For context, this refers to "Chat Control 1.0", allowing facebook and other messaging providers to scan chats for harmful content (which they had been temporarily allowed to do by a recently expired law).
This is still problematic, but the far more dangerous Chat Control 2.0 that would weaken end-to-end-encrypted messengers like Signal is not being discussed here.
Not to diminish the gravity of the new development, but the defeatist "no way to prevent this" narratives that are already popping up here are getting old -- when in fact it looks like 2.0 is off the table for good because protest against it has proven effective.
That exemption had an expiration date for a reason. That they failed to consolidate that practice into a better law does not make forcefully overriding that expiration any more democratic.
I think the problem is really that law enforcement have got used to outsourcing this kind of policing to private operated platforms (at least here in Germany). I was actually at the local police station because I notified them via an online mechanism about sth that looked very CSAM to me in a random forum tracking some gossip/Internet meme (actually I did not really look further than a title because that can be already illegal). Just dropping the link (which I thought would be just auto scanned and sent into some central pool), led to the fact that I had to go there in person, wait and had to listen to a speech about the fact that it can be easily illegal to be in certain places in the Internet and that I should be careful because I had a daughter in the age. It was almost that they are threatening me. They told me that all the CSAM stuff anyways comes through the provider and that they would do raids if needed. They cannot do much anyhow on the state level if they do not get the local ISP and IP delivered.
It felt rather absurd and somewhat scary/dystopian that there are Internet companies that sent cops out to do raids based on some IP. According to the police officer it seemed very effective.
You wouldn't be the first person to try reporting a crime and then discover that police care about arresting people a lot more than they care about arresting the right people, as they threaten you with arrest yourself. That was my first experience with police too. I was under investigation for a year before they dropped the charges.
"If not for the EU, a much worse version of this would already be law in the nation states."
In some, in some not. Not everyone is the UK. Many nations which had a totalitarian government in the 20th century are more wary about this sort of sweeping surveillance power.
The "charm" of pushing this through the circuitous path via Brussels is that few people and even few media outlets are paying attention to what happens in Brussels. Everyone is still obsessed with their national politics.
If the majority of national governments didn't want this, the Council wouldn't push for it. That's literally who the Council is composed of.
I think a good step for transparency would be forcing Council votes to be open so the ire could be redirected at the appropriate national governments instead of letting them EU-wash their unpopular ideas.
Exactly. As demonstrated by several countries pronouncing themselves against it every time this comes up.
If the government of Denmark really wants to implement this, let them, but the idea that a tiny country's officials, elected by a population of 6M that their media managed to convince of the utopia to come when privacy doesn't exist, manages to make another 450M in 26 countries comply to their will (not to call it delusion) is frightening.
Sure, you are right, but that does not mean that the EU as such is totally innocent in this.
Most liberal constitutions of Europe operate on the principle that their governments cannot be fully trusted in execution of their power and need a lot of oversight from the people. This is a result of hundreds of years of bad experience with politicans who had too much power.
The EU is somewhat more idealistically built and thus easier to abuse as a loophole for pushing things that would domestically hit a lot of counter-wind - by the same governments that are domestically limited by their constitutional order, but nevertheless still full of power-hungry people who are seeking ways to increase their power.
Frankly, for me that means that the EU should be reformed to make that less easy, but a colossus of 28, soon-to-be-more countries is approximately as amendable as the US Constitution - theoretically, yes, practically, the hurdles are extremely high.
I don't think we can fundamentally solve the problem that politics attracts psychopaths. We can only limit their power, and that, as of now, works better on the national level than on the continental one.
That's a completely backward way of seeing it. "Nations" want nothing. The EU council is obviously an EU institution, the institution least accountable to the people of the EU. They want it and force it through as best they can. The parliament, the EU institution most accountable to the people of the EU (not that it's saying much) tried to stop it.
The Council represents state governments, not nations. A nation consists of all the people in it, not just those who appointed themselves to speak on its behalf.
... appoint themselves? You are aware how governments are chosen in all member states? Are you calling into question the democratic processes of national governments?
Either way, your issue is with national governments and not the EU, which curbs their excesses.
Far from it. This is a classic example that national governments use EU to launder unpopular policy at home. "We have to, it's a EU requirement". It's hard to think it's not by design, that indeed EU is made to "curb the excesses" of popular accountability.
UK played that game for decades, and it went as it had to go.
I think you're misunderstanding something here. "Chat Control" is a term invented and popularized by privacy groups who oppose any scanning of private chats for any purpose; any confusion caused by having the same term refer to different things has to be laid at their feet, although they argue it's appropriate because any kind of scanning is abusable in basically the same ways. The people who support scanning private chats don't use the term "Chat Control".
Why is it currently illegal? If I have a service that let's users communicate, why is it illegal to look through those communications? (especially after they've signed my 400 page EULA). It would make moderation impossible otherwise.
Or are we saying this is being used for something specific that happens to be illegal?
> Why is it currently illegal? If I have a service that let's users communicate, why is it illegal to look through those communications?
Not all services should be treated equally. We've figured this out earlier about letters, it's typically illegal, even for postal services, to open and read your letters without your consent, because there is an expectation about privacy.
Fast forward some years since then, and now basically IMs are the new letters, and sadly we have few big actors (yet again) controlling the transportation of our communication. People generally still want privacy in their communications, so regulations were made that companies cannot open your messages ("letters") without your consent, so we humans still have more or less the same protections as before, just tailored to the new specific implementation.
It guarantees that the content of sealed letters is never revealed, and that letters in transit are not opened by government officials, or any other third party. The right of privacy to one's own letters is the main legal basis for the assumption of privacy of correspondence. The principle has been naturally extended to other forms of communication, including telephony and electronic communications on the Internet, as the constitutional guarantees are generally thought to also cover these forms of communication
Moderation is when others remove publicly posted content because you don't want to see it. (Censorship is when others remove publicly posted content because they don't want you to see it.)
You don't need moderation for your private communication.
Why should you have any right to look through everyone's private communications? Nobody really has any choice to reject your EULA if they want to stay in contact with someone on your service. I could force you to sign a ToS that includes "By using our service you owe us $10 million and agree to donate your kidney to our CEO" in order to reach your overseas grandma, but that doesn't mean it's actually enforceable or legal...
People sending unwanted DMs is an obvious reason. At the very least, users should be able to report DMs and then that should allow for moderation.
It's very common in some spaces to get people who send unwanted (spam/harassment/etc) DMs to tons of people. Just expecting everyone to block those people makes for a horrible user experience, because it means new users might be suddenly met by a bunch of unwanted DMs from aggressive randos that remain unbanned. You really need to be able to ban these people (and that means being able to verify that they did what they're accused of).
In some EU countries it is not only illegal, but also unconstitutional.
For example, Art 15 of the Italian constitution [1]:
"Freedom and confidentiality of correspondence and of every other form of
communication is inviolable.
Limitations may only be imposed by judicial decision stating the reasons and
in accordance with the guarantees provided by the law."
Would be interested in seeing your sources for this. I've yet to see evidence that this has the significant upsides that would, definitely not justify, but at least explain, the push towards limiting fundamental freedoms.
There's a reason "who will think of the children" is ridiculed: there's no evidence that this is the intent or that there are outcomes. Everything I've read to date shows that surveillance is not effective in curbing CSAM, that the people (and especially organised crime) that engage into such activity are not using plain text and twitter to talk to each other, that those solutions that are known to have outcomes are not being invested in or enforced, etc.
The whole Epstein sage is very closely tied to the current US administration, I haven't seen much of it being tied to anything about the EU Council. I think you might confuse the government ties Epstein had, at least the ones we knew about.
Ahh, to be that naive again. Those were the times. One definitely sleeps better.
If you haven't done any digging, don't make such claims. This is a network that goes way beyond the current US administration. I'm sorry you're still trusting whatever media you consume.
(I'm not gonna debate this. It's not that difficult to find some investigative research on this.)
> You think the European wealthy are innocent of pedophilia?
You think children should be executed in the streets? Neither of us said any such thing, why ask that as a question even?
My only point being that Epstein himself doesn't seem related to EU Council, based on facts, while he was very close friend of the current sitting US president, and the whole thing is still being actively swept under the rug by the US Justice Department. Two governments located on two different continents...
Those narratives pop up from users that have a clear anti-EU bias (and I suspect they might not even be from the EU considering how ignorant they seem to be about how it works, its function ans structure, etc.
Even if it is foreign propaganda, the problems it exploits are real. Either you're solving the problems, or you're pushing people into the arms of said propaganda.
You see an article about how the EU tries to force a law after it got struck down by forcing it through with a legal trick and all you can think of is how any comment that critizes this is propaganda? Get a grip
It's strongly connected to the structure of the EU though, and the weak control that voters have over appointments to the commission, and every level of indirection is one at which the appointer can be influenced.
If EU institutions are used to push this sort of thing, we must treat that as what they are for. Systems do not get a pass because someone external is 'using them', but must be treated holistically.
It is quite disturbing that more and more ofent critique of policy or a political system like the EU is framed as some convinient boogey man's propaganda.
Due to lack of transparency. The way the EU is structured makes it way easier for national governments to push policies under the radar and avoid any type of responsibility by deflecting any backlash to the EU (due to fundamental flaws in how it's functioning).
The EU already has in place, apparently, a Digital Services Act that basically stops access to some part of the web. That the slope may bring to enlarged web inaccessibility - and an unlivable eu ("What do you mean you have no internet, no web access?! We take it for granted").
That some actors may ride it, is not their stain, but the eu's.
Kindly explain why some platforms have issued notice that access would be restricted pending age verification. To my inquiries, that is owing to the DSA. Was I fed wrong information? Where, in which part?
And, about «precisely the misinformation I mentioned earlier»: you think this infomess was caused by foreign agents, instead of internal european lack of clarity?
If a government body wants to interfere in your privacy and take it away, isn't it normal to be against that government body pushing that policy?
It's not a bias, it's just a normal common sense reaction to tyrannical behavior, and pushing against that government body is the only way to enact the positive change you want to see.
Otherwise if you just bend over and take it all the time, just so randos on the internet don't accuse you of being "anti-EU", then nothing will change and you'll see more and more of your rights taken away. And even if it were "EU bias" it's my right as an EU citizen and taxpayer to have it if I want to.
Alos BTW, what's with this defensive attitude of treating the EU like some sacred cow that's somehow beyond reproach HN? Are they paying you guys to AstroTurf or what?
In that case you're against the people currently in government, not the body itself, i.e. some people against Chat Control ask for the dissolution of the EU, but would they ask for the dissolution of their national state if a similar law was passed in their national parliament? I think no
I've never seen anyone ask for the dissolution of the EU in chat control threads, and I read every one of them.
What I see people (Europeans) lamenting is how undemocratic the EU is. As much as I think von der Leyen should be imprisoned, the issue is not the people in the government, but the institution itself. The Commission and the Council are the ones pushing these things, every time.
The people in government are bad, and there's no reason whatsoever to think that'll improve amy time soon: what prevents bad people from doing bad things is the regulatory apparatus of checks and balances, which the EU very much lacks (in parts, granted). Worse, it has introduced US style corruption (or "lobbying") into countries that historically lacked it.
If Chat Control 2.0 passes, given the general direction this would be showing, I'd very much understand people wanting to exit from the EU and cut the amount of undemocratic bullshit they have to contend with.
But to return to your point, when something people strongly reject happens in their country, they do, rightfully, advocate for the dissolution of that government. Much harder to do with unelected bureaucrats sheltering in another country.
Something particularly ironic is that much of the EU's undemocratic nature comes from features designed specifically to prevent the EU from subsuming its member states. The best path to making Europe democratic again... would be a federal EU, with all the protections for individual member states stripped out, because member states are not a protected class.
The Euroskeptics want to go about this backwards. They correctly see the anti-democratic nature of the current EU structure and conclude that this is the only way European integration could happen, ergo we should not integrate Europe. The problem with this is that, even as 27 individual sovereigns, the former EU member states would still need to form agreements with one another and with other countries. Except this negotiation process is completely outside the democratic process even more than the EU currently is.
The underlying problem is that democracies do not stack or sum. Two democracies negotiating with one another become a dictatorship of whoever is doing the negotiating. The only way to preserve democracy is to give the people of both countries equal control over the matters assigned to the whole. The people must rule as one or they cease to rule at all.
I can entertain that this idea could be a solution IF done well, but what would be the path to democratic decision-making in this integrated EU? I strongly believe in people organising against the government, I think this is what can lead to change, or at least maintain the fighting spirit going.
The EU is handicapped by its very diversity on this. Imagine the situation where the EU is integrated, and the government wants to pass Chat Control 2.0, or some equally unsavoury measure. Imagine that some people or orgs manage to whip up the people of the Netherlands into protesting in the streets against it: it's extremely unlikely that Poles or Spaniards would be able to build a protest movement on top of that, if they were even aware of it, because of language and national sentiment ("it's just some people over there being angry about whatever, and mainstream media says there's nothing to see there, or that they're evil terrorists, and I don't understand their funny language enough to check").
There are some promising moves towards a EU-wide party in Mera25 for example (if I understand it correctly), but it's ultimately a party for English-speaking, basically well-off, educated, currently left-leaning, young people, which is nothing that one can build a deep movement on.
>The EU is handicapped by its very diversity on this.
Thousands of years of cultural heritage can't be bulldozed over and turned into a faceless economic zone similar to the US, just because the business class elites see it as a disadvantage to advancing their WEF globalist agenda where every person on the planet is to be an identical blank slate in an excel sheet and there's no borders, no religion, no identity, and no intellectual, educational, cultural and behavioral differences and all everyone just compete to be cattle in a race to the bottom for their corporate and real estate empires. This will always get pushback, mostly via voting far right.
If you want to convince people to freely give up their culture and identity in the name of EU economic advancement, you need to give them an incentive, a big economic one, and the EU sucks at this, and ambitious people looking for money go to the US, Dubai, etc. Money in the EU is still gatekept based on where you live and what nationality you have. EU will never go anywhere if still keeps this caste system where western/northern europeans are the noble gentry and eastern/southern europe the cheap labor peasants without any skin the game as they just become mercenaries who will sell their talent to US, China, etc anyone how will pay them better than Europeans.
>it's ultimately a party for English-speaking, basically well-off, educated, currently left-leaning, young people, which is nothing that one can build a deep movement on
Out-of-touch theater kids from upper class families who never did any hard labor jobs and spent their lives in an eternal Erasmus travel and party program, aren't gonna be popular with anyone but their own bubble as nobody who's struggling to pay bills, deal with unemployment from layoffs or lack of safety in public spaces due to migration, will ever empathize with them. It's the same posh European nobility cohort the hugely unpopular and equally out of touch Ursula von der Leyen comes from, where she grew up living abroad, traveling, partying and studying surrounded by private security, and then lectures the working class on "difficult decisions". We would guillotine people like that for less.
> but would they ask for the dissolution of their national state if a similar law was passed in their national parliament? I think no
?! Yes. Well, to some of us maybe not yet chat control given some proper well conceived legislation. But age verification, yes, may be one of the reasons to ask for dissolution.
This is still problematic, but the far more dangerous Chat Control 2.0 that would weaken end-to-end-encrypted messengers like Signal is not being discussed here.
Not to diminish the gravity of the new development, but the defeatist "no way to prevent this" narratives that are already popping up here are getting old -- when in fact it looks like 2.0 is off the table for good because protest against it has proven effective.