For context, this refers to "Chat Control 1.0", allowing facebook and other messaging providers to scan chats for harmful content (which they had been temporarily allowed to do by a recently expired law).
This is still problematic, but the far more dangerous Chat Control 2.0 that would weaken end-to-end-encrypted messengers like Signal is not being discussed here.
Not to diminish the gravity of the new development, but the defeatist "no way to prevent this" narratives that are already popping up here are getting old -- when in fact it looks like 2.0 is off the table for good because protest against it has proven effective.
That exemption had an expiration date for a reason. That they failed to consolidate that practice into a better law does not make forcefully overriding that expiration any more democratic.
I think the problem is really that law enforcement have got used to outsourcing this kind of policing to private operated platforms (at least here in Germany). I was actually at the local police station because I notified them via an online mechanism about sth that looked very CSAM to me in a random forum tracking some gossip/Internet meme (actually I did not really look further than a title because that can be already illegal). Just dropping the link (which I thought would be just auto scanned and sent into some central pool), led to the fact that I had to go there in person, wait and had to listen to a speech about the fact that it can be easily illegal to be in certain places in the Internet and that I should be careful because I had a daughter in the age. It was almost that they are threatening me. They told me that all the CSAM stuff anyways comes through the provider and that they would do raids if needed. They cannot do much anyhow on the state level if they do not get the local ISP and IP delivered.
It felt rather absurd and somewhat scary/dystopian that there are Internet companies that sent cops out to do raids based on some IP. According to the police officer it seemed very effective.
Would be interested in seeing your sources for this. I've yet to see evidence that this has the significant upsides that would, definitely not justify, but at least explain, the push towards limiting fundamental freedoms.
There's a reason "who will think of the children" is ridiculed: there's no evidence that this is the intent or that there are outcomes. Everything I've read to date shows that surveillance is not effective in curbing CSAM, that the people (and especially organised crime) that engage into such activity are not using plain text and twitter to talk to each other, that those solutions that are known to have outcomes are not being invested in or enforced, etc.
The whole Epstein sage is very closely tied to the current US administration, I haven't seen much of it being tied to anything about the EU Council. I think you might confuse the government ties Epstein had, at least the ones we knew about.
Why is it currently illegal? If I have a service that let's users communicate, why is it illegal to look through those communications? (especially after they've signed my 400 page EULA). It would make moderation impossible otherwise.
Or are we saying this is being used for something specific that happens to be illegal?
> Why is it currently illegal? If I have a service that let's users communicate, why is it illegal to look through those communications?
Not all services should be treated equally. We've figured this out earlier about letters, it's typically illegal, even for postal services, to open and read your letters without your consent, because there is an expectation about privacy.
Fast forward some years since then, and now basically IMs are the new letters, and sadly we have few big actors (yet again) controlling the transportation of our communication. People generally still want privacy in their communications, so regulations were made that companies cannot open your messages ("letters") without your consent, so we humans still have more or less the same protections as before, just tailored to the new specific implementation.
Why should you have any right to look through everyone's private communications? Nobody really has any choice to reject your EULA if they want to stay in contact with someone on your service. I could force you to sign a ToS that includes "By using our service you owe us $10 million and agree to donate your kidney to our CEO" in order to reach your overseas grandma, but that doesn't mean it's actually enforceable or legal...
Moderation is when others remove publicly posted content because you don't want to see it. (Censorship is when others remove publicly posted content because they don't want you to see it.)
You don't need moderation for your private communication.
People sending unwanted DMs is an obvious reason. At the very least, users should be able to report DMs and then that should allow for moderation.
It's very common in some spaces to get people who send unwanted (spam/harassment/etc) DMs to tons of people. Just expecting everyone to block those people makes for a horrible user experience, because it means new users might be suddenly met by a bunch of unwanted DMs from aggressive randos that remain unbanned. You really need to be able to ban these people (and that means being able to verify that they did what they're accused of).
That's a completely backward way of seeing it. "Nations" want nothing. The EU council is obviously an EU institution, the institution least accountable to the people of the EU. They want it and force it through as best they can. The parliament, the EU institution most accountable to the people of the EU (not that it's saying much) tried to stop it.
The Council represents state governments, not nations. A nation consists of all the people in it, not just those who appointed themselves to speak on its behalf.
"If not for the EU, a much worse version of this would already be law in the nation states."
In some, in some not. Not everyone is the UK. Many nations which had a totalitarian government in the 20th century are more wary about this sort of sweeping surveillance power.
The "charm" of pushing this through the circuitous path via Brussels is that few people and even few media outlets are paying attention to what happens in Brussels. Everyone is still obsessed with their national politics.
Exactly. As demonstrated by several countries pronouncing themselves against it every time this comes up.
If the government of Denmark really wants to implement this, let them, but the idea that a tiny country's officials, elected by a population of 6M that their media managed to convince of the utopia to come when privacy doesn't exist, manages to make another 450M in 26 countries comply to their will (not to call it delusion) is frightening.
Those narratives pop up from users that have a clear anti-EU bias (and I suspect they might not even be from the EU considering how ignorant they seem to be about how it works, its function ans structure, etc.
If a government body wants to interfere in your privacy and take it away, isn't it normal to be against that government body pushing that policy?
It's not a bias, it's just a normal common sense reaction to tyrannical behavior, and pushing against that government body is the only way to enact the positive change you want to see.
Otherwise if you just bend over and take it all the time, just so randos on the internet don't accuse you of being "anti-EU", then nothing will change and you'll see more and more of your rights taken away. And even if it were "EU bias" it's my right as an EU citizen and taxpayer to have it if I want to.
Alos BTW, what's with this defensive attitude of treating the EU like some sacred cow that's somehow beyond reproach HN? Are they paying you guys to AstroTurf or what?
In that case you're against the people currently in government, not the body itself, i.e. some people against Chat Control ask for the dissolution of the EU, but would they ask for the dissolution of their national state if a similar law was passed in their national parliament? I think no
I've never seen anyone ask for the dissolution of the EU in chat control threads, and I read every one of them.
What I see people (Europeans) lamenting is how undemocratic the EU is. As much as I think von der Leyen should be imprisoned, the issue is not the people in the government, but the institution itself. The Commission and the Council are the ones pushing these things, every time.
The people in government are bad, and there's no reason whatsoever to think that'll improve amy time soon: what prevents bad people from doing bad things is the regulatory apparatus of checks and balances, which the EU very much lacks (in parts, granted). Worse, it has introduced US style corruption (or "lobbying") into countries that historically lacked it.
If Chat Control 2.0 passes, given the general direction this would be showing, I'd very much understand people wanting to exit from the EU and cut the amount of undemocratic bullshit they have to contend with.
But to return to your point, when something people strongly reject happens in their country, they do, rightfully, advocate for the dissolution of that government. Much harder to do with unelected bureaucrats sheltering in another country.
Something particularly ironic is that much of the EU's undemocratic nature comes from features designed specifically to prevent the EU from subsuming its member states. The best path to making Europe democratic again... would be a federal EU, with all the protections for individual member states stripped out, because member states are not a protected class.
The Euroskeptics want to go about this backwards. They correctly see the anti-democratic nature of the current EU structure and conclude that this is the only way European integration could happen, ergo we should not integrate Europe. The problem with this is that, even as 27 individual sovereigns, the former EU member states would still need to form agreements with one another and with other countries. Except this negotiation process is completely outside the democratic process even more than the EU currently is.
The underlying problem is that democracies do not stack or sum. Two democracies negotiating with one another become a dictatorship of whoever is doing the negotiating. The only way to preserve democracy is to give the people of both countries equal control over the matters assigned to the whole. The people must rule as one or they cease to rule at all.
I can entertain that this idea could be a solution IF done well, but what would be the path to democratic decision-making in this integrated EU? I strongly believe in people organising against the government, I think this is what can lead to change, or at least maintain the fighting spirit going.
The EU is handicapped by its very diversity on this. Imagine the situation where the EU is integrated, and the government wants to pass Chat Control 2.0, or some equally unsavoury measure. Imagine that some people or orgs manage to whip up the people of the Netherlands into protesting in the streets against it: it's extremely unlikely that Poles or Spaniards would be able to build a protest movement on top of that, if they were even aware of it, because of language and national sentiment ("it's just some people over there being angry about whatever, and mainstream media says there's nothing to see there, or that they're evil terrorists, and I don't understand their funny language enough to check").
There are some promising moves towards a EU-wide party in Mera25 for example (if I understand it correctly), but it's ultimately a party for English-speaking, basically well-off, educated, currently left-leaning, young people, which is nothing that one can build a deep movement on.
> but would they ask for the dissolution of their national state if a similar law was passed in their national parliament? I think no
?! Yes. Well, to some of us maybe not yet chat control given some proper well conceived legislation. But age verification, yes, may be one of the reasons to ask for dissolution.
Even if it is foreign propaganda, the problems it exploits are real. Either you're solving the problems, or you're pushing people into the arms of said propaganda.
You see an article about how the EU tries to force a law after it got struck down by forcing it through with a legal trick and all you can think of is how any comment that critizes this is propaganda? Get a grip
The EU already has in place, apparently, a Digital Services Act that basically stops access to some part of the web. That the slope may bring to enlarged web inaccessibility - and an unlivable eu ("What do you mean you have no internet, no web access?! We take it for granted").
That some actors may ride it, is not their stain, but the eu's.
Kindly explain why some platforms have issued notice that access would be restricted pending age verification. To my inquiries, that is owing to the DSA. Was I fed wrong information? Where, in which part?
And, about «precisely the misinformation I mentioned earlier»: you think this infomess was caused by foreign agents, instead of internal european lack of clarity?
The central bank, council, and commission have to get thoroughly investigated. The amount of questionable decisions coming from those three in the recent (15) years is extremely unsettling. The parliament and courts are practically the only institutions preventing things from hitting the fan at this point, and struggling to do so, it seems.
I’m convinced of widespread corruption here. We need to follow the money. Who is funding and pushing this agenda to blanket spy on all Europeans? I guess my question is rhetorical.
I genuinely don’t think such folk have as much influence and power as everyone thinks. In my (direct) experience it’s just a complete mess and they’re reacting naively to every problem.
They’re fighting a battle against the real problem which is the paid up influence campaigns that give them problems to defend. Start at the press, the social media companies and the think tanks.
They form these groups to network and do favors for each other and provide cover for each other. After a while you are asked to do increasingly compromising things to yourself to do deeper into/stay part of the club such as blood rituals. Bohemian Grove high priest Henry Kissinger led simulated animal sacrifice rituals attended by many others in the "inner circles" of the top strata of decision makers and wallet holders. They do this because engaging in a common taboo unites the group extremely strongly, and these behaviors are the ultimate taboo.
And no committee, no bureaucracy, no regulations, just let corporations do whatever they want, works great right!? It's not like it immediately collapses to despotism as the slightly bigger fish gobbles up everything in a positive feedback process.
With an egalitarian government, corruption is a problem, its bad, its something we try to fight and there are mechanisms to do so. Having no government is just giving up and going straight to 100% corruption.
Ok, theres defo a lot of idiots on HN and in USA who disagree with you.
Still, kinda weird to complain about bureaucracy and regulations in this context cus its the only solution to these problems of egality and corruption which humanity has been struggling with ever since the dawn of civilisation.
Tho, It's kind of a solved problem too. We should all just try to be like Denmark, they at the top or near the top of practially every metric. Happiness, corruption index, Gini, Quality of life, healthcare, education, carbon.
They have a massive powerful bureaucracy, lots of strong regulation, extremely high taxes, low corruption.
The solution to any eco-geo-political issue is just "be more like Denmark".
Once everyone gets to that level we can think about further improvement.
Wait, but doesn't Denmark have the strictest immigration policies in the entire EU?
> they at the top or near the top of practially every metric. Happiness, corruption index, Gini, Quality of life, healthcare, education, carbon.
I don't understand. Are you suggesting deporting all migrants to improve the statistics to Denmark's level? But that's impossible in our legal system. We've been actively importing culturally incompatible foreigners for decades now, and many already have citizenship. You can't just strip people of their citizenship in an attempt to improve the statistics.
Ironically, those are two separate cases of one high-profile EU politician (in fact, the very head of the same parliament that pushes for mass scanning of private messages) BOTH involving secret text messages that the mentioned politician refuses to reveal.
The government will investigate the government and find that the government did nothing wrong. A subsequent government review of the government's investigation of the government will find no wrongdoing on the part of the government. Ain't democracy grand?
They’re indirectly elected through national governments and parliament. That’s different from being directly elected by citizens. Being appointed by elected politicians doesn’t make someone directly accountable to voters. Citizens don’t vote for commissioners, and it’s much harder for voters to remove or reward them based on their policies.
It has never happened, but if there once would be enough faithless electors to swing the election (choosing a different president than what people voted for) it would be a huge scandal and it would be widely condemned as undemocratic.
I mean, if the electoral college would have enough faithless electors to swing the result away from the president whom the majority of the electors had pledged to vote for.
There has been so far 5 elections where the electoral vote chose a different president than what the popular vote count would have chosen. But this is a different thing than what I was talking about.
The criticism is about accountability, not whether the system is democratic.
The UK pm and the POTUS are both ultimately accountable through elections. In the UK, a general election can change the government. In the US, people vote specifically for presidential electors, even if it’s through the Electoral College.
The EU commission is different. People don’t vote for commissioners or the president, and they can’t vote them out in the same direct way.
Im having a hard time following what is making the US presidental system different from the EU commission?
the US president is appointed by politicians who are elected, and the only accountability mechanism for president is impeachment, which is again, indirect via elected politicians.
100%. This is why many of us have a problem with the EU. And world governments in general — the more power they have and the further away from the elections that keep them accountable, the more tyrannical they become.
After how many layers does the democratic part get watered down and is just members of the elite picking other elites?
Role | Chosen by | Direct citizen vote?
-----------------------------+------------------------------------------------------+----------------------------
Commission President | European Council proposes, European Parliament elects| No (indirect via EP)
European Council President | European Council (27 heads of state) | No
European Parliament President| MEPs elect from among themselves | No (indirect via EP)
ECB President | European Council, after consulting Parliament | No
Those are primarily figureheads with limited power. The EU is not a presidential system. Which is good, because a single person can never well-represent an entire population, directly elected or not.
The council is more problematic, since a blocking majority might only represent 25% of the population (half of the EU member governments, each elected by majority vote), but in this case they voted in favor, so it's as if they didn't exist and the decision lies with parliament, whose composition is determined by proportional representation. Excellent!
The interesting thing here is that the EU is accused of being undemocratic not because special interests killed a law with wide support among the populace, but because all the different bodies might actually agree and pass a law that privacy activists don't like. Legislation by agreement of multiple cross-cutting majorities must clearly be undemocratic!
Not the parent, but chill with the aggressive tone.
When you vote in your elections, you almost certainly know who's going to lead the country.
Not so with the EU: look up Spitzenkandidat method and the deviations from it, including von der Leyen in 2019 being parachuted into her post not based on any vote.
>I live in a country where the prime minister is picked by the parliament. I don't directly vote for him.
That's kind of whataboutism. If that works for your country and the people are happy with the arrangement and the results of this system, I don't see an issue.
>By your own ridiculous standards
I don't think direct accountability to the citizens is a ridiculous concept. If you're unhappy with a MEP, your prime minister, you can vote them out or protest till they quit. But the head of the EC, Ursula, is impossible to dethrone by the people via democratic vote or protest. You're stuck taking up the ass from someone you never voted for and don't support.
Do, because already there nuances (towards the better or worse) are revealed, which are not evident in journalism as we have it. The whole story needs more investigation than the stubs.
But the way they are managing it in the workflow does not seem too linear...
You should elaborate. And explain what you understood as "its intended purpose".
My understanding of the vote last Friday was about protracting the 2021 temporary compromise (scan voluntarily until we have a full law), which was suspended at the beginning of April. It is not clear how they proceeded that way. It seems some vertices imposed that they would not accept a legal vacuum there. So, it's not a "law". What ran for the past five years was an "exception to privacy laws" (I am not informed of the mandated guardrails).
I regret to inform you that a temporary exception to a law is also a law.
edit:
> It seems some vertices imposed that they would not accept a legal vacuum there.
I find this sentence unintelligible. Can you come up with another wording? And who are these "vertices" who have been given approval rights over EU legislation?
Apparently metsola, to some source. The eu parliament refused to renew the temporary licence to private message monitoring, which had the "speaker" complain that this would just leave the union with a normative vacuum - apparently insisting that one non-temporary regulation has to be decided. So I read.
There is no way to stop these so just lets get going. The sooner we have age and ID verification on every single website and app the sooner we will have a working decentralised internet that avoids it.
I doubt that. They cannot stop me from downloading movies and series. They cannot stop me from betting or using crypto. It's kinda hard to find a single thing they are able to stop me from doing online and I'm not even trying that hard.
What frightens me is, as usual, the assumption of conformism that may just remove people from services.
"Present a document" // "No, certainly not to you" // "Do without then"
The straight will say "no", but their lives will be extremely complicated, possibly in the unawareness of those that just take compliance to the absurd for granted - as the weak call survival paramount and cannot see that their modus is subjective. That we won't have it is something that they cannot even conceive. Adults are noise to them.
> The EU's own government websites have these same cookie banners.
Most of them decidedly don't have the same cookie banners. E.g. in vast majority of cases they don't prevent you from seeing content, and have an easy opt-out mechanism without dark patterns.
The result matters, which is why regulations should be considered carefully. The whole cookie fiasco is exactly that: they created a whole industry of shitty compliance and the rules are complex enough that every engineering team is like "just use the off-the-shelf shitty thing". And here we are.
As a reminder "EU cookie banners" are not required if you use cookies for site functionality. They are only required if your site uses these to track users.
This needs repeating, it's a common misconception (deliberately spread by many, too) that the EU requires cookie banners for all cookies.
This gets repeated a lot, but is not my experience after having worked with both in-house and contracted lawyers to understand how functional cookies are handled. We end up wanting something more durable than session cookies to track user preferences so we can set them next time they visit. This is super standard light/dark mode, region, language type of stuff. But that's considered “tracking" in many of these discussions, which never made sense to me.
> This shall not prevent any technical storage or access for the sole purpose of carrying out or facilitating the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network, or as strictly necessary in order to provide an information society service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user.
This is the reason why these are usually separated to "strictly necessary" and "functional" cookies. Functional cookies are things which enhance the functionality, but are not strictly necessary. These would generally include things like persistent cookie for language choice rather than just session one.
Im pretty sure it is illegal. In my understanding, it must be equally easy to reject and accept. And the website MUST continue working under either choice. Which is not the case here.
I think the lawmakers should have made all forms of tracking illegal instead. That would make law writing and following easier. And closer to the spirit of what they are trying to accomplish and what everyone wants (except you Silicon Valley O.o)
I hate the tracking too. But how to websites monetize free content otherwise? Advertising doesn’t work if you can’t price it. Without tracking, everything becomes a paywall.
It seems a lot of people are doing amazing things with Patreon. Share some things for free (free as in beer) then have a paid tier for those who want more. Convince us you’re worthy, then we’ll give you money willingly.
There have been a few incidents that make me think Snapchat private chats are monitored. The one with the guy joking to his friends about blowing up a plane or something is the first that comes to mind.
Tell me how private messaging gets you taken off a plane otherwise. It’s not private. Big tech has put a camera and microphone in everyone’s pocket and they’re monitoring everything.
The government and big (American) tech are very likely lying to us IMO. How will anyone protest when mass surveillance becomes the law if it’s already in place and you can be labeled a bad actor that gets your life ruined if you dissent?
> How will anyone protest when mass surveillance becomes the law if it’s already in place and you can be labeled a bad actor that gets your life ruined if you dissent
With the pure awareness that Men do not act out of convenience, and that this whole situation of declining societies was born out of already-fascist-material that acted out of convenience, with complacency.
The problem is /what/ will pass. What is this clothing limit? Pink, shocking, lime? Long sleeves, above the wrist or below? In the city center, in the suburbs, where?
The issue is all in the details.
And in the decision process, before that, of course.
The main argument for this seems to be that they catch many pedos by using image recognition tech on facebook etc.
Thus, discontinuing the permit to use these techniques did have enforcement numbers of those crimes found drop significantly.
I'm wondering if they've given up real policing of these crimes completely?!
Spreading pedo content on Facebook, those people have to be the dumbest of the dumb? Everyone spending even a single critical thought on their crimes won't be caught by this.
And they say enforcement numbers drop significantly? Meaning they don't catch many other people? What the fuck are they even doing? Did they completely give up trying to find the real criminals, and instead fall back on sugar-coated figures to conceal that failure?
These pro-surveillance narratives don't even attempt to look plausible, they are aimed at the average Joe/Mohammed/whoever with attention span of 10ms and IQ of a guppy.
This would be illegal in Germany. I wonder why law enforcement is not looking into this. It is similar to having abusive husband control wife's communication - just at scale and for ideological reason. This is a violent act against whole population, applied indiscriminately. It fulfils updated definition of terrorism in Germany and it is exploiting legislative apparatus of the EU to enact this violent act. German people should report this and these people behind it should be investigated and presumably arrested.
Governments don’t work for people. Yet they use terms like democracy all the time. The repeated attempts at chat control are so blatantly anti civil rights but also disrespectful of democratic principles. Why do EU citizens tolerate this? Are they okay being made a fool of or is this just not an issue for them after all?
How do you suggest people be intolerant? Essentially all the parties work toward these goals, so voting is ineffective. Speech is (more-or-less) allowed until it turns into strident protest, at which point the water cannons are brought out and a few token agitators are prosecuted for their instigation. I wouldn't want to call this tyranny, because I might get a knock on the door.
Why not emphasize the issue of civil rights and make it disqualifying as a single issue for any politician? At least online it feels like people care about chat control a lot but when it comes to voting, the type of dystopian control EU bureaucrats are building isn’t in anyone’s mind. So politicians can get away with supporting those policies since there isn’t a consequence for them.
"Online people" who care about this sort of thing are a microscopic subset of the voting base and do not represent what most people are aware of, understand, or care about. I live in Ireland, and you know what everyone in town and around my area talks about? Donald Trump. When I try and raise issues of national or European politics, I get whatabouted into more American politics. The bread is sweeter (it's the corn syrup) and the circuses more outrageous.
The power of the European Commission to propose legislation needs to be curbed or removed entirely. Executive agencies shouldn’t be writing legislation. It’s far to easy for them to propose laws that benefit the the European Commission, rather than benefiting Europeans.
You're blaming the wrong people and making this worse.
The article is literally about the EU Council, the elected heads of states of all the EU nations. The elected leaders of the EU nations really, really want chat control. The Commission has nothing to do with this.
This means the council has systematically overridden the will of both EU parliaments and states' objections in pushing this legislation. TLDR: there are, roughly and not 100% accurately speaking, 4 ways to make legislation at the EU level
1) commission + parliament (meaning the EU commission has initiative (veto rights over any law, like the US president), and parliament can only "propose amendments", which pass with 50% of votes, or deny). This is what normally happens.
Parliament denied the law. Twice.
Member states vetoed the legislation at least 3 times (it doesn't technically work like this but member states can force the commission to veto legislation, and Belgium, Hungary and Denmark have done so) (technically member states can force the EU commission not to introduce legislation and because nobody else can do so either, this is normally effectively a veto)
2) council + parliament. This is where we are. If the executives of the member states (NOT parliaments) want to push through a vote, they can use this path. The difference is that only 2/3 majority of parliament can stop the law from passing or put in amendments.
Technically, this is meant for bypassing the EU commission. But of course, in reality it is for getting past the Danish and potential Belgian and Hungarian and other's vetoes. The commission really wants this.
3) council + commission. This completely overrides any legislative involvement in ... well, legislation. They have already threatened to do this.
4) the council can just force legislation through without anyone's approval
Normally "democracy" in the EU means that legislation requires BOTH a majority of Europeans to agree (Parliament) AND no executive government. Both have already been bypassed.
This refers to "Chat Control 1.0", allowing facebook and other messaging providers to scan chats for harmful content (which they had been temporarily allowed to do by a recently expired law). It means current scanning is illegal.
Just so we're clear, this basically means that all messengers (not any specific one) will have to intercept everyone's messages, scan for specific words, and if found report the whole chat history to the police.
Of course, it already turned out "BTW carrousel" (an illegal tax avoidance strategy) is one of the sentences they scan for to "protect the children".
The article itself also contains evidence against the idea that this protects children (that child protection investigations keep increasing despite the scanning not taking place anymore)
>Technically, this is meant for bypassing the EU commission. But of course, in reality it is for getting past the Danish and potential Belgian and Hungarian and other's vetoes. The commission really wants this.
Excuse me? That is quite an assertion. You're saying the EU Commission, the civil servants appointed by the EU Council, are somehow controlling the EU Council to push this agenda?
I don't believe that is true. Please provide evidence.
In the article, it talks explicitly about this being driven by the heads of state.
It is a bit strange why EU countries allow their own credibility and legitimacy get steadily dragged down, bit by bit, by all these thousands of dubious statements, tricks, manoeuvres, and so on.
Do they just not care about weakening their own societies?
Much the same reasons why the UK, US etc. do much the same. It is slowed down a bit in some countries with strong constitutions or resistance to it, but the governments all want it.
> "You have to understand that times have changed, it's not like before... Now we have children, the children, the children, children, children and the t-word."
~~ keir starmer
(I'll see if I can still find the source. If anybody beats me to it, appreciated.)
I guess I'm not sure what's dubious here. The article says they're circumventing "democratic control bodies", but I don't know what that means (perhaps it's a more common phrase in German?), and it sounds like the European Parliament can still vote to reject Chat Control if they don't want it. The article strongly implies there's something dubious going on here, but to me what would be dubious is a procedure that prevents the parliament from voting on Chat Control.
The simple fact is that a law that existed since 2011 and expired in April is now back in effect. So we are back where we were on February.
I don't remember moving from an anti-democratic hell scape to serene democratic beauty back in April so it's probably a nothing-burger.
I often see news articles that trade on the fact the general populace aren't professional bureaucrats and so frame anything happening in unpopular ways.
They hold all the cards, and have means - above-board or questionable, but effective nonetheless - to enact their will. Do you remember the Treaty of Lisbon referendumS, plural? Just keep asking the question until the plebs answer correctly.
Isn't this natural for any "Social" ideologies? They imply a system of centralized redistribution, which implies a powerful repressive apparatus and an omnipresent surveillance system.
Does that ###, which seems to have the most simplistic ideas about the world, also have arguments to defend its position?
I mean: has it ever heard, for example about the 2nd Amendment to the USA constitution, arguing that people must be able to defend from governments themselves?
Is it not aware that data is not accessed "just by the good guys"? ?!
The same as every other fascist control measure. Voted down. Voted down. Voted down. Then forced through through some obscure mechanism bypassing the will of the people and becoming law forever.
> Although the Council emphasizes that the *scans will be limited to the absolutely necessary extent* and that no general, indiscriminate surveillance will take place
I'm 100% sure that this is the case and about the good intentions of the proposers.
Hn is a goofy place. It feels like on odd days we see posts like this, about the EU creating this legal framework for the destruction of privacy. On even days we see posts about quitting American saas in favor of Europeans on the basis of privacy. Somehow the dots never connect.
Doesn't the mere fact that the EU is trying to pass laws to erode privacy indicate that there is privacy to erode? The US doesn't need to pass such laws because there are no protections.
> The US doesn't need to pass such laws because there are no protections.
The US desperately needs fundamental definitions and protections in regard to privacy, but the fact that it is extremely common for European countries to prosecute illegal speech and associations is a big difference. Americans are trying to defend themselves against the secondary effects of surveillance. Europeans can just jail you for saying magic words, or associating with organizations that have been proscribed.
Also, as of a day or two ago, Europeans can be prosecuted for sharing any RT (Russia Today) content, even in private, regardless of content. These are things that the Bill of Rights makes unthinkable in the US. We can bring assault rifles to anti-government protests; if they're seized we can sue to get them back, and to be compensated for being bothered.
The constitutional documents of European countries and supranational institutions might have been largely cribbed from the US's set, but anything like the Bill of Rights in them is virtually never written as an absolute right. It's stuff like Citizens are guaranteed freedom of expression except in cases where it is necessary to prevent expression to maintain safety or the public order.
For context, this refers to "Chat Control 1.0", allowing facebook and other messaging providers to scan chats for harmful content (which they had been temporarily allowed to do by a recently expired law).
This is still problematic, but the far more dangerous Chat Control 2.0 that would weaken end-to-end-encrypted messengers like Signal is not being discussed here.
Not to diminish the gravity of the new development, but the defeatist "no way to prevent this" narratives that are already popping up here are getting old -- when in fact it looks like 2.0 is off the table for good because protest against it has proven effective.
That exemption had an expiration date for a reason. That they failed to consolidate that practice into a better law does not make forcefully overriding that expiration any more democratic.
I think the problem is really that law enforcement have got used to outsourcing this kind of policing to private operated platforms (at least here in Germany). I was actually at the local police station because I notified them via an online mechanism about sth that looked very CSAM to me in a random forum tracking some gossip/Internet meme (actually I did not really look further than a title because that can be already illegal). Just dropping the link (which I thought would be just auto scanned and sent into some central pool), led to the fact that I had to go there in person, wait and had to listen to a speech about the fact that it can be easily illegal to be in certain places in the Internet and that I should be careful because I had a daughter in the age. It was almost that they are threatening me. They told me that all the CSAM stuff anyways comes through the provider and that they would do raids if needed. They cannot do much anyhow on the state level if they do not get the local ISP and IP delivered. It felt rather absurd and somewhat scary/dystopian that there are Internet companies that sent cops out to do raids based on some IP. According to the police officer it seemed very effective.
IIRC they used to catch a lot of child groomers by scanning messages.
Would be interested in seeing your sources for this. I've yet to see evidence that this has the significant upsides that would, definitely not justify, but at least explain, the push towards limiting fundamental freedoms.
There's a reason "who will think of the children" is ridiculed: there's no evidence that this is the intent or that there are outcomes. Everything I've read to date shows that surveillance is not effective in curbing CSAM, that the people (and especially organised crime) that engage into such activity are not using plain text and twitter to talk to each other, that those solutions that are known to have outcomes are not being invested in or enforced, etc.
If any of this was about protecting children, that Epstein thing wouldn't have been buried and forgotten already.
The whole Epstein sage is very closely tied to the current US administration, I haven't seen much of it being tied to anything about the EU Council. I think you might confuse the government ties Epstein had, at least the ones we knew about.
Isn't this something they already do?
I would be utterly shocked if facebook et al. were not scanning all of your messages (either in transit or at terminus to get around 'E2E' claims).
Yes, this had been temporarily permitted until recently, and AFAIK they continue doing so illegally at the moment.
Why is it currently illegal? If I have a service that let's users communicate, why is it illegal to look through those communications? (especially after they've signed my 400 page EULA). It would make moderation impossible otherwise.
Or are we saying this is being used for something specific that happens to be illegal?
> Why is it currently illegal? If I have a service that let's users communicate, why is it illegal to look through those communications?
Not all services should be treated equally. We've figured this out earlier about letters, it's typically illegal, even for postal services, to open and read your letters without your consent, because there is an expectation about privacy.
Fast forward some years since then, and now basically IMs are the new letters, and sadly we have few big actors (yet again) controlling the transportation of our communication. People generally still want privacy in their communications, so regulations were made that companies cannot open your messages ("letters") without your consent, so we humans still have more or less the same protections as before, just tailored to the new specific implementation.
Because the EU passed a law making it illegal and the temporary exemption recently expired.
Why should you have any right to look through everyone's private communications? Nobody really has any choice to reject your EULA if they want to stay in contact with someone on your service. I could force you to sign a ToS that includes "By using our service you owe us $10 million and agree to donate your kidney to our CEO" in order to reach your overseas grandma, but that doesn't mean it's actually enforceable or legal...
Moderation is when others remove publicly posted content because you don't want to see it. (Censorship is when others remove publicly posted content because they don't want you to see it.) You don't need moderation for your private communication.
> It would make moderation impossible otherwise.
Why would you need to moderate private messages between users?
People sending unwanted DMs is an obvious reason. At the very least, users should be able to report DMs and then that should allow for moderation.
It's very common in some spaces to get people who send unwanted (spam/harassment/etc) DMs to tons of people. Just expecting everyone to block those people makes for a horrible user experience, because it means new users might be suddenly met by a bunch of unwanted DMs from aggressive randos that remain unbanned. You really need to be able to ban these people (and that means being able to verify that they did what they're accused of).
Protect the kids bla bla bla...
Always the same political excuse
the opposite question - why is it legal and was made legal?
it's unconstitutional in most places to read letters - same thing should be applied to other form of communication as well
You're most likely replying to a professional Overton window mover.
Also, another key fact to bring up here once again:
The institution that forced this through is the EU Council, the body that represents national governments and is composed of heads of government.
The reason they have to force it through and couldn't do 2.0 is because the EU Parliament stopped them.
In other words, it's the nation states that want this and the EU institutions that are blocking it, not the other way around as often framed online.
If not for the EU, a much worse version of this would already be law in the nation states.
You can see this play out in real-time in the UK, which has gone real dystopian ever since Brexit.
That's a completely backward way of seeing it. "Nations" want nothing. The EU council is obviously an EU institution, the institution least accountable to the people of the EU. They want it and force it through as best they can. The parliament, the EU institution most accountable to the people of the EU (not that it's saying much) tried to stop it.
Of course Nations want this.
Who is in the Council? You are saying "nuh-uh", but not addressing any of the substance of my comment.
The Council represents state governments, not nations. A nation consists of all the people in it, not just those who appointed themselves to speak on its behalf.
"If not for the EU, a much worse version of this would already be law in the nation states."
In some, in some not. Not everyone is the UK. Many nations which had a totalitarian government in the 20th century are more wary about this sort of sweeping surveillance power.
The "charm" of pushing this through the circuitous path via Brussels is that few people and even few media outlets are paying attention to what happens in Brussels. Everyone is still obsessed with their national politics.
Exactly. As demonstrated by several countries pronouncing themselves against it every time this comes up.
If the government of Denmark really wants to implement this, let them, but the idea that a tiny country's officials, elected by a population of 6M that their media managed to convince of the utopia to come when privacy doesn't exist, manages to make another 450M in 26 countries comply to their will (not to call it delusion) is frightening.
Those narratives pop up from users that have a clear anti-EU bias (and I suspect they might not even be from the EU considering how ignorant they seem to be about how it works, its function ans structure, etc.
>users that have a clear anti-EU bias
If a government body wants to interfere in your privacy and take it away, isn't it normal to be against that government body pushing that policy?
It's not a bias, it's just a normal common sense reaction to tyrannical behavior, and pushing against that government body is the only way to enact the positive change you want to see.
Otherwise if you just bend over and take it all the time, just so randos on the internet don't accuse you of being "anti-EU", then nothing will change and you'll see more and more of your rights taken away. And even if it were "EU bias" it's my right as an EU citizen and taxpayer to have it if I want to.
Alos BTW, what's with this defensive attitude of treating the EU like some sacred cow that's somehow beyond reproach HN? Are they paying you guys to AstroTurf or what?
In that case you're against the people currently in government, not the body itself, i.e. some people against Chat Control ask for the dissolution of the EU, but would they ask for the dissolution of their national state if a similar law was passed in their national parliament? I think no
I've never seen anyone ask for the dissolution of the EU in chat control threads, and I read every one of them.
What I see people (Europeans) lamenting is how undemocratic the EU is. As much as I think von der Leyen should be imprisoned, the issue is not the people in the government, but the institution itself. The Commission and the Council are the ones pushing these things, every time.
The people in government are bad, and there's no reason whatsoever to think that'll improve amy time soon: what prevents bad people from doing bad things is the regulatory apparatus of checks and balances, which the EU very much lacks (in parts, granted). Worse, it has introduced US style corruption (or "lobbying") into countries that historically lacked it.
If Chat Control 2.0 passes, given the general direction this would be showing, I'd very much understand people wanting to exit from the EU and cut the amount of undemocratic bullshit they have to contend with.
But to return to your point, when something people strongly reject happens in their country, they do, rightfully, advocate for the dissolution of that government. Much harder to do with unelected bureaucrats sheltering in another country.
Something particularly ironic is that much of the EU's undemocratic nature comes from features designed specifically to prevent the EU from subsuming its member states. The best path to making Europe democratic again... would be a federal EU, with all the protections for individual member states stripped out, because member states are not a protected class.
The Euroskeptics want to go about this backwards. They correctly see the anti-democratic nature of the current EU structure and conclude that this is the only way European integration could happen, ergo we should not integrate Europe. The problem with this is that, even as 27 individual sovereigns, the former EU member states would still need to form agreements with one another and with other countries. Except this negotiation process is completely outside the democratic process even more than the EU currently is.
The underlying problem is that democracies do not stack or sum. Two democracies negotiating with one another become a dictatorship of whoever is doing the negotiating. The only way to preserve democracy is to give the people of both countries equal control over the matters assigned to the whole. The people must rule as one or they cease to rule at all.
I can entertain that this idea could be a solution IF done well, but what would be the path to democratic decision-making in this integrated EU? I strongly believe in people organising against the government, I think this is what can lead to change, or at least maintain the fighting spirit going.
The EU is handicapped by its very diversity on this. Imagine the situation where the EU is integrated, and the government wants to pass Chat Control 2.0, or some equally unsavoury measure. Imagine that some people or orgs manage to whip up the people of the Netherlands into protesting in the streets against it: it's extremely unlikely that Poles or Spaniards would be able to build a protest movement on top of that, if they were even aware of it, because of language and national sentiment ("it's just some people over there being angry about whatever, and mainstream media says there's nothing to see there, or that they're evil terrorists, and I don't understand their funny language enough to check").
There are some promising moves towards a EU-wide party in Mera25 for example (if I understand it correctly), but it's ultimately a party for English-speaking, basically well-off, educated, currently left-leaning, young people, which is nothing that one can build a deep movement on.
> but would they ask for the dissolution of their national state if a similar law was passed in their national parliament? I think no
?! Yes. Well, to some of us maybe not yet chat control given some proper well conceived legislation. But age verification, yes, may be one of the reasons to ask for dissolution.
Call it what it is: Propaganda designed to stir anti-EU sentiment from groups that would benefit from being able to divide and conquer Europe.
Are you implying Denmark and other governments supporting it are pushing Chat Control as some sort of false flag operation to undermine the EU?
Even if it is foreign propaganda, the problems it exploits are real. Either you're solving the problems, or you're pushing people into the arms of said propaganda.
You see an article about how the EU tries to force a law after it got struck down by forcing it through with a legal trick and all you can think of is how any comment that critizes this is propaganda? Get a grip
EU doesn't tries to force a law. Some politicians does. EU is just a group of institutions.
The EU already has in place, apparently, a Digital Services Act that basically stops access to some part of the web. That the slope may bring to enlarged web inaccessibility - and an unlivable eu ("What do you mean you have no internet, no web access?! We take it for granted").
That some actors may ride it, is not their stain, but the eu's.
The DSA doesn't stop access to any part of the web. This is precisely the misinformation I mentioned earlier.
Kindly explain why some platforms have issued notice that access would be restricted pending age verification. To my inquiries, that is owing to the DSA. Was I fed wrong information? Where, in which part?
And, about «precisely the misinformation I mentioned earlier»: you think this infomess was caused by foreign agents, instead of internal european lack of clarity?
Wow. Talk about ragebait.
The central bank, council, and commission have to get thoroughly investigated. The amount of questionable decisions coming from those three in the recent (15) years is extremely unsettling. The parliament and courts are practically the only institutions preventing things from hitting the fan at this point, and struggling to do so, it seems.
I’m convinced of widespread corruption here. We need to follow the money. Who is funding and pushing this agenda to blanket spy on all Europeans? I guess my question is rhetorical.
>Who is funding and pushing this agenda to blanket spy on all Europeans?
Why are we ignoring the other side of the transaction? The side responsible for taking the money.
Giving bribes for lobbying is bad, but that would not be an issue if those found taking the bribes would be guillotined or hanged.
I don’t think it’s a conspiracy or corruption. It’s just design by committee bureaucracy. It always fails into that state.
It’s just design by committee bureaucracy and its members attend Bohemian Grove
I genuinely don’t think such folk have as much influence and power as everyone thinks. In my (direct) experience it’s just a complete mess and they’re reacting naively to every problem.
They’re fighting a battle against the real problem which is the paid up influence campaigns that give them problems to defend. Start at the press, the social media companies and the think tanks.
They form these groups to network and do favors for each other and provide cover for each other. After a while you are asked to do increasingly compromising things to yourself to do deeper into/stay part of the club such as blood rituals. Bohemian Grove high priest Henry Kissinger led simulated animal sacrifice rituals attended by many others in the "inner circles" of the top strata of decision makers and wallet holders. They do this because engaging in a common taboo unites the group extremely strongly, and these behaviors are the ultimate taboo.
> They do this because engaging in a common taboo unites the group extremely strongly, and these behaviors are the ultimate taboo.
This last sentence immediately made me think of Epstein’s island and the “ultimate taboo” they were engaging in there.
> They do this because engaging in a common taboo unites the group extremely strongly
Nothing unites the scum stronger than a guaranteed scorching pan in hell for all of them.
And no committee, no bureaucracy, no regulations, just let corporations do whatever they want, works great right!? It's not like it immediately collapses to despotism as the slightly bigger fish gobbles up everything in a positive feedback process.
With an egalitarian government, corruption is a problem, its bad, its something we try to fight and there are mechanisms to do so. Having no government is just giving up and going straight to 100% corruption.
I’m not suggesting that at all. I am simply suggesting that bureaucracies have their own specific failure models.
I am very pro regulation.
Ok, theres defo a lot of idiots on HN and in USA who disagree with you.
Still, kinda weird to complain about bureaucracy and regulations in this context cus its the only solution to these problems of egality and corruption which humanity has been struggling with ever since the dawn of civilisation.
Tho, It's kind of a solved problem too. We should all just try to be like Denmark, they at the top or near the top of practially every metric. Happiness, corruption index, Gini, Quality of life, healthcare, education, carbon. They have a massive powerful bureaucracy, lots of strong regulation, extremely high taxes, low corruption.
The solution to any eco-geo-political issue is just "be more like Denmark". Once everyone gets to that level we can think about further improvement.
Denmark has half the population of just the Los Angeles Metropolitan area and is 85% white. Most countries cannot be like Denmark.
> We should all just try to be like Denmark
Wait, but doesn't Denmark have the strictest immigration policies in the entire EU?
> they at the top or near the top of practially every metric. Happiness, corruption index, Gini, Quality of life, healthcare, education, carbon.
I don't understand. Are you suggesting deporting all migrants to improve the statistics to Denmark's level? But that's impossible in our legal system. We've been actively importing culturally incompatible foreigners for decades now, and many already have citizenship. You can't just strip people of their citizenship in an attempt to improve the statistics.
Denmark seem to be the ones pushing chat control the hardest.
Is that the same Denmark that tried to push Chat Control 2.0 in the EU?
they dont investigate themselves, I hope you understand those details some day.
They do, albeit it's a slow process:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pfizergate
- https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/eu-secret-gr...
Ironically, those are two separate cases of one high-profile EU politician (in fact, the very head of the same parliament that pushes for mass scanning of private messages) BOTH involving secret text messages that the mentioned politician refuses to reveal.
The government will investigate the government and find that the government did nothing wrong. A subsequent government review of the government's investigation of the government will find no wrongdoing on the part of the government. Ain't democracy grand?
Then blame Russia. Rinse and repeat.
>The central bank, council, and commission have to get thoroughly investigated.
By WHO?! They are THE (unelected) ruling elite. Who's gonna prosecute them?
OLAF I would assume.
They are not unelected. The EU Council is made up of the head of government of each member state. They are all elected.
The commissioners are picked by the heads of state (elected) and the EU parliament (also elected).
This does not absolve them from wrongdoing, but you should understand where your complaints should be directed at.
They’re indirectly elected through national governments and parliament. That’s different from being directly elected by citizens. Being appointed by elected politicians doesn’t make someone directly accountable to voters. Citizens don’t vote for commissioners, and it’s much harder for voters to remove or reward them based on their policies.
Ao is the prime minister in any country that adopts parliamentarism.
I am still to see as many people getting riled up about how those countries are not democratic.
Again, not a single word I’ve posted says “it’s un-democratic”
Ao?
So is the US president (Electoral College), the UK PM (Parliament) etc etc, yet you never hear complaints here from the same types.
Their opposition is ideological, democracy is just an excuse because their true views would be too unsavory to say out loud.
> So is the US president (Electoral College)
It has never happened, but if there once would be enough faithless electors to swing the election (choosing a different president than what people voted for) it would be a huge scandal and it would be widely condemned as undemocratic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faithless_elector
(Did this not happen in 2016? I understood the absolute aggregate count in the popular vote and the majority of the electoral college differed.)
I mean, if the electoral college would have enough faithless electors to swing the result away from the president whom the majority of the electors had pledged to vote for.
There has been so far 5 elections where the electoral vote chose a different president than what the popular vote count would have chosen. But this is a different thing than what I was talking about.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presiden...
The criticism is about accountability, not whether the system is democratic.
The UK pm and the POTUS are both ultimately accountable through elections. In the UK, a general election can change the government. In the US, people vote specifically for presidential electors, even if it’s through the Electoral College.
The EU commission is different. People don’t vote for commissioners or the president, and they can’t vote them out in the same direct way.
Im having a hard time following what is making the US presidental system different from the EU commission?
the US president is appointed by politicians who are elected, and the only accountability mechanism for president is impeachment, which is again, indirect via elected politicians.
The EU Commission does the bidding of the elected EU Council. The Commission is sort of a civil service.
100%. This is why many of us have a problem with the EU. And world governments in general — the more power they have and the further away from the elections that keep them accountable, the more tyrannical they become.
>They are not unelected.
After how many layers does the democratic part get watered down and is just members of the elite picking other elites?
Those are primarily figureheads with limited power. The EU is not a presidential system. Which is good, because a single person can never well-represent an entire population, directly elected or not.
The council is more problematic, since a blocking majority might only represent 25% of the population (half of the EU member governments, each elected by majority vote), but in this case they voted in favor, so it's as if they didn't exist and the decision lies with parliament, whose composition is determined by proportional representation. Excellent!
The interesting thing here is that the EU is accused of being undemocratic not because special interests killed a law with wide support among the populace, but because all the different bodies might actually agree and pass a law that privacy activists don't like. Legislation by agreement of multiple cross-cutting majorities must clearly be undemocratic!
I live in a country where the prime minister is picked by the parliament. I don't directly vote for him.
By your own ridiculous standards, I don't live in a democracy. I fact, any paliamentarism would not be democratic based on that.
Not the parent, but chill with the aggressive tone.
When you vote in your elections, you almost certainly know who's going to lead the country.
Not so with the EU: look up Spitzenkandidat method and the deviations from it, including von der Leyen in 2019 being parachuted into her post not based on any vote.
>I live in a country where the prime minister is picked by the parliament. I don't directly vote for him.
That's kind of whataboutism. If that works for your country and the people are happy with the arrangement and the results of this system, I don't see an issue.
>By your own ridiculous standards
I don't think direct accountability to the citizens is a ridiculous concept. If you're unhappy with a MEP, your prime minister, you can vote them out or protest till they quit. But the head of the EC, Ursula, is impossible to dethrone by the people via democratic vote or protest. You're stuck taking up the ass from someone you never voted for and don't support.
> the head of the EC, Ursula, is impossible to dethrone by the people via democratic vote or protest
The Commission can be dismissed by the Parliament, with a majority of its members and 2/3 of votes cast
By this standard there are no democracies in the world. Stop being ridiculous and repeating dumb russian propaganda.
Do also see:
# Italy warns against Chat Control mass surveillance, but votes in favour of it (digitalcourage.social)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48783340
Do, because already there nuances (towards the better or worse) are revealed, which are not evident in journalism as we have it. The whole story needs more investigation than the stubs.
But the way they are managing it in the workflow does not seem too linear...
"We are in favour of this law, so long as it is not used for its intended purpose."
You should elaborate. And explain what you understood as "its intended purpose".
My understanding of the vote last Friday was about protracting the 2021 temporary compromise (scan voluntarily until we have a full law), which was suspended at the beginning of April. It is not clear how they proceeded that way. It seems some vertices imposed that they would not accept a legal vacuum there. So, it's not a "law". What ran for the past five years was an "exception to privacy laws" (I am not informed of the mandated guardrails).
I regret to inform you that a temporary exception to a law is also a law.
edit:
> It seems some vertices imposed that they would not accept a legal vacuum there.
I find this sentence unintelligible. Can you come up with another wording? And who are these "vertices" who have been given approval rights over EU legislation?
> to inform you that
What would that entail.
> who are these "vertices"
Apparently metsola, to some source. The eu parliament refused to renew the temporary licence to private message monitoring, which had the "speaker" complain that this would just leave the union with a normative vacuum - apparently insisting that one non-temporary regulation has to be decided. So I read.
They're not going to stop, are they?
Law enforcement should stop them. In countries like Germany this is very likely illegal and amounts to preparation of terrorist act.
It certainly seems like they'll stop after they pass it.
Who is they?
These pithy remarks don't really extend the debate or have any nuance - they just sound conspiratorial.
There are plenty of reasons to "scan" communications.
There are plenty of reasons to have limits on communication "scanning".
What part of the spectrum do you fall on?
There is no way to stop these so just lets get going. The sooner we have age and ID verification on every single website and app the sooner we will have a working decentralised internet that avoids it.
> There is no way to stop these so just lets get going.
Except for the times they've tried before and public outrage stopped it. So this defeatist attitude works against us.
It's a strong signal to start building such an Internet and slowly withdraw from using anything centralized.
governments can (and will) shut down or fine the detractors.
I doubt that. They cannot stop me from downloading movies and series. They cannot stop me from betting or using crypto. It's kinda hard to find a single thing they are able to stop me from doing online and I'm not even trying that hard.
What frightens me is, as usual, the assumption of conformism that may just remove people from services.
"Present a document" // "No, certainly not to you" // "Do without then"
The straight will say "no", but their lives will be extremely complicated, possibly in the unawareness of those that just take compliance to the absurd for granted - as the weak call survival paramount and cannot see that their modus is subjective. That we won't have it is something that they cannot even conceive. Adults are noise to them.
Am I crazy or is this website not allowing me to opt out of cookie tracking unless I sign up for a subscription?
I know the EU cookie banners have basically ruined the internet, but this seems like a whole 'nother level of obnoxious.
It's called "pay-or-okay" (or "consent-or-pay") and there hasn't been many decisions on it yet which has led noyb to sue German DPAs: https://noyb.eu/en/years-inactivity-pay-or-ok-cases-noyb-sue...
There is one case where DPA ruled in favor of the company, but it's currently being appealed: https://noyb.eu/en/pay-or-ok-der-spiegel-noyb-sues-hamburg-d...
Another one ruled against company and court agreed: https://noyb.eu/en/court-decides-pay-or-okay-derstandardat-i...
It's not EU cookie banners that have ruined the internet, it's malicious compliance and dark pattens on behalf of those that want to track you.
The EU's own government websites have these same cookie banners. Are they maliciously compliant with their own regulations?
EU made bad laws that have encouraged this kind of behavior. And now we're all suffering.
Look at the CCPA in California for legislation that accomplishes largely the same goals, but doesn't break the web due to "malicious compliance".
> The EU's own government websites have these same cookie banners.
Most of them decidedly don't have the same cookie banners. E.g. in vast majority of cases they don't prevent you from seeing content, and have an easy opt-out mechanism without dark patterns.
The result matters, which is why regulations should be considered carefully. The whole cookie fiasco is exactly that: they created a whole industry of shitty compliance and the rules are complex enough that every engineering team is like "just use the off-the-shelf shitty thing". And here we are.
No. The cookie banners have ruined the internet. The banners haven’t fixed anything. Business as usual, just click here.
As a reminder "EU cookie banners" are not required if you use cookies for site functionality. They are only required if your site uses these to track users.
This needs repeating, it's a common misconception (deliberately spread by many, too) that the EU requires cookie banners for all cookies.
This gets repeated a lot, but is not my experience after having worked with both in-house and contracted lawyers to understand how functional cookies are handled. We end up wanting something more durable than session cookies to track user preferences so we can set them next time they visit. This is super standard light/dark mode, region, language type of stuff. But that's considered “tracking" in many of these discussions, which never made sense to me.
Not quite.
> This shall not prevent any technical storage or access for the sole purpose of carrying out or facilitating the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network, or as strictly necessary in order to provide an information society service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user.
This is the reason why these are usually separated to "strictly necessary" and "functional" cookies. Functional cookies are things which enhance the functionality, but are not strictly necessary. These would generally include things like persistent cookie for language choice rather than just session one.
Yet every website still has them.
> Am I crazy or is this website not allowing me to opt out of cookie tracking unless I sign up for a subscription?
Extremely common practice for newspapers websites, unfortunately.
When they force that, it's an invitation for me to open it in an incognito window. Track all you want, assholes!
Try the demo on this site: https://fingerprint.com/demo
Both in incognito and normal modes. I bet you'll get the same fingerprinting ID in both.
So yes, they can track you in incognito mode, too.
Very common on EU news websites.
Workarounds include:
- reader mode
- "behind the overlay" extension (and others like it)
- archive.is
- probably many others
This is what made me disable JavaScript by default in 2018. I didn't even get this banner.
You are correct. Reader mode on Firefox shows the full article though.
Wow, yeah, that seems... illegal, no?
Im pretty sure it is illegal. In my understanding, it must be equally easy to reject and accept. And the website MUST continue working under either choice. Which is not the case here.
I think the lawmakers should have made all forms of tracking illegal instead. That would make law writing and following easier. And closer to the spirit of what they are trying to accomplish and what everyone wants (except you Silicon Valley O.o)
I hate the tracking too. But how to websites monetize free content otherwise? Advertising doesn’t work if you can’t price it. Without tracking, everything becomes a paywall.
It seems a lot of people are doing amazing things with Patreon. Share some things for free (free as in beer) then have a paid tier for those who want more. Convince us you’re worthy, then we’ll give you money willingly.
Nope, completely legal.
You Reject the undesirable ones (all!) and click Agree to Selected.
On these you usually can't reject them. It says
> Data processing by advertising providers including personalised advertising with profiling (Consent required for free use)
doesn't work, they don't let you unselect anything. you have to accept everything or pay.
very frustrating because especially a tech magazine like heise should really know better
EU council is 27 individual governments each elected by their members. It’s like the US senate pre 17th ammendemnt.
So what platforms will this apply too? What platforms Dow sit already apply too? All SMS, large email providers (Gmail?), WhatsApp, Apple services?
There have been a few incidents that make me think Snapchat private chats are monitored. The one with the guy joking to his friends about blowing up a plane or something is the first that comes to mind.
Tell me how private messaging gets you taken off a plane otherwise. It’s not private. Big tech has put a camera and microphone in everyone’s pocket and they’re monitoring everything.
The government and big (American) tech are very likely lying to us IMO. How will anyone protest when mass surveillance becomes the law if it’s already in place and you can be labeled a bad actor that gets your life ruined if you dissent?
> How will anyone protest when mass surveillance becomes the law if it’s already in place and you can be labeled a bad actor that gets your life ruined if you dissent
With the pure awareness that Men do not act out of convenience, and that this whole situation of declining societies was born out of already-fascist-material that acted out of convenience, with complacency.
it will %100 pass at some point. no way around it.
The problem is /what/ will pass. What is this clothing limit? Pink, shocking, lime? Long sleeves, above the wrist or below? In the city center, in the suburbs, where?
The issue is all in the details.
And in the decision process, before that, of course.
The main argument for this seems to be that they catch many pedos by using image recognition tech on facebook etc.
Thus, discontinuing the permit to use these techniques did have enforcement numbers of those crimes found drop significantly.
I'm wondering if they've given up real policing of these crimes completely?!
Spreading pedo content on Facebook, those people have to be the dumbest of the dumb? Everyone spending even a single critical thought on their crimes won't be caught by this.
And they say enforcement numbers drop significantly? Meaning they don't catch many other people? What the fuck are they even doing? Did they completely give up trying to find the real criminals, and instead fall back on sugar-coated figures to conceal that failure?
These pro-surveillance narratives don't even attempt to look plausible, they are aimed at the average Joe/Mohammed/whoever with attention span of 10ms and IQ of a guppy.
Please email your members of parliament: https://fightchatcontrol.eu
i thought apple is already doing this on all it's devices?
This would be illegal in Germany. I wonder why law enforcement is not looking into this. It is similar to having abusive husband control wife's communication - just at scale and for ideological reason. This is a violent act against whole population, applied indiscriminately. It fulfils updated definition of terrorism in Germany and it is exploiting legislative apparatus of the EU to enact this violent act. German people should report this and these people behind it should be investigated and presumably arrested.
Don't you also have it in the Constitution? In your case, it could probably construed as part of Article 1 (I may be confused).
For others, it is explicit in the Articles.
> these people behind it should be investigated and presumably arrested
Are you talking about the eu organs? (Because it does seem linear, but paradoxical, and surely not outside a thought legal framework.)
Governments don’t work for people. Yet they use terms like democracy all the time. The repeated attempts at chat control are so blatantly anti civil rights but also disrespectful of democratic principles. Why do EU citizens tolerate this? Are they okay being made a fool of or is this just not an issue for them after all?
> Why do EU citizens tolerate this?
Some EU citizens want it? You'd be surprised on the views of some people.
How do you suggest people be intolerant? Essentially all the parties work toward these goals, so voting is ineffective. Speech is (more-or-less) allowed until it turns into strident protest, at which point the water cannons are brought out and a few token agitators are prosecuted for their instigation. I wouldn't want to call this tyranny, because I might get a knock on the door.
Why not emphasize the issue of civil rights and make it disqualifying as a single issue for any politician? At least online it feels like people care about chat control a lot but when it comes to voting, the type of dystopian control EU bureaucrats are building isn’t in anyone’s mind. So politicians can get away with supporting those policies since there isn’t a consequence for them.
"Online people" who care about this sort of thing are a microscopic subset of the voting base and do not represent what most people are aware of, understand, or care about. I live in Ireland, and you know what everyone in town and around my area talks about? Donald Trump. When I try and raise issues of national or European politics, I get whatabouted into more American politics. The bread is sweeter (it's the corn syrup) and the circuses more outrageous.
Well, we don't tolerate it, that's why it hasn't passed yet. They keep trying, though.
The power of the European Commission to propose legislation needs to be curbed or removed entirely. Executive agencies shouldn’t be writing legislation. It’s far to easy for them to propose laws that benefit the the European Commission, rather than benefiting Europeans.
You're blaming the wrong people and making this worse.
The article is literally about the EU Council, the elected heads of states of all the EU nations. The elected leaders of the EU nations really, really want chat control. The Commission has nothing to do with this.
This means the council has systematically overridden the will of both EU parliaments and states' objections in pushing this legislation. TLDR: there are, roughly and not 100% accurately speaking, 4 ways to make legislation at the EU level
1) commission + parliament (meaning the EU commission has initiative (veto rights over any law, like the US president), and parliament can only "propose amendments", which pass with 50% of votes, or deny). This is what normally happens.
Parliament denied the law. Twice.
Member states vetoed the legislation at least 3 times (it doesn't technically work like this but member states can force the commission to veto legislation, and Belgium, Hungary and Denmark have done so) (technically member states can force the EU commission not to introduce legislation and because nobody else can do so either, this is normally effectively a veto)
2) council + parliament. This is where we are. If the executives of the member states (NOT parliaments) want to push through a vote, they can use this path. The difference is that only 2/3 majority of parliament can stop the law from passing or put in amendments.
Technically, this is meant for bypassing the EU commission. But of course, in reality it is for getting past the Danish and potential Belgian and Hungarian and other's vetoes. The commission really wants this.
3) council + commission. This completely overrides any legislative involvement in ... well, legislation. They have already threatened to do this.
4) the council can just force legislation through without anyone's approval
Normally "democracy" in the EU means that legislation requires BOTH a majority of Europeans to agree (Parliament) AND no executive government. Both have already been bypassed.
This refers to "Chat Control 1.0", allowing facebook and other messaging providers to scan chats for harmful content (which they had been temporarily allowed to do by a recently expired law). It means current scanning is illegal.
Just so we're clear, this basically means that all messengers (not any specific one) will have to intercept everyone's messages, scan for specific words, and if found report the whole chat history to the police.
Of course, it already turned out "BTW carrousel" (an illegal tax avoidance strategy) is one of the sentences they scan for to "protect the children".
The article itself also contains evidence against the idea that this protects children (that child protection investigations keep increasing despite the scanning not taking place anymore)
>Technically, this is meant for bypassing the EU commission. But of course, in reality it is for getting past the Danish and potential Belgian and Hungarian and other's vetoes. The commission really wants this.
Excuse me? That is quite an assertion. You're saying the EU Commission, the civil servants appointed by the EU Council, are somehow controlling the EU Council to push this agenda?
I don't believe that is true. Please provide evidence.
In the article, it talks explicitly about this being driven by the heads of state.
This is democracy manifest. What a joke.
It is a bit strange why EU countries allow their own credibility and legitimacy get steadily dragged down, bit by bit, by all these thousands of dubious statements, tricks, manoeuvres, and so on.
Do they just not care about weakening their own societies?
Much the same reasons why the UK, US etc. do much the same. It is slowed down a bit in some countries with strong constitutions or resistance to it, but the governments all want it.
> "You have to understand that times have changed, it's not like before... Now we have children, the children, the children, children, children and the t-word."
~~ keir starmer
(I'll see if I can still find the source. If anybody beats me to it, appreciated.)
The govs consist of people who have their own agendas. Mass surveillance is something they all are aligned on.
I guess I'm not sure what's dubious here. The article says they're circumventing "democratic control bodies", but I don't know what that means (perhaps it's a more common phrase in German?), and it sounds like the European Parliament can still vote to reject Chat Control if they don't want it. The article strongly implies there's something dubious going on here, but to me what would be dubious is a procedure that prevents the parliament from voting on Chat Control.
Perhaps the article is biased.
The simple fact is that a law that existed since 2011 and expired in April is now back in effect. So we are back where we were on February.
I don't remember moving from an anti-democratic hell scape to serene democratic beauty back in April so it's probably a nothing-burger.
I often see news articles that trade on the fact the general populace aren't professional bureaucrats and so frame anything happening in unpopular ways.
They hold all the cards, and have means - above-board or questionable, but effective nonetheless - to enact their will. Do you remember the Treaty of Lisbon referendumS, plural? Just keep asking the question until the plebs answer correctly.
We have been enjoying a succulent Chinese meal.
Yeah and Peter Hummelgaard is about to touch you on the penis.
> "We must break with the totally erroneous perception that it is everyone's civil liberty to communicate on encrypted messaging services,"
What an arsehole.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/politics/government/danish-justice...
What is it with Danish Social Democrats and wanting to enact mass surveillance at any cost?
Isn't this natural for any "Social" ideologies? They imply a system of centralized redistribution, which implies a powerful repressive apparatus and an omnipresent surveillance system.
Does that ###, which seems to have the most simplistic ideas about the world, also have arguments to defend its position?
I mean: has it ever heard, for example about the 2nd Amendment to the USA constitution, arguing that people must be able to defend from governments themselves?
Is it not aware that data is not accessed "just by the good guys"? ?!
At that point it has become clear to most Europe is not a democracy anymore. It has lost any legitimacy.
Talk about overreacting.
Many of us judge that the authoritativeness of most states and organizations is at a staggeringly low point.
The reaction may not be tied to a single event.
At the end of the day, regimes do not depend on legitimacy but on force.
The same as every other fascist control measure. Voted down. Voted down. Voted down. Then forced through through some obscure mechanism bypassing the will of the people and becoming law forever.
> Then forced through through some obscure mechanism bypassing
It was extending a recently expired law that has existed since 2011.
I don't think your comment is reflecting on what has actually happened. "Chat Control" as people know it has not passed into law.
> Although the Council emphasizes that the *scans will be limited to the absolutely necessary extent* and that no general, indiscriminate surveillance will take place
I'm 100% sure that this is the case and about the good intentions of the proposers.
/s
Hn is a goofy place. It feels like on odd days we see posts like this, about the EU creating this legal framework for the destruction of privacy. On even days we see posts about quitting American saas in favor of Europeans on the basis of privacy. Somehow the dots never connect.
A rational person could argue both against EU surveillance laws and in favour of more EU digital independence.
The dots connect very normally, politicians make mistakes. People need to protest against it.
As you might have learned from life, things are not binary.
Doesn't the mere fact that the EU is trying to pass laws to erode privacy indicate that there is privacy to erode? The US doesn't need to pass such laws because there are no protections.
> The US doesn't need to pass such laws because there are no protections.
The US desperately needs fundamental definitions and protections in regard to privacy, but the fact that it is extremely common for European countries to prosecute illegal speech and associations is a big difference. Americans are trying to defend themselves against the secondary effects of surveillance. Europeans can just jail you for saying magic words, or associating with organizations that have been proscribed.
Also, as of a day or two ago, Europeans can be prosecuted for sharing any RT (Russia Today) content, even in private, regardless of content. These are things that the Bill of Rights makes unthinkable in the US. We can bring assault rifles to anti-government protests; if they're seized we can sue to get them back, and to be compensated for being bothered.
The constitutional documents of European countries and supranational institutions might have been largely cribbed from the US's set, but anything like the Bill of Rights in them is virtually never written as an absolute right. It's stuff like Citizens are guaranteed freedom of expression except in cases where it is necessary to prevent expression to maintain safety or the public order.
> Europeans can be prosecuted for sharing any
Could you provide more details?
https://atlantablackstar.com/2025/10/15/man-who-posted-meme-...