EU to legislate about Chat Control behind closed doors

> So in the real world a relatively small number of providers. Why do we even need providers? Locally store the convos on each device and there's not a need for the server.

Messaging protocols are useful even if everyone is not on the same app. In the past I was chatting with my google using friend via some third party jabber server where I had an account. It was useful and didn't require us to be "in the same app". We both were using both different apps and different server providers.

They do understand it but what they want is not just criminals' data but all of us.

WhatsApp already does it for unencrypted messages for about half of the EU under the purview of the rules of lawful interception obligations for NI-ICS, as well as Norway, Switzerland and the UK. When they want to read encrypted messages they seize the phone and use Cellebrite or similar 3rd Party tooling to gain physical user-level access. No need for cert-pinning or esoteric MITM attacks. N.B. China does not allow WeChat to have e2e encryption.

The whole point of end to end encryption is that providers cannot comply with police request to access conversations. A properly secured system would make it impossible without compromise of your device. Now i don't know what signal does, but I am almost certain WhatsApp can just lie about your contacts keys and man in the middle the connection.

> The problem is that politicians don't seem to understand it. The problem is that politicians were corrupted by power.

A modest proposal: have governments consist of underage girls.

Epstein

EU law 101: (1) EU Commission (i.e. the executive) proposes a law; (2) EU Parliament signs off on it; (3) EU Council (i.e. the equivalent of a senate, comprising national governments) puts the final stamp on it. The complicating factor being that a given law may or may not require unanimity at the final EU Council stage. In general, the governments have the final word.

The EU is predicated on the pooled sovereignty of its constituent countries, as exercised thought the EU Council. Apart from a limited number of certain matters, any EU country can veto any decision made by the EU Commission, or indeed the EU Parliament.

I guess that’s how it eventually goes through. When, at random, enough flippers flop or floppers flip that it tips the balance. And once it’s done it’s done. The relentlessness does not continue into, “are you sure?”, it’ll be over. For the record, I’m in the EU and do not want this to pass.

> "In a 52-48 referendum this would be unfinished business by a long way. If the Remain campaign win two-thirds to one-third that ends it." - Nigel Farage (16 May 2016)

All the quotes are clearly talking about closer integration which no one is hiding is a stated goal of the European Union. It's right there in the original treaties `an ever closer union`. If you don't like it leave, but the rest have all committed to that a long time ago. The chat control thing has nothing to do with all of the above, it's just a bit of legislation. The whole "we will vote on it again and again until we can finally push it through on the 12th of August at 03:00 o'clock with a total of 20 votes" is a typical strategy seen in many democracies pushed by vested interests on unpopular legislation. It's not the "EU" that wants this to pass, there are specific people and groups pushing for this surveillance state apparatchiks, all sort of compliance industry vultures, and all the censorship technology industry that is dying to enter the chat market. I really doubt von der Leyen or anyone in a position of actual power actually cares about this, I am certain they really think this is small time inconsequential bullshit. They have much larger problems to deal with, like the looming jet and diesel shortage, the upcoming crop shortfall we are going to see come harvest season, getting Mercosur through, planning for when Trump inevitably invades Cuba or puts Greenland back on the menu.

https://youtu.be/jxWlJ_muK0I Related.

Isn't that how politics works? People keep pushing for what they want until they get it.

America would be happy to bring you our brand of Democracy!

The same Kutcher who had to step down because he supported a rapist who happened to be his friend.

In other words, CIA.

Wait, law enforcement is part of the government. Why is there not a push to zero out their funding for lobbying?

The right is a massive supporter for all of these authoritarian pushes, so what exactly are you trying to say?

> There are a total of maybe 3-6 pictures of me on the internet Incorrect, you are probably in the background of random photos on the internet, and by virtue of not having any profiles and social media sites can tag you and form a shadow profile around you.

I still remember conversations here on HN, around the time Facebook was launched. It was considered insanity that you would give up your privacy to a firm. I remember how that what seemed absurdly risky, meant absolutely nothing to the average person, and the astronomic value Facebook began to accumulate. I wonder if it wasn't social media that set up the death spiral of the internet. The walled gardens on content and then the ad revenue created incentives to increase engagement, while capturing the value which would have gone to the open internet. In that light, it seems AI firms are going to complete what Social Media started. Sequestering the remaining value of information and content, and then earning rents on it.

>privacy does not matter when there are rampant black operations being conducted which violates human dignity in every sense of the term. You have this completely backwards. The threat and existence of such operations is one of the fundamental reasons privacy does matter so much. Privacy is to be protected heavily not just for the now but for what could happen in the future, and it's self-reinforcing. A more privacy preserving society is a harder one to oppress.

Closely related, I think. Without privacy even demonstrating, a democratic right, becomes risky.

What 'big money' you have in mind in this very specific case?

>Fahrenheit 451 We are quite far away from that. On the contrary knowledge is preserved better than ever. Anna's Archive estimates they have preserved 16% of the world's books, all available to download with an internet connection. https://annas-archive.gl/faq On the other hand, I can see the side of Fahrenheit 451 where the people don't value books which is what allowed the book burning in the first place.

That works better in a less-connected, more local-bubble-centric world. Back then unless you were expressing something really inflammatory or contrary to a narrow slice of government-opposed ideology (e.g. red scare in the US), you could be spread your opinion mostly freely without too much fear of blowback. In the modern world, we have governments (and politically aligned lackey-citizens) increasingly actively hunting down anything vaguely dissent-shaped and making those who spoke it suffer in some form, whether than be mass harassment and jawboning or outright muzzling or prosecution. There’s a chilling effect with growing intensity that pressures people to either obediently nod along or shut up, which makes anonymity (even if only the plausibly deniable sort) important.

Do you ever wonder why we vote anonymously?

I'm not sure I agree, people say unhinged things on TikTok/Facebook using accounts that have their full government name and/or showing face. I doubt deanonymisation would help. To me "people will be on their best behaviour if they can't be anonymous" sounds eerily similar to Larry Ellison's "people will be on their best behaviour if they're constantly surveilled".

Your world sure makes impersonation based cyber crime a lot simpler.

>everyone stood by everything they said online with their real identity And get Charlie Kirk'ed? No thanks. There are a lot of deranged and demented people out there, and publishing on the internet is rolling that dice billions of times, compared to shouting in the town square.

> If every potential mate and employer was able to review everything you've ever posted online, we'd all be much more careful with what we say, much better able to screen out bad actors, and the wold would be a better place for it. This is stalking and is illegal. Are there any other crimes you want to claim as righteous? Presuming you want stalking to be repealed and permissible, you have quite a few bars to pass through. And in that society, are you willing to have me as your enemy who is very willing to push society to its utter limits? I know I'd be good at it, and I know thousands if not millions of people who share this interest. Because, as you say, its any potential mate/employer.

>Lets say the primary force we need to prevent is russian influence campaigns that back and push far right nationalists who will destabilize democracy. Is that a sufficient reason for controls? No. Because if you solve underlying tensions in society the so called russian propaganda has nothing to take hold on. Also who and under what rules will decide which propaganda is allowed? is American propaganda fine? Chinese? Japanese? UAE? Not only this creates dissident, and suppresses voices critical of current government. but also gives extraordinary power on level of soviet union to current government. You might trust current EU to not abuse it, but it might take a single elections, or single term for un-elected(!) officials in EC for attidute to change. Just like in US - a lot of powers were granted but suddenly there's a person willing to abuse them. For that to be even considered in EU we would need a lot more check and balances - especially for European Comission and Council. Another issue is - is EU a trade union or federation? if former - this is outside of EU's responsiblities and powers. if later - look at point above. If you really wanted to solve this problem you would go after advertisers and data collection companies, and regulate them.

The answer to lies is generally sunshine, not censorship. There are just too many examples of censorship eventually being misused by those in power. The power to censor Russia right now might appear appealing to those in charge, but they need to remember, pro-Russian factions may be voted into power in the future, and they will use this power to suppress information they don't like. Once the precedent is created, it's too late to cry about censorship when it's your "side" which gets censored. No one will care. To point: I don't accept the premise that the governments gets to decide which information I should be allowed to consume.

Is it a sufficient reason to build a cage for yourself that only needs a single regime flip to turn against you? Is it a sufficient reason to become what you're trying to avoid? Is destabilizing democracy necessary to stop the democracy from being destabilized? No, no, and no. >russian influence campaigns Just FYI, your rhetoric precisely mirrors Russian internal rhetoric used to boil the frog 10-15 years ago. If this doesn't make you pause and think, nothing will. In Russia people who fall for it are called "unteachable". Which makes sense, you don't seem to learn anything from their mistakes even though you have a live example of your future that you will reach with 99% certainty, without any help from your boogeymen, because your politicians mirror each step.

>who will destabilize democracy Let's just ban those politicians, ban and censor "bad" media and platforms, and surveil all citizens to protect us from those pesky authoritarians!

Is eroding privacy the only way to combat that?

> Is that a sufficient reason for controls? no.

Rubbish. Fighting fascism by implementing totalitarian tools is a ludicrous idea. Start with dismantling the means by which the information cancer spreads. No more targeted ads, no more data harvesting. Increase privacy. Everybody knows about the influence of Russian bots on the net and yet precisely fuck all is being done about it.

Why would Russia be responsible for what corrupt EU officials do? There is a high chance that corrupt money spreads, which explains 100% of why such laws get in, but I fail to see why Russia should the only or primary actor be here. There is no real benefit for Russia here, but there is a LOT of benefit for those who want to reduce privacy and force transparency onto everyone at all times. Several US companies come to mind and there is cross-state kick back going on here even aside from the USA too.

to argue that the success of the far right nationalists is solely off the back of Russian disinformation campaigns ignores the material reality experienced by far right party voters

You know EU has mostly gone after and unpersoned leftoids (and accusing them of working for russia), despite the rightoid wringing of hands? Look up e. g. Hüseyin Doğru.

seems like a lot of people either know way to much about the paradox of tolerance and how to wield it against people's best interest; or know nothing about it.

Doesn't matter because Apple will happily implement messages scanning immediately and eagerly. And despite let's say Poland not implementing the bill, all iPhones in Poland will snitch on their owners. Tim Cook's Apple is not Steve Jobs' Apple. Case in point: my new Mac purchased in Switzerland and activated in Poland on my US Apple account required me to provide my age in the setup assistant. Neither Poland nor Switzerland or the US have this stupid law. Yet Apple is already doing it's part to eliminate my privacy.

I don't think you can nicely divide it like that. It seems to be mostly bad individuals, or just individuals with some bad ideas they refuse to give up.

The issue is that the outcome is the same: whether the Parliament is made up of angels or not, the dealings of the Commission and Council affect the Member States anyway.

which speaks volumes about either EU overstepping it's bounds as an entity, or is severely lacking checks and balances.

True, this seems to be Denmarks project

As an extension of this, look at the European Commission's response to the Stop Destroying Videogames[0] petition. It's utter dogshit. The petition is a pure consumer protection issue and the Commission's response is "but we can't touch IP rights". Bullshit, you guys made IP rights, you wrote all the rules surrounding them, and Donald Trump is about to drown you with them because America's tech oligarchs figured out your rulebook better than you knew it. Or, if you think that issue's too niche, look at all the talk of "sovereign clouds". It's almost all "how can we build our own giant polluting AI datacenters" and not "how do we take our data back from the Americans". Because, ultimately, the European Commission is built out of an urge to submit to capital interests. The Epstein class are puppeting the EC in exactly the same way they puppet Donald Trump. If there is any future in the EU, it will start with abolishing the European Commission to take away the capital class's accountability sink. [0] For legal reasons, unrelated to Stop Killing Games, but they work together

Also, don't forget the foreign propagandists who absolutely hate democracy, and have toppled both Britain and America. That seems to always be "forgotten" about how the internet is acting as a accelerationist far right platform.

[deleted]

[deleted]

Let it not be forgotten that when Denmark was president of the Council of EU and tried to push this forward, one of the former colleagues/friends of the justice minister was charged with child abuse in 2025. Just search Henrik Sass Larssen and Peter Humeelgaard. We should start digging into the lives of those pushing for mandated age verification, chat control, and other privacy killing measures to show the world their true face. The public deserves to know who exactly is pushing for the "privacy law for kids" agenda.

Yes, EP has rejected it, and now the president of the EP is ignoring that outcome.

I can speak for the sentiment in Denmark: most people are unaware of this legislation. A vocal minority of us (who are a little too online) have been trying to educate people, but I think it feels too esoteric. We had a poll last year which asked, "the ability to detect child abuse is more important than the right to online privacy." 65% of people said yes, 33% said both are equally important, and only 2% said online privacy is more important. The discussion for normal people is often couched in the language of "think of the children." Unfortunately, that appears to be highly effective with the Danes. To be honest, I'm beginning to suspect most people don't care all that much about privacy if you promise them safety.

It only has to pass once, and we have to scream about it every goddamn time try try. And they'll try and try again and again.

>Without the EU, this would have been introduced in some member countries much earlier (see also UK). And without the EU there'd be some states in which it would never be introduced. Decentralization is what made Europe so successful historically compared to large centralized empires like China and the Ottomans, and the EU is destroying that.

There's the lack of customs charges for items from other European countries. The common market is a really big advantage. There's the Euro, and in the past, the EU did a fairly decent job at holding large corporations accountable, although that seems to have disappeared with Neelie Kroes' retirement. And of course the lack of borders. Being able to go on vacation with no trouble is massive. Do we really want those border checks back?

Tell me you don't see the value in the tax as a way of discouraging people from ordering a pair of socks from the other side of the globe, while they can buy them locally?

> even if it's a 1eur phone case (1eur + 3eur customs + That's the fucking point for fuck's sake! Pardon my language, but the entire point of the tariff is to stop people from buying masses of trivial things from the other side of the world, with all the externalities that it entails. This tariff tries to cover at least some fraction of said externalities. People on HN should not be this clueless about basic economy. This tariff is one of the good things that the EU has done lately, but unfortunately it won't be popular among the common folk who just want their cheap unsustainable stuff without having to think about the consequences.

What have the Romans ever done for us?

Are you kidding me..? The freedom of movement across all member states, including the right to settle and start a business anywhere you like, that's not a "good regulation" to you? Being able to pay in all of those states without paying FX rates, bringing home your purchases across the border without tolls or even checkpoints no less? The funding of a massive amount of public benefit projects in poorer member states, including art and artists, public health and education, infrastructure - all of that isn't worth anything? The ability to trust everything you buy to be safe, from child toys to food to cars? This list goes on for a long time. Many politicians have used the EU as a convenient scapegoat for inconvenient decisions, and people like you continue to spread completely uninformed FUD. Let's even put aside all the benefits you have but apparently either don't know or don't care about. How well do you think your home country would fare against the USA or China or Russia on its own? The only weapon all of us have against the big power blocks of the world is being a power block on our own. The EU isn't perfect, and I'm absolutely opposed to the Chat Control bullshit in its entirety, but don't throw out the baby with the bathwater.

Marie Antoinette didn't have mass surveillance. This is why they're trying to rectify the situation.

> No, everybody needs to give up their privacy "for the greater good" You can bargain (via voting) about how much of the stuff you need to forgo. But you can't have 100% privacy, if the nation has to function. You don't need to give up any privacy at all, if you don't expect anything from government. But the concept of a nation is hinged upon it's citizens foregoing a bit of privacy, a bit of their income, a bit of their freedom. The nation imposes rules that you need to follow (loss of freedom), asks you to pay up taxes and makes your identity linked to the citizen services. The nation comes into existences precisely from the things that you forego.

You are free to 'argue', but you need to read about how the modern riots are being organized on a massive scale, so that you can correct your argument.

Yes, I know they've been pushing for this when they're pretty reasonable and independent on other issues. How come?

Well put

Denmark would also sterilize indigenous Greenland population and immigrants back in the 1950s-1960s. THey have a dark side few people know about.

>While the EU is not perfect and surely needs improvement in many areas, it is still better than not having it. Would you still believe this if Chat Control got though? What good did the EU bring that's good enough to make up for the badness of everyone in Europe having all their private digital communications constantly scanned?

Yes, you are right, the only two possible choices are to either give the government an absolute mandate to spy on every citizen, or to abolish the EU altogether, no other option is possible.

What do you mean the migrant crisis stirred up things? The anti immigration position in danish politics has been a winning position since the mid 00's.

And either 80% of banners are not respecting the law, or the law managed to omit mandating making it as easy to reject as accept... Rejecting usually require you to enter into settings and sometimes click "reject" for every individual partner(!)

"Cookie banners are malicious compliance" is starting to wear thin as an excuse. GDPR went into law in 2018, almost ten years ago and for almost as long websites have been "maliciously complying". If you don't don anything about it at some point it's not malicious anymore, it's just how the law is meant to be interpreted. I have a different hypothesis for why the GDPR exists: it is to create a market for EU based compliance companies.

And because you are grateful for the cookie policies you don’t mind rewarding them with unlimited access all your private communication? I don’t really follow this argument.. > would you say has done the best job in regulating the Internet So again.. how do these basic/superficial (or even if they are extremely effective and useful, that doesn’t really change anything) regulations justify mass surveillance? > false news For what its worth in no way has the EU been effective in doing anything about this (I’m not sure they even tried doing anything that directly addressed it?)

inundated with advertising, unwanted cookies, unnecessary JavaScript, false news, scams, I’d rather have that instead of govt monitoring of all communications. Your govt can hurt you more than any of those things. Especially in the EU given what happened just a few decades ago.

All of those are either illegal already (scams) or easily avoidable without regulation.

> European here. I like the cookie law. It's made it clear to people how much we're being tracked and I can choose to opt out. Opting out of cookies does not mean no tracking. Tracking companies moved away from cookies a decade ago and now fingerprint the browser through JS in very subtle ways.

Website operators hate these cookies popups because they make their website more annoying and make me more likely to press the back button and click on a different website. As it should be. This incentivizes them to stop tracking me.

[deleted]

99% of the people just click accept and go through. This could be solved on the client side, by requiring all devices with browsers sold in EU to have separate cookie jars per domain and by default those cookies would be deleted on window/tab close. If you wanted to stay logged in to a site, you'd click a button next to the url bar that says "keep cookies for this domain", and be done.

So you like the law, but don't like how it didn't actually solve the problem it was trying to solve? I assume you're pretty well read up on matters of privacy, right? So you have a better awareness and understanding. But do you believe the average person does? Or would you assume that the average person has either been trained to ignore the banner, automatically consent to more invasive tracking, or is generally more confused about why the banner exists, or what it does? The cookie consent law is the dumbest application of an attempt to improve privacy. It's made the internet worse, and is being used to train people into consenting to giving away their privacy without thinking... because: "clicking accept is what you have to do to use the page" -- every normal person casually browsing any site. No implementation for cookie based consent can be done correctly. Personally, I'd love to see a law that makes any/all dark patterns a crime, and empowers state prosecutors via grand jury to bring charges for them against both the company, and individual authors of the specific commits as jointly responsible. I don't want statutory laws, I want a trial jury to look at it, and decide if any technological measure, pattern, tactic, procedure, design, or measurement was used to encourage one decision over the other instead of a fair choice. I don't want a set of rules that given enough funding any company is able to win as a negative sum game. I want a jury, not a trailing clause, to decide if the company is clearly acting in good faith or worthy of apocalyptic fines.

A couple of decades ago both France and Britain had higher per capita GDP than the US. Now they are significantly behind. Similarly top European companies used to rival American companies in profitability, power and valuation. There’s not really an equivalent of FAANG/ NVIDIA in Europe, just ASML and LVMH.

[deleted]

[deleted]

Yeah, we can: I am from Poland and precisely through this mechanism our MEPs/delegates/nominates know that supporting this would be a disaster for their political group right here back home regardless of direct voting.

Only Switzerland has a true democracy

>> We don't have democracy - we can't vote on issues This is how democracy works pretty much everywhere. You vote for parties or people based on their policies.

Of all things to criticise, you pick out the one ruling that eventually lead to a consolidation of chargers? Really? I haven't ever met a single person who wasn't grateful of being able to have one cable for all their devices.