This is still problematic, but the far more dangerous Chat Control 2.0 that would weaken end-to-end-encrypted messengers like Signal is not being discussed here.
Not to diminish the gravity of the new development, but the defeatist "no way to prevent this" narratives that are already popping up here are getting old -- when in fact it looks like 2.0 is off the table for good because protest against it has proven effective.
"Present a document" // "No, certainly not to you" // "Do without then"
The straight will say "no", but their lives will be extremely complicated, possibly in the unawareness of those that just take compliance to the absurd for granted - as the weak call survival paramount and cannot see that their modus is subjective. That we won't have it is something that they cannot even conceive. Adults are noise to them.
Thus, discontinuing the permit to use these techniques did have enforcement numbers of those crimes found drop significantly.
I'm wondering if they've given up real policing of these crimes completely?!
Spreading pedo content on Facebook, those people have to be the dumbest of the dumb? Everyone spending even a single critical thought on their crimes won't be caught by this.
And they say enforcement numbers drop significantly? Meaning they don't catch many other people? What the fuck are they even doing? Did they completely give up trying to find the real criminals, and instead fall back on sugar-coated figures to conceal that failure?
1) commission + parliament (meaning the EU commission has initiative (veto rights over any law, like the US president), and parliament can only "propose amendments", which pass with 50% of votes, or deny). This is what normally happens.
Parliament denied the law. Twice.
Member states vetoed the legislation at least 3 times (it doesn't technically work like this but member states can force the commission to veto legislation, and Belgium, Hungary and Denmark have done so) (technically member states can force the EU commission not to introduce legislation and because nobody else can do so either, this is normally effectively a veto)
2) council + parliament. This is where we are. If the executives of the member states (NOT parliaments) want to push through a vote, they can use this path. The difference is that only 2/3 majority of parliament can stop the law from passing or put in amendments.
Technically, this is meant for bypassing the EU commission. But of course, in reality it is for getting past the Danish and potential Belgian and Hungarian and other's vetoes. The commission really wants this.
3) council + commission. This completely overrides any legislative involvement in ... well, legislation. They have already threatened to do this.
4) the council can just force legislation through without anyone's approval
Normally "democracy" in the EU means that legislation requires BOTH a majority of Europeans to agree (Parliament) AND no executive government. Both have already been bypassed.
This refers to "Chat Control 1.0", allowing facebook and other messaging providers to scan chats for harmful content (which they had been temporarily allowed to do by a recently expired law). It means current scanning is illegal.
Just so we're clear, this basically means that all messengers (not any specific one) will have to intercept everyone's messages, scan for specific words, and if found report the whole chat history to the police.
Of course, it already turned out "BTW carrousel" (an illegal tax avoidance strategy) is one of the sentences they scan for to "protect the children".
The article itself also contains evidence against the idea that this protects children (that child protection investigations keep increasing despite the scanning not taking place anymore)
I'm 100% sure that this is the case and about the good intentions of the proposers.
/s
# Italy warns against Chat Control mass surveillance, but votes in favour of it (digitalcourage.social)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48783340
Do, because already there nuances (towards the better or worse) are revealed, which are not evident in journalism as we have it. The whole story needs more investigation than the stubs.
But the way they are managing it in the workflow does not seem too linear...
I know the EU cookie banners have basically ruined the internet, but this seems like a whole 'nother level of obnoxious.
I would be utterly shocked if facebook et al. were not scanning all of your messages (either in transit or at terminus to get around 'E2E' claims).
The institution that forced this through is the EU Council, the body that represents national governments and is composed of heads of government.
The reason they have to force it through and couldn't do 2.0 is because the EU Parliament stopped them.
In other words, it's the nation states that want this and the EU institutions that are blocking it, not the other way around as often framed online.
If not for the EU, a much worse version of this would already be law in the nation states.
You can see this play out in real-time in the UK, which has gone real dystopian ever since Brexit.
It was extending a recently expired law that has existed since 2011.
I don't think your comment is reflecting on what has actually happened. "Chat Control" as people know it has not passed into law.
The issue is all in the details.
And in the decision process, before that, of course.
In some, in some not. Not everyone is the UK. Many nations which had a totalitarian government in the 20th century are more wary about this sort of sweeping surveillance power.
The "charm" of pushing this through the circuitous path via Brussels is that few people and even few media outlets are paying attention to what happens in Brussels. Everyone is still obsessed with their national politics.
There is one case where DPA ruled in favor of the company, but it's currently being appealed: https://noyb.eu/en/pay-or-ok-der-spiegel-noyb-sues-hamburg-d...
Another one ruled against company and court agreed: https://noyb.eu/en/court-decides-pay-or-okay-derstandardat-i...
Extremely common practice for newspapers websites, unfortunately.
Workarounds include:
- reader mode
- "behind the overlay" extension (and others like it)
- archive.is
- probably many others
Some EU citizens want it? You'd be surprised on the views of some people.
Tell me how private messaging gets you taken off a plane otherwise. It’s not private. Big tech has put a camera and microphone in everyone’s pocket and they’re monitoring everything.
The government and big (American) tech are very likely lying to us IMO. How will anyone protest when mass surveillance becomes the law if it’s already in place and you can be labeled a bad actor that gets your life ruined if you dissent?
By WHO?! They are THE (unelected) ruling elite. Who's gonna prosecute them?
This needs repeating, it's a common misconception (deliberately spread by many, too) that the EU requires cookie banners for all cookies.
Do they just not care about weakening their own societies?
These pithy remarks don't really extend the debate or have any nuance - they just sound conspiratorial.
There are plenty of reasons to "scan" communications.
There are plenty of reasons to have limits on communication "scanning".
What part of the spectrum do you fall on?
very frustrating because especially a tech magazine like heise should really know better
> Data processing by advertising providers including personalised advertising with profiling (Consent required for free use)
With the pure awareness that Men do not act out of convenience, and that this whole situation of declining societies was born out of already-fascist-material that acted out of convenience, with complacency.
Why are we ignoring the other side of the transaction? The side responsible for taking the money.
Giving bribes for lobbying is bad, but that would not be an issue if those found taking the bribes would be guillotined or hanged.
Or are we saying this is being used for something specific that happens to be illegal?
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pfizergate
- https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/eu-secret-gr...
Ironically, those are two separate cases of one high-profile EU politician (in fact, the very head of the same parliament that pushes for mass scanning of private messages) BOTH involving secret text messages that the mentioned politician refuses to reveal.
The commissioners are picked by the heads of state (elected) and the EU parliament (also elected).
This does not absolve them from wrongdoing, but you should understand where your complaints should be directed at.
Both in incognito and normal modes. I bet you'll get the same fingerprinting ID in both.
So yes, they can track you in incognito mode, too.
EU made bad laws that have encouraged this kind of behavior. And now we're all suffering.
Look at the CCPA in California for legislation that accomplishes largely the same goals, but doesn't break the web due to "malicious compliance".
My understanding of the vote last Friday was about protracting the 2021 temporary compromise (scan voluntarily until we have a full law), which was suspended at the beginning of April. It is not clear how they proceeded that way. It seems some vertices imposed that they would not accept a legal vacuum there. So, it's not a "law". What ran for the past five years was an "exception to privacy laws" (I am not informed of the mandated guardrails).
I think the lawmakers should have made all forms of tracking illegal instead. That would make law writing and following easier. And closer to the spirit of what they are trying to accomplish and what everyone wants (except you Silicon Valley O.o)
If a government body wants to interfere in your privacy and take it away, isn't it normal to be against that government body pushing that policy?
It's not a bias, it's just a normal common sense reaction to tyrannical behavior, and pushing against that government body is the only way to enact the positive change you want to see.
Otherwise if you just bend over and take it all the time, just so randos on the internet don't accuse you of being "anti-EU", then nothing will change and you'll see more and more of your rights taken away. And even if it were "EU bias" it's my right as an EU citizen and taxpayer to have it if I want to.
Alos BTW, what's with this defensive attitude of treating the EU like some sacred cow that's somehow beyond reproach HN? Are they paying you guys to AstroTurf or what?
That some actors may ride it, is not their stain, but the eu's.
Platform-scale moderation had continued under an exemption, which expired. Chat Control 2.0 would have mooted it; CC2 didn’t pass (nice job all!); so they’re maneuvering to extend the status quo.
To the “impossible,” though: I vaguely remember, many years ago, reading through pretty cool research into content-agnostic approaches to moderation at scale. Many of which, IIRC, informed WhatsApp’s approach.
They seemed to focus on damping the social dynamics—not the content itself—of messages that turned out to be inflammatory, malicious, or extractive.
Things like restricting the number of times any specific message could be forwarded, or constraining the size of audience that somebody could address, or network analysis overlaid on the set of messages that recipients voluntarily flagged for review.
(And in WhatsApp’s case, segregating explicitly commercial speech in “business accounts” outside the e2e veil.)
I’m sure this is an entire field of study that I’m doing no justice, but I’d welcome any entry points to the current literature!
it's unconstitutional in most places to read letters - same thing should be applied to other form of communication as well
Why would you need to moderate private messages between users?
With an egalitarian government, corruption is a problem, its bad, its something we try to fight and there are mechanisms to do so. Having no government is just giving up and going straight to 100% corruption.
After how many layers does the democratic part get watered down and is just members of the elite picking other elites?
Role | Chosen by | Direct citizen vote?
-----------------------------+------------------------------------------------------+----------------------------
Commission President | European Council proposes, European Parliament elects| No (indirect via EP)
European Council President | European Council (27 heads of state) | No
European Parliament President| MEPs elect from among themselves | No (indirect via EP)
ECB President | European Council, after consulting Parliament | NoMost of them decidedly don't have the same cookie banners. E.g. in vast majority of cases they don't prevent you from seeing content, and have an easy opt-out mechanism without dark patterns.
edit:
> It seems some vertices imposed that they would not accept a legal vacuum there.
I find this sentence unintelligible. Can you come up with another wording? And who are these "vertices" who have been given approval rights over EU legislation?
The simple fact is that a law that existed since 2011 and expired in April is now back in effect. So we are back where we were on February.
I don't remember moving from an anti-democratic hell scape to serene democratic beauty back in April so it's probably a nothing-burger.
I often see news articles that trade on the fact the general populace aren't professional bureaucrats and so frame anything happening in unpopular ways.
~~ keir starmer
(I'll see if I can still find the source. If anybody beats me to it, appreciated.)
> "We must break with the totally erroneous perception that it is everyone's civil liberty to communicate on encrypted messaging services,"
What an arsehole.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/politics/government/danish-justice...
Always the same political excuse
The council is more problematic, since a blocking majority might only represent 25% of the population (half of the EU member governments, each elected by majority vote), but in this case they voted in favor, so it's as if they didn't exist and the decision lies with parliament, whose composition is determined by proportional representation. Excellent!
The interesting thing here is that the EU is accused of being undemocratic not because special interests killed a law with wide support among the populace, but because all the different bodies might actually agree and pass a law that privacy activists don't like. Legislation by agreement of multiple cross-cutting majorities must clearly be undemocratic!
They’re fighting a battle against the real problem which is the paid up influence campaigns that give them problems to defend. Start at the press, the social media companies and the think tanks.
I am very pro regulation.
By your own ridiculous standards, I don't live in a democracy. I fact, any paliamentarism would not be democratic based on that.
Their opposition is ideological, democracy is just an excuse because their true views would be too unsavory to say out loud.
I am still to see as many people getting riled up about how those countries are not democratic.
I mean: has it ever heard, for example about the 2nd Amendment to the USA constitution, arguing that people must be able to defend from governments themselves?
Is it not aware that data is not accessed "just by the good guys"? ?!
What I see people (Europeans) lamenting is how undemocratic the EU is. As much as I think von der Leyen should be imprisoned, the issue is not the people in the government, but the institution itself. The Commission and the Council are the ones pushing these things, every time.
The people in government are bad, and there's no reason whatsoever to think that'll improve amy time soon: what prevents bad people from doing bad things is the regulatory apparatus of checks and balances, which the EU very much lacks (in parts, granted). Worse, it has introduced US style corruption (or "lobbying") into countries that historically lacked it.
If Chat Control 2.0 passes, given the general direction this would be showing, I'd very much understand people wanting to exit from the EU and cut the amount of undemocratic bullshit they have to contend with.
But to return to your point, when something people strongly reject happens in their country, they do, rightfully, advocate for the dissolution of that government. Much harder to do with unelected bureaucrats sheltering in another country.
When you vote in your elections, you almost certainly know who's going to lead the country.
Not so with the EU: look up Spitzenkandidat method and the deviations from it, including von der Leyen in 2019 being parachuted into her post not based on any vote.
Still, kinda weird to complain about bureaucracy and regulations in this context cus its the only solution to these problems of egality and corruption which humanity has been struggling with ever since the dawn of civilisation.
Tho, It's kind of a solved problem too. We should all just try to be like Denmark, they at the top or near the top of practially every metric. Happiness, corruption index, Gini, Quality of life, healthcare, education, carbon. They have a massive powerful bureaucracy, lots of strong regulation, extremely high taxes, low corruption.
The solution to any eco-geo-political issue is just "be more like Denmark". Once everyone gets to that level we can think about further improvement.
That's kind of whataboutism. If that works for your country and the people are happy with the arrangement and the results of this system, I don't see an issue.
>By your own ridiculous standards
I don't think direct accountability to the citizens is a ridiculous concept. If you're unhappy with a MEP, your prime minister, you can vote them out or protest till they quit. But the head of the EC, Ursula, is impossible to dethrone by the people via democratic vote or protest. You're stuck taking up the ass from someone you never voted for and don't support.
The UK pm and the POTUS are both ultimately accountable through elections. In the UK, a general election can change the government. In the US, people vote specifically for presidential electors, even if it’s through the Electoral College.
The EU commission is different. People don’t vote for commissioners or the president, and they can’t vote them out in the same direct way.
The Euroskeptics want to go about this backwards. They correctly see the anti-democratic nature of the current EU structure and conclude that this is the only way European integration could happen, ergo we should not integrate Europe. The problem with this is that, even as 27 individual sovereigns, the former EU member states would still need to form agreements with one another and with other countries. Except this negotiation process is completely outside the democratic process even more than the EU currently is.
The underlying problem is that democracies do not stack or sum. Two democracies negotiating with one another become a dictatorship of whoever is doing the negotiating. The only way to preserve democracy is to give the people of both countries equal control over the matters assigned to the whole. The people must rule as one or they cease to rule at all.
Wait, but doesn't Denmark have the strictest immigration policies in the entire EU?
> they at the top or near the top of practially every metric. Happiness, corruption index, Gini, Quality of life, healthcare, education, carbon.
I don't understand. Are you suggesting deporting all migrants to improve the statistics to Denmark's level? But that's impossible in our legal system. We've been actively importing culturally incompatible foreigners for decades now, and many already have citizenship. You can't just strip people of their citizenship in an attempt to improve the statistics.
The Commission can be dismissed by the Parliament, with a majority of its members and 2/3 of votes cast
The dispute over digital letter secrecy in the EU is reaching a new level of escalation shortly before the summer break. After negotiations on Chat Control 2.0 – i.e., the mandatory, suspicionless scanning of encrypted communication – stalled due to persistent resistance in the EU Parliament, the Council of Ministers is now pushing forward with a legal maneuver.
The member states want to reactivate the transitional regulation for voluntary monitoring of messages by technology groups, which expired on April 3, in an expedited procedure. The Council adopted a corresponding position for a “new” regulation on Thursday via written procedure to close a looming legal loophole and increase pressure on MEPs.
The reason for the trick: Since the end of 2020, internet-based, number-independent communication services such as messenger apps, webmail, and VoIP telephony have been subject to the strict provisions of the European E-Privacy Directive. This protects the fundamental right to confidentiality of communication and prohibits unauthorized interception or evaluation of content and traffic data. To still allow technology providers to voluntarily search private chats using AI and hash matching for known abuse material or grooming patterns, the EU lawmakers created a temporary exemption in 2021. This regulation, referred to as Chat Control 1.0, expired in the spring, as the Council and Parliament could not agree on an extension.
For the Council, the expiry of the deadline is an untenable situation. The providers' voluntary detection measures are an indispensable tool for identifying affected children early, rescuing victims from abuse situations, and curbing the uncontrolled further dissemination of illegal image and video material online. Furthermore, the procedure makes an important contribution to online law enforcement, even though reports continue to flow despite the expired norm. The new regulation aims to prevent fragmentation through national unilateral actions.
Critics, however, see the chosen procedure as an attempt to circumvent democratic control bodies and to surprise Parliament. Since an already expired regulation cannot simply be extended in formal terms, the EU governments are resorting to a trick: Instead of an extension, they have put forward a legislative proposal that is largely identical in content but different in form.
The draft is to be put on Parliament's agenda as early as Tuesday as part of an urgent procedure – immediately before the start of the summer break. Should the plenary session approve the accelerated procedure, a vote threatens on the last day of session before the holidays, when many MEPs have historically already departed. Compounding the issue, the procedure is already in its 2nd reading. At this stage, the Council's position can only be stopped or modified by amendments if an absolute majority of the representatives vote against it. A hurdle that, in practice, is considered almost insurmountable shortly before the summer break.
Although the Council emphasizes that the scans will be limited to the absolutely necessary extent and that no general, indiscriminate surveillance will take place, the intrusion into the privacy of all users remains significant. The regulation stipulates that the processed content and traffic data must be irrevocably deleted no later than twelve months after detection, unless a concrete suspicion is confirmed. A permanent, long-term legal framework for abuse prevention, meanwhile, moves further into the distance.
(kbe)
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This article was originally published in German. It was translated with technical assistance and editorially reviewed before publication.