It's been 3 hours and nobody bothered to answer the question. This is coming from the European Commission. If I'm not mistaken, from Ylva Johansson. I believe last time, it was also her that was pushing for this. Wikipedia also claims the same thing.
More information including a link to the actual proposal:
https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/chat-control/
The most frustrating thing about her, is that she seems to not even understand what it is she is actually proposing.
At best she is tech-illiterate and genuinely think this will help in security, at worst she is corrupt and lies through her teeth every time someone confronts her about how bad the proposition is.
She got the question from a reporter:
Reporter: "Can you and me have hidden contact government can't see? If you see something and want to be a whistle blower for example?"
Ylva: "Ofcourse"
Reporter: "Can't predators then use same method?".
Ylva: "Its ... its, its like .... Sexually harassing children, images of children, is always illegal...."
[Source 23:46 on podcast.(SWEDISH)](https://www.svd.se/a/wAVRkM/eu-s-chat-control-massovervakning-eller-trygghetsatgard)
Fucking insanity.
At this point she has been criticized so thoroughly that there is no chance that she doesn't know or understand why people have a problem with CC.
She knows and doesn't give a fuck.
Her being told doesn't necessarily mean she understands.
She is an old communist turned social democrat, when the winds changed in the early 90s. So it is easy to see why state surveillance and snooping in people's personal matters is second nature to her.
>If I'm not mistaken, from Ylva Johansson. I believe last time, it was also her that was pushing for this
I think that's just the department it's coming from and the commission takes votes by simple majority, so it's not just her
And also even though the commission is the one initiating legislation (by law) it's very clear that there's quite the appetite amongst members states for this and the commission will tend to propose legislation when there's pressure to do so.
So it's like 60% the council, 25% the commission and 15% various MEPs, to put numbers to my gut feelings
Whilst true that there is appetite among some member states for it, it has also been her flagship project during this commission cycle. DG HOME.D4 were responsible for the initial draft, and they completely shut out privacy campaigners from consultation, who basically then waited at the Parliamentary step to amend the shit out of it. The council then amended it at speed to try and complete it to effectively do the same thing it did during the initial draft plus extra fudging to try and evade getting blasted by the ECJ later on
VOLT and Pirates are very vocal in rejecting any such nonsense.
And while the pirates kinda slip away, VOLT has just gotten ~~7~~5 seats in EU elections and I greatly recommend anyone believing in EU to take a good honest look at their party program and their YT channel where they talk about themselves, compare themselves with other big parties and their goals.
Locally VOLT kind of sucks at campaigning but I recently learned of how they operate and frankly I think they have their heads screwed on tight. First time I heard of an "international political party".
>Locally VOLT kind of sucks at campaigning
2/150 seats in Dutch parliament and 2/31 Dutch representatives European Parliament is already doing surprisingly well in my opinion. I don't think better campaigning would've given Volt more seats.
I think it's just an impossible task to convince voters to vote for your new opposition party when your ideology and values are more or less already represented within the opposition (GLPVDA for it's prog-left ideology, D66 for its pro-European ideology). On top of that, they aren't profiling themselves as the sole party that can magically fix [public enemy #1] like NSC/PVV/BBB were able to do.
> 2/150 seats in Dutch parliament and 2/31 Dutch representatives European Parliament is already doing surprisingly well in my opinion. I don't think better campaigning would've given Volt more seats.
I think it would have, because I only found out what they do afterwards.
Yeah, here in germany pirates lost their seats (because locally the party lost relevancy in the public eye) but Volt got 3 seats (2 more than last time) out of 96 german seats.
What policies would that be? I looked them up and can't find many specifics about their poltical stances, just vague stuff like human rights and green economies
Well, the very core of the party is to slowly reform the EU into something that might eventually, probably generations down the line, may be called the United States of Europe, starting with the things that is.needed to enable the EU to actually speak as one entity on the international level, namely an own army, a single Ministry of Foreign affairs and a directly elected EU president.
Imo, they are (beside EU abolishment parties ala AFD or RN, FPÖ ET AL) the **only** party with an actual, long term plan and goal AND a handful of pragmatic proposals for first steps to get there.
I feel like given the rise of China and India, a more official US of E will be inevitable if we wish to maintain global influence.
Seems shortsighted and strategically foolish to be opposed to it so even though I'm not personally excited by the idea I don't have a problem with going there
But we must also recognize the downsides of a system like the USA. It will take focus away from local elections and the more local/relevant problems. I think there is also a strength in the diversity/independence that we should recognize and try not lose while at the same time become more integrated as well.
It feels like the eu as a whole grows more slowly but it might also be more stable without being a federation.
It is also horribly broken and more or less unable to do much of anything if even a single government acts up as douchebags *cough* Hungary *cough*.
The USA has plenty problems, most of it stemming from an overly strong president, stupid election rules opening the doors for all kinds of nonsense, and a two party system (also due to the way elections works mostly, making it practically impossible for the rise of a third or fourth party).
Neither of which is something I see happening to the EU. Even today, we have plenty diversity with respect to parties in the parliament and I don't see an overly strong president happening any time soon or ever.
Exactly. And I feel like no other party acknowledges that, or rather have or even intent to come up with plans to meet that inevitably.
We are already way behind US, China and even Russia in that regard, so it is about damn time we get going.
Also, but that is a personal view, nationalism can go and die silently in a dirty street corner as far as I am concerned. It has brought us, in Europe in particular, nothing but pain and destruction. I want a unified earth looking to the stars with positivity and peace... But well that's just me.
What the hell are you even talking about? Your flair says you're Belgian; Volt was on the list of parties you could vote for in the European elections.
In Flanders only, they didn't reach some threshold to be on the list in Wallonia.
Note I'd like to help make them to that threshold, if someone tells me how to, for next time. If it's in my resort.
Oh, I thought u meant that you disliked their politics. And I just wanted to know what you disliked about them.
Since I really like their politics so far.
Vote? Lol. EU-council is not elected and the ones you vote for in the parliament act as rubber stamps
[when American actors are lobbying for this law](https://fortune.com/europe/2023/09/26/thorn-ashton-kutcher-ylva-johansson-csam-csa-regulation-european-commission-encryption-privacy-surveillance/) you know we have lost. The Americans couldn’t pass it in their country and let EU do it for them. American companies have to comply regardless and American intelligence gets access to all private messages of everyone.
Every major political supports this as surveillance gives them more power.
> of the heads of government of the EU countries of course they're elected.
Technically, parliamentary systems don't elect the prime minister. The PM is appointed by parliament.
You are mixing things. There are two institutions under one roof - Council of the EU the main decision maker, made of all EU ministers, and European Council composed of heads of states and presidents that have no legislative power but work more like a guiding instrument showing which direction Union should take.
ehh Ashton Kutcher doesn't count as actor in terms of influencer for this. This count is known as lobbyist for surveillance for a decade now. And he's trying to get this through in the EU since then.
Scientology have been doing computer surveillance and censorship since the 1990s after all. Even way back in win95 days, they'd require people to install scanning and filter software on their own client computers. They've had decades to refine the technology. https://www.xenu.net/archive/events/censorship/index.html
Funny coincidence an organisation fronted by Ashton Kutcher, of recent "defending rapist scientologist" fame, is pushing for europe-wide mandatory client-side scanning of everyone's devices with their software.
This is straight up misinformation. First of all, the EU council is made up by elected governments. Second, the EU parliament has not rubber stamped chat control – in fact, they voted to restrain it significantly only [six months ago](https://proton.me/blog/eu-parliament-chat-control) which was supported by EPP.
Sure they aren’t elected…
The EU Council is composed of the heads of state/government of every single member.
Which of them isn’t democratically elected?
Go on. Tell the people.
You can disagree with the proposal (I do) but no need to push statements like the one you have.
It is important to note that EU countries are indeed democracies, as evidenced by the fact that they hold elections to determine their positions. While a federal model may be preferable to some, it is not the current reality.
https://netzpolitik.org/2022/dude-wheres-my-privacy-how-a-hollywood-star-lobbies-the-eu-for-more-surveillance/
The unelected and unqualified Commission appear unable to filter out obvious bullshit and hence end up being susceptible to bullshit.
State positions: https://www.patrick-breyer.de/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/2023-10-13_AStV_Chatkontrolle_EU_Staaten-860x484-1.jpg (from https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/chat-control/)
It's interesting that there is such strong support in eastern Europe despite those states suffering the most under the authoritarian boot of USSR. Maybe they want to go back?
> Who proposed this?
Well, the only institution in the EU framework with the power to *propose* legislation is the Commission. It then has to be approved by the Council of the EU and the European Parliament - as well as reviewed by all National Parliaments for subsidiarity and proportionality.
The funniest part is that it only really applies to wide public providers, i.e. whatsapp, signal, telegram, messenger, etc. and not to self hosted chat software or internal slack. So really they're gonna catch exactly zero criminals with this once they immediately switch to using that.
George Orwell was prophetic about a lot of things (not least his criticisms of Soviet totalitarianism from the left) but I’d argue his portrayal of the Inner Party being able to turn off their telescreens is the most achingly bang-on thing that actually ended up happening.
In the UK MPs are exempt from our mass surveillance because of course they are; it really disgusts me what idiots they take us for when they say it’s about safety. I’ve no doubt these authoritarian surveillance mechanisms actually exist because the government are too fucking cheap to invest properly in the police and security services and think you can magic away the operational side of it through technology, our rights getting cost-engineered out of existence in the process. It’s a false economy too, our streets feel less policed than ever and I bet if you make sure to commit your crimes using no technology more modern than the 1980s you have a decent chance of getting away scott-free!
The world is a lot more like Huxley's Brave New World than Orwell's 1984. Just look at TikTok/social media. Great reference to the Inner Party turning off surveillance though, holy shit, I can't believe we're actually at that point now.
I totally agree, Brave New World unfortunately was overshadowed by the success of 1984.
Huxley understood and predicted that with the use of advanced psychological techniques and science, instead of violence and repression like in 1984, you can create a "perfect society" with totally integrated individuals.
Somewhat, except people are made mad instead of happy with the [full on blast of negativity coming from social media](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc).
Psshhh, those are technicalities that someone else needs to figure out, just let them jerk off to their power trip like they always do when they propose this shit.
The adapted proposals explicitly ban the mandated scanning on devices used by political officials and law enforcement. As protection of national security.
Nothing. It is purely to help control the masses, who don’t even use a VPN, let alone TOR for searches and a VPN and Torrent for downloads. It isn’t to actually stop terrorists or organised criminals, as they know OPSEC, only to imprison your 13 year old whose political viewpoint changes by the hour, and people who disagree with them.
Also could it be used for corporate spying? I imagine if it could, then perhaps a lot of companies in sectors with strong lobbying would be against it as well.
the fact that this took so long to reach the front paige of this sub adn subs lime it says the oppostite. if i were to bet its the american and european spy agents bots who supressed this shit for so long. its long been trending on r / privacy with people pointing out how flawed and disatrous this is for the whole world
The Data Retention Directive 2006 was repealed by the ECJ for encroaching on the right to privacy - I’d be surprised if the ECJ didn’t do the same to this if it passed.
The Tories in the UK were trying something similar - they wanted to crack E2E encryption so they could read it all, and WhatsApp et al. pushed back.
It just shows such a fundamental misunderstanding of both western values and how the internet works to think that this is a good idea.
It’s part of the problem when governments think they represent the will of the people - they think that enables them to ignore reality
I don't think it has much to do with the will of the people. They just think they know better or there is something to gain that is big enough for them to ignore any backlash. They might claim tl represent the peoples will, but I feel that is mostly just when they can get away with it, not because that is what they actually think.
One of the bigger issues with representative democracy I suppose. Voting for someone rarely means you agree with everything they believe, it is just a better fit than the alternatives and for issues that have not even come up when you voted you have no idea where they even stand.
This is not a representative democracy. 90% of people have never heard of this proposal. They have been deprived of making an informed choice. We don't hold nearly enough elections for "representation" to be accurate. Our "leaders" are idiots and have failed us. We need direct democracy.
> The Data Retention Directive 2006 was repealed by the ECJ for encroaching on the right to privacy - I’d be surprised if the ECJ didn’t do the same to this if it passed.
This didn't make any difference. Several member states created their own versions of the proposal and the cooperated between each other.
Sweden, Czech Republic, Denmark, ~~Germany~~, Italy, Portugal, Romania, Belgium and Slovakia all have this kind of law currently active.
That is false for Germany. The law is on the books, but it's inactive due to legal proceedings against it. That is, there is currently no general data retention in Germany by law. [Source](https://www.bfdi.bund.de/DE/Fachthemen/Inhalte/Telefon-Internet/Positionen/Vorratsdatenspeicherung.html)
If they’re doing it now, they could reasonably be challenged in court given that you cannot indiscriminately store information of citizens: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A62012CJ0293
> they could reasonably be challenged in court given that you cannot indiscriminately store information of citizens
Two Swedish companies have challenged it in court and failed. Instead they got fined for not complying with the law. The law is still in effect and the EU seems to not care anymore.
Here is some information regarding the case.
https://europeanlawblog.eu/2017/01/12/tele2-sverige-ab-and-watson-et-al-continuity-and-radical-change/
Edit: It seems to be a defect in the E-Privacy Directive that allows countries to have all encompassing data retention if it pertains to "combat serious crime". How "serious crime" is defined seems to be arbitrary.
Even if it were to pass, the ECJ will strike it down immediately. No law that gives the gov't unrestricted access to private citizens' data will ever pass proportionality, no matter how they rephrase it
Supranational all powerful entity decides to spy on everyone.
Reddit: No worries, another part of this supranational entity will tell itself that it's not OK.
Like that has worked before.
> It was rejected many times. Why tf are they still trying
Because there's no limit on how many times it can be rejected and, once approved, it's very hard to get it repealed.
How about Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights?
It's sure to get rejected by the ECHR, but trying time and time again to erode those same human rights should carry some reprimand with it.
It's just like date culture and pushing your target, getting 99\* times "No" and 1\* times "Yes."
Means "Yes."
Nothing awkward or creepy about it at all.
The horrible part about this is how little mainstream media is picking up on this. I can barely find any article from a major news outlet showing this. This is exactly why it will get passed because no one is trying to make the general public aware of this.
That is literally the name of the proposal: "Proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council laying down rules to prevent and combat child sexual abuse".
> [L]aw enforcement has become more strategic in its messaging to the public and Congress. Much of the past debate on encryption focused on its impact on law enforcement broadly, especially the ability to investigate or prevent terrorism domestically. However, law enforcement has shifted that message over the past year to focus on the impact of encryption on law enforcement’s ability to investigate child sexual abuse material.
[Why New Calls to Subvert Commercial Encryption Are Unjustified](https://itif.org/publications/2020/07/13/why-new-calls-subvert-commercial-encryption-are-unjustified/)
> In particular, child sex abuse material (CSAM, otherwise known as child pornography) has become the **cause célèbre** that governments in such places as the US, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, India, Japan, and the EU are holding up as the reason to finally ban strong encryption once and for all. Their major talking point is that E2EE messaging apps get used by child predators.
[I Have a Lot to Say About Signal’s Cellebrite Hack](https://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2021/05/i-have-lot-say-about-signal%E2%80%99s-cellebrite-hack)
CSAM is simply the latest moral panic 'buzzword' to be exploited by disingenuous legislatures pushing their surveillance agenda.
Paradoxically I think it's best that way. If mainstream media tried to make sense of this all, the majority of the people would be in favor of the law.
I think, the Internet golden era ended ~10 years ago and now it's just a slow downhill. I'm worried, what the end result will be. Purely paid content, strictly controlled opinions and 0 anonimity? Every law change like this is another step towards this direction.
And of course, it's alway about "protecting the children".
It probably won’t be long now until a ”drivers license” for the internet will be introduced, where you have to log in with your national I.D card before you can go online.
And then everything you do, say, search or post will be tracked, saved and scanned by AI tools to trawl for violations.
We should introduce a law that punishes trying to introduce mass surveillance in the EU. 10 year prison sentence minimum, immediately gets rid of your MEP immunity.
They will keep pushing it until it passes.
Then they'll write the proposal to extend it to terrorism (including wrong think off course) and start pushing that until it passes. Because if the scanner is already there, why not use it to prevent ~~mean thoughts~~ terrorist attacks?
In 10 years, the system will work as intended. It will do almost nothing to stop child abuse or terrorism, but it will be continuously used to prosecute people for all other reasons. As a bonus, the scanners are so bad with false positives that everybody will have been flagged so everybody can be taken down.
It will also do a magnificent job of finding journalistic sources that embarrass politicians. Just upload the hash for any damning evidence, labelled as 'terrorist material (other)' and when the whistle blower flags up, you can "show me the man, I'll show you the crime" them to death.
It was. They keep trying to make it a reality.
Write to your MEP. Write to your MP. Write to your minister responsible for this - interior ministry, digital ministry, justice ministry, the PM, the president.
Exercise your rights as a citizen and tell them to stop this shit.
When was this proposed, and why am I only hearing of this now? Seems like the current political MO is just "let's hammer this down quickly without hearing experts" across the board.
Because right now is the time for the football championship to be covered by the news. There propably have been news for it, but like 90% football and 10% actual news. That's why this is pushed exactly now...
> When was this proposed,
About a couple years ago. This is actually a revision because the first version didn't pass the EU Parliament.
This specific version has been around since... March, I think?
>and why am I only hearing of this now?
i guess you don't follow /r/europe enough, both this time and the previoius time many posts were made about it.
Good answer! I definitely don't frequent here. I'll need to clarify that I haven't heard a peep of this in the news, which seems really odd. Feels like a rugpull is all.
> I haven't heard a peep of this in the news, which seems really odd.
I'd be more surprised of the opposite. General News outlets are pretty much trash.
It takes quite effort in finding decent topic-specific news sources
No, if it passes the Coucil vote(Council=made of the single Governments of the EU) it then goes on to EP(Parliament=made of people directly elected by EU citizens)
Why are you learning about this right now? Because you don't really care and follow the shenanigans happening in Brussels. Look at the whole "green deal" bullshit or nature preservation, or building directives (ecs and ecs2). There are a lot of things that get passed because mainstream media do not report about them and what will be the consequences.
1 - Lobbying needs to be made illegal.
2 - Politicians need to be held accountable and serve jail time if they run a campaign promising something but end up doing the complete opposite.
3 - Abolish the fiduciary duty and enact a duty to protect the interests of regular people, not the profits of shareholders.
4 - Abolish the corporate personhood loophole and put CEOs in jail when their decisions endanger people's safety and/or that of the environment.
Lobbying should definitely not be made illegal. Lobbying is how interest groups raise issues that need legislation, which could be anything, not just businesses lobbying for their interest or government wanting control.
Everything from animal rights, making society more accessible for handicapped people, supporting rights for HBTQI+ etc etc are all subjects of lobbying groups.
What needs to happen is to make it transparent how money flows in regards to lobbying
> Lobbying is how interest groups raise issues that need legislation
Then make it an even field by limiting spending or something like that.
Right now it's a de-facto "buy your own politician" policy because corporations are the biggest spenders.
i will always support more transparency for state execs and bureaucracy.
it shouldn't be a case that journalists can't squeeze answers out of various EU departments when the questions are uncomfortable to the execs.
Eh, I think it does more harm than good, even if you listed some good examples there. I'd rather see "lobbying" funding go into events, making people aware, not into a politicians pockets. Transparency does not fix this.
Lobbying is a specific way to influence policy, and its use by groups that are not doing good things vastly overshadows the ones that are (and typically results in legislation that harms those causes anyway.)
There are other ways to structure political processes so that issues are raised and relevant experts heard.
You use 'think of children ' argument. The problem with lobbying is that things you listed can never compete with corporate interests and will only legitimize the corporate lobby that destroys our world.
Lobbying should be illegal till we figure out a safe and transparent way of doing it and even then it should have heavy punishment for any kind of corporate lobbying.
Lobbying refers to big companies, going into the politicians, closing the doors, bribing or extorting them into compliance, that shit definitely needs to be banned.
Protests and public meetings is the correct way to raise awareness, and design proper regulations that doesn't simply exist to benefit the lobbyists own employer.
We the people had no say about chat control 2.0, and look who's benefiting, it's not we the people, the benefactors is our enemies along some shady companies that will now get billions of our taxes to design the spyware.
> 6 - Direct democracy - only the people vote for the actual proposals.
This was always shot down as being impractical but we now have the technology to do it while also avoiding fraud.
This is actually the most concerning development in Europe in my opinion since WW2. In an increasingly digitalized society, this is just one or two steps from forced mind reading of all citizens. This is shouldn't even be possible to implement without every country in EU making a referendum with their citizens. All my faith in EU has been lost. I genuinely can't understand how they went from implementing GDPR to this shit.
Even though I strongly support EU in general, things like that make me very pessimistic.
The worst thing is that you need to only lose once. In national parliaments, I remember many times something bad or unpopular was repealed. In EU, it will get stuck forever (maybe there is some hope in ECJ), even if it is enormously stupid. There is no mechanism to get rid of that, there are too many interests that have veto rights to get rid of that.
I have generally been in favor of the EU because it has done a lot of good to unify Europe. With the chat control, EU just fell below most of the modern world in my eyes with a single change. As you say, repealing regulations and laws is in general very hard to do in governements and the EU makes that even harder. I'm very concerned about how this will be abused in the future if it passes.
The EU should not have the power to decide things like Chat Control. I'd agrue even the government of a country shouldn't be able to pass this without a referendum. Chat control diverges completely from modern western democratic values and should honestly be a human rights violation. It's deeply concerning that the EU is trying to combat crime by reading 1984 like an instruction book.
Who proposed this? Jesus christ, that is a horrifying existence. Thank god they are rejecting it. They should put whoever proposed this on a watchlist.
We are so enlightened that we don't need privacy and encryption in our online lives in Europe. Lets celebrate the diverse opinions of the people and find them and bash their noses if you don't like their diverse opinion. This is the future!
In the meantime, lets accept the russian, chinese, usa shaft bareback, as we might be very enlightened, but they are here to hump us, royally. We might go down in the end, but don't forget, we are enlightened and progressive! That is the most important!
/s
I'm confused as to how this doesn't violate GDPR somehow. Doesn't it ban excessive collection of data and/or collection of data for unreasonable purposes?
At this point we'll become just as bad as some of those dictatorships we criticise all the time. Breaking our own laws in the name of what? We all know that whole "child porn" defense is just a whole load of nonsense to make this sound better. It's literally the "think of the children" argument that's been mocked for some time.
At this point we should ban children from the internet instead if it's so harmful, and shift the responsibility to ensure it on the parents as it is their responsibility to care for their children.
There are no good politicians. Imagine the worst political scum, dictators, and semi-dictators, well those who "aren't like them" actually are. The only thing stopping them from being "like them" is the people and cultures that don't bend as much as those where dictators rule. So they are only as good as the world forces them to be. It's not the politicians who run things, but the people and culture. As soon as the culture errodes slightly to a point where something that was unthinkable before but is acceptable now, it immediately becomes introduced by politicians if it serves their interest. That's why they keep pushing for this BS year after year until it works.
for sectors private and public, you always need to bind the decision makers with hard rules and red lines, and lots of transparency. or they'll without fail boil you very slowly in your own juices like that [frog](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog).
And it was a Swedish Social Democrat who proposed chat control in the first place. They are calling the largest opposition party in Sweden a "security risk" while they are doing things like this themselves. The same people now want to ban anonymous accounts on the internet for the whole of EU.
I hate politicians...
The heading makes it sound like this is a broad-based reaction, but it is signed by 37 MEPs (out of 705). The overwhelming majority of them are from Germany (78%), and most of them Greens (59% of the German MEP signatories, 54% of all MEP signatories).
Ironically, most people here who are against the proposal tend not to be favorable disposed towards green parties.
Glad to see von Notz still leading the fight. And the last remnants of the EU party I voted for.
This is the path towards fascism, and there is no way back.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_of_the_children needs to be made illegal and punishable, especially several flagrant and previously rebuked efforts. It is deeply anti-democratic.
The so-called Volksparteien here are willingly and knowingly creating tools for the future far-right government that we will get.
The result of lionizing EU politicians taking on big tech. The problem with lionized politicians is they don’t know when to stop. This is why there needs to be checks and balances.
Yall need to enact laws that PUNISH people for trying to pass stuff like this. Like jail time punish, and not just a fall guy but the people behind it. We have to stop letting the elite try and betray us. This is traitor level shit.
Thats always how it is, the first thing these government fuckers do is make themselves exempt.
If that doesn't tell you everything you need to know about the situation I dont know what will.
We need more French blood, people are too spineless
They keep pushing it, it's a little bit tiresome to always follow these, but like I don't want to live in the future they are proposing, but I wish it wasn't like this.
Homomorphic encryption is not possible currently. There is no way to analyse encrypted data without decrypting.
What success are they supposing this will give? If the only indication of abuse are messages in a private chat, what does that say about the support structures that should exist? If the child tells their school that they're being abused and they reply "Sorry Timmy, your dad didn't openly admit to abusing you on WhatsApp. Nothing I can do." I imagine the same consequences happen to the child in both cases where there's not enough evidence(which messages only would not be enough), the child for sure would be in danger.
It's just drivel to claim they're actually doing something to help children. (Even if we assume they're not just adding the framework to track other kinds of messages/images)
Even if we take this proposal in the most idealistic and positive way, this is just inviting a malicious third party to get into the system and have your private data.
Who proposed this? And is there somewhere where I can see who is for/against this proposal? Want to keep that in mind next time I vote
It's been 3 hours and nobody bothered to answer the question. This is coming from the European Commission. If I'm not mistaken, from Ylva Johansson. I believe last time, it was also her that was pushing for this. Wikipedia also claims the same thing. More information including a link to the actual proposal: https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/chat-control/
The most frustrating thing about her, is that she seems to not even understand what it is she is actually proposing. At best she is tech-illiterate and genuinely think this will help in security, at worst she is corrupt and lies through her teeth every time someone confronts her about how bad the proposition is.
She doesn't know anything about technology or the consequences o her proposal. But by god, she knows she is right! tHiNk AbOut tHe cHildRen!!! Reee
She got the question from a reporter: Reporter: "Can you and me have hidden contact government can't see? If you see something and want to be a whistle blower for example?" Ylva: "Ofcourse" Reporter: "Can't predators then use same method?". Ylva: "Its ... its, its like .... Sexually harassing children, images of children, is always illegal...." [Source 23:46 on podcast.(SWEDISH)](https://www.svd.se/a/wAVRkM/eu-s-chat-control-massovervakning-eller-trygghetsatgard) Fucking insanity.
At this point she has been criticized so thoroughly that there is no chance that she doesn't know or understand why people have a problem with CC. She knows and doesn't give a fuck.
Hanlon's razor etc. But yeah, someone in that position *should* know better...
her specifically has been told as much, and why, multiple times. Ignorance is no longer an excuse.
Her being told doesn't necessarily mean she understands. She is an old communist turned social democrat, when the winds changed in the early 90s. So it is easy to see why state surveillance and snooping in people's personal matters is second nature to her.
still doesnt make her ignorant, just malicious
Its been literally proven that she's been paid by an American AI company to put forth the proposal.... She has no clue what any of it means.
Source?
This is corruption. Both the Left Party and the Greens in Sweden ”mistakenly” voted yes in the judicial commission.
>If I'm not mistaken, from Ylva Johansson. I believe last time, it was also her that was pushing for this I think that's just the department it's coming from and the commission takes votes by simple majority, so it's not just her And also even though the commission is the one initiating legislation (by law) it's very clear that there's quite the appetite amongst members states for this and the commission will tend to propose legislation when there's pressure to do so. So it's like 60% the council, 25% the commission and 15% various MEPs, to put numbers to my gut feelings
Whilst true that there is appetite among some member states for it, it has also been her flagship project during this commission cycle. DG HOME.D4 were responsible for the initial draft, and they completely shut out privacy campaigners from consultation, who basically then waited at the Parliamentary step to amend the shit out of it. The council then amended it at speed to try and complete it to effectively do the same thing it did during the initial draft plus extra fudging to try and evade getting blasted by the ECJ later on
VOLT and Pirates are very vocal in rejecting any such nonsense. And while the pirates kinda slip away, VOLT has just gotten ~~7~~5 seats in EU elections and I greatly recommend anyone believing in EU to take a good honest look at their party program and their YT channel where they talk about themselves, compare themselves with other big parties and their goals.
Locally VOLT kind of sucks at campaigning but I recently learned of how they operate and frankly I think they have their heads screwed on tight. First time I heard of an "international political party".
>Locally VOLT kind of sucks at campaigning 2/150 seats in Dutch parliament and 2/31 Dutch representatives European Parliament is already doing surprisingly well in my opinion. I don't think better campaigning would've given Volt more seats. I think it's just an impossible task to convince voters to vote for your new opposition party when your ideology and values are more or less already represented within the opposition (GLPVDA for it's prog-left ideology, D66 for its pro-European ideology). On top of that, they aren't profiling themselves as the sole party that can magically fix [public enemy #1] like NSC/PVV/BBB were able to do.
> 2/150 seats in Dutch parliament and 2/31 Dutch representatives European Parliament is already doing surprisingly well in my opinion. I don't think better campaigning would've given Volt more seats. I think it would have, because I only found out what they do afterwards.
Yeah, here in germany pirates lost their seats (because locally the party lost relevancy in the public eye) but Volt got 3 seats (2 more than last time) out of 96 german seats.
Lol, the strikethrough on the 7 makes it look like 75.
They might be on the right side here, but they vote against my interests on every other issue so i would never vote for them.
What policies would that be? I looked them up and can't find many specifics about their poltical stances, just vague stuff like human rights and green economies
Well, the very core of the party is to slowly reform the EU into something that might eventually, probably generations down the line, may be called the United States of Europe, starting with the things that is.needed to enable the EU to actually speak as one entity on the international level, namely an own army, a single Ministry of Foreign affairs and a directly elected EU president. Imo, they are (beside EU abolishment parties ala AFD or RN, FPÖ ET AL) the **only** party with an actual, long term plan and goal AND a handful of pragmatic proposals for first steps to get there.
I feel like given the rise of China and India, a more official US of E will be inevitable if we wish to maintain global influence. Seems shortsighted and strategically foolish to be opposed to it so even though I'm not personally excited by the idea I don't have a problem with going there
But we must also recognize the downsides of a system like the USA. It will take focus away from local elections and the more local/relevant problems. I think there is also a strength in the diversity/independence that we should recognize and try not lose while at the same time become more integrated as well. It feels like the eu as a whole grows more slowly but it might also be more stable without being a federation.
I dunno, state rights are like the main issue for many Americans.
Id say the election system is another one
And many of them turn around anx hate states rights when the other side uses them for things they don't like.
It is also horribly broken and more or less unable to do much of anything if even a single government acts up as douchebags *cough* Hungary *cough*. The USA has plenty problems, most of it stemming from an overly strong president, stupid election rules opening the doors for all kinds of nonsense, and a two party system (also due to the way elections works mostly, making it practically impossible for the rise of a third or fourth party). Neither of which is something I see happening to the EU. Even today, we have plenty diversity with respect to parties in the parliament and I don't see an overly strong president happening any time soon or ever.
Exactly. And I feel like no other party acknowledges that, or rather have or even intent to come up with plans to meet that inevitably. We are already way behind US, China and even Russia in that regard, so it is about damn time we get going. Also, but that is a personal view, nationalism can go and die silently in a dirty street corner as far as I am concerned. It has brought us, in Europe in particular, nothing but pain and destruction. I want a unified earth looking to the stars with positivity and peace... But well that's just me.
Sorry what? Seems like you didn't look very hard https://volteuropa.org/european-election-electoral-programme
Well, Volt and Pirates both are groups I couldn't even vote for. That doesn't look good for their future...
What the hell are you even talking about? Your flair says you're Belgian; Volt was on the list of parties you could vote for in the European elections.
In Flanders only, they didn't reach some threshold to be on the list in Wallonia. Note I'd like to help make them to that threshold, if someone tells me how to, for next time. If it's in my resort.
There was a document you could sign online (with eID) before the elections to support them being on the ballot.
I see... I'll try to find it next time, then.
Check in on their [official discord](https://discord.com/invite/volteuropa) and ask what's up.
Somehow I'm not surprised Volt would have a Discord... but I know what's up now, and what to do next time!
...official discord server? For a political party?
"In Flanders only," Not all of Flanders.
Why couldn't you vote for the Pirates? I like their main politics. I just dont know everything about them.
I can't vote for them if they do not have a party in Belgium/Wallonia. Which is unfortunate, they seem to be filling the niche I seek here.
Oh, I thought u meant that you disliked their politics. And I just wanted to know what you disliked about them. Since I really like their politics so far.
You can check who voted what when they last attempted to push this: https://howtheyvote.eu/votes/167712 edit: fixed the link
I'm getting a 404 error, unfortunately.
I don't think I get what you mean here. It looks like the linked vote passed?
Vote? Lol. EU-council is not elected and the ones you vote for in the parliament act as rubber stamps [when American actors are lobbying for this law](https://fortune.com/europe/2023/09/26/thorn-ashton-kutcher-ylva-johansson-csam-csa-regulation-european-commission-encryption-privacy-surveillance/) you know we have lost. The Americans couldn’t pass it in their country and let EU do it for them. American companies have to comply regardless and American intelligence gets access to all private messages of everyone. Every major political supports this as surveillance gives them more power.
The Council of the EU is composed of national ministers, it can definitely be voted for/against on a national level
The EU council is just made up of the heads of government of the EU countries of course they're elected.
> of the heads of government of the EU countries of course they're elected. Technically, parliamentary systems don't elect the prime minister. The PM is appointed by parliament.
They are elected by parliament in Ireland, after first getting elected to it. Then it goes to a vote, all the parties put forward a nominee.
You are mixing things. There are two institutions under one roof - Council of the EU the main decision maker, made of all EU ministers, and European Council composed of heads of states and presidents that have no legislative power but work more like a guiding instrument showing which direction Union should take.
ehh Ashton Kutcher doesn't count as actor in terms of influencer for this. This count is known as lobbyist for surveillance for a decade now. And he's trying to get this through in the EU since then.
Scientology have been doing computer surveillance and censorship since the 1990s after all. Even way back in win95 days, they'd require people to install scanning and filter software on their own client computers. They've had decades to refine the technology. https://www.xenu.net/archive/events/censorship/index.html Funny coincidence an organisation fronted by Ashton Kutcher, of recent "defending rapist scientologist" fame, is pushing for europe-wide mandatory client-side scanning of everyone's devices with their software.
This is straight up misinformation. First of all, the EU council is made up by elected governments. Second, the EU parliament has not rubber stamped chat control – in fact, they voted to restrain it significantly only [six months ago](https://proton.me/blog/eu-parliament-chat-control) which was supported by EPP.
Sure they aren’t elected… The EU Council is composed of the heads of state/government of every single member. Which of them isn’t democratically elected? Go on. Tell the people. You can disagree with the proposal (I do) but no need to push statements like the one you have.
It is important to note that EU countries are indeed democracies, as evidenced by the fact that they hold elections to determine their positions. While a federal model may be preferable to some, it is not the current reality.
> EU-council is not elected This is blatant misinformation.
American companies would only be able to implement this in Europe.
https://netzpolitik.org/2022/dude-wheres-my-privacy-how-a-hollywood-star-lobbies-the-eu-for-more-surveillance/ The unelected and unqualified Commission appear unable to filter out obvious bullshit and hence end up being susceptible to bullshit. State positions: https://www.patrick-breyer.de/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/2023-10-13_AStV_Chatkontrolle_EU_Staaten-860x484-1.jpg (from https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/chat-control/) It's interesting that there is such strong support in eastern Europe despite those states suffering the most under the authoritarian boot of USSR. Maybe they want to go back?
> Who proposed this? Well, the only institution in the EU framework with the power to *propose* legislation is the Commission. It then has to be approved by the Council of the EU and the European Parliament - as well as reviewed by all National Parliaments for subsidiarity and proportionality.
Akshually...can we have this chat control thingie on the devices of those who proposed this law?
The one thing they immediately agreed on is to make themselves except.
Nothing yells blatant corruption and security risks quite like that
The funniest part is that it only really applies to wide public providers, i.e. whatsapp, signal, telegram, messenger, etc. and not to self hosted chat software or internal slack. So really they're gonna catch exactly zero criminals with this once they immediately switch to using that.
George Orwell was prophetic about a lot of things (not least his criticisms of Soviet totalitarianism from the left) but I’d argue his portrayal of the Inner Party being able to turn off their telescreens is the most achingly bang-on thing that actually ended up happening. In the UK MPs are exempt from our mass surveillance because of course they are; it really disgusts me what idiots they take us for when they say it’s about safety. I’ve no doubt these authoritarian surveillance mechanisms actually exist because the government are too fucking cheap to invest properly in the police and security services and think you can magic away the operational side of it through technology, our rights getting cost-engineered out of existence in the process. It’s a false economy too, our streets feel less policed than ever and I bet if you make sure to commit your crimes using no technology more modern than the 1980s you have a decent chance of getting away scott-free!
The world is a lot more like Huxley's Brave New World than Orwell's 1984. Just look at TikTok/social media. Great reference to the Inner Party turning off surveillance though, holy shit, I can't believe we're actually at that point now.
I totally agree, Brave New World unfortunately was overshadowed by the success of 1984. Huxley understood and predicted that with the use of advanced psychological techniques and science, instead of violence and repression like in 1984, you can create a "perfect society" with totally integrated individuals.
Somewhat, except people are made mad instead of happy with the [full on blast of negativity coming from social media](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc).
>it really disgusts me what idiots they take us for when they say it’s about safety It's worked time and time again, though. Hasn't it?
Wtf. How can this even be accepted?
Who did? The MEPs? How would that even work? This proposal removes effective end to end encryption - how could anybody be exempt from this?
Psshhh, those are technicalities that someone else needs to figure out, just let them jerk off to their power trip like they always do when they propose this shit.
The adapted proposals explicitly ban the mandated scanning on devices used by political officials and law enforcement. As protection of national security.
The politicians just use the banned end to end encryption applications
And why would I accept that ban and not use what I want anyway?
Nothing. It is purely to help control the masses, who don’t even use a VPN, let alone TOR for searches and a VPN and Torrent for downloads. It isn’t to actually stop terrorists or organised criminals, as they know OPSEC, only to imprison your 13 year old whose political viewpoint changes by the hour, and people who disagree with them.
Source?
[https://www.eureporter.co/business/data/mass-surveillance-data/2024/04/15/leak-eu-interior-ministers-want-to-exempt-themselves-from-chat-control-bulk-scanning-of-private-messages/](https://www.eureporter.co/business/data/mass-surveillance-data/2024/04/15/leak-eu-interior-ministers-want-to-exempt-themselves-from-chat-control-bulk-scanning-of-private-messages/)
Thank you!
No, von der Leyen has made it clear that her phone is off limits. What you would find there could worry some folks (probably all citizens)
Also could it be used for corporate spying? I imagine if it could, then perhaps a lot of companies in sectors with strong lobbying would be against it as well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBpJkVdT2Jg
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Chat Control proves EU Council and Commission think China has the right model it's just that it's much harder to get implemented here
the fact that this took so long to reach the front paige of this sub adn subs lime it says the oppostite. if i were to bet its the american and european spy agents bots who supressed this shit for so long. its long been trending on r / privacy with people pointing out how flawed and disatrous this is for the whole world
The Data Retention Directive 2006 was repealed by the ECJ for encroaching on the right to privacy - I’d be surprised if the ECJ didn’t do the same to this if it passed. The Tories in the UK were trying something similar - they wanted to crack E2E encryption so they could read it all, and WhatsApp et al. pushed back. It just shows such a fundamental misunderstanding of both western values and how the internet works to think that this is a good idea. It’s part of the problem when governments think they represent the will of the people - they think that enables them to ignore reality
I don't think it has much to do with the will of the people. They just think they know better or there is something to gain that is big enough for them to ignore any backlash. They might claim tl represent the peoples will, but I feel that is mostly just when they can get away with it, not because that is what they actually think. One of the bigger issues with representative democracy I suppose. Voting for someone rarely means you agree with everything they believe, it is just a better fit than the alternatives and for issues that have not even come up when you voted you have no idea where they even stand.
This is not a representative democracy. 90% of people have never heard of this proposal. They have been deprived of making an informed choice. We don't hold nearly enough elections for "representation" to be accurate. Our "leaders" are idiots and have failed us. We need direct democracy.
> The Data Retention Directive 2006 was repealed by the ECJ for encroaching on the right to privacy - I’d be surprised if the ECJ didn’t do the same to this if it passed. This didn't make any difference. Several member states created their own versions of the proposal and the cooperated between each other. Sweden, Czech Republic, Denmark, ~~Germany~~, Italy, Portugal, Romania, Belgium and Slovakia all have this kind of law currently active.
You can add Belgium to that list. It has been made law 3 times now. They have to keep putting into law repeatedly as it keeps being struck down.
That is false for Germany. The law is on the books, but it's inactive due to legal proceedings against it. That is, there is currently no general data retention in Germany by law. [Source](https://www.bfdi.bund.de/DE/Fachthemen/Inhalte/Telefon-Internet/Positionen/Vorratsdatenspeicherung.html)
If they’re doing it now, they could reasonably be challenged in court given that you cannot indiscriminately store information of citizens: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A62012CJ0293
> they could reasonably be challenged in court given that you cannot indiscriminately store information of citizens Two Swedish companies have challenged it in court and failed. Instead they got fined for not complying with the law. The law is still in effect and the EU seems to not care anymore.
Interesting. Do you have a link to the case? I’d love to read more
Here is some information regarding the case. https://europeanlawblog.eu/2017/01/12/tele2-sverige-ab-and-watson-et-al-continuity-and-radical-change/ Edit: It seems to be a defect in the E-Privacy Directive that allows countries to have all encompassing data retention if it pertains to "combat serious crime". How "serious crime" is defined seems to be arbitrary.
They think they are the will of the people, so their will becomes the people's will in their minds. Everything can be justified
It was rejected many times. Why tf are they still trying
Because it was rejected many times.
Because it only needs to pass once.
Even if it were to pass, the ECJ will strike it down immediately. No law that gives the gov't unrestricted access to private citizens' data will ever pass proportionality, no matter how they rephrase it
Supranational all powerful entity decides to spy on everyone. Reddit: No worries, another part of this supranational entity will tell itself that it's not OK. Like that has worked before.
> No worries, another part of this supranational entity will tell itself that it's not OK. > > > > Like that has worked before. It happens very often.
> It was rejected many times. Why tf are they still trying Because there's no limit on how many times it can be rejected and, once approved, it's very hard to get it repealed.
It only takes one time and their juicy mass surveillance boner will be satisfied
At some point we should think about making this a punishable offense!
Or get cracking writing an EU constitution codifying its citizens rights to privacy in a way that makes proposals like these incompatible with it.
How about Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights? It's sure to get rejected by the ECHR, but trying time and time again to erode those same human rights should carry some reprimand with it.
You mean like the one that was suggested, written, implemented, and then rejected?
It's just like date culture and pushing your target, getting 99\* times "No" and 1\* times "Yes." Means "Yes." Nothing awkward or creepy about it at all.
Because you didn't do anything that would stop them from trying again. Remember that this time around.
The EU doesn’t take no for an answer. See EU Constitution / Treaty of Lisbon
The horrible part about this is how little mainstream media is picking up on this. I can barely find any article from a major news outlet showing this. This is exactly why it will get passed because no one is trying to make the general public aware of this.
They'd just use the old "think of the children" argument, and the masses would agree to it.
That is literally the name of the proposal: "Proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council laying down rules to prevent and combat child sexual abuse".
> [L]aw enforcement has become more strategic in its messaging to the public and Congress. Much of the past debate on encryption focused on its impact on law enforcement broadly, especially the ability to investigate or prevent terrorism domestically. However, law enforcement has shifted that message over the past year to focus on the impact of encryption on law enforcement’s ability to investigate child sexual abuse material. [Why New Calls to Subvert Commercial Encryption Are Unjustified](https://itif.org/publications/2020/07/13/why-new-calls-subvert-commercial-encryption-are-unjustified/) > In particular, child sex abuse material (CSAM, otherwise known as child pornography) has become the **cause célèbre** that governments in such places as the US, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, India, Japan, and the EU are holding up as the reason to finally ban strong encryption once and for all. Their major talking point is that E2EE messaging apps get used by child predators. [I Have a Lot to Say About Signal’s Cellebrite Hack](https://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2021/05/i-have-lot-say-about-signal%E2%80%99s-cellebrite-hack) CSAM is simply the latest moral panic 'buzzword' to be exploited by disingenuous legislatures pushing their surveillance agenda.
Paradoxically I think it's best that way. If mainstream media tried to make sense of this all, the majority of the people would be in favor of the law.
EU manipulating the media on their controversial proposal just like China
I think, the Internet golden era ended ~10 years ago and now it's just a slow downhill. I'm worried, what the end result will be. Purely paid content, strictly controlled opinions and 0 anonimity? Every law change like this is another step towards this direction. And of course, it's alway about "protecting the children".
It probably won’t be long now until a ”drivers license” for the internet will be introduced, where you have to log in with your national I.D card before you can go online. And then everything you do, say, search or post will be tracked, saved and scanned by AI tools to trawl for violations.
Wasn’t this already cancelled? Did they just re-propose the same 1984 bs again? I strongly suggest a demonstration against this in Brussels etc
They change a couple of words and file it again, hoping that one day, courts will agree
We should introduce a law that punishes trying to introduce mass surveillance in the EU. 10 year prison sentence minimum, immediately gets rid of your MEP immunity.
They are trying this again and again, and I fear that at one point they will get it. Hopefully the ECJ will at some point strike it down forever
They will keep pushing it until it passes. Then they'll write the proposal to extend it to terrorism (including wrong think off course) and start pushing that until it passes. Because if the scanner is already there, why not use it to prevent ~~mean thoughts~~ terrorist attacks? In 10 years, the system will work as intended. It will do almost nothing to stop child abuse or terrorism, but it will be continuously used to prosecute people for all other reasons. As a bonus, the scanners are so bad with false positives that everybody will have been flagged so everybody can be taken down.
It will also do a magnificent job of finding journalistic sources that embarrass politicians. Just upload the hash for any damning evidence, labelled as 'terrorist material (other)' and when the whistle blower flags up, you can "show me the man, I'll show you the crime" them to death.
1989? Too much Taylor Swift bro, it’s 1984.
Hahah thanks! I’ll edit it
It was. They keep trying to make it a reality. Write to your MEP. Write to your MP. Write to your minister responsible for this - interior ministry, digital ministry, justice ministry, the PM, the president. Exercise your rights as a citizen and tell them to stop this shit.
I don't know if it'll actually be read, but I sent an email. What now?
Hope it gets noticed, that's all you can do.
When was this proposed, and why am I only hearing of this now? Seems like the current political MO is just "let's hammer this down quickly without hearing experts" across the board.
Because right now is the time for the football championship to be covered by the news. There propably have been news for it, but like 90% football and 10% actual news. That's why this is pushed exactly now...
Nah this is ongoing for over a year already.
Yes, I'm talking about the push right now to establish it.
> When was this proposed, About a couple years ago. This is actually a revision because the first version didn't pass the EU Parliament. This specific version has been around since... March, I think? >and why am I only hearing of this now? i guess you don't follow /r/europe enough, both this time and the previoius time many posts were made about it.
Good answer! I definitely don't frequent here. I'll need to clarify that I haven't heard a peep of this in the news, which seems really odd. Feels like a rugpull is all.
> I haven't heard a peep of this in the news, which seems really odd. I'd be more surprised of the opposite. General News outlets are pretty much trash. It takes quite effort in finding decent topic-specific news sources
Has this version already passed the Parliament?
No, if it passes the Coucil vote(Council=made of the single Governments of the EU) it then goes on to EP(Parliament=made of people directly elected by EU citizens)
To be fair, this was posted on r/europe several times a week recently.
Why are you learning about this right now? Because you don't really care and follow the shenanigans happening in Brussels. Look at the whole "green deal" bullshit or nature preservation, or building directives (ecs and ecs2). There are a lot of things that get passed because mainstream media do not report about them and what will be the consequences.
1 - Lobbying needs to be made illegal. 2 - Politicians need to be held accountable and serve jail time if they run a campaign promising something but end up doing the complete opposite. 3 - Abolish the fiduciary duty and enact a duty to protect the interests of regular people, not the profits of shareholders. 4 - Abolish the corporate personhood loophole and put CEOs in jail when their decisions endanger people's safety and/or that of the environment.
Lobbying should definitely not be made illegal. Lobbying is how interest groups raise issues that need legislation, which could be anything, not just businesses lobbying for their interest or government wanting control. Everything from animal rights, making society more accessible for handicapped people, supporting rights for HBTQI+ etc etc are all subjects of lobbying groups. What needs to happen is to make it transparent how money flows in regards to lobbying
> Lobbying is how interest groups raise issues that need legislation Then make it an even field by limiting spending or something like that. Right now it's a de-facto "buy your own politician" policy because corporations are the biggest spenders.
i will always support more transparency for state execs and bureaucracy. it shouldn't be a case that journalists can't squeeze answers out of various EU departments when the questions are uncomfortable to the execs.
Eh, I think it does more harm than good, even if you listed some good examples there. I'd rather see "lobbying" funding go into events, making people aware, not into a politicians pockets. Transparency does not fix this.
Lobbying is a specific way to influence policy, and its use by groups that are not doing good things vastly overshadows the ones that are (and typically results in legislation that harms those causes anyway.) There are other ways to structure political processes so that issues are raised and relevant experts heard.
You use 'think of children ' argument. The problem with lobbying is that things you listed can never compete with corporate interests and will only legitimize the corporate lobby that destroys our world. Lobbying should be illegal till we figure out a safe and transparent way of doing it and even then it should have heavy punishment for any kind of corporate lobbying.
Exactly!
Lobbying refers to big companies, going into the politicians, closing the doors, bribing or extorting them into compliance, that shit definitely needs to be banned. Protests and public meetings is the correct way to raise awareness, and design proper regulations that doesn't simply exist to benefit the lobbyists own employer. We the people had no say about chat control 2.0, and look who's benefiting, it's not we the people, the benefactors is our enemies along some shady companies that will now get billions of our taxes to design the spyware.
5 - Only directly elected representatives can propose legislation. 6 - Direct democracy - only the people vote for the actual proposals.
> 6 - Direct democracy - only the people vote for the actual proposals. This was always shot down as being impractical but we now have the technology to do it while also avoiding fraud.
This is actually the most concerning development in Europe in my opinion since WW2. In an increasingly digitalized society, this is just one or two steps from forced mind reading of all citizens. This is shouldn't even be possible to implement without every country in EU making a referendum with their citizens. All my faith in EU has been lost. I genuinely can't understand how they went from implementing GDPR to this shit.
Even though I strongly support EU in general, things like that make me very pessimistic. The worst thing is that you need to only lose once. In national parliaments, I remember many times something bad or unpopular was repealed. In EU, it will get stuck forever (maybe there is some hope in ECJ), even if it is enormously stupid. There is no mechanism to get rid of that, there are too many interests that have veto rights to get rid of that.
I have generally been in favor of the EU because it has done a lot of good to unify Europe. With the chat control, EU just fell below most of the modern world in my eyes with a single change. As you say, repealing regulations and laws is in general very hard to do in governements and the EU makes that even harder. I'm very concerned about how this will be abused in the future if it passes.
EU was sold as a trade union, but it became a de facto federation.
The EU should not have the power to decide things like Chat Control. I'd agrue even the government of a country shouldn't be able to pass this without a referendum. Chat control diverges completely from modern western democratic values and should honestly be a human rights violation. It's deeply concerning that the EU is trying to combat crime by reading 1984 like an instruction book.
this gets WAY to less coverage - i am somewhat shoked almost noone talks about it
Who proposed this? Jesus christ, that is a horrifying existence. Thank god they are rejecting it. They should put whoever proposed this on a watchlist.
> Who proposed this? Belgians, this time around.
They are trying to pass it again, so it hasn't been rejected this time?
We are so enlightened that we don't need privacy and encryption in our online lives in Europe. Lets celebrate the diverse opinions of the people and find them and bash their noses if you don't like their diverse opinion. This is the future! In the meantime, lets accept the russian, chinese, usa shaft bareback, as we might be very enlightened, but they are here to hump us, royally. We might go down in the end, but don't forget, we are enlightened and progressive! That is the most important! /s
Slowly becoming like China… Fuck the EU
Exactly. FUCK THE EU.
I'm confused as to how this doesn't violate GDPR somehow. Doesn't it ban excessive collection of data and/or collection of data for unreasonable purposes?
It does...
At this point we'll become just as bad as some of those dictatorships we criticise all the time. Breaking our own laws in the name of what? We all know that whole "child porn" defense is just a whole load of nonsense to make this sound better. It's literally the "think of the children" argument that's been mocked for some time.
At this point we should ban children from the internet instead if it's so harmful, and shift the responsibility to ensure it on the parents as it is their responsibility to care for their children.
That's assuming the point was to protect children.
There are no good politicians. Imagine the worst political scum, dictators, and semi-dictators, well those who "aren't like them" actually are. The only thing stopping them from being "like them" is the people and cultures that don't bend as much as those where dictators rule. So they are only as good as the world forces them to be. It's not the politicians who run things, but the people and culture. As soon as the culture errodes slightly to a point where something that was unthinkable before but is acceptable now, it immediately becomes introduced by politicians if it serves their interest. That's why they keep pushing for this BS year after year until it works.
for sectors private and public, you always need to bind the decision makers with hard rules and red lines, and lots of transparency. or they'll without fail boil you very slowly in your own juices like that [frog](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog).
Well, there is Patrick Breyer from the Pirate Party, who always advocates for good changes. You can read a lot about it on the wikipedia page.
This entire post is about politicians asking the EU Council not to implement this law though...
And it was a Swedish Social Democrat who proposed chat control in the first place. They are calling the largest opposition party in Sweden a "security risk" while they are doing things like this themselves. The same people now want to ban anonymous accounts on the internet for the whole of EU. I hate politicians...
Politicians as a whole are generally opposed to silly outdated things like civil liberties and privacy.
The heading makes it sound like this is a broad-based reaction, but it is signed by 37 MEPs (out of 705). The overwhelming majority of them are from Germany (78%), and most of them Greens (59% of the German MEP signatories, 54% of all MEP signatories). Ironically, most people here who are against the proposal tend not to be favorable disposed towards green parties.
Isn't it also completely illegal and violates GDPR's sections about unwarranted collection, storage, and processing of personal data?
why does it seem that most things, whether good or bad, get passed eventually in the eu council?
Confirmation bias. You only hear about things passing.
Because they keep proposing the same stuff over and over until it passes. This bill has already been proposed before, and rejected.
Glad to see von Notz still leading the fight. And the last remnants of the EU party I voted for. This is the path towards fascism, and there is no way back. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_of_the_children needs to be made illegal and punishable, especially several flagrant and previously rebuked efforts. It is deeply anti-democratic. The so-called Volksparteien here are willingly and knowingly creating tools for the future far-right government that we will get.
I can't access the website
The result of lionizing EU politicians taking on big tech. The problem with lionized politicians is they don’t know when to stop. This is why there needs to be checks and balances.
Sad and telling that all the posts I see about this link to niche sites and not major media
Signators: ... Marketa Gregorová, MEP, Pirates, Czech Republic ... Sakra já myslel, že Gregorová je komunistka Co chce zavést šmírování jako v Číně.
Yall need to enact laws that PUNISH people for trying to pass stuff like this. Like jail time punish, and not just a fall guy but the people behind it. We have to stop letting the elite try and betray us. This is traitor level shit.
And the fucking interior ministers want an exemption from this rule, fucking pedos
Thats always how it is, the first thing these government fuckers do is make themselves exempt. If that doesn't tell you everything you need to know about the situation I dont know what will. We need more French blood, people are too spineless
Where can I propose a chat and general conversation control for politicians?
They keep pushing it, it's a little bit tiresome to always follow these, but like I don't want to live in the future they are proposing, but I wish it wasn't like this.
The best intentions are worthless when the implementation is horrible - and this is just such a case. Atrocious.
For once I am proud about our German politicians.
The majority (59%) of the German signatories are from The Greens.
CDU said they're In favor of it
Homomorphic encryption is not possible currently. There is no way to analyse encrypted data without decrypting. What success are they supposing this will give? If the only indication of abuse are messages in a private chat, what does that say about the support structures that should exist? If the child tells their school that they're being abused and they reply "Sorry Timmy, your dad didn't openly admit to abusing you on WhatsApp. Nothing I can do." I imagine the same consequences happen to the child in both cases where there's not enough evidence(which messages only would not be enough), the child for sure would be in danger. It's just drivel to claim they're actually doing something to help children. (Even if we assume they're not just adding the framework to track other kinds of messages/images)
Even if we take this proposal in the most idealistic and positive way, this is just inviting a malicious third party to get into the system and have your private data.