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Comments (211)

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  neobrain
  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.
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  m132
  The central bank, council, and commission have to get thoroughly investigated. The amount of questionable decisions coming from those three in the recent (15) years is extremely unsettling. The parliament and courts are practically the only institutions preventing things from hitting the fan at this point, and struggling to do so, it seems.
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  mdp2021
  Do also see:# Italy warns against Chat Control mass surveillance, but votes in favour of it (digitalcourage.social)https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48783340Do, because already there nuances (towards the better or worse) are revealed, which are not evident in journalism as we have it. The whole story needs more investigation than the stubs.But the way they are managing it in the workflow does not seem too linear...
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  mattrighetti
  They're not going to stop, are they?
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  abroszka33
  There is no way to stop these so just lets get going. The sooner we have age and ID verification on every single website and app the sooner we will have a working decentralised internet that avoids it.
• grg0
  The politicians voting for this are either thoroughly stupid or corrupt. From the linked site:> The position adopted by the Council today paves the way for providers of Internet services to resume their efforts to detect and report material on child sexual abuse to the police.- Jim O’Callaghan, Irish Minister of Justice, Interior and MigrationExcept that many of those providers are not European. Good job handling all of your citizens' data to foreign entities, Jim. Way to go, champ.I don't know how to put it nicely, but some members of the Council need to cease operations, or be ceased.
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  hdgvhicv
  EU council is 27 individual governments each elected by their members. It’s like the US senate pre 17th ammendemnt.
• budududuroiu
  I used to think Varoufakis' critique of the EU being a structurally anti-democratic union was just coming from the angle of an edgy leftist that was forced by the Troika to do austerity.Day in and day out, the EU proves Varoufakis right.
• mdp2021
  What frightens me is, as usual, the assumption of conformism that may just remove people from services."Present a document" // "No, certainly not to you" // "Do without then"The straight will say "no", but their lives will be extremely complicated, possibly in the unawareness of those that just take compliance to the absurd for granted - as the weak call survival paramount and cannot see that their modus is subjective. That we won't have it is something that they cannot even conceive. Adults are noise to them.
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  petcat
  Am I crazy or is this website not allowing me to opt out of cookie tracking unless I sign up for a subscription?I know the EU cookie banners have basically ruined the internet, but this seems like a whole 'nother level of obnoxious.
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  wronex
  So what platforms will this apply too? What platforms Dow sit already apply too? All SMS, large email providers (Gmail?), WhatsApp, Apple services?
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  kingleopold
  it will %100 pass at some point. no way around it.
• stavros
  Please email your members of parliament: https://fightchatcontrol.eu
• glenstein
  Just saying I would buy a chat control legislation calendar, where each month of the calendar has significant meeting days of deliberation bodies, elections/nominations of people to relevant boards, as well as historical dates of previous attempts to pass chat control.Just so the cycle is easily knowable.
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  Grollicus
  The main argument for this seems to be that they catch many pedos by using image recognition tech on facebook etc.Thus, discontinuing the permit to use these techniques did have enforcement numbers of those crimes found drop significantly.I'm wondering if they've given up real policing of these crimes completely?!Spreading pedo content on Facebook, those people have to be the dumbest of the dumb? Everyone spending even a single critical thought on their crimes won't be caught by this.And they say enforcement numbers drop significantly? Meaning they don't catch many other people? What the fuck are they even doing? Did they completely give up trying to find the real criminals, and instead fall back on sugar-coated figures to conceal that failure?
• anthk
  This is illegal in Spain.
• ascotan
  i thought apple is already doing this on all it's devices?
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  varispeed
  This would be illegal in Germany. I wonder why law enforcement is not looking into this. It is similar to having abusive husband control wife's communication - just at scale and for ideological reason. This is a violent act against whole population, applied indiscriminately. It fulfils updated definition of terrorism in Germany and it is exploiting legislative apparatus of the EU to enact this violent act. German people should report this and these people behind it should be investigated and presumably arrested.
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  sph
  This is democracy manifest. What a joke.
• rdm_blackhole
  As always the EU does not disappoint regarding it's stance on privacy. What a joke.
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  sunshine-o
  At that point it has become clear to most Europe is not a democracy anymore. It has lost any legitimacy.
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  SilverElfin
  Governments don’t work for people. Yet they use terms like democracy all the time. The repeated attempts at chat control are so blatantly anti civil rights but also disrespectful of democratic principles. Why do EU citizens tolerate this? Are they okay being made a fool of or is this just not an issue for them after all?
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  spwa4
  This means the council has systematically overridden the will of both EU parliaments and states' objections in pushing this legislation. TLDR: there are, roughly and not 100% accurately speaking, 4 ways to make legislation at the EU level1) commission + parliament (meaning the EU commission has initiative (veto rights over any law, like the US president), and parliament can only "propose amendments", which pass with 50% of votes, or deny). This is what normally happens.Parliament denied the law. Twice.Member states vetoed the legislation at least 3 times (it doesn't technically work like this but member states can force the commission to veto legislation, and Belgium, Hungary and Denmark have done so) (technically member states can force the EU commission not to introduce legislation and because nobody else can do so either, this is normally effectively a veto)2) council + parliament. This is where we are. If the executives of the member states (NOT parliaments) want to push through a vote, they can use this path. The difference is that only 2/3 majority of parliament can stop the law from passing or put in amendments.Technically, this is meant for bypassing the EU commission. But of course, in reality it is for getting past the Danish and potential Belgian and Hungarian and other's vetoes. The commission really wants this.3) council + commission. This completely overrides any legislative involvement in ... well, legislation. They have already threatened to do this.4) the council can just force legislation through without anyone's approvalNormally "democracy" in the EU means that legislation requires BOTH a majority of Europeans to agree (Parliament) AND no executive government. Both have already been bypassed.This refers to "Chat Control 1.0", allowing facebook and other messaging providers to scan chats for harmful content (which they had been temporarily allowed to do by a recently expired law). It means current scanning is illegal.Just so we're clear, this basically means that all messengers (not any specific one) will have to intercept everyone's messages, scan for specific words, and if found report the whole chat history to the police.Of course, it already turned out "BTW carrousel" (an illegal tax avoidance strategy) is one of the sentences they scan for to "protect the children".The article itself also contains evidence against the idea that this protects children (that child protection investigations keep increasing despite the scanning not taking place anymore)
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  superkuh
  The same as every other fascist control measure. Voted down. Voted down. Voted down. Then forced through through some obscure mechanism bypassing the will of the people and becoming law forever.
• vb-8448
  > Although the Council emphasizes that the *scans will be limited to the absolutely necessary extent* and that no general, indiscriminate surveillance will take placeI'm 100% sure that this is the case and about the good intentions of the proposers./s
• redsocksfan45
  [dead]
• LePetitPrince
  [dead]
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  bitcurious
  Hn is a goofy place. It feels like on odd days we see posts like this, about the EU creating this legal framework for the destruction of privacy. On even days we see posts about quitting American saas in favor of Europeans on the basis of privacy. Somehow the dots never connect.