes in places to determine whether they deserve this. The right just want to turn their boats back as they approach (pushback) which is literally illegal.
It's important to realise though that asylum seekers are not the root cause of most of our issues even though they are portrayed as such by the right in deflection from the real issues. For example here in Holland the biggest societal issue is the farmers who pollute too many nitrogen compounds and that causes housing projects to be put on hold. The number of asylum seekers has been steadily decreasing over the years.
But farmers make up a huge piece of the right wing so they'll never take ownership of the problem. Better to deflect on someone else.
Unfortunately the hard-right has also defunded that process for many years, and have thus created this problem themselves. The agencies tasked with figuring out if asylum seekers have a legitimate claim are overwhelmed with all the work. This is purely a self-created problem (intended to gaslight the population in there being a huge 'immigrant problem').
This is exactly how we got here. We allowed them to work to make temporary asylum permanent migration.
PS: Part of the issue with sending them back is that the countries they're from won't take them. They can't live at the airport like Tom Hanks either.
They could be pink for all everyone should care about. The actual relevant distinction with real word implication is criminal statistics and per capita rates. Not to mention everyday real life bad experiences for people living outside of the sheltered silicon valley world view.
>countries they're from won't take them
That is just wrong. In many places it literally results in a brain drain.
Countries are not entitled to keep their citizens by force to prop up their economy. If the person doesn't want to stay, why should they be forced to?
You might want to contemplate the fact that you're literally rehashing the same arguments that Soviets and East Germany used to justify their exit visas. Except you're doing it from the other end of the pipe.
But these are treaties are no longer fit for purpose, as can be seen by the boatloads of mostly young male economic migrants turning up in the UK to 'claim asylum'. People who've got thousands of euros to pay the small boats traffickers.
If they were refugees fleeing war or other dangers, you'd expect a lot more families - women, kids, the elderly - to be making the journey.
(Of course, legal migration to the UK is vastly higher than illegal arrivals. And this is the larger issue putting pressure on housing, healthcare, transport, and more. But the small boats are a glaring example of a broken system being exploited)
In this way we do have responsibility towards them. The migration from Africa is a different issue but it is already possible to quickly reject asylum-seekers from known-safe countries.
> Of course, legal migration to the UK is vastly higher than illegal arrivals. And this is the larger issue putting pressure on housing, healthcare, transport, and more.
Well exactly but nobody is talking about that. Everyone is talking about the asylum seekers. Which are only a small part of the issue.
And the pressure on housing is very multifaceted. A lot of NIMBYism when it comes to new construction, and boomers who have invested in the housing market and don't want to see their investment evaporate by more supply on the housing market. So the parties backed by those with money are always obstructing new construction and other means to make housing cheaper. This is a much bigger problem when it comes to housing than those few apartments granted to asylum seekers.
True, but I would say the current refugees are not those who most need refuge. Religious minorities who are the most threatened by ISIS are under-represented.
> it is already possible to quickly reject asylum-seekers from known-safe countries.
It does not happen though. it happens in the end, but the system in ridiculously slow and inefficient.
> And the pressure on housing is very multifaceted. A lot of NIMBYism when it comes to new construction, and boomers who have invested in the housing market and don't want to see their investment evaporate by more supply on the housing market.
That is true.
1. highly inefficient: its slow and badly run. 2. seriously considers applications that clearly false - people from Canada and the EU do not need to claim asylum! Those numbers are tiny but it illustrates a winder spread problem. people who feel safe enough to return to the country they "fled" on holiday also clearly do not have a genuine claim. 3. It fails to provide a route for a lot of people who do have a genuine claim - e.g. religious minorities in the Middle East.
It is no longer true that the numbers of legal migrants are vastly higher because the government have decided that they need to cut the numbers of immigrants and the easiest way to do this is to cut legal immigration.
The problem is, there never was a consensus around immigration. The Liberals own stats prove that. What there was was a consensus around multiculturalism and tolerance.
Immigration itself, was always split evenly among three camps in Canada: those who want more, those who want less, and those who think we have the right amount.
Trudeau & his fake leftist brigade many have ruined multiculturalism for a large portion of Canadians, permanently.
Well, it didn't.
The minimum anyone would have to accept is that the economy went to shit while mass immigration was happening ... (in both EU and Canada). So I guess you don't have to accept causation, but they were happening simultaneously, so this reaction by the population is justified in that sense.
be warned citizen, you are committing a serious wrong and hate think and will hence be labeled nazi, fascist or any other dehumanizing word to legitimize violence against you. Please correct your mistake to protect our democracy.
You don't get called a nazi because they think you are one but because it's easier to justify violence against you that way.
No, leftist governments in the EU have failed to provide prosperity and failed in all their promises, now they're going for total control to try to stay in power.
Look at France, as soon as Le Pen was cleared to run for the presidency they start talking about anti "misinformation" laws...
You can always make your enemy. Current rearming efforts really remind historians of WW1 arm races.
At some point once so much interests and offers are at stake, that creating the demand is inevitable and just a matter of time.
[1] https://xcancel.com/NXT4EU/status/2075193290215805042
The point is that the actual far right is rising all over Europe and will likely be ascendant in the next round of elections, the establishment is trying to stay in power.
My friends are allowed to be as queer as they want to be, and those who don't want to see them are free to look away.
Those with mental issues are free from destitution as their employers weren't free to just fire them.
The state should work for the most people to live the most comfortable life possible. We would have the money for it, if it weren't for the trickle down virus that's still infected half our politicians.
And I can't in good conscience judge anyone for coming here, I would do the same and would want to be treated well as well. Not be put in a concentration camp paid for by the EU, or get my dinky shot by Frontex at high sea, just before reaching the border.
By WHO?! Russia is still stuck in 1/4 of the Ukraine and fear mongers make it sound like they're about to reach Paris any day now.
This does not even make sense as a conspiracy theory.
Had "EU" wanted to hurt Russia there were was a thousand ways to do that. But they didn't. Instead they traded and built infrastructure. Most EU countries saw Russia as a partner before they invaded their neighbour in the most gruesome way possible.
If anything, the EU should have reacted sooner. It was shameful they didn't. You can't really pretend like nothing while an all out war is taking place on the same continent.
This law didn't open a phone case factory in europe, it just made the 1eur case cost ~5euros (vat is paid on customs too). The only alternative is to go to a local mall and buy a case there for 10-15euros, and it's the same chinese case, just more expensive, but the reseller pays a lot less tax, since they can buy 100 cases for 1eur and still pay just 3eur of customs on them.
So I, the consumer get 300% customs on that 1eur case (+vat on huge customs fee), while the mall kiosk gets 3% customs fee, how is that fair? And how will that build a phone case factory in europe?
Why not build the factory first instead? Have it make 2eur phone cases, and then the price raise would make me buy the european one, but for now, it's just makes me pay more for the same chinese stuff, and I can't spend the leftover money for a local beer at a local bar anymore, so stuff actually made in europe.
EU spends 33% of World’s military spending, once you exclude US. EU spends more on military than China.
How much do you need to spend to defend yourself, 60% of the world?
Mind you, many western weapons, like stinger and javelin, cost more than their weight in silver. Sounds like a scam
Did we though? At least in Germany a bunch of anti-climate-change projects and changes have been and are being canceled and we're going back to coal and diesel. It seems we're optimizing to have no results and negative progress at the moment.
Yes, interesting that the People dropping bombs did not anticipate blowing up.
Our elites have revealed many flaws recently, but one I did not expect is that they have surprisingly limited intelligence.
So long freedom, it’s been nice living in STASI free society for a while. Too bad power attracts the people who will make sure they keep it in their hands.
Mars is nice this time of year.
Well, once you realise that the so-called "EU parliament" is nothing but a lobbyist group (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qatar_corruption_scandal_at_th...) it is no longer surprising. To me nothing here is surprising, neither the hurry nor any slowness.
Lobbyists are winning the war.
I really don’t but any other reason, as other tools (legal and technological) are already in place.
Nt being able to scan personal communications would break big tech platforms main monetisation strategy (selling peoples data).
They know the impact of the decisions: more power for them as bodies.
Every time HN posts another one of these privacy-invading EU regulations, a bunch of pro-bureaucracy people are in here cheering on regulations and knocking down anyone who suggests that maybe this time they've gone too far.
I’m not saying this legislation impacts any of this positively or negatively, but we can’t pretend the prior world order isn’t making some drastic changes lately. Governments are slow to change laws but I would expect much of the current push has actual ties to the larger global shifts.
This smells like him, honestly.
So many reasons: unpopular wars in the Middle East, repeated embarrassments in international arena, domestic unrest.
It's only a matter of time before EU-skeptical opposition parties achieve absolute majorities in critical EU constituency states. They're aware of this fact and are trying to adopt as much of their agenda as possible in the time they have remaining.
- Europe is now at war with Russia (neighbor)
- Its relationship with the US is rapidly deteriorating (main partner, de facto protector)
- Its relationship with China is also rapidly deteriorating
- It is getting very antagonistic with it own citizen and some individual member countries (such as Hungaria or Romania recently)
So there are a lot of justifications in each case but the overall picture is worrisome. You can't be antagonistic with everyone.
There is a reason why the North Korean regime is still around, they never forgot they need to keep a good relationship with at least one powerful ally.
Second, the relationship with US is deteriorating due to Trump. As a matter of fact all US relationships are deteriorating for the same reason. Where have you been the past years? Im not going to bother to respond to the following points because you mix some reality with propaganda and seem to live in a paralel reality.
And the internal struggles are indeed a problem, this is due to the extreme right which has completely taken over America (and is sponsored by Russia). It was good to see the Hungarians came to their senses but it's worrying that the EU doesn't have a mechanism to expel countries.
The problem is who do we ally with that we can trust now. Russia and America obviously not. Canada yes but they're not big. China just serves its own interests, they will never care about a partnership. They just want our money to buy their products, nothing else.
I think South America is another potential one and the EU is trying to connect there with eg Mercosur. But America is sponsoring the extreme right there too as you can see in Honduras and Colombia recently. And in Venezuela of course.
They don't care about solving problems around migrants. It really boils down to people just not wanting brown faces in 'their' streets.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposed_United_States_acquisi...
> The problem is who do we ally with that we can trust now.
"We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow." ― Lord Palmerston
There are lots of possible allies, but no one single ally to depend on. India to counter balance China, Canada to have an ally in North America, etc.
> it's worrying that the EU doesn't have a mechanism to expel countries.
Or it can become a federal state.
And no I don't think it's a good idea for Europe to become a federated state. The US' current situation shows how bad that could turn if the wrong person is elected.
At least we have the national governments here as a safeguard and we can also leave the EU if needed.
And yeah I didn't name India as a possible partner because they're too close with Russia. The EU is trying to make some deals with them but it's a bad idea while Modi and the BJP in general is in power in my opinion. They're similarly bad to minorites as the Chinese.
The US actually occupied parts of Greenland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposed_United_States_acquisi...
> And yeah I didn't name India as a possible partner because they're too close with Russia.
Offer them a better alternative
Nukes
For which there is no good reason and which is extremely stupid
There has been zero aggression from China towards Europe and zero chance of military confrontation.
Most of the sanctions that were implemented under pressure from Us have backfired on Europe (but not so much on US)
European politicians are going around the world and telling India not to trade with Russia while Israel trades with Russia, etc.
The media is barely covering it at all, the sheep are well asleep, online some just lucid dream about the democracy they never had.
The problem is though, that countries in the EU by themselves are economically not powerful enough, to hold up any ethical values against the giants US and China. So we need some alternative to the EU, some other union, that at least contains the economically most powerful EU countries, so that we have enough economical weight, that the other big players cannot simply push us around. Currently, the EU seems to be hellbent on losing its support. But how to prevent that other union to go down the same road?
Anyway, it seems clear, that we can no longer allow EU decision makers to make rules for us. They are not to be trusted.
You mean the far right that talks about EU all the time and loves when EU does things like this?
You shouldn't go that far. Simply don't vote for the EPP (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_People%27s_Party_Grou...) in your country. They are the driving force behind this. Other parties have mostly voted against this (depending on the country)
It is the equivalent of having a gas pedal in a car that is fully activated unless you put your foot down.
Surveillance is a branding issue. If you wrap a shit in crepe paper and Corinthian leather, most people will admire what an artist you are.
Such a weak reasoning and method which they used to push this is ridiculous agenda lead me to strongly suspect there must be something else behind it.
Only the server operators then know your IP, and they don't know who you are or what you're saying.
Spain would label you criminal for merely using alternative Android builds: https://www.androidauthority.com/google-pixel-organized-crim...
https://simplex.chat/
> https://meshtastic.org/
What changes with the return of Chat Control 1.0—and what stays the same:
*What is coming back:* US tech companies are once again allowed to scan private messages without a warrant or prior suspicion. This affects direct messages on platforms like Instagram, Discord, Snapchat, Skype, and Xbox, as well as emails via Google’s Gmail and Apple’s iCloud.
*What remains unchanged:* Public social media posts and files hosted in cloud storage could already be scanned without this law. Furthermore, private messages can always be reported by users, or monitored by authorities using targeted, court-ordered wiretapping.
*What is still NOT being scanned:* End-to-end encrypted chats, such as those on WhatsApp, have always been exempt from these scans. Additionally, European providers of messaging and email services have never implemented chat control measures.
So, E2E is unaffected?
Chat Control 2.0 was the big one in those regards.
(Also, LOL @ Skype mention.)
For IRC there is irssi-otr. There was weechat-otr but I think it may have gone unsupported as their script did not work in python3.
There is also ejabberd [0] that has OMEMO [1] preferred over OTR and PGP and supports many to many E2EE.
[0] - https://ejabberd.im/
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OMEMO
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/07/openai-faked-ina...
In a couple years time, Chat Control 2.0 will come about, and the same tyrants will use the EU admission [2] that there is no evidence that suspicionless scanning of private communications has led to an increase in criminal convictions or in rescued children to argue that we need to go further, and break E2EE.
[1]: https://www.iwf.org.uk/resources/end-to-end-encryption-and-k... [2]: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELE...
Haven’t found anything that breaks their funding down by source and the majority on the UK govt site is from “charitable activities” (https://register-of-charities.charitycommission.gov.uk/en/ch...)
The top 25 contributing members (£90k+; big tech are here) contributed between £2.25M and £4.37M. The other 110 members contributed between £2.26M and £4.46M.
I get that if you are an ngo that really wants to solve online child abuse you’d want a law like this. It may be mostly the ngo pushing for it, not necessarily big tech. I could be wrong.
If big tech _wanted_ to they could already backdoor their encryption and scan the message content, they don't need regulation to do that. The only thing that changes with regulation is that they now _have_ to, which cannot possibly be in their favor.
Why an earth would a big tech company say no to gather more info on its users? Show me the first one
The Internet Watch Foundation is one of these NGOs that makes lists of hashed child porn images and URLs. All the big tech companies subscribe so they can coordinate on blocking child porn, as they are legally required to do.
Unfortunately the IWF is also a "charity" and thus engages in political lobbying. Because like all such NGOs they have a single purpose, they lobby for making that purpose easier irregardless of other costs, which they view as out of scope. It's obviously easier to watch the internet if tech firms are forced to watch everything all the time, so that's what they're in favour of.
People actually working at tech firms on messaging systems don't want to do this, however. So they end up funding people who are undermining their own policies. This is very common whenever NGOs get involved e.g. governments funding NGOs that directly undermine the government's own efforts.
The fix would be for tech firms to leave the IWF and set up their own alternative organization that doesn't engage in lobbying activity. However, that would require a lot of cross-org agility that is difficult for big companies to achieve even internally, let alone across the industry, and the leadership is all thinking about AI anyway not EU stuff where they already just assume the EU is going to regulate them all the death anyway. So inertia carries the day.
[1]: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/26073615-c-2025-5430...
They are already allowed to do this, and already are doing this. When you provide data to the service provider in a non-e2ee fashion, it's their data as much as it is yours. They can scan it, data mine it, analyze it, whatever.
Because its an extension of an existing bill.
After the whole internet lost its mind about Apple CSAM scanning and being horribly off target, I'd recommend to ignore news reports and go to the sources when making an opinion.
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex%3A...
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=COM...
The only issues I can see is the error rate for non-CSAM scanning and how the latest vote was conducted.
Although the scanning part, it is still law enforcement that has to review that information and determine if there is a case. Most of the those are teens sharing naked photos with other teens.
> Overview
> End-to-end encryption is a term used to describe blocking or preventing any third-party recipient from viewing, reading or becoming aware of information that one individual has sent to another. In response to growing concerns about online data security, many technology companies are adopting this strategy with potentially dire circumstances.
> The use of end-to-end encryption would prevent the companies or any third-party from detecting illegal activity occurring on their platforms, including the activity of people who use the internet to perpetuate online demand for graphic sexual abuse material of children.
> We believe personal security is extremely important and support efforts to improve online privacy. But, if this solution is implemented with no exceptions for detecting child sexual exploitation, millions of incidents of abuse will remain hidden, leaving these young victims without any help or protection from these horrific crimes.
https://ncmec.org/theissues/end-to-end-encryption
Because what actually happens is you learn to handle it yourself, particularly if you're a boy. No one wants to hear it.
There's no dogma because there's no inherent connection between survivors: abuse creates the need for understanding and care while destroying your ability to trust in the reality of human kindness.
The first bit you have to do on your own. Because someone has spoken to your body in a private language, but they're not interested in speaking to you as you understood yourself, and this is like being told to speak without vocal chords.
There's no catharsis in talking about it. Then and now that has always been the cruellest irony. It is deeply uncomfortable to hear a man describing this kind of abuse. You become marked, for lack of a better word, even if no-one lets you know the reason why. You lose friends before you learn to stop talking.
All the adults just seem to hope you don't remember. Sometimes secrets can be made to move in slow motion, and there are years between the day they're said and the day they are heard. Avoidance always turns to guilt, and so the shame falls upon you for shaking the tree. A child can understand the simplicity of rage, but not shame.
Now return to the thousands of sudden voices. They're from everywhere, yet somehow nowhere at all, and they all really do care about shouting that childhood abuse is everywhere too, it's invisible, you probably know someone it happened to. They're glossy, loud, funded, and they need you to care too... or else, well, you must be on the side of the other guys, right?
Well, I hate them. I hate them for their emptiness and their venality. They have a vampiric relationship to the abused, masquerading as ‘activists’ or ’safety influencers’. They outright lie at this point because we’re either naïve enough to believe them... or zealous enough to think their ends justify their means. We’ve seen it before, we know how this spirals. If you finance a company which depends on a constant throughput of ‘baddies’… what happens if, after some time, there aren’t enough?
We're all collectively just... cowards. Lightly applauding, bored or brow-beaten: aloof for the sake of personal safety. Someone once said I was a kid with an 'old soul'... and that was the most helpful thought anyone ever handed me. I was never conscious of the juxtaposition with my minority; at the time, I was just happy to have an excuse not to talk to people.
If the "services" want to watch, don't worry they will, "they don't need your password". But I guess they "do" that only for the very baddies, aka child exploitation, human trafficking, terrorists, killers, drug dealers, etc.
We all know here that "information system security" does not exist, this is a fantasy: there is only some "best effort" with a wide spectrum of compromises. If somebody talks to you about "deliverable security", that guy wants to sell you something.
E2E will protect you only against John Doh, "hacker only on Sundays". And we better keep that in mind.
This is not specific to 'backdooring aes-gcm implementations' at all. Read again what I wrote, namely this is the general status quo on 'information system security': they don't need your password or aes-gcm key to watch if they really want to. You would be a fool to presume anything else.
innocent men cannot be ruled over. authoritarians want a population of such "criminals", because then their power becomes the choice of which law is executed on whom.
To avoid being affected by this law, you can just download Signal, or use any other encrypted messaging service.
> What changes with the return of Chat Control 1.0—and what stays the same:
> What is coming back: US tech companies are once again allowed to scan private messages without a warrant or prior suspicion. This affects direct messages on platforms like Instagram, Discord, Snapchat, Skype, and Xbox, as well as emails via Google’s Gmail and Apple’s iCloud.
> What remains unchanged: Public social media posts and files hosted in cloud storage could already be scanned without this law. Furthermore, private messages can always be reported by users, or monitored by authorities using targeted, court-ordered wiretapping.
> What is still NOT being scanned: End-to-end encrypted chats, such as those on WhatsApp, have always been exempt from these scans. Additionally, European providers of messaging and email services have never implemented chat control measures.
It's dispiriting to see a supposedly pro-privacy politician launder backdoors as "strict security standards".
https://howtheyvote.eu/votes/195775
>"Yes" means stop control, because it's a "proposition de rejet" we're looking at. rejet = reject
A "yes" vote was a vote against Chat Control. It failed because it needed an absolute majority of 361/) votes to defeat the "urgent procedure" lawfare by Metsina, a conservative.
- It was supported by two big groups on center-right and center-left and rejected by all the other groups (left and right).
- Conservatism preserves traditions, limited government, rule of law, and individual rights via gradual change. Fascism is revolutionary totalitarianism: one-party state, leader cult, suppression of dissent, militarism, and rejection of liberalism/conservatism. Totally different.
Just now I scrolled through our most popular news sites. 0 mentions. Wasn't on TV either.
The vast majority of the population didn't even have a clue that the vote was happening.
I checked the top 5 most popular local news sites. There was one article about chat control in April and then 2 more from 2025. That's it.
Imagine an issue as big as this and it's not even reported. Yeah I don't feel confident about the future at all.
Example: Look at Germany and how many Rundfunk Intendanten there are and how much they make a year, plus how little coverage such topics get.
Here's a quote from the article itself, which works for both pro and con arguments:
As I'm not trained in law, I have no strong opinions on if this proposal is a net positive or negative, almost any big name LLM will do a better job than me looking at the legal text, stroking my goatee and saying "I recon…". But what I can say that I've just seen a headline about a class action lawsuit in the USA due to grok making CSAM and the company failing to assist the police in their investigations, and another about Meta facing a lawsuit in India for delivering advertising for CSAM on Instagram.My steelman in favour of the legislation:
The regulation closes a legal gap that would otherwise force platforms to stop using existing CSAM detection systems; a temporary framework that doesn't require universal mandatory scanning or ban E2EE, just keeps the legal basis for companies which choose to use detection/scanners while lawmakers continue negotiating a more comprehensive longterm solution.
My steelman against the legislation:
Scanning private communications, even allowing companies to "voluntary" do this, sets the precedent that the confidentiality of private correspondence is conditional rather than fundamental. Also, automated scanning inevitably has false positives. Also, has chilling effect on free speech, undermines trust in encrypted messaging.
Also, situationally, that it's "voluntary" means offenders can migrate to platforms which don't "voluntary" do this.
Blackboxes which scan your messages and photos for anything 3rd party want with undisclosed criteria.
In principle "for anything 3rd party want" would be illegal in the EU. However, Big Tech clearly doesn't care what's illegal in the EU.
Pertinent to this case: https://stateofsurveillance.org/news/big-tech-defies-eu-law-...
Previously: https://www.edpb.europa.eu/news/french-sa-cookies-and-advert...
Even earlier, when they cared about the law: https://www.trtworld.com/article/13092354
Well the criteria is CSAM?
Do you have any evidence that these systems have been used to imprison someone that wasn't CSAM related?
Could you confirm that in any way?
Given that big tech firms keep getting fined for doing stuff like this ("anything 3rd party want with undisclosed criteria"), clearly the answer is "yes, eventually".
Imagine Alice, an 18, 19yo girl, having a boyfriend, Bob, and since Bob is on a student exchange, she decides to send him a boob photo. Since alice is skinny, her boobs are on the smaller side.
Now imagine Alice hitting 'Send', and getting an automated message from whatever CSAM AI bot:
"Your message has not been sent, the system detected the breasts in the photo to be probably underage, the photo was forwarded to <your local police station> for manual review"
And half an hour later
"Detectives Rob Johnson, John Robson and Bob Bobson from police department XY, have done an extensive manual review of the photo of the breasts and have 2:1 decided that they're probably not underage, so the photo was sent to the intended destination. Than you, your friendly CSAM AI bot!"
No government really wants to be fully enforcing all their own laws, just because it's way too expensive to hire that many cops. I think the closest anyone got was the Stasi, and they had a lot of "volunteers": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unofficial_collaborator#Other_...
I think Apple was going to implement something like this a few years ago before scrapping it.
A couple of years ago you could add some pixels to an image to change it's automatic classification from cat to ostrich. But the tech has improved and I think the race has now firmly been won by the side trying to de-obfuscate images, and only in rare scenarios can images actually be obfuscated efficiently and consistently.
The LLMs think one specific mystery plant in my garden hiding behind the hedge is velvetleaf; no, wild cotton; no, linden; no, hibiscus; no, mulberry; no, knotweed; no, paulownia; no, catalpa; no, hydrangea; no, grape vine; no, pokeweed.
Many of these claims were trivial for me to falsify with a quick image search, they don't look much like each other or my mystery plant. The things the AI "identified" were often simply not true of the photo.
Basically, even with current tech, you go straight back to false positives and false negatives: https://arxiv.org/abs/2111.06628
Why would you NOT want this to exist? This seems the only method to not raise false positives.
Why? Because I don't want such pictures to be kept or archived by anyone. This isn't hard.
https://www.robertkinglawfirm.com/mass-torts/grok-lawsuit/
"a measure it had rejected twice in March. Although a majority of voting Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) actually opposed the regulation (314 against, 276 in favor, 17 abstentions), the motion to reject it failed to secure the required absolute majority of 361 votes. As a result, mass scanning is now permitted again until 2028."
"Oh no we can't get a majority to pass the law!"
"Have you tried getting a majority to not pass the law?"
"Worth a shot!"
"It worked, should we also do this multiple times?"
"Of course not!"
On 7 July, MEPs voted 331–303 to fast-track the return of Chat Control 1.0 mass scanning. A binding vote follows Thursday, 9 July, where an absolute majority of 361 MEPs is needed to stop it. Take action now to demand they defend your private messages.
Assuming "yes" means stop control, parties in favor of chat control were:
- European People’s Party and
- Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats.
Countries in favor of chat control were:
- Spain, Poland, Romania, Sweden, Hungary, Portugal, Greece, Ireland, Lithuania, Lavia, Cyprus
They voted for "Proposition de rejet". It's written there, but it's in French.
Also, see the case of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%BCseyin_Do%C4%9Fru - if you aren't liked by the EU courts, they just accuse you of "collusion with Russia" and ban your bank account via "sanction policies". The ECJ doesn't have to provide any evidence of crime, you have to provide counter-evidence of the absence of crime (and good luck defending yourself without money). The ECJ judges, who interpret and impose these laws, are also not democratically really elected or anything, yet they hold power over your bank account. Makes ya think.
This journalist was not sanctioned by the court.
You're right, it's about the injunction.
Can you explain how he is supposed to house and feed a family of 5 on 500€ a month?
Or is this a "he should starve to death" situation?
What right does the EU even have to "sanction" a German citizen? None.
https://infocuria.curia.europa.eu/tabs/affair?publishedId=T-...
>Immediately after Red Media gets founded by the guy, but now in Turkey
>Redfish social media presence gets renamed to Red Media
>Red Media kept staff, equipment and reused content from Redfish
Tbh I'd be pissed if sanctions could be bypassed by simply changing your logo and handle.
I'd go further and suspect the Russian disinformation apparatus just threw them under the bus for "EU bad" points.
It's such a textbook and standard Russian propaganda practice to finance and push divisive and partial views I'm even surprised people keep falling for it.
Another "journalist" the far left (in Spain at least) considers a martyr. The whole coverage of his arrest was a shitshow (Freedom of expression! Poland is fascist! Freedom for Pablo!)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablo_Gonz%C3%A1lez_Yag%C3%BCe
Then it was shown he spied on Nemtsov, Polish journalists... and he even hugged uniformed GRU officers upon arrival in Russia as part of a prisoner exchange, while wearing a "my empire needs me" t-shirt.
But this doesn't affect only the far left:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_of_Europe
Anti-immigration, anti EU narratives, solid antisemitic (not just anti-Israel) stances, interviews with all sorts of sketchy characters, the whole set. Luckily for de Vlieger, he had sold the operation to literal Viktor Medvedchuk (and then the platform took a further Russia victim, Ukraine bad turn), so he remains unsanctioned.
this is just eu in a nutshell, the irish were made to vote on both nice and lisbon treaties twice (both were voted no in the first vote)
They'll only realize this when the jackboot is on their neck. But probably not even then because in some EU countries government obedience is like a religion.
I'm neurodivergent, and on various nerdom bell curve tails, including know more than averga bear about technology societal implications and misuses, but I still wouldn't use that term; here in particular, it seems a strong pejorative for anybody who disagrees with your world view :-/
>here in particular, it seems a strong pejorative
Only because that's how you choose to see it.
> for anybody who disagrees with your world view
So having a world view where government surveillance state should NOT be OK makes me the bad guy?
As we’re seeing in the UK right now, if you stump up £500 and find ten people to counter-sign your candidacy, you can even run against your MP as a novelty candidate. If you choose your novelty name right you also get to stand next to them at the alphabetically-ordered result announcement.
Compare with comatose Kentucky senators on their deathbed or EU commissioners based in a country with French train signs. Neither are insurmountable obstacles to democracy — hold up a sign? Google Translate? — but, by my metric, they are lesser options to something more local and accountable.
I’m sure, back in the day, rural folk took umbrage at having to ride their donkey to the local town just to be able to throw cowpats at their despised burghers. We of course can do it on TikTok nowadays but nothing beats yelling in person.
But if I’m unhappy with EU policies I can talk to a member of the EU parliament (and yes I know two of the members from my city) or I can talk to a member of the Bundestag since national governments have a large role in the EU.
In the end, my voice is tiny. Which is expected, after all I’m just one of over 450 million people living here.
I think the main purpose of the EU is to prevent wars between European states by providing a forum for compromise and cooperation.
I’d say it’s succeeded in that nicely since its founding. Not one war between member states despite ongoing disputes.
Seems like a very good idea.
I hate this law though, it’s undemocratic.
It's like thinking "I like Canada and am a proud Canadian, though I think there's still a lot of inequality and many policies can be improved upon and we can certainly be more efficient".
As an outsider, it feels all levels of USA government are constantly fighting and going back and forth and back and forth over big topics like minority rights, marriages, religion in schools and public matters, funding, environmental concerns, police approach, rights and freedoms, spying, choices of utilities, etc.
Same for EU externally I imagine.
because the European Union contains more than 600 million people and almost 30 very diverse countries (and is a supranational, not federal body). It's institutions also do mirror the structures of most other large unions.
The Commission is an executive body, the parliament is a legislative body, and the council is comparable to the state bodies in bicameral governments. You may as well ask why you have a Senate or Bundesrat when you have a Congress and Bundestag. Because minoritarian and majoritarian interests need to be balanced, even more so in the EU. If even actual nation states a fraction the size of the EU and bona fide countries aren't governed in unitary fashion, why do you expect anybody would centralize so much power in the EU.
If the FAA decides to make some aviation regulation that's binding through the entire country, and likewise if EU parliament and council have adopted legislation for say, the emission rates of cars the Commission then goes and decides the actual rules.
These kinds of institutions, and really in most countries they do most of the implementation work are necessary because you can't have your legislative vote on thousands of technical details of how cars or planes work, that's just a technocratic reality regardless of where you are.
It should have stayed this way.
Yes - it fixed the attribution of our problems. Politicians, leaders, judges, etc will find it harder to "blame the EU" - when then blame is squarely on them.
This will then have an effect during voting.
I wouldn't call it the most censored platform, but it still has vestiges of its old self, particularly with respect to philosophy and politics.
Reddit has made it harder for mods to find out which subs you are active in, so that you can’t be banned for activity in subs that are in cold wars with each other.
- This vote took place on last day of the session when many MEPs had already left for Summer vacation - 112 MEPs of 719 didn't vote.
- The vote was called only two days before as an "Rule 170 - Urgent procedure" - 73 MEPs missed the vote making it "urgent". Normally it takes months of procedure to come up for a final vote.
Sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from malice.
It completely perverts the entire system. With this approach, any law can be passed by a minority; just phrase as a negative.
I propose a new law: "The EU is hereby not not not abolished" ohh look, it failed to gain majority vote! EU is over! Everyone go home! Look at how clever I am finding loopholes!
This was just everyone leaving on a Friday, sort of a work day, sort of not.
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/faq/9/plenary-session...
> Plenary sessions of Parliament take place 12 times per year in Strasbourg and last four days
There are 48 days in sessions over a year. You're saying that it's too much to ask MEPs not to take holidays during those 48 days? Am I missing something here?
If we're talking about _direct_ democracy then we have to do the work ourselves but because we don't want to do that (because we want to go on holydays), we give up our rights to those who _want_ to represent us.
That, of course, falls apart once those representing us start to only represent themselves.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_(Aristotle)#Book_III
Even relying on people to vote no is not enough.
The problem is that constitutional courts should then say the law was against the constitution and cancel it, but will that happen?
Germany has implemented EU sanctions against a German journalist, which deprive him and his family of the ability to conduct basically any economic activity in Germany or even to leave the country. He is not allowed to work. No one is allowed to pay him money. He has to petition the government every time he wants to access even a small amount of the money in his own bank account. The same restrictions apply to his close family members, because they are suspected of helping him survive financially. He is barred from crossing any border in Europe, including to leave.
He has not been accused or convicted of anything in court. The only procedure that was required to hand down an economic death sentence was for the EU Commission to put his name on a list.
The German government claims this is all okay, because the journalist can proactively challenge his sanction listing in Brussels. It's a years-long process that will require paying lawyers - using money he is not allowed to access.
Needless to say, this is all highly unconstitutional. But the German government simply doesn't care. They just say they're implementing EU sanctions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%BCseyin_Do%C4%9Fru
https://www.rts.ch/info/suisse/2025/article/ancien-espion-su...
The sanctions imposed on December 15 by the European Union against Jacques Baud and eleven other people include the freezing of their assets, a ban on doing business and bans on entering the EU.
“I don’t have the right to return to Switzerland, or even to travel within the EU. I’m essentially being held against my will,” says Jacques Baud.
Regardless, the UK is still run by the same pro-EU loyalists it was run by for decades, and they largely continue EU policy. You will notice that a lot of people are very unhappy about that, but it takes time to completely replace the entire political class of a country - especially when that class bought time by pretending they were going to make a break with EU ideas and demands, whilst secretly planning to do the opposite.
I’m living in Germany and am -principally- a massive advocate for and proponent of the free (or liberal) democratic basic order ("FDGO" [0]) we have had here for the last decades, and apart from Chat Control, I’m usually very highly pro-EU, too.
But reading this has genuinely left me in a bit of a shock now, and created some (for lack of a better word) FUD I haven’t felt before with regard to these two, eh, institutions governing us.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_democratic_basic_order
Currently we have numberplate recognition everywhere and logging of SMS and position info of phones.
So this is just another step into the direction where we will be watched everywhere by our government in case we step out of line.
It would be more surprising if the organisation ultimately responsible for security did not want to.
This isn’t true. Regulations are directly applicable and don’t require national legislation; directives generally do. Individuals affected by a failure to implement a directive can complain to the European Commission, which can bring infringement proceedings against the member state and potentially seek financial penalties.
EU law also has primacy over conflicting national law, and the CJEU’s position is that this includes constitutional provisions. Courts in Germany and Poland have challenged that position, but refusing to comply can put the countries in breach of their EU treaty obligations and lead to infringement proceedings and penalties.
Also, the European Court of Justice has, to the best of my knowledge, not ruled on this yet, either. The fact fight isn't over.
[0]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Bill_of_Rights
Think about what it might mean for
(a) the government to give me the right to live in your house; or
(b) the government to restrict you from expelling me from your house.
The US is founded on certain ideas about natural rights -- hence not granted, per se -- but that's somewhat orthogonal to this whole issue. Even if there were an unwritten constitution, a country could base its institutions, philosophy of lawmaking, jurisprudence, &c, on natural rights doctrine (and for a time, the British did exactly that).
The earlier post mentions "That's why you have a constitution with rights that are not up for vote." but if what they mean is natural rights, that goes well beyond any procedural issue around the basic law.
But https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entrenched_clause are not all that uncommon in general.
With regards to Germany, the page says:
...if a constitution provides for a mechanism of its own abolition or replacement, like the German Basic Law does in Article 146, this by necessity provides a "back door" for getting rid of the "eternity clause", too.
It's really hard to have a legal system that literally can not be changed by any legitimate vote -- only by revolution -- because what sits at the bottom of most of them (all of them?) is that the consent of some body politic is necessary and sufficient to legitimate a law.
Attendance isn't just low before the summer break, it's low all the time. MEPs miss votes for reasons as trivial as there being a football game on, because why not? It's not like their votes matter much anyway. Everything important is decided upon long before they get involved, they aren't allowed to actually write laws or pass them or repeal them, and so nobody with any political ambition goes there unless they're using it as a springboard to national politics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=166SAhPB5-Q
> "Mr President, our parliament in the United Kingdom sat for 142 days last year and it was criticized widely for only sitting for that amount of time yet we in Brussels and Strasburg in the plenary and mini plenary, we sit for just five days a month and on three of those days it's only part of a day that we actually sit for. So we end up with debate in this chamber where microphones of speakers are cut off after 60 seconds, 90 seconds or 2 minutes, and we have no way of expanding on a point, we have no way of properly challenging a speaker, we have no means of proper scrutiny of proposed legislation that comes through. Surely it would make more sense to have sufficient time allocated to proper debate to reason debate and those who actually believe in the structures and institutions of this place should surely welcome that. I think my 60 seconds is up."
You can tell it's a joke institution because they regularly penalize MEPs for the content of their two minute speeches. Britain has the concept of parliamentary immunity but the EU does not, so you get "politicians" who are told what they can and cannot say by the leaders of other parties.
The Council, made up of heads of state, set the direction.
The Commission, made up of whoever is nominated by those heads of state, usually some mate of theirs with no democratic accountability or mandate of their own (see: Peter Mandelson), is the body that decides on and creates legislation.
The Parliament, made up of the actually elected members, seems to exist just to rubber-stamp the output of the other bodies. Or occasionally not, but look what happened here, they were asked again until they did * .
Don't get me wrong, I think there's a lot that's good about the EU too, but it's in need of serious reform before it can claim to be a truly democratic set of bodies.
(* Which is incidentally another criticism of the EU, mostly centred around the time of the Lisbon treaty, which was first put forward as the new EU constitution but, after rejection in some popular referenda in some countries, was renamed the Lisbon Treaty and pushed through again. In the UK this caused waves because the populace was not asked at all about the treaty and Gordon Brown was reported to have snuck-off and signed it into law on the quiet)
Well, the UK has only been asked about Europe twice - once to join and once to leave. Unlike many other European countries that frequently ask their populace as a way of standard governance.
The only other UK referendum in my lifetime was the 'alternative vote'
The UK government (no matter the party) just doesn't seem to like asking the public's opinion, on things. And after 2016, I'd be very surprised to see another referendum on anything, any time soon as the outcome of that was opposite to what the 'establishment' wanted (cue the last decade of squabbling). They will instead use the excuse: 'you gave us the mandate choosing us at the General Election'.
In a functioning democracy, the masses would demand higher taxes on the wealthy to fund social support. The oligarchy has already bought out democracy in the US and other places to ensure that doesn't happen. So to keep the masses in line, a system of totalitarian oppression is required.
I've seen several posts with the photo of Ursula (one of the most hated politicians of all times) associated with the batteries thing.
Surely this was not by someone’s design. Maybe though… you don’t leave a day early for your vacation?
This antecedent is far too broad; what regulations, benefiting whom? It's pretty obvious in this case that the majority of their representatives do not favor at least this type of regulation. In other cases, the majority of representatives favor regulation which prevents private corporations from selling their PII to the highest bidder. So you're going to have to reckon with the nuance of the real world if you don't want to make obviously leading statements like this.
314 against, 276 in favor, 17 abstentions
I think most of them will not even look at the biggest part of the laws they are supposed to vote. They will vote for whatever they are told to vote for by the party or carefully crafted lobbying.
For something like chat control, you don't see it but there are probably a dozen lobbyist that went to see them in turn, feeding lies and propaganda that they will not challenge because they have other "important" political subjects they are busy looking at.
The commission is leading the game with lots of tricks like what was done here to get what they want in the end.
Just look at the fact that very very few of member even realized or complained to have been played fool by the last vote.
Trust in the EU is at its highest in 18 years
'52% of Europeans trust the EU, the highest result since 2007. The level of trust is highest among young people aged 15-24 (59%). Setting another 18-year record, 52% of Europeans say they trust the European Commission, with scoring again particularly high among young citizens (57%). At the same time, 36% of Europeans say they trust their national government and 37% say they trust their national parliament.Three quarters of respondents (75%) - the highest level in more than two decades - say they feelthey are citizens of the EU.'
On the other hand look at who issued this report. https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/api/files/docume...
Who was asked, i.e. tourists visiting Brussels? How many were asked? How were they asked, i.e. leading questions such as "you do like the EU don't you"? Who didn't respond?
And more importantly, who is doing the asking? Oh, the EU itself is doing the asking. They are, of course, not biased in any way at all.
These numbers are then provided by the same folks that just timed a vote on our privacy when a) MEPs were known to be on holidays b) reversing the vote procedures, i.e. the 'no's have reach a set minimum c) are happy to sign away our collective privacy.
All that for 52% - all time high. When I was going to school, 52% wasn't a score that I went home to my parents with and told them how good things were going - even if it was an "all time high".
Crazy, how the EU have mixed up mediocrity with democracy.
Soviet Union 2.0
Nothing really.
Some will disagree with this, but this is neither new or surprising behaviour from the EU. In the EU if the political class want something, it doesn't really matter what the public want or vote for.
In the US a lot of your dysfunction is from the fact that your political system actually "works". You maniacs actually can vote for someone like Trump (twice), and he can do stuff regardless of how unpopular he is among the political class.
Here in Europe things like democracy and freedom of speech are only permitted if our political class approves. We can decide things like tax rates, but some things we're not allowed to express opinions on, and some things we have no power to vote for or against.
With some exceptions most European democracies work like this and EU is really the gold standard of this system. They have lots of ways to do what they want regardless of how popular it is, and regardless of what the opinions of our elected representatives are.
In the US, it seems more obvious how corporate money pulls the political strings, but my impression is that corporate influence is a lot weaker in Europe..
Highly educated people, often from wealthy backgrounds, who are very globally orientated.
They are generally not representative of the average person in Europe.
They are the people who European government appoints.
> In the US, it seems more obvious how corporate money pulls the political strings, but my impression is that corporate influence is a lot weaker in Europe..
I agree, but not sure that directly contradicts what I said?
I wasn't disagreeing with you; I just added that to explain why it wasn't obvious who the political class is there because their incentives are more opaque to me.
What do you think is the main reason these highly educated people act against the interests of the common people?
For example with Chat Control, are they worried about preventing populism from taking hold? Or do they personally gain something financially?
Meet the senate, where most stuff doesn’t pass unless you get 60 votes, not 51
For all the bad in trump era like roe vs wade among many others. The same mechanism are what allowed roe vs wade to exist. A double edge sword but better than alternative variants of totalitarian multi decade long regimes.
How do we design such apps? Let's rule out age attestation (to allow only some age ranges) or scan of content because they are orthogonal to apps. What are the design patterns that prevent adults to meet kids? No messaging?
-- EU policy makers are really honest people, hats off to them. There's no way politicians in my country allow their chats to be scanned, because they're very corrupt.
>*EU politicians exempt themselves from this surveillance under "professional secrecy" rules. They get privacy. You and your family do not.
https://8bitsecurity.com/posts/chat-control-2-0-%E2%80%93-ho...
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
> Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.
Incidentally, the comment immediately below this one begins with the words "I'm curious". So I think we're good.
Having said that, I don’t think the tech industry is what it once was, dominated by cypherpunks working to create a better world. It has been captured by greed and “moving fast and breaking things”, as well as infighting. Greed (both in the form of web3 numbers go up, and benefiting from the greater fool while delivering no utility) and moving fast (web2 facebook / VC / dump shares on the public / lock in / extract rents). So no wonder the government eventually steps in, when the industry spends a decade without adults steering the ship. We have giant platforms controlling everything, and the rest has devolved into zero sum games and memecoins. The tech industry hasn’t led or even organized enough to get behind technology that can liberate users. Instead it’s been captured by for-profit interests. Mozilla and Apache are rounding errors.
Here is what open source can do when it comes to mass surveillance, and this would also solve the Flock problem here in the States, too:
https://community.qbix.com/t/balancing-privacy-and-accountab...
More broadly, here is what needs to be done across the board:
https://www.laweekly.com/restoring-healthy-communities/
They will just call your code illegal in law. And if you will run it anyway, use deep packet inspection to drop your protocol packets, like they do in Russia
https://www.reddit.com/r/privacytoolsIO/comments/cukcaf/goog...
I want to stress that I'm speaking from experience. I personally installed a telegram proxy project which aimed to mirror the pattern of traffic and fool the censors
Chat Control 1.0 and 2.0 Explained
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48818311
Chat Control passed first round in EU Parliament
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48819008
Also, employees who do verification, sometimes create internal chats where they post pictures of clients and mock their appearance. If you look funny you might end up there.
First, there are USB tokens that can hold a private key and sign messages. Such tokens could be sold at places accessible only to adults and verify that they are indeed adult. Obviously every token should hold the same private key.
Second, OS could implement "parent mode" which allows installing only white-listed, government approved apps (no Telegram or Whatsapp or other dangerous apps, but school apps are ok) and opening only white-listed government-approved websites. Put in jail the parents who did not set up a parent mode. Problem solved without passports and verifications.
If, however, the government insists on selfies, it means they just want to identify users and compile lists of "untrustworthy", "rebelious" and other persons of interest. In Russia, for example, every online account must be linked to a phone number or a passport, and all messages in social networks or messengers must be accessible in unencrypted form to the government. The access is automated and the government does not need to provide any documents (like court orders) for getting the data. Messengers that do not provide access, are illegal and are banned.
We have had lots of similar cases where people not only blindly followed new regulations (for example, regarding cash) but also encouraged them — and the justification was always the same: "Why do you use cash? Are you hiding something? Cash is for criminals!" Now that the government is about to monitor their chats, they suddenly complain. Why are you bothered by chat control? Are you hiding anything? Encryption is for criminals!
All for a safe and secure society.