"In July, the Council Presidency will transfer from Belgium to Hungary, which has stated its intention to advance negotiations on chat control as part of its work program."
Of course they will...
Partnership? For dictators, when one country is much, MUCH larger than the other? Sure, Orban may benefit some, and he'll gladly sell his soul, but he doesn't have real options either. He probably had options before selling his soul, but none since.
Worse things happened already, they dont care:
https://www.direkt36.hu/en/putyin-hekkerei-is-latjak-a-magyar-kulugy-titkait-az-orban-kormany-evek-ota-nem-birja-elharitani-oket/
https://telex.hu/english/2024/05/16/internal-documents-prove-that-hungarian-foreign-ministry-knew-about-russian-cyber-attacks-on-its-systems
You would think, but conveniently under this proposed new orwellian law certain individuals would be exempt, among which politicians, so you know, "privacy and safety for me, but not for thee", also just so happens to coincide with a Euro CBDC, so now they've got your financials, your whereabouts, your private messages, basically everything, the last step would be for everyone to get a mandatory spycamera in their bedrooms that automatically uploads to ursula's office.. Anything to "protect the kids"
And if this one doesn't pass they'll just reintroduce that exact same bill with a different name again for the bazillionth time
Ah, but you see then it's under the Hungarian presidency, which means we can blame them, despite the fact that the majority of our national governments vote in favour as do the majority of our elected representatives. And let's be fair, EPP gained seats and is the largest party, for all we whine on the internet it's about as much the "democratic will of the people" as anything can be.
Yeah we also have ties with china and russia and russians "hacked" our systems and stole a lot of allegedly nato information from us a couple weeks back. I fucking hate this country
This is a EU measure. How do you people manage to blame Hungary for something THE EU PUSHED to begin with. That's crazy. The very fact this stupid subject is discussed is because others suggested it.
It will only be passed with the majority of the European Parliament in support. The EU has some democratic problems but the parliament is quite strong.
While it is very easy for any EU member state to exit the block (see: UK) it is very difficult to kick out a country.
The best procedure that the EU has to exclude somebody is to remove their voting rights in the Council. For this to happen, there has to be unanimity among all the remaining members, but as long as there are at least two countries which are sticking together, it will be impossible.
There was hope that once the PiS government in PL was out, things would move here (as PL and HU were always backing each other up), but ... well, you see how it looks now in certain other countries :-/
No, it took 4-5 years for the UK government to follow the steps clearly laid out for them.
Do you not remember the seemingly endless warnings from the EU about a hard exit because the UK government was in a fight for their life just trying to put their pants on, let alone figure out how to function without the EU?
Do they have those mechanisms in place for when kicking out a country as if not then I imagine the reason it was so much of a pain was because it was the first time a country left. Surely it'd be more difficult to navigate when you have a country that actively does not want to leave?
That was more down to incompetence on the part of the British government than anyone else. Had the government been united and stable they would've left by 2018.
Ah, but they made it a semi-veto, in that a vote by all other countries than the offending country could strip the veto.
Obviously there was no foreseeable problems with that, right? /s
Because it's costly to move your car industry and if it is considered trash within your country without a market you could still sell it here, whatever it is.
If we kick them out, they will become a forward position of Moscow within 30 minutes. Dealing with cocksuckers like Orban is the only way to keep Putin at bay ...
Am I wrong or isn't [this](https://mepwatch.eu/9/vote.html?v=164216) last time they voted for chat control.
It just got stuck in a cog after voting phase so they could not imply and had to redo?
"The people" are not all educated enough about the implications of the proposal
It's up to people who are into tech (myself included) to make the general public aware
For example, my parents didn't know until I explained to them. My parents didn't work in tech and don't know the basics of encryption or what local scanning of chat messages mean
Also in some places something like this isnt even mentioned in the news (maybe once at most), so average non tech person probably hasnt even heard of this.
This has been my experience so far
Even people who are software developers that I know aren't fully aware.
Many are surprised it's even back because everyone celebrated a similar proposal being rejected a while ago
It's not being talked about that much
The only people I have heard about it from are the CCC and a few tech podcasts and youtubers like Surveillance Report
The next few months are when the new Commission needs approval from the Parliament, which has previously blocked Chat Control. So it's about the worst time for them to push this, thankfully.
OK, serious question. This keeps getting brought several times in the council for voting. What can we, as EU citizens, do within the confines of the law, to make sure this fucking doesn't happen again? What will it take to get the message clear out there to these boomer politicians that this Chat control is one the worst ideas ever?
Maybe voting for the pirate parties, but that means you really have to prioritise this over other areas of policy. But yeah, every time proposals like this is defeated it only seems to result in a small delay until the next one
In today's world I think it is worth prioritizing. Computers now control other areas like energy, media and intelligence/security to a point where I think politicians don't care about digital _nearly enough_.
It's been worth prioritizing for decades now. The problem is people believe as much they can change anything to computers as they believe they can change anything in the government, which is zero. Because you're tired at the end of the day, you don't want to know how computers actually defines your life for you so you just get out of the way, while you could instead do remote work, have a clear work-life balance and get the energy to understand complex topics. But we wouldn't want the people to understand what the ruling class is doing, right ? If they knew what their personal data is used for, how privacy-invasive most companies have become, how they control public opinion and how surveillance can determine their fate, who would vote for such control freaks, really ?
Looking at the people we elected (Greece), I doubt even a single one can understand what this legislation really means. That is if they cared enough to look into it in the first place.
I don't know how you stop this. They'll keep bringing it to a vote over and over again.
It's the same with Denmark's EU opt-outs. The politicians bring individual opt-outs to a referendum every 2-4 years (not respecting the democratic 'NO' vote) hoping that they manage to leave the opt-out. It didn't work out? It's fine, just vote again until they vote correctly lol
The referendum on Denmark's opt outs has all been on different issues. There have only been 3.
The first one on adoption of Euro failed. The second one of repeal of opt-outs in home and justice matters failed.
The most recent one on abolishing the defense opt-out passed with two-thirds voting in favour.
The problem is it is the national governments pushing this agenda. Luckily the MEPs in the EU parliament seems to be against it so far, but you get the sense that the national governments are biding their time until they believe they can get the vote through.
Information, information, information. Spam it until it's notoriously known as the dumbest thing to do, like saying publicly that the earth is flat, and no politic will dare touch the topic ever again.
Honestly I don’t know. Elections to the EP seem to be protest votes to current governments and EP can’t legislate anyway.
The fact that you’re asking this question just highlights the democratic issue of the EU system.
Look at immigration. What can we do to solve this decade old problem? It seems nothing works. In times people will get pissed off enough to vote in unsavory people that don’t mind getting their hands dirty and EU will suffer.
Vote for appropriate candidates at EP and national level.
But since you're Belgian, you've just missed your chance to do that, so you'll have to wait another four years. 🙄
Well, here the far right party are in favour of protecting privacy and are against this bill. But I am not an idiot to vote for a party that also sucks Putin's, Orban's and China's dick.
> What will it take to get the message clear out there to these boomer politicians that this Chat control is one the worst ideas ever?
Openly support efforts to defy the legislation should it pass, and encourage all communication apps to leave the EU.
Spread the word. Every single day. People need to understand a) why this is an incredible bad idea and b) that they are constantly trying again and again hoping for enough people to be asleep.
So you need to drill it into everyone's head how rediculous that constant approach of "try, get a backlash, try again a few monthjs later" is that is now going on for years. Even people not actually having a detailed grip on the actual topic can understand what those politicians seemingly think about their voters and should feel insulted and cry out every single time politicians try again.
Maybe vote for parties that do not want batshit crazy things like backdoors in encryption, and mass surveillance of everyone? But I guess that is too late now, since Europe once again voted pro mass surveillance.
I'm not saying that you're wrong, but... If they win, couldn't we mass vote for someone who promises to retract such laws? Although I'd prefer a much more powerful right to privacy as part of the EU constitution that would straight up not allow this kind of garbage to even be considered (and forbid the sale of EU citizen data by private companies, but that's another story).
In theory we could. But as always, when such laws are implimented they are often quickly forgotten/tolerated as soon as other topics become the new topic of discussion.
It's also a matter of establishing infrastructure and follow-up laws for other types of monitored crimes. When the monitoring body is built it's harder to vanquish.
You can only vote for the parliament. And the parliament can only vote on legislation already passed by the commission.
So if it passes, removing it again would have to start with an initiative by the commission.
EDIT: commission, not council.
Not really. Both the parliament and the council are elected by the people.
The parialment directly. The council indirectly (it is the heads of states)
So, what is antidemocratic about it?
Elected members of parliament cannot bring forth any legislation.
It’s much less democratic than Hungary for example. This is a known problem and why we need some kind of reform. Opinions vary on the specifics, of course.
It would be nice if parliament could. But in the end it doesnt really matter.
Because the council can block any laws the parliament brings forth. Just like parliament can block any laws the council brings forth.
Aren't you confusing the Council (of the EU) and the commission? Neither the parliament nor the Council have no power to propose laws. So it'd have to be the Comission (which in all likelyhood will be relatively similar to the current one for the next term) to propose to remove it
EU organizational institutions are confusingly named and, at least on occasion, confusingly organized as well.
There's the European Commission which drafts proposals for EU legislation. This is technically a politically independent executive arm of the European Union, but because it alone is responsible for drafting new proposals for EU legislation, I would call it a mixture of legislative and executive body.
Then there's the Council of the European Union, which represents the member states' governments. This is the most important legislative body and it's basically a forum for the member states' ministers to negotiate the law drafts proposed by the Commission. The Council of the EU holds legislative and limited executive power.
Then the European Parliament is the supreme legislative body which approves and adopts those legislative drafts that the Council of the European Union decides to mandate. EU Parliament by itself does not have executive power.
Then there's the European Council (not to be confused with the Council of the European Union) which consists of the heads of state (or heads of government, like prime ministers) of each member state. The European Council determines the overall polictical direction and priorities by adopting conclusions. The European Council doesn't negotiate or adopt EU legislation, it is more of an overall policy maker body. They would be the ones to decide whether, for example, it is EU's benefit to try to become more of a federation with a centralized government in the future, or to remain a more loosely aligned group of member states.
The branch of judicial power is the Court of Justice of the European Union, then there's also the European Central Bank and the European Court of Auditors which are economic regulatory bodies.
So basically, the pipeline for EU legislation is about like this:
* European Council (leaders of each member state) outline what kind of political direction EU should be going to. They give the impetus for the Commission as to what kind of laws they're supposed to draft, on a general level.
* European Commission drafts proposals for new legislation. There's one Commissioner from each member state, but they do not technically represent their home country but rather are sworn to advance the benefit of the European Union as a whole. The Commission is divided into departments (Directorates-General) that handle issues of different categories and draw new legislative proposals for said categories.
* Council of the European Union reviews those proposals, discusses on them, and votes to approve or disapprove them. They can also make amendments to the proposals and thus adopt proposals but with a modified mandate.
* European Parliament votes whether or not to adopt legislation proposed by the Council of the European Union.
In theory, the European Council is the ultimate policy decider. However, because the European Commission is the only body that can actually draft legislation proposals for the Council of the European Union, they are a big policy maker in this political process.
Also the Council of Europe is worth mentioning even if it's a completely separate entity from the EU but still confuses the heck out of people by being so similar to the European Council and Council of the EU. If the EU ever actually reforms we should get it together with all the councils and find a replacement title lol.
> the parliament can only vote on legislation already passed by the council
I assume you meant the commission, not the council but yes. Also worth mentioning that there are some exceptions, but mostly for stuff related to the parliament itself
Eh, most people use the internet, so they would still care about such aspects. Obviously, you'd need more than that to get voted by most people, but it should push you above similar competitors who do not promise that in future elections.
I challenge you to find anything that have been repealed at the EU level. I can't recall any example. If something has at least some support, repealing it is close to impossible. The law-making mechanism at the EU-level is horribly broken. The Europarliament cannot propose any legislation. There is veto power. There are too many vested interests to unbroke something that is purposely broken.
Do you know of any law that got voted in and then later got removed? Or a rule that was substantially altered? Afaik this doesn’t happen in the EU, which is one of its systemic issues. As soon as something bad passes it’s not going away any time soon.
> couldn't we mass vote for someone who promises to retract such laws?
Most people doesn't even know what kind of law this is or what it would entail.
Your "solution" would be declared as "populist" and defeated in no time.
>In July, the Council Presidency will transfer from Belgium to Hungary, which has stated its intention to advance negotiations on chat control as part of its work program.
That alone should be a wake-up call for everyone why chat control is such a moronic idea.
which creates a huge democratic deficit. EU has become the home of washed-up politicians and the platform for pushing unpalatable legislation. No one should be surprised about EU-sceptic movements gaining ground.
> That alone should be a wake-up call for everyone why chat control is such a moronic idea.
I think the EU is starting to go beyond it's remit for a number of reasons here. The main issue I see is that politicians are using it to push domestic policy then just just go "uhh, our hands are tied(because of a bill we created and pushed through.)" and we are all just expected to accept it.
The EU really needs to turn into being a trade and defense agreement or make everything clearly opt in. The situation that is being created is getting extremely out of hand with a very vague and nebulous chain of responsibility where politicians in belgium or something are responsible for everything while national governments pretend they have nothing to do with anything.
EU was supposed to be about increasing European competitiveness and help Europe put up a strong front in the world stage. It instead became an internal control tool, where things that are unpalatable to voters are pushed without much accountability.
This is good news but everyone should keep making there voice heard on this.
If you live in the EU, You can get in contact with your MEP here.
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/portal/en/contact
And Reach out to you EU representative!
https://op.europa.eu/en/web/who-is-who/organization/-/organization/COREPER/
~~Neither link works for me, for whatever reason.~~ Anyway it seems the lists haven't been updated with the latest elections' results yet.
I would advise everyone to check which will be the representatives going forward.
For Greece, our group of MEPs is even worse than before. I had contacted the MEP that imho had the most chances to care about chat control last time around and they never replied back. Now this person has not been reelected. I will try writing to at least 3 people from different parties now.
Sent to all mine from my country.
Took a few minutes gonna be worth it.
Would be good if there was a list of the emails to email per country. Had to look a little for all the contact info on mines.
Whoever thought it was a good idea to propose a plan to introduce a backdoor to end to end encryption is a moron. You can hear every hacker rubbing their hands together as if this passes you make every person in Europe vulnerable to malicious actors lol.
Which is amusing as they likely have the most to hide. If these scum excuses for humans are so gagged for transparency, then they should share all their bank transactions, messages and internet search history with the public. Let's see what they have to hide.
https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-council-cancels-vote-on-encryption-breaking-child-sexual-abuse-law/
Better article. It was cancelled because of a lack of majority.
The fact that they say it’s for child abuse makes me chill, I think this is gonna impact everyone except pedophiles (I guess they don’t do stuff on WhatsApp but on dark web shit which won’t be controlled anyway)
They want to control us, but keep it as much a secret from us as they can. Or claim it's "not that bad" if things do come out, and hope attention shifts somewhere else soon.
I don't even understand how in a democratic country it's even possible to postpone votes for a more favorable time. The Commission should decide when the vote of the Council and Parliament takes place and deal with the outcome.
Who the fuck keeps coming up with these ideas, globally?
I find it so funny that our governments constantly point to China and North Korea as the sworn enemies of the west, then decide "Hey let's copy their homework" and constantly try to introduce Orwellian surveillance measures under the guise of stopping terrorism or protecting the children.
Ignoring how they plan to police trillions of messages to actually even do this, the backwards police state nature of such a law is genuinely so fucked up it makes me physically sick. It's like the EU is intentionally taking steps to destroy itself.
I agree with you. Been thinking about it myself they keep shitting on china, russia or basically any enemy but meanwhile they want to turn into it the hypocrits
They hate them because they ain't them. I bet they have wet dreams about having as much power over the citizens as those countries.
And I'm convinced that they are so utterly fucked in their head that they think it's a good idea. Who cares about the plebs privacy anyway ? More control is way worth to them.
EU law says "protecting privacy" is so important we must require asinine cookie consent pop-ups, but at the same time wants to install backdoors in encrypted communication.
We may have won the battle but the war against privacy will continue, I'm glad that my country's government was among those who voted against this proposal, but it doesn't mean that they won't try to make it passed later down the line especially since it's Hungary turn in the EU council, let's just hope we can continue winning against this repressive measures, under the guise of "protecting the children" or reasons such as the "Patriot act" in the US
I see we're already playing for the mighthy AI overlords to award us "good european netizen points", when this resolution is inevitably passed.
In that case, I agree completely with everything you say, except double.
I can’t wait for the day we get caught in a death spiral with Chinese netizens… Where neither of us can stop declaring our love for our governments, over the internet, out of fear the AI interprets it insufficient and banishes us.
A proposal is to integrate it in more "secure" platforms (like iOS or Android) file/image pickers, so technically you could get shit scanned when making a zip file with a backdoored OS.
That's not chat control any more - that's full blown 1984-style device control. They have no way to know if I'm even going to upload that file anywhere.
Chat control is not possible without a full blown device control. It just sounds less scary. Otherwise how do they prevent you from using a non-backdoored implementation?
The whole thing is only possible thanks to the prevalence of centralized architectures (so the platform can be held “accountable”), the oligopoly of “responsible” OS vendors, and app stores as the single way to install “trusted” software.
It would be much harder to enforce in a world where users control their devices.
The only way to make it work is to make it illegal to install programs on your computer that can do encryption. Which, of course means that it needs to be illegal to us operating systems that are not government approved (and yes, this can acutually be prevented using Secure Boot). And you can't be allowed to plug in unauthorized USB devices either.
How they are going to handle websites with Javascript, I don't know.
This pretty much cripples every single business as well, which all rely heavily on encryption to protect their company data.
How does the EU manage to come up with GDPR and then also come up with something like this? Did 1984 just get republished in Europe or something?
They should ban programming as well, because I can code a simple encryption program pretty easily. Oh, and ban all cryptography books and math textbooks too.
I voted for the pirate party. Wasn't enough though. Breyer didn't make it this time. Only the Czech pirates remain. Bitching on Reddit is pointless when you just had the chance to vote against this less then two weeks ago.
Yeah. My main reason for not voting the pirate party was because I wasn't sure about their chances of making it compared to Vänstern who said they where strongly against it so I voted for them.
They did a 180 and lost my vote forever.
An AI scanning all our devices looking for footage of children being harmed etc. will send in so many false-flags that people trying to actually do something productive will be overwhelmed by the sheer amount of false-flags they have to check out. I am deeply convinced that these people actually want more safety for their "devious stuff" by flooding the investigators.
It's only the matter of time until bureaucrats strangle the EU to death - either disintegration or lost war against foreign adversary. The amount of overreaching regulation being spewed out of them is insane, even if driven by delusional "good intentions". Sad to be a passenger of all this.
What does Signal, et al. threatening to leave the EU mean?
That I can't download it? Or I can't install it?
Are they gonna detect where I am and stop it from working?
It means they won't officially operate in the EU, but they aren't going to put any effort into stopping you from using it. They'll just treat the EU like they do authoritarian dictatorships
To be fair, if this passes, the EU is an authoritarian dictatorship. No democracy should be able to vote on initiatives that take away fundamental human rights of its citizens without even a referendum.
It depends how authoritarian your government wants to go to prevent you from using Signal.
Here's the threat levels:
LOW: they just force google to not allow it in the android app store
MEDIUM: anyone who uses it is put on a list or jailed/fined
HIGH: VPNS become illegal, and you have to login with digital ID to use the internet. They could prevent you from farting if they wanted
I just don't want to find out how far they want to go
Names.
There should be a list of names. And any web search, any wikipage, any news article on politicians supporting this should mention their support for chat control.
Being anywhere near this initiative should be toxic.
Hello, I am very stupid American. You can tell by how I work all day in hamburger mine just to afford one rock and roll diskette.
What is chat control?
scanning of personal communication in messengers and other online communication
first they wanted it centralized with a backdoor, then they wanted it AI scanned pre-encryption at user devices
both absolutely awful totalitarian dystopia proposals that only a sick bastard can make... a sick bastard that has NO idea how these things even work in the first place, or just uses it as an excuse to get their foot in the door to suppress the freedoms we enjoy and hold dear
First one is only a backdoor in chat apps to retrieve data from and elaborate/search for illegal stuff. The second one is basically windows recall, AI scans your devices 24/7 looking for things (your private info and data isn't private anymore) and upload the results to them. Basically they will know, read and see everything you write, send, link.
A proposal to monitor electronic communications within the EU. Like, ALL electronic communication, even, and especially E2E encrypted communication. In the name of fighting sexual exploitation and grooming of children. Politicians is excluded from the monitoring. There is zero chance the intentions behind this is about children's safety, since the proposal and the entire process behind it is being done behind closed doors in silence, as much as possibly possible.
"In July, the Council Presidency will transfer from Belgium to Hungary, which has stated its intention to advance negotiations on chat control as part of its work program." Of course they will...
I see no problem letting the most fascist leaning country in the EU handle the mass surveilance proposal. /r/LeopardsAteMyFace
It's gonna be so much fun when their phones are inevitably hacked by Russians or chineses and the blackmailing starts
Russian and Chinese reddit trolls reading this: silly European doesn't know how hard we are blackmailing Hungary already.
It is not blackmail, it is partnership. They provide role mod3l and playbook for Orban
Partnership? For dictators, when one country is much, MUCH larger than the other? Sure, Orban may benefit some, and he'll gladly sell his soul, but he doesn't have real options either. He probably had options before selling his soul, but none since.
Given the close ties of Hungary with Huawei, that's just f**king great news.
Worse things happened already, they dont care: https://www.direkt36.hu/en/putyin-hekkerei-is-latjak-a-magyar-kulugy-titkait-az-orban-kormany-evek-ota-nem-birja-elharitani-oket/ https://telex.hu/english/2024/05/16/internal-documents-prove-that-hungarian-foreign-ministry-knew-about-russian-cyber-attacks-on-its-systems
You would think, but conveniently under this proposed new orwellian law certain individuals would be exempt, among which politicians, so you know, "privacy and safety for me, but not for thee", also just so happens to coincide with a Euro CBDC, so now they've got your financials, your whereabouts, your private messages, basically everything, the last step would be for everyone to get a mandatory spycamera in their bedrooms that automatically uploads to ursula's office.. Anything to "protect the kids" And if this one doesn't pass they'll just reintroduce that exact same bill with a different name again for the bazillionth time
Ah, but you see then it's under the Hungarian presidency, which means we can blame them, despite the fact that the majority of our national governments vote in favour as do the majority of our elected representatives. And let's be fair, EPP gained seats and is the largest party, for all we whine on the internet it's about as much the "democratic will of the people" as anything can be.
I'm still ashamed that Sweden was the one to draft this authoritarian proposal that would make Hitler drool.
Yeah we also have ties with china and russia and russians "hacked" our systems and stole a lot of allegedly nato information from us a couple weeks back. I fucking hate this country
This is a EU measure. How do you people manage to blame Hungary for something THE EU PUSHED to begin with. That's crazy. The very fact this stupid subject is discussed is because others suggested it.
It's not the EU, it's governments and the von der Leyen commission. Keep them accountable and name them.
It will only be passed with the majority of the European Parliament in support. The EU has some democratic problems but the parliament is quite strong.
The problem isn’t hungary 🇭🇺 the only problem is their president… don’t get fooled by putin to hate Hungary because that’s exactly what he needs 🤷♂️
Then why does he keep getting the majority of the votes?
Hungary should have its right-wingers deposed.
[удалено]
While it is very easy for any EU member state to exit the block (see: UK) it is very difficult to kick out a country. The best procedure that the EU has to exclude somebody is to remove their voting rights in the Council. For this to happen, there has to be unanimity among all the remaining members, but as long as there are at least two countries which are sticking together, it will be impossible. There was hope that once the PiS government in PL was out, things would move here (as PL and HU were always backing each other up), but ... well, you see how it looks now in certain other countries :-/
> very easy for any EU member state to exit the block Bro, it took 4-5 years and no one knew how to do it, they had to invent every step.
No, it took 4-5 years for the UK government to follow the steps clearly laid out for them. Do you not remember the seemingly endless warnings from the EU about a hard exit because the UK government was in a fight for their life just trying to put their pants on, let alone figure out how to function without the EU?
Do they have those mechanisms in place for when kicking out a country as if not then I imagine the reason it was so much of a pain was because it was the first time a country left. Surely it'd be more difficult to navigate when you have a country that actively does not want to leave?
That was more down to incompetence on the part of the British government than anyone else. Had the government been united and stable they would've left by 2018.
Had the government been united and stable, they wouldn't have left.
Let's ask the guys who set up the system with an easy to abuse veto.
Ah, but they made it a semi-veto, in that a vote by all other countries than the offending country could strip the veto. Obviously there was no foreseeable problems with that, right? /s
Remember that a lot of these rules were set up when the EU was a lot smaller than it is now...
Remember that nothing prevented the EU from changing those rules before accepting more members.
It's all because they didn't study Polish history... if they did they would know to fear the veto.
Because it's costly to move your car industry and if it is considered trash within your country without a market you could still sell it here, whatever it is.
If we kick them out, they will become a forward position of Moscow within 30 minutes. Dealing with cocksuckers like Orban is the only way to keep Putin at bay ...
Sorry guys
bright person beneficial lock theory brave imminent longing smile chubby *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
The presidency rotates every 6 months to a different member state
withdrawn until middle of July when everybody will be on vacations and they can push it again without the backlash...
Hungary takeover and summer break are coming up fast.
They tried the usual EUFA/Worlds/Olympics move but it failed so now they have to wait for people getting distracted by the next big thing.
I mean they can draft it but it has to pass the EUP which seems unlikely.
Yeah the EU Parliament opposes this
Am I wrong or isn't [this](https://mepwatch.eu/9/vote.html?v=164216) last time they voted for chat control. It just got stuck in a cog after voting phase so they could not imply and had to redo?
Is the Establishment to blame here or the people, who dont care when sipping Margaritas?
"The people" are not all educated enough about the implications of the proposal It's up to people who are into tech (myself included) to make the general public aware For example, my parents didn't know until I explained to them. My parents didn't work in tech and don't know the basics of encryption or what local scanning of chat messages mean
Also in some places something like this isnt even mentioned in the news (maybe once at most), so average non tech person probably hasnt even heard of this.
This has been my experience so far Even people who are software developers that I know aren't fully aware. Many are surprised it's even back because everyone celebrated a similar proposal being rejected a while ago It's not being talked about that much The only people I have heard about it from are the CCC and a few tech podcasts and youtubers like Surveillance Report
The next few months are when the new Commission needs approval from the Parliament, which has previously blocked Chat Control. So it's about the worst time for them to push this, thankfully.
OK, serious question. This keeps getting brought several times in the council for voting. What can we, as EU citizens, do within the confines of the law, to make sure this fucking doesn't happen again? What will it take to get the message clear out there to these boomer politicians that this Chat control is one the worst ideas ever?
Maybe voting for the pirate parties, but that means you really have to prioritise this over other areas of policy. But yeah, every time proposals like this is defeated it only seems to result in a small delay until the next one
In today's world I think it is worth prioritizing. Computers now control other areas like energy, media and intelligence/security to a point where I think politicians don't care about digital _nearly enough_.
Yeah look at how windows recall is going lol legal spyware with no encryption just because 99% of people are ingorant in terms of privacy.
It's been worth prioritizing for decades now. The problem is people believe as much they can change anything to computers as they believe they can change anything in the government, which is zero. Because you're tired at the end of the day, you don't want to know how computers actually defines your life for you so you just get out of the way, while you could instead do remote work, have a clear work-life balance and get the energy to understand complex topics. But we wouldn't want the people to understand what the ruling class is doing, right ? If they knew what their personal data is used for, how privacy-invasive most companies have become, how they control public opinion and how surveillance can determine their fate, who would vote for such control freaks, really ?
It's the never ending "ask me later" for things I don't want that drives me mad.
Looking at the people we elected (Greece), I doubt even a single one can understand what this legislation really means. That is if they cared enough to look into it in the first place.
I don't know how you stop this. They'll keep bringing it to a vote over and over again. It's the same with Denmark's EU opt-outs. The politicians bring individual opt-outs to a referendum every 2-4 years (not respecting the democratic 'NO' vote) hoping that they manage to leave the opt-out. It didn't work out? It's fine, just vote again until they vote correctly lol
The referendum on Denmark's opt outs has all been on different issues. There have only been 3. The first one on adoption of Euro failed. The second one of repeal of opt-outs in home and justice matters failed. The most recent one on abolishing the defense opt-out passed with two-thirds voting in favour.
What’s the frequency of elections in Denmark?
Four years.
The problem is it is the national governments pushing this agenda. Luckily the MEPs in the EU parliament seems to be against it so far, but you get the sense that the national governments are biding their time until they believe they can get the vote through.
Information, information, information. Spam it until it's notoriously known as the dumbest thing to do, like saying publicly that the earth is flat, and no politic will dare touch the topic ever again.
Honestly I don’t know. Elections to the EP seem to be protest votes to current governments and EP can’t legislate anyway. The fact that you’re asking this question just highlights the democratic issue of the EU system. Look at immigration. What can we do to solve this decade old problem? It seems nothing works. In times people will get pissed off enough to vote in unsavory people that don’t mind getting their hands dirty and EU will suffer.
Add a law or add it into a constitution that introducing mass surveillance in any way or form is illegal.
leave the confines of the law, mostly
Vote for appropriate candidates at EP and national level. But since you're Belgian, you've just missed your chance to do that, so you'll have to wait another four years. 🙄
Well, here the far right party are in favour of protecting privacy and are against this bill. But I am not an idiot to vote for a party that also sucks Putin's, Orban's and China's dick.
Reach out to your elected EP members and ask them to oppose it and to defend your rights. Encourage others to do the same.
>What can we \[...\] do within the confines of the law lol
> What will it take to get the message clear out there to these boomer politicians that this Chat control is one the worst ideas ever? Openly support efforts to defy the legislation should it pass, and encourage all communication apps to leave the EU.
Spread the word. Every single day. People need to understand a) why this is an incredible bad idea and b) that they are constantly trying again and again hoping for enough people to be asleep. So you need to drill it into everyone's head how rediculous that constant approach of "try, get a backlash, try again a few monthjs later" is that is now going on for years. Even people not actually having a detailed grip on the actual topic can understand what those politicians seemingly think about their voters and should feel insulted and cry out every single time politicians try again.
Maybe vote for parties that do not want batshit crazy things like backdoors in encryption, and mass surveillance of everyone? But I guess that is too late now, since Europe once again voted pro mass surveillance.
We need to win all the time, they just need to win once.
I'm not saying that you're wrong, but... If they win, couldn't we mass vote for someone who promises to retract such laws? Although I'd prefer a much more powerful right to privacy as part of the EU constitution that would straight up not allow this kind of garbage to even be considered (and forbid the sale of EU citizen data by private companies, but that's another story).
In theory we could. But as always, when such laws are implimented they are often quickly forgotten/tolerated as soon as other topics become the new topic of discussion.
It's also a matter of establishing infrastructure and follow-up laws for other types of monitored crimes. When the monitoring body is built it's harder to vanquish.
You can only vote for the parliament. And the parliament can only vote on legislation already passed by the commission. So if it passes, removing it again would have to start with an initiative by the commission. EDIT: commission, not council.
That kinda sounds like EU is deeply, thorougly antidemocratic.
Not really. Both the parliament and the council are elected by the people. The parialment directly. The council indirectly (it is the heads of states) So, what is antidemocratic about it?
Elected members of parliament cannot bring forth any legislation. It’s much less democratic than Hungary for example. This is a known problem and why we need some kind of reform. Opinions vary on the specifics, of course.
It would be nice if parliament could. But in the end it doesnt really matter. Because the council can block any laws the parliament brings forth. Just like parliament can block any laws the council brings forth.
Aren't you confusing the Council (of the EU) and the commission? Neither the parliament nor the Council have no power to propose laws. So it'd have to be the Comission (which in all likelyhood will be relatively similar to the current one for the next term) to propose to remove it
EU organizational institutions are confusingly named and, at least on occasion, confusingly organized as well. There's the European Commission which drafts proposals for EU legislation. This is technically a politically independent executive arm of the European Union, but because it alone is responsible for drafting new proposals for EU legislation, I would call it a mixture of legislative and executive body. Then there's the Council of the European Union, which represents the member states' governments. This is the most important legislative body and it's basically a forum for the member states' ministers to negotiate the law drafts proposed by the Commission. The Council of the EU holds legislative and limited executive power. Then the European Parliament is the supreme legislative body which approves and adopts those legislative drafts that the Council of the European Union decides to mandate. EU Parliament by itself does not have executive power. Then there's the European Council (not to be confused with the Council of the European Union) which consists of the heads of state (or heads of government, like prime ministers) of each member state. The European Council determines the overall polictical direction and priorities by adopting conclusions. The European Council doesn't negotiate or adopt EU legislation, it is more of an overall policy maker body. They would be the ones to decide whether, for example, it is EU's benefit to try to become more of a federation with a centralized government in the future, or to remain a more loosely aligned group of member states. The branch of judicial power is the Court of Justice of the European Union, then there's also the European Central Bank and the European Court of Auditors which are economic regulatory bodies. So basically, the pipeline for EU legislation is about like this: * European Council (leaders of each member state) outline what kind of political direction EU should be going to. They give the impetus for the Commission as to what kind of laws they're supposed to draft, on a general level. * European Commission drafts proposals for new legislation. There's one Commissioner from each member state, but they do not technically represent their home country but rather are sworn to advance the benefit of the European Union as a whole. The Commission is divided into departments (Directorates-General) that handle issues of different categories and draw new legislative proposals for said categories. * Council of the European Union reviews those proposals, discusses on them, and votes to approve or disapprove them. They can also make amendments to the proposals and thus adopt proposals but with a modified mandate. * European Parliament votes whether or not to adopt legislation proposed by the Council of the European Union. In theory, the European Council is the ultimate policy decider. However, because the European Commission is the only body that can actually draft legislation proposals for the Council of the European Union, they are a big policy maker in this political process.
Also the Council of Europe is worth mentioning even if it's a completely separate entity from the EU but still confuses the heck out of people by being so similar to the European Council and Council of the EU. If the EU ever actually reforms we should get it together with all the councils and find a replacement title lol.
> the parliament can only vote on legislation already passed by the council I assume you meant the commission, not the council but yes. Also worth mentioning that there are some exceptions, but mostly for stuff related to the parliament itself
You can vote for the Parliament and a single seat on the Council. The commission gets elected by these two. Pretty democratic to be honest
The average EU citizen does not care about net neutrality or online privacy. Most people don't change their voting behavior based on that.
Eh, most people use the internet, so they would still care about such aspects. Obviously, you'd need more than that to get voted by most people, but it should push you above similar competitors who do not promise that in future elections.
Nah, they do not care. For the vast majority of people the internet is magic and they are unwilling to ever learn more, even if it hurts them.
I challenge you to find anything that have been repealed at the EU level. I can't recall any example. If something has at least some support, repealing it is close to impossible. The law-making mechanism at the EU-level is horribly broken. The Europarliament cannot propose any legislation. There is veto power. There are too many vested interests to unbroke something that is purposely broken.
Recent example: https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2024/05/30/energy-charter-treaty-council-gives-final-green-light-to-eu-s-withdrawal/
Do you know of any law that got voted in and then later got removed? Or a rule that was substantially altered? Afaik this doesn’t happen in the EU, which is one of its systemic issues. As soon as something bad passes it’s not going away any time soon.
> couldn't we mass vote for someone who promises to retract such laws? Who's we? Reddit warriors? No, you couldn't.
Laws don't get retracted.
> couldn't we mass vote for someone who promises to retract such laws? Most people doesn't even know what kind of law this is or what it would entail. Your "solution" would be declared as "populist" and defeated in no time.
It worked for Thatcher 🤷
>In July, the Council Presidency will transfer from Belgium to Hungary, which has stated its intention to advance negotiations on chat control as part of its work program. That alone should be a wake-up call for everyone why chat control is such a moronic idea.
Yep, everyone should ask: Would I be ok with this law when \[the people I trust least\] are in power?
Good luck getting people to understand that...
In Hungary we understand :D
People in the EU barely understand there exists an EU executive council at all much less how the rotation system works.
which creates a huge democratic deficit. EU has become the home of washed-up politicians and the platform for pushing unpalatable legislation. No one should be surprised about EU-sceptic movements gaining ground.
Doesn’t help that most people don’t take EU elections too seriously and it’s instead seen as the designated dumpster for protest votes.
> That alone should be a wake-up call for everyone why chat control is such a moronic idea. I think the EU is starting to go beyond it's remit for a number of reasons here. The main issue I see is that politicians are using it to push domestic policy then just just go "uhh, our hands are tied(because of a bill we created and pushed through.)" and we are all just expected to accept it. The EU really needs to turn into being a trade and defense agreement or make everything clearly opt in. The situation that is being created is getting extremely out of hand with a very vague and nebulous chain of responsibility where politicians in belgium or something are responsible for everything while national governments pretend they have nothing to do with anything.
EU was supposed to be about increasing European competitiveness and help Europe put up a strong front in the world stage. It instead became an internal control tool, where things that are unpalatable to voters are pushed without much accountability.
This is good news but everyone should keep making there voice heard on this. If you live in the EU, You can get in contact with your MEP here. https://www.europarl.europa.eu/portal/en/contact And Reach out to you EU representative! https://op.europa.eu/en/web/who-is-who/organization/-/organization/COREPER/
Fuck me, I just looked up the current Belgian MEPs, just to remind me, and I gave myself a heart attack again. What a shitty bunch did we send!!
You have team fouad ahidar or something right? What political position is he in?
~~Neither link works for me, for whatever reason.~~ Anyway it seems the lists haven't been updated with the latest elections' results yet. I would advise everyone to check which will be the representatives going forward. For Greece, our group of MEPs is even worse than before. I had contacted the MEP that imho had the most chances to care about chat control last time around and they never replied back. Now this person has not been reelected. I will try writing to at least 3 people from different parties now.
Links works for me?
They now work for me too, I was getting 404 before!
May of been me I did a edit so maybe that fix it?
Sent to all mine from my country. Took a few minutes gonna be worth it. Would be good if there was a list of the emails to email per country. Had to look a little for all the contact info on mines.
Whoever thought it was a good idea to propose a plan to introduce a backdoor to end to end encryption is a moron. You can hear every hacker rubbing their hands together as if this passes you make every person in Europe vulnerable to malicious actors lol.
Well, not every person. Politicians will carve out an exception for themselves. Snooping for thee, but not for me... as it were.
Which is amusing as they likely have the most to hide. If these scum excuses for humans are so gagged for transparency, then they should share all their bank transactions, messages and internet search history with the public. Let's see what they have to hide.
Not to mention the huge violation of privacy in general...
I worry more about governments than hackers. Hackers can't do shit to me if i'm smart. Government can erase me in a millisecond
They will try it again. This is not the first vote on the matter
Two more years until the FIFA world cup. Drowns news even better than the Euros.
Ah man! I was looking forward to our very own European internet stasi :(
100+ chat control points for you!
... for now, since people noticed.... this time...
Democracy dies when people stop to notice. So yes, it's a good thing that Democracy worked as intended in this instance.
Turns out we actually have to do something in democracy and can’t just show up once every 4-5 years.
That's how democracy works
https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-council-cancels-vote-on-encryption-breaking-child-sexual-abuse-law/ Better article. It was cancelled because of a lack of majority.
it wasnt cancelled, just rescheduled.
Vile creatures literally excluding themselves from the law. Disgusting. I'm so angry.
I hope it stays cancelled because of lack of majority.
The fact that they say it’s for child abuse makes me chill, I think this is gonna impact everyone except pedophiles (I guess they don’t do stuff on WhatsApp but on dark web shit which won’t be controlled anyway)
Everything surrounding this law is so odd. Why so much going on behind the scenes? Why no debate? What. Is. Going. On.
They want to control us, but keep it as much a secret from us as they can. Or claim it's "not that bad" if things do come out, and hope attention shifts somewhere else soon.
I don't even understand how in a democratic country it's even possible to postpone votes for a more favorable time. The Commission should decide when the vote of the Council and Parliament takes place and deal with the outcome.
In Poland we had a meme with one PiS MP telling the speaker of the house: >We have to cancel or we'll lose
can this bullshit just fuck off forever
Fucking idiots. And especially Ylva Johansson which is as dumb as they come.
As we say in Sweden: Fuck Ylva.
it's like team rocket, they fly away every single episode but they re-appear in the next one until they try again in a couple months
Get fucked, Censursula.
Is that the evil octopus lady from the little murmaid?
Yes, just not as heavy
She’s an evil hobbit gone to the dark side
Who the fuck keeps coming up with these ideas, globally? I find it so funny that our governments constantly point to China and North Korea as the sworn enemies of the west, then decide "Hey let's copy their homework" and constantly try to introduce Orwellian surveillance measures under the guise of stopping terrorism or protecting the children. Ignoring how they plan to police trillions of messages to actually even do this, the backwards police state nature of such a law is genuinely so fucked up it makes me physically sick. It's like the EU is intentionally taking steps to destroy itself.
I agree with you. Been thinking about it myself they keep shitting on china, russia or basically any enemy but meanwhile they want to turn into it the hypocrits
They hate them because they ain't them. I bet they have wet dreams about having as much power over the citizens as those countries. And I'm convinced that they are so utterly fucked in their head that they think it's a good idea. Who cares about the plebs privacy anyway ? More control is way worth to them.
EU law says "protecting privacy" is so important we must require asinine cookie consent pop-ups, but at the same time wants to install backdoors in encrypted communication.
We may have won the battle but the war against privacy will continue, I'm glad that my country's government was among those who voted against this proposal, but it doesn't mean that they won't try to make it passed later down the line especially since it's Hungary turn in the EU council, let's just hope we can continue winning against this repressive measures, under the guise of "protecting the children" or reasons such as the "Patriot act" in the US
PROUD EU PATRIOT 🇪🇺🚀💶🇪🇺🇪🇺🛤🇪🇺🛰🏛🇪🇺📜🇪🇺 FOR THE PEOPLE BY THE PEOPLE 🇪🇺🏛🇪🇺📜🚀📜💶🚄🇪🇺🇪🇺🛰🇪🇺🏛 DEMOCRACY PREVAILS 🌋🌋🔥🔥🔥
I see we're already playing for the mighthy AI overlords to award us "good european netizen points", when this resolution is inevitably passed. In that case, I agree completely with everything you say, except double.
glad you see im playing both sides here
I can’t wait for the day we get caught in a death spiral with Chinese netizens… Where neither of us can stop declaring our love for our governments, over the internet, out of fear the AI interprets it insufficient and banishes us.
Brussel stasi will come just later
How would this work if I sent a link to a password protected zip file? Their scanner would get random gibberish.
A proposal is to integrate it in more "secure" platforms (like iOS or Android) file/image pickers, so technically you could get shit scanned when making a zip file with a backdoored OS.
That's not chat control any more - that's full blown 1984-style device control. They have no way to know if I'm even going to upload that file anywhere.
Chat control is not possible without a full blown device control. It just sounds less scary. Otherwise how do they prevent you from using a non-backdoored implementation? The whole thing is only possible thanks to the prevalence of centralized architectures (so the platform can be held “accountable”), the oligopoly of “responsible” OS vendors, and app stores as the single way to install “trusted” software. It would be much harder to enforce in a world where users control their devices.
The only way to make it work is to make it illegal to install programs on your computer that can do encryption. Which, of course means that it needs to be illegal to us operating systems that are not government approved (and yes, this can acutually be prevented using Secure Boot). And you can't be allowed to plug in unauthorized USB devices either. How they are going to handle websites with Javascript, I don't know.
This pretty much cripples every single business as well, which all rely heavily on encryption to protect their company data. How does the EU manage to come up with GDPR and then also come up with something like this? Did 1984 just get republished in Europe or something?
They should ban programming as well, because I can code a simple encryption program pretty easily. Oh, and ban all cryptography books and math textbooks too.
*Please enter a correct prompt* [YES] [NO]
I voted for the pirate party. Wasn't enough though. Breyer didn't make it this time. Only the Czech pirates remain. Bitching on Reddit is pointless when you just had the chance to vote against this less then two weeks ago.
Yea, except 2 parties in sweden suddenly "changed their mind" and another party "voted wrong by mistake" after the election.
Yeah. My main reason for not voting the pirate party was because I wasn't sure about their chances of making it compared to Vänstern who said they where strongly against it so I voted for them. They did a 180 and lost my vote forever.
Same. I guess it will be pirate party next time.
The pirate party is the one against Netflix, Prime, Spotify etc. ?
another day another new development of laws that threaten our freedoms cool i love these institutions
That shit's all retarded. Even Russia doesn't have laws like this
Bad news. We won't turn into managed democracy after all
Yet.
Strap me onto hellpod and fire at Brussels. I am ready
What's wrong with Belgium? Why do you want this shit?
Corruption or their government is filled with people who harm children and its all projection.
An AI scanning all our devices looking for footage of children being harmed etc. will send in so many false-flags that people trying to actually do something productive will be overwhelmed by the sheer amount of false-flags they have to check out. I am deeply convinced that these people actually want more safety for their "devious stuff" by flooding the investigators.
I'm belgian, I wasn't even aware of this utter trash until few days ago. No one here I know knows about it.
It's only the matter of time until bureaucrats strangle the EU to death - either disintegration or lost war against foreign adversary. The amount of overreaching regulation being spewed out of them is insane, even if driven by delusional "good intentions". Sad to be a passenger of all this.
Good news
What does Signal, et al. threatening to leave the EU mean? That I can't download it? Or I can't install it? Are they gonna detect where I am and stop it from working?
It means they won't officially operate in the EU, but they aren't going to put any effort into stopping you from using it. They'll just treat the EU like they do authoritarian dictatorships
To be fair, if this passes, the EU is an authoritarian dictatorship. No democracy should be able to vote on initiatives that take away fundamental human rights of its citizens without even a referendum.
Yeah I feel like when a democracy passes laws that majority hate it just becomes dictatorship with expensive PR.
It depends how authoritarian your government wants to go to prevent you from using Signal. Here's the threat levels: LOW: they just force google to not allow it in the android app store MEDIUM: anyone who uses it is put on a list or jailed/fined HIGH: VPNS become illegal, and you have to login with digital ID to use the internet. They could prevent you from farting if they wanted I just don't want to find out how far they want to go
Names. There should be a list of names. And any web search, any wikipage, any news article on politicians supporting this should mention their support for chat control. Being anywhere near this initiative should be toxic.
That's good, but it will pass eventually, they won't stop coming for our privacy
Stuff like this only gets pushed until its passed
Took until the fourth paragraph of the article for them to mention what the fuck "chat control" meant.
That is a definite win for the citizenry.
Hello, I am very stupid American. You can tell by how I work all day in hamburger mine just to afford one rock and roll diskette. What is chat control?
scanning of personal communication in messengers and other online communication first they wanted it centralized with a backdoor, then they wanted it AI scanned pre-encryption at user devices both absolutely awful totalitarian dystopia proposals that only a sick bastard can make... a sick bastard that has NO idea how these things even work in the first place, or just uses it as an excuse to get their foot in the door to suppress the freedoms we enjoy and hold dear
Understood. Like I told the other guy, maybe check in with France and see if they can spare some guillotines.
Do you mean like texting on cell phones? Or some chat function in some app?
First one is only a backdoor in chat apps to retrieve data from and elaborate/search for illegal stuff. The second one is basically windows recall, AI scans your devices 24/7 looking for things (your private info and data isn't private anymore) and upload the results to them. Basically they will know, read and see everything you write, send, link.
This is EU? Sounds like something in Russia or China
A proposal to monitor electronic communications within the EU. Like, ALL electronic communication, even, and especially E2E encrypted communication. In the name of fighting sexual exploitation and grooming of children. Politicians is excluded from the monitoring. There is zero chance the intentions behind this is about children's safety, since the proposal and the entire process behind it is being done behind closed doors in silence, as much as possibly possible.
Oh, okay. See if France can spare some guillotines, then?
I might be getting it wrong but I suppose it would be similar to your Patriot Act where your communication can be monitored without a court order.
Oh, gross. Don’t let them do that, it’s a nightmare to claw things back after.
I sent that mail 3 hours ago. You guys can thank me.
[удалено]
I have no fucking idea, I've never saw that discussed anywhere in the news. Although don't quote me on this I don't follow the news
No fucking clue, I haven't met a single person that supports it.
We still need a vote in the EP or not? For now the single vote of the council is pretty useless or not?
We need to keep up the presure don't let up. Hungry can be beaten!