First, there are USB tokens that can hold a private key and sign messages. Such tokens could be sold at places accessible only to adults and verify that they are indeed adult. Obviously every token should hold the same private key.
Second, OS could implement "parent mode" which allows installing only white-listed, government approved apps (no Telegram or Whatsapp or other dangerous apps, but school apps are ok) and opening only white-listed government-approved websites. Put in jail the parents who did not set up a parent mode. Problem solved without passports and verifications.
If, however, the government insists on selfies, it means they just want to identify users and compile lists of "untrustworthy", "rebelious" and other persons of interest.
Also, employees who do verification, sometimes create internal chats where they post pictures of clients and mock their appearance. We had such case with Alfa-Bank in Russia, where the photo of a funny client with a passport and third-grader level comments leaked to Instagram account of employee's friend. The bank paid approximately $20 as a compensation.
I'm feeling these politicians was not doing it for the victims. Instead, it's almost like the victims are providing reasons to allow the politicians to expand their own power.
The Accelerationism (see note below) part of me think it's a good thing, because a heavily regulated country is often also a backward country. Doing things like this long enough, then you get out competed by everyone else, your population shrinks to zero and your land gets reused.
(Note: The word "Accelerationism" in the Chinese dissidents circle means that, if a bad future is certain and it trends to destroy itself eventually, we might as well just let it happen faster, so the pain maybe shorter. More: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerator-in-Chief)
Look, EU obviously have a few good regulations. But a regulation must be correctly designed and implemented, and it must not punish good people. Scanning private messages is a punishment to all.
If EU must scan something, I'd say scanning all messages/phone calls sent out by the politicians might do more good, consider how much trust people put on them (maybe they shouldn't).
This vote was urgently scheduled for today, the last day of parliament before the summer break. 113 MEPs were not present for this vote, likely having taken vacation days to extend their break. It's hard to believe choosing to do the vote today was done accidentally.
It's a joke. The system is hacked.
How do we design such apps? Let's rule out age attestation (to allow only some age ranges) or scan of content because they are orthogonal to apps. What are the design patterns that prevent adults to meet kids? No messaging?
Is there any sort of warrant needed for accessing this sort of information on devices?
Having said that, I don’t think the tech industry is what it once was, dominated by cypherpunks working to create a better world. It has been captured by greed and “moving fast and breaking things”, as well as infighting. Greed (both in the form of web3 numbers go up, and benefiting from the greater fool while delivering no utility) and moving fast (web2 facebook / VC / dump shares on the public / lock in / extract rents). So no wonder the government eventually steps in, when the industry spends a decade without adults steering the ship. We have giant platforms controlling everything, and the rest has devolved into zero sum games and memecoins. The tech industry hasn’t led or even organized enough to get behind technology that can liberate users. Instead it’s been captured by for-profit interests. Mozilla and Apache are rounding errors.
Here is what open source can do when it comes to mass surveillance, and this would also solve the Flock problem here in the States, too:
https://community.qbix.com/t/balancing-privacy-and-accountab...
More broadly, here is what needs to be done across the board:
Chat Control 1.0 and 2.0 Explained
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48818311
Chat Control passed first round in EU Parliament
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
> Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.
Don't get me wrong, I feel a desire to engage with this as well, but there is nothing I can possibly say about this that is not political, because this is purely a political choice.
It's clear that member countries use the EU as a blame-laundering mechanism to pass domestically unpopular laws, but the forcing of this vote under the urgency procedure that requires absolute majority to reject, on the last EP session before summer break is so blatant that it might awaken people that might've overlooked the structural failures of the EU and finally radicalise them
EDIT: bad wording, it's not that the urgency procedure causes the voting to require absolute majority, it's that an absolute majority second-reading is forced through an emergency procedure which is designed for first readings of legislation that's the implied meaning above
What changes with the return of Chat Control 1.0—and what stays the same:
*What is coming back:* US tech companies are once again allowed to scan private messages without a warrant or prior suspicion. This affects direct messages on platforms like Instagram, Discord, Snapchat, Skype, and Xbox, as well as emails via Google’s Gmail and Apple’s iCloud.
*What remains unchanged:* Public social media posts and files hosted in cloud storage could already be scanned without this law. Furthermore, private messages can always be reported by users, or monitored by authorities using targeted, court-ordered wiretapping.
*What is still NOT being scanned:* End-to-end encrypted chats, such as those on WhatsApp, have always been exempt from these scans. Additionally, European providers of messaging and email services have never implemented chat control measures.
So, E2E is unaffected?
"a measure it had rejected twice in March. Although a majority of voting Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) actually opposed the regulation (314 against, 276 in favor, 17 abstentions), the motion to reject it failed to secure the required absolute majority of 361 votes. As a result, mass scanning is now permitted again until 2028."
"Oh no we can't get a majority to pass the law!"
"Have you tried getting a majority to not pass the law?"
"Worth a shot!"
"It worked, should we also do this multiple times?"
"Of course not! Pass the law, quickly!"
Result: 314 against, 276 in favor, 17 abstentions, 113 absent
The EU is well on the way to becoming a totalitarian government.
ETA: It is shocking that 276 members of parliament would vote to support this. Are so many so naive? Or being paid off?
Here's a quote from the article itself, which works for both pro and con arguments:
"What is still NOT being scanned: End-to-end encrypted chats, such as those on WhatsApp, have always been exempt from these scans. Additionally, European providers of messaging and email services have never implemented chat control measures."
My steelman in favour of the legislation:
The regulation closes a legal gap that would otherwise force platforms to stop using existing CSAM detection systems; it's a temporary framework that doesn't require universal mandatory scanning or ban E2EE, just keeps the legal basis for companies which choose to use detection/scanners while lawmakers continue negotiating a more comprehensive longterm solution.
My steelman against the legislation:
Scanning private communications, even allowing companies to "voluntary" do this, sets the precedent that the confidentiality of private correspondence is conditional rather than fundamental. Also, automated scanning inevitably has false positives. Also, has chilling effect on free speech, undermines trust in encrypted messaging.
Also, situationally, that it's "voluntary" means offenders can migrate to platforms which don't "voluntarily" do this.
-- EU policy makers are really honest people, hats off to them. There's no way politicians in my country allow their chats to be scanned, because they're very corrupt.
You don't need a special app to do this, or maybe you just need a companion app that you type your message into and it gives you the thing you just paste into whatever messaging app / social media you use. The steganography makes it hard for the operator to determine that you're "abusing" the service by not transmitting your message in the clear so they can read it.
1) Alice uses steganography to embed her public key in an otherwise innocent or mundane looking image e.g their profile picture.
2) Bob uses the public key to encrypt a short message to send her.
3) Bob embeds the encrypted message in his own mundane looking image (could generate these from a pool of images or on the fly using stable diffusion)
4) Bob sends the image to Alice.
5) Alice recovers the encrypted message and decrypts using her private key.
(Could also use the process to do key encapsulation too, instead of using the raw key pair)
Who is working on that? I suspect the main challenge is not technical, but human - persuading users to switch messenger apps is almost impossible.
All for a safe and secure society.
314 against, 276 in favor, 17 abstentions
In case anyone wants to know: stopping it would have required 361 against.
It's dispiriting to see a supposedly pro-privacy politician launder backdoors as "strict security standards".
Just fueling material for right wingers who will take advantage of this and push for secessionist stuff.
EU is in dire need to have VERY POPULAR measures among people, not idiotic stuff like this which is a step in a wrong direction.
Welcome to the Brave New 1984 We World. Big Brother loves us.
We are living through the time best described by Zamyatin, Orwell, and Huxley.
(Edit: seems that the statement above applies to ChatControl 2.0, not the approved text. Apologies.)
Combine the 'age verification' (show your ID when you register) with this (we can read what you type), add some AI (to profile the people), and you have all the info you'd ever want on anyone anywhere.
Such a weak reasoning and method which they used to push this is ridiculous agenda lead me to strongly suspect there must be something else behind it.
The EPP also gave us migrant quotas, chat control and punished Greece for its debt.
The fact that governments worldwide do not force either a vote for or against is a much greater issue as it allows representatives to launder their beliefs through inaction.
> What changes with the return of Chat Control 1.0—and what stays the same:
> What is coming back: US tech companies are once again allowed to scan private messages without a warrant or prior suspicion. This affects direct messages on platforms like Instagram, Discord, Snapchat, Skype, and Xbox, as well as emails via Google’s Gmail and Apple’s iCloud.
> What remains unchanged: Public social media posts and files hosted in cloud storage could already be scanned without this law. Furthermore, private messages can always be reported by users, or monitored by authorities using targeted, court-ordered wiretapping.
> What is still NOT being scanned: End-to-end encrypted chats, such as those on WhatsApp, have always been exempt from these scans. Additionally, European providers of messaging and email services have never implemented chat control measures.
Haha, no. As long as there is bread and circus, nothing wil happen.
If it's not a dictatorship, a regime, a shithole, a kleptocracy, or whatever name they use for a government they don't like, I don't know what it is.
If this is not some shady maneuver to scan user messages for security reason, because of, for example, possible incoming war then it's beyond absurd.
I would doubt that politicians pushing this are not understanding that pedophiles simply do not need to use these apps they are scanning. But I saw questioning of tech CEOs by older US officials and the lack of even basic knowledgeable about current technologies was ridiculously astounding.
Europe would be a much better place if the EU stayed what it was, a trade union of sovereign nations without any political power over the people.
In a couple years time, Chat Control 2.0 will come about, and the same tyrants will use the EU admission [2] that there is no evidence that suspicionless scanning of private communications has led to an increase in criminal convictions or in rescued children to argue that we need to go further, and break E2EE.
[1]: https://www.iwf.org.uk/resources/end-to-end-encryption-and-k... [2]: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELE...
Chat Control 2.0 was the big one in those regards.
(Also, LOL @ Skype mention.)
Aren't they fucking paid to be there 'on the last day'?
There can exist strong consumer protections against misuse of their personal data by various entities.
And there can simultaneously also exist governmental overreach against citizens private data.
The world is complex, few things are truly binary.
Let's not forget that these laws are supported and pushed for by national governments in the EU Council, there's no shadowy cabal that materializes these laws out of thin air, the EU is a blame-laundromat for domestically unpopular laws passed through backroom deals
that's the reason they are busy igniting a war by the time the defaulting begins, so that there's some external boogieman to blame instead of them...
Also how the Law was forced is extremely bad.
But hey it's once more proof that the EU is not a democratically spirited institution.
The absolute majority seems to be an anti-paralysis instrument, where the onus is on the Parliament to reject something put in motion by the Council. I think the the asymmetry is that a vote to trigger the urgency procedure only requires a simple majority, whereas a rejection of that same legislation requires absolute majority.
To my reading, this reinforces the idea that Parliament is designed to be more of a rubber stamp for the Council.
It feels like the last turn in a board game where everyone is busy taking points with no regard for the impact of the decisions on the theoretical next turn - because there is no next turn. Its really weird.
> blame-laundering mechanism
Also, I'm stealing this.
> Second reading
> 7. If, within three months of such communication, the European Parliament:
> (a) approves the Council's position at first reading or has not taken a decision, the act concerned shall be deemed to have been adopted in the wording which corresponds to the position of the Council;
> (b) rejects, by a majority of its component members, the Council's position at first reading, the proposed act shall be deemed not to have been adopted;
> (c) proposes, by a majority of its component members, amendments to the Council's position at first reading, the text thus amended shall be forwarded to the Council and to the Commission, which shall deliver an opinion on those amendments.
Spain would label you criminal for merely using alternative Android builds: https://www.androidauthority.com/google-pixel-organized-crim...
Haven’t found anything that breaks their funding down by source and the majority on the UK govt site is from “charitable activities” (https://register-of-charities.charitycommission.gov.uk/en/ch...)
PS: Sorry, but "haha nothing matters" cynicism does NOT add anything to the discussion. In fact it straightforwardly breaks a whole bunch of HN guidelines: "Be curious", "Don't be generically negative", "Don't be snarky", "Don't post shallow dismissals", etc. This forum is supposed to be better than the R-site.
True P2P implies knowing the IP addresses of the people you're talking to.
But I suppose the OP said all that needs to be said, and so this spot was left empty for whatever nonsense comment dared to fill the void, and you won.
And once you get there, you're no longer a trade union. Or a trading block, which is probably the better word since a trade union already means something else.
Would you also be ok with not being allowed to send any mail unless you first scan the contents of everything in that envelope and include a generated signature that might tell the post office that you're sending CSAM? And then having the envelope delivered directly to police if the scan did indicate that?
Just now I scrolled through our most popular news sites. 0 mentions. Wasn't on TV either.
The vast majority of the population didn't even have a clue that the vote was happening.
I checked the top 5 most popular local news sites. There was one article about chat control in April and then 2 more from 2025. That's it.
Imagine an issue as big as this and it's not even reported. Yeah I don't feel confident about the future at all.
And let's not pretend there are not already many other ways in which child abuse is detected and fought. When schoolteachers or doctors or neighbors or other family members notice something is amiss, when a CSAM group is infiltrated by police, or when a predator falls for a honeypot. This triggers an investigation, and at that point no digital lock can withstand modern targeted covert surveillance. But we are supposed to pretend none of this exists, and that encryption is an unassailable castle, and play along with the "going dark" lie, despite being more surveilled than at literally any point in history, including under the Stasi.
They only don't address child abuse, if by "child abuse" is meant a photo existing in some private shared-with-nobody hard drive, and not an actual human child being abused.
I’m not saying this legislation impacts any of this positively or negatively, but we can’t pretend the prior world order isn’t making some drastic changes lately. Governments are slow to change laws but I would expect much of the current push has actual ties to the larger global shifts.
This isn't surprising to me at all.
The World Cup is on, and it draws attention away from politics. This has been a pretty common observable pattern for as long as I can remember.
Well, once you realise that the so-called "EU parliament" is nothing but a lobbyist group (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qatar_corruption_scandal_at_th...) it is no longer surprising. To me nothing here is surprising, neither the hurry nor any slowness.
Lobbyists are winning the war.
Every time HN posts another one of these privacy-invading EU regulations, a bunch of pro-bureaucracy people are in here cheering on regulations and knocking down anyone who suggests that maybe this time they've gone too far.
They know the impact of the decisions: more power for them as bodies.
The media is barely covering it at all, the sheep are well asleep, online some just lucid dream about the democracy they never had.
>*EU politicians exempt themselves from this surveillance under "professional secrecy" rules. They get privacy. You and your family do not.
https://8bitsecurity.com/posts/chat-control-2-0-%E2%80%93-ho...
this is just eu in a nutshell, the irish were made to vote on both nice and lisbon treaties twice (both were voted no in the first vote)
Also, see the case of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%BCseyin_Do%C4%9Fru - if you aren't liked by the EU courts, they just accuse you of "collusion with Russia" and ban your bank account via "sanction policies". The ECJ doesn't have to provide any evidence of crime, you have to provide counter-evidence of the absence of crime (and good luck defending yourself without money). The ECJ judges, who interpret and impose these laws, are also not democratically really elected or anything, yet they hold power over your bank account. Makes ya think.
Imagine Alice, an 18, 19yo girl, having a boyfriend, Bob, and since Bob is on a student exchange, she decides to send him a boob photo. Since alice is skinny, her boobs are on the smaller side.
Now imagine Alice hitting 'Send', and getting an automated message from whatever CSAM AI bot:
"Your message has not been sent, the system detected the breasts in the photo to be probably underage, the photo was forwarded to <your local police station> for manual review"
And half an hour later
"Detectives Rob Johnson, John Robson and Bob Bobson from police department XY, have done an extensive manual review of the photo of the breasts and have 2:1 decided that they're probably not underage, so the photo was sent to the intended destination. Than you, your friendly CSAM AI bot!"
Blackboxes which scan your messages and photos for anything 3rd party want with undisclosed criteria.
So long freedom, it’s been nice living in STASI free society for a while. Too bad power attracts the people who will make sure they keep it in their hands.
Laws and democracy is a constant fight, no democracy was complete and perfect the day it was announced.
We lost a battle now. And unlike people like you who only resort to insults I am not willing to give up just because of this setback. I will continue to fight for these rights.
They voted for "Proposition de rejet". It's written there, but it's in French.
This was done by the Council of Europe (an organisation made up of a mix of member state foreign ministers and member state parliament members)
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=OJ:...
No court was involved as far as I can tell...
This journalist was not sanctioned by the court.
No government really wants to be fully enforcing all their own laws, just because it's way too expensive to hire that many cops. I think the closest anyone got was the Stasi, and they had a lot of "volunteers": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unofficial_collaborator#Other_...
I think Apple was going to implement something like this a few years ago before scrapping it.
In principle "for anything 3rd party want" would be illegal in the EU. However, Big Tech clearly doesn't care what's illegal in the EU.
Pertinent to this case: https://stateofsurveillance.org/news/big-tech-defies-eu-law-...
Previously: https://www.edpb.europa.eu/news/french-sa-cookies-and-advert...
Even earlier, when they cared about the law: https://www.trtworld.com/article/13092354
On 7 July, MEPs voted 331–303 to fast-track the return of Chat Control 1.0 mass scanning. A binding vote follows Thursday, 9 July, where an absolute majority of 361 MEPs is needed to stop it. Take action now to demand they defend your private messages.
"Yes" means stop control, because it's a "proposition de rejet" we're looking at. rejet = reject. Parties in favor of chat control were:
- European People’s Party and
- Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats.
Countries in favor of chat control were:
Spain, Poland, Romania, Sweden, Hungary, Portugal, Greece, Ireland, Lithuania, Latvia, Cyprus
If you look at the initial vote from July 7, there are a few countries who actually wanted to make it an "urgent decision" (other than the countries above):
France, Czechia, Finland, Croatia, Luxembourg
They passed a regulation with 276 votes in favor, 314 votes against, and 17 abstained. The minority decided instead of the majority.
If this is not a dictatorship, what is it then? In any case, it has nothing to do with the democracy.
innocent men cannot be ruled over. authoritarians want a population of such "criminals", because then their power becomes the choice of which law is executed on whom.
A "yes" vote was a vote against Chat Control. It failed because it needed an absolute majority of 361/) votes to defeat the "urgent procedure" lawfare by Metsina, a conservative.
>"Yes" means stop control, because it's a "proposition de rejet" we're looking at. rejet = reject
>For example, Poland was hit with massive daily fines when it was embroiled in a dispute over rule of law measures, as well as a separate case linked to environmental permits at a coal mine on the Czech border.
>The Commission is allowed to take these fines out of that country’s EU budget allocation, preventing governments from simply refusing to pay up.
https://www.brusselstimes.com/1568198/how-the-eu-punishes-it...
I really don’t but any other reason, as other tools (legal and technological) are already in place.
The war on privacy at the EU level always comes from conservatives.
No, leftist governments in the EU have failed to provide prosperity and failed in all their promises, now they're going for total control to try to stay in power.
Look at France, as soon as Le Pen was cleared to run for the presidency they start talking about anti "misinformation" laws...
I'm not sure the EU needs to worry about political capital in the way that many national and regional governments do. Power moves through negotiations between institutions, party groups, lobbyists, activists, and heads of government rather than through anything voters can trace. If one is being unkind, it's basically backroom deals all the way down. Naturally, the EU has more respectable terms for this sort of thing, like "trilogue".
Look at how the President of the European Commission got her job in 2019 - there was an election campaign in which major parties presented lead candidates for the post and she wasn't one of them, then post-election - ta da - she's nominiated for the post and there's a confirmatory vote in the Parliament on which the ballot paper had precisely one name listed - hers.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-48853746
https://www.alamy.com/16-july-2019-france-france-straburg-a-...
First of all, private companies shouldn't be given that responsibility to begin with. Meta in particular, has a long history of unethical and immoral usage of personal data. I won't use the term "illegal", as the question of legality becomes moot when punishment can be factored in as a cost of doing business [1]. Given the long list of things Meta has been caught doing, together with the in grand total zero seconds of jail time. I'm genuinely curious as to why you think this would be any different. I'd be surprised if it hasn't already happened, where in some room without windows and a lot of lawyers and business analysts, they have ran models and concluded that the cost of getting caught here is "a good financial decision". Wouldn't be surprised either if it also came with a guarantee of personal protection from prosecution, from NSA and other government entities, in exchange for a hand in that data pipe.
Secondly, for this to carry any plausibility for being motivated by "protect the children" arguments, it requires a minimal effort be enacted on more effective measures, and a measured balance with the cost this comes at. There are very good arguments for why this law would actively harm children. Throw in some Bayesian understanding, and you better have a state of the art system that somehow pretty much never has false positives, nor false negatives, where this was also the only way to detect and avoid said abuse. I don't know the numbers here, but I highly doubt this is a good idea, even with infinite generosity as to good intentions. We've all been children, we've all done stupid things. Now throw in the brilliant and surely-not-to-scar-a-child-for-life situations where parents and strangers looking at something they thought was private, and have a "grown up discussion" about. I shiver at the thought.
Thirdly, and aside from directly harming children in situations where they selves use technology and naively, and unwisely share pictures, consider how many take pictures of their own kids without clothes, because they are normal human beings, who do not consider there to be anything sexual about said depiction. You want to throw law enforcement in the mix here? Child protective services?
Fourthly, consider the possible negative for this abuse. If normal behavior (e.g. children being children, and e.g. normal parents otherwise sharing normal pictures if you are a normal person) can be selectively chosen as being a heinous crime, this should scare anyone, especially consider the political shifting trends towards fascism.
[1]: https://www.creativefuture.org/facebook-scandal-timeline/
Nt being able to scan personal communications would break big tech platforms main monetisation strategy (selling peoples data).
Mars is nice this time of year.
As a central part of its campaign for the European elections in 2009, the EPP approved its election manifesto at its Congress in Warsaw in April that year. The manifesto called for:[16]
- Creation of new jobs, continuing reforms and investment in education, lifelong learning, and employment to create opportunities for everyone (govt universal social investment, left)
- Avoidance of protectionism, and coordination of fiscal and monetary policies (pro-federal pro-centralisation)
- Increased transparency and surveillance in financial markets(more regulation on market)
- Making Europe the market leader in green technology. (increase govt involvement in economy)
- Increasing the share of renewable energy to at least 20 percent of the energy mix by 2020. (increase govt involvement in economy)
- Family-friendly flexibility for working parents, better child care and housing, family-friendly fiscal policies, encouragement of parental leave. (Pro-Worker's rights, social security)
-A new strategy to attract skilled workers from the rest of the world to make Europe's economy more competitive, more dynamic and more knowledge-driven (Pro-migration)
Could you explain how that's considered right-wing?
I was aware that VDL obtained her role by routing around the Spitzenkandidaten process, but I was never aware that her confirmatory vote was done in this way.
Her unpopularity at home also reinforces the idea that unpopular politicians can be sent to Brussels, because "in Brussels, you can't hear them scream".
You can always make your enemy. Current rearming efforts really remind historians of WW1 arm races.
At some point once so much interests and offers are at stake, that creating the demand is inevitable and just a matter of time.
Because no party has an outright majority, there are weeks of negotiations after the elections, as the parties try to find a compromise acceptable to a majority. Once a deal has been reached, the parliament votes to confirm it. If the vote fails, the parties return to negotiations.
Von der Leyen was chosen to head the Commission, because she was an acceptable compromise. All lead candidates had been tried before her, but all of them failed to obtain majority support in the negotiations.
Woah, that's such a good, on point statement. From Boing, FightClub (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0137523/quotes/?item=qt0479130) to Cambridge Analytica (Meta) and Pegasus as a small sample ;)
Today, the European Parliament allowed the suspicionless mass scanning of private communications (“Chat Control 1.0”) to pass, a measure it had rejected twice in March. Although a majority of voting Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) actually opposed the regulation (314 against, 276 in favor, 17 abstentions), the motion to reject it failed to secure the required absolute majority of 361 votes. As a result, mass scanning is now permitted again until 2028.
A symbolic exemption was adopted for encrypted communications—though in practice, service providers do not scan these anyway. Furthermore, while a majority of voting MEPs wanted to restrict the scanning of private communications strictly to suspects identified by the judiciary (322 to 255 votes), this amendment likewise fell short of the required absolute majority.
Dr. Patrick Breyer, civil rights activist and former Member of the European Parliament (MEP), warns of the consequences:
“The fact that Chat Control is moving forward against the will of the majority of voting MEPs is a farce and damages democracy. Our children are the real losers in this undemocratic process. The passage of a genuine, permanent child protection regulation is now in serious jeopardy. The Council will never agree to a desperately needed paradigm shift as long as they can simply stick to the old approach of suspicionless scanning at the whim of the tech industry.”
Despite the legislative defeat, Breyer remains defiant regarding the upcoming negotiations:
“Today’s vote on the interim regulation was a setback, but the political battle over the permanent ‘Chat Control 2.0’ is just getting started. The resistance we saw in Parliament today was so strong that finding a majority for permanent, suspicionless mass scanning in future negotiations is a complete pipe dream.”
Breyer fundamentally rejects the mass surveillance approach:
“Trying to protect children with suspicionless mass surveillance is like frantically mopping the floor while the faucet is still running. Blanket chat control is just as unacceptable as indiscriminately opening everyone’s physical mail. For five years, this failed system has served as a smokescreen to delay real action, all while overwhelming the police with false alarms. We need more child protection, not less—but we need effective protection, not the illusion of security.”
What happens next?
The interim regulation passed today will remain in effect until 2028, or until an agreement on a permanent regulation is reached. Negotiations for the permanent law will resume in September. The core dispute between the EU Parliament, member state governments, and the EU Commission remains the scanning of private chats: should it be indiscriminate, or targeted at criminal suspects?
What changes with the return of Chat Control 1.0—and what stays the same:
Why Chat Control is the wrong approach:
Talk of averting a “protection gap” is therefore highly misleading. The most effective law enforcement tools—court-ordered wiretaps, user reports, and the scanning of public platforms and cloud storage—were never at risk and remain fully intact. The only practice that was temporarily banned since April was the indiscriminate, warrantless searching of private, unencrypted messages of innocent people on a handful of US platforms.
Background: The deadlock over a permanent solution
In parallel, negotiations are ongoing for a permanent regulation to protect children from sexualized online violence (the “CSAM Regulation” or “Chat Control 2.0”). In these talks, the EU Parliament is pushing for a paradigm shift in how we approach online child safety, demanding:
This permanent legislation has stalled because EU member states insist on maintaining the outdated approach of voluntary, suspicionless scanning of private communications. Critics warn that repeatedly extending the interim rules removes the political pressure needed to reach a viable, permanent agreement. Ultimately, clinging to the status quo threatens to derail real progress on child protection.
Patrick Breyer sums up the problem:
“As long as EU governments can use procedural loopholes to continually extend their comfortable status quo of voluntary, indiscriminate mass scanning, they have zero incentive to engage with the Parliament’s targeted, legally sound, and far more effective child protection strategy.
“The Voices of Survivors: “We need privacy to bring abusers to justice”
Survivors of sexual violence explicitly emphasize that untargeted Chat Control did not help victims:
Alexander Hanff, survivor of child sexual abuse and privacy advocate, clarifies:
“As a survivor I relied on confidential communications to tell my story and find justice for 28 schoolboys—myself included—resulting in the conviction of multiple offenders. We survivors need privacy, because without it we lose our voice. Chat Control was not created to protect children. It was about Big Tech companies like Meta or Google wanting access to our data for profiteering, and states attempting to expand mass surveillance. The EU Commission has wasted five years and millions of euros on algorithms that cannot protect children and were never meant to. This money should have been diverted to real policing, causal research, and support for survivors, millions of whom have never received any support at all.”
Marcel Schneider* (name changed), a survivor who has been suing Meta in court over its voluntary Chat Control, adds:
“Anyone mourning the end of Chat Control has not understood what actually helps survivors of sexual violence. Mass surveillance by corporations like Meta does not prevent abuse. Genuine protection means: deleting material at the source, proactive police work on the Darknet, and apps that are safe by design for children from the very start.”
Dorothée Hahne, founding member and vice-chair of the survivors’ initiative MOGiS e.V. (A Voice for Survivors), emphasizes the danger mass surveillance poses to victims themselves:
“As survivors, we see our ‘safe spaces’, our protected areas and communication channels, endangered or destroyed by this. For survivors, this need is existential.__“
It's useful to add some cynicism in the mix (or in this case, pragmatism)
They're trying to avoid any conflict since they have no energy and hard power to counter any confrontations, so they smile and nod to anything happening worldwide or push some stern words about "monitoring the situation" to social media, depending on the situation.
The point is that the actual far right is rising all over Europe and will likely be ascendant in the next round of elections, the establishment is trying to stay in power.
By WHO?! Russia is still stuck in 1/4 of the Ukraine and fear mongers make it sound like they're about to reach Paris any day now.
- Avoidance of protectionism, and coordination of fiscal and monetary policies
- - Making Europe the market leader in green technology.
Market ideology -> Right wing
- Increasing the share of renewable energy to at least 20 percent of the energy mix by 2020.
Done through incentives, not nationalized industry -> market ideology, right wing.
- Family-friendly flexibility for working parents, better child care and housing, family-friendly fiscal policies, encouragement of parental leave
Classic birtherism -> right wing
- A new strategy to attract skilled workers from the rest of the world to make Europe's economy more competitive, more dynamic and more knowledge-driven
Importing cheap labor for European capitalists -> right wing
And once the chip fabs have been bombed, civilisation is set by by decades, and may end up fighting a lower-tech war.
No public hearings, no public votes, not even any public parliamentary debates(!) about different candidates for the Commission. This is indeed "the EU way", trying to find compromise via party-family bargaining ... in private.
> All lead candidates had been tried before her, but all of them failed to obtain majority support in the negotiations.
The Parliament didn't actually get to vote on any of the other candidates, did they?
Yeah, compared to communists they are right, but even socialists does not push against market economy and if you consider socialists right-wing - we have a huge de-sync on definitions level I guess.
Beyond this, if you start attacking neutral fabs you lose out on anything from them. Your expectations are quite a bit off if you think striking fabs stops a conflict.
Voting rituals would be a waste of time. The confirmation vote is not just about the President of the Commission but the entire package, including other major positions in the Commission and major policy directions. If no party has a majority, no candidate can hope to get majority support before the whole package has been agreed on.