Roberta Metsola's actions this week jeopardise the legitimacy of the EU project as a whole.
It's clear that member countries use the EU as a blame-laundering mechanism to pass domestically unpopular laws, but the forcing of this vote under the urgency procedure that requires absolute majority to reject, on the last EP session before summer break is so blatant that it might awaken people that might've overlooked the structural failures of the EU and finally radicalise them
EDIT: bad wording, it's not that the urgency procedure causes the voting to require absolute majority, it's that an absolute majority second-reading is forced through an emergency procedure which is designed for first readings of legislation that's the implied meaning above
I'm really surprised at the hurry. The EU, and many EU governments, have been ramming through deeply unpopular legislation at a breakneck pace for no apparent reason, lately.
It feels like the last turn in a board game where everyone is busy taking points with no regard for the impact of the decisions on the theoretical next turn - because there is no next turn. Its really weird.
At least in some member states, that's a well used pattern when the soccer world cup is on (as in: people are focused on something else).
Which at least has been going on in the last weeks.
Whenever you see people complaining that the EU is "too slow", more often than not it's because they benefit directly from EU rushing things without thinking.
To understand whether/to what extent this is brazen, I'd be interested to learn the reasoning why urgency procedures are possible, and in particular, why the apparent majority against shouldn't have been enough, and what is needed to classify something as urgent.
Afaik, EU rules provide for urgent procedure only for proposals at first reading, while here it was used to compress a second reading vote and skip committee, just perfectly timed for the last sitting before recess.
The absolute majority seems to be an anti-paralysis instrument, where the onus is on the Parliament to reject something put in motion by the Council. I think the the asymmetry is that a vote to trigger the urgency procedure only requires a simple majority, whereas a rejection of that same legislation requires absolute majority.
To my reading, this reinforces the idea that Parliament is designed to be more of a rubber stamp for the Council.
What should worry everybody is the big picture (trying to abstract from politics, ideologies and specific situation). In recent years we had:
- Europe is now at war with Russia (neighbor)
- Its relationship with the US is rapidly deteriorating (main partner, de facto protector)
- Its relationship with China is also rapidly deteriorating
- It is getting very antagonistic with it own citizen and some individual member countries (such as Hungaria or Romania recently)
So there are a lot of justifications in each case but the overall picture is worrisome. You can't be antagonistic with everyone.
There is a reason why the North Korean regime is still around, they never forgot they need to keep a good relationship with at least one powerful ally.
The regulation was rejected today with 314 votes against, 276 in favor, and 17 abstentions, but because of Metsola's lawfare that classified this regulation as under an "urgent procedure", an absolute majority was required to reject.
The EU parliament has 720 representatives (at the moment 719, one seat is vacant apparently), so 113 representatives didn't show up for the vote. The absolute majority would've been reached with 361 votes.
Sure, then just let the normal legislative process run its course, no need to bleed political capital and get an already polarised electorate to hate the EU even more by shoving this legislation through in this way.
I'm not sure the EU needs to worry about political capital in the way that many national and regional governments do. Power moves through negotiations between institutions, party groups, lobbyists, activists, and heads of government rather than through anything voters can trace. If one is being unkind, it's basically backroom deals all the way down. Naturally, the EU has more respectable terms for this sort of thing, like "trilogue".
Look at how the President of the European Commission got her job in 2019 - there was an election campaign in which major parties presented lead candidates for the post and she wasn't one of them, then post-election - ta da - she's nominiated for the post and there's a confirmatory vote in the Parliament on which the ballot paper had precisely one name listed - hers.
I agree, my point about political capital was about the overton window shifting to allow a more mainstream EU-skeptic platform for national parties, platforms which up until recently were easily labelled Russophiles or European traitors for US money.
I was aware that VDL obtained her role by routing around the Spitzenkandidaten process, but I was never aware that her confirmatory vote was done in this way.
Her unpopularity at home also reinforces the idea that unpopular politicians can be sent to Brussels, because "in Brussels, you can't hear them scream".
It's absolutely legitimate to be upset. However, identifying a lawfare trick in a close vote to a dictatorship is serious hyperbole. I'm afraid that's counterproductive.
What changes with the return of Chat Control 1.0—and what stays the same:
*What is coming back:*
US tech companies are once again allowed to scan private messages without a warrant or prior suspicion. This affects direct messages on platforms like Instagram, Discord, Snapchat, Skype, and Xbox, as well as emails via Google’s Gmail and Apple’s iCloud.
*What remains unchanged:*
Public social media posts and files hosted in cloud storage could already be scanned without this law. Furthermore, private messages can always be reported by users, or monitored by authorities using targeted, court-ordered wiretapping.
*What is still NOT being scanned:*
End-to-end encrypted chats, such as those on WhatsApp, have always been exempt from these scans. Additionally, European providers of messaging and email services have never implemented chat control measures.
The Internet Watch Foundation, the group, funded almost entirely by big tech, who pushed for this vote to be held under emergency procedure, is already at work lobbying for the end of E2EE [1].
In a couple years time, Chat Control 2.0 will come about, and the same tyrants will use the EU admission [2] that there is no evidence that suspicionless scanning of private communications has led to an increase in criminal convictions or in rescued children to argue that we need to go further, and break E2EE.
Then I'm not very moved about this. I always assumed that anything unencrypted is scanned one way or another. What I care is not having a backdoor for E2E, i.e. like client-side scanning telling me what I am allowed to talk about like with the LLMs. CSAM excuse is a great excuse to turn every conversation to what we have with AI today.
The frog thing describes a transition period, All maximalist will lose because there is indeed need for privacy and need to deal with bad actors.
Privacy maxxers will pave the way to security maxxers. Maxxers are cancer, what needs to be done is to derive a stable system where all legitimate concerns are addressed.
"a measure it had rejected twice in March. Although a majority of voting Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) actually opposed the regulation (314 against, 276 in favor, 17 abstentions), the motion to reject it failed to secure the required absolute majority of 361 votes. As a result, mass scanning is now permitted again until 2028."
"Oh no we can't get a majority to pass the law!"
"Have you tried getting a majority to not pass the law?"
"Worth a shot!"
"It worked, should we also do this multiple times?"
What I don't understand, based on this: https://howtheyvote.eu/votes/195775 the votes are the other way around, with the majority being for. I'm guessing that site has it reversed then or I don't fully understand the proposal? Looking at which politicians from my country voted "no" on this site it seems to be mostly the ones that I'd expect to vote "yes", so that would support this site just having the options reversed.
On 7 July, MEPs voted 331–303 to fast-track the return of Chat Control 1.0 mass scanning. A binding vote follows Thursday, 9 July, where an absolute majority of 361 MEPs is needed to stop it. Take action now to demand they defend your private messages.
Assuming "yes" means stop control, parties in favor of chat control were:
- European People’s Party and
- Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats.
Democracy is when you just try and try again and again until it passes with 51/49. Then its democratic and legitimized and only evil terrorists would oppose those laws we have all democratically agreed upon.
Also, see the case of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%BCseyin_Do%C4%9Fru - if you aren't liked by the EU courts, they just accuse you of "collusion with Russia" and ban your bank account via "sanction policies". The ECJ doesn't have to provide any evidence of crime, you have to provide counter-evidence of the absence of crime (and good luck defending yourself without money). The ECJ judges, who interpret and impose these laws, are also not democratically really elected or anything, yet they hold power over your bank account. Makes ya think.
Good. Usually, I would be against this like any other normal human being, but I can’t lie I’m gloating about this one.
We have had lots of similar cases where people not only blindly followed new regulations (for example, regarding cash) but also encouraged them — and the justification was always the same: "Why do you use cash? Are you hiding something? Cash is for criminals!" Now that the government is about to monitor their chats, they suddenly complain. Why are you bothered by chat control? Are you hiding anything? Encryption is for criminals!
There are at least two options to verify age without humiliating procedure of taking a selfie with a passport like a porn actor.
Also, employees who do verification, sometimes create internal chats where they post pictures of clients and mock their appearance. We had such case with Alfa-Bank in Russia, where the photo of a funny client with a passport leaked to Instagram account of employee's friend. The bank paid approximately $20 as a compensation.
First, there are USB tokens that can hold a private key and sign messages. Such tokens could be sold at places accessible only to adults and verify that they are indeed adult. Obviously every token should hold the same private key.
Second, OS could implement "parent mode" which allows installing only white-listed, government approved apps (no Telegram or Whatsapp or other dangerous apps, but school apps are ok) and opening only white-listed government-approved websites. Put in jail the parents who did not set up a parent mode. Problem solved without passports and verifications.
If, however, the government insists on selfies, it means they just want to identify users and compile lists of "untrustworthy", "rebelious" and other persons of interest. In Russia, for example, every online account must be linked to a phone number or a passport, and all messages in social networks or messengers must be accessible in unencrypted form to the government. The access is automated and the government does not need to provide any documents (like court orders) for getting the data. Messengers that do not provide access, are illegal and are banned.
But now you have governmental overreach and legalized spying on European Citizens by (mostly) US Companies, so i would say that Law is truly binary bad.
Also how the Law was forced is extremely bad.
But hey it's once more proof that the EU is not a democratically spirited institution.
I am not sure if the absurdity of that statement is intentional, or a result of just how far the Overton window has drifted.
First of all, private companies shouldn't be given that responsibility to begin with. Meta in particular, has a long history of unethical and immoral usage of personal data. I won't use the term "illegal", as the question of legality becomes moot when punishment can be factored in as a cost of doing business [1]. Given the long list of things Meta has been caught doing, together with the in grand total zero seconds of jail time. I'm genuinely curious as to why you think this would be any different. I'd be surprised if it hasn't already happened, where in some room without windows and a lot of lawyers and business analysts, they have ran models and concluded that the cost of getting caught here is "a good financial decision". Wouldn't be surprised either if it also came with a guarantee of personal protection from prosecution, from NSA and other government entities, in exchange for a hand in that data pipe.
Secondly, for this to carry any plausibility for being motivated by "protect the children" arguments, it requires a minimal effort be enacted on more effective measures, and a measured balance with the cost this comes at. There are very good arguments for why this law would actively harm children. Throw in some Bayesian understanding, and you better have a state of the art system that somehow pretty much never has false positives, nor false negatives, where this was also the only way to detect and avoid said abuse. I don't know the numbers here, but I highly doubt this is a good idea, even with infinite generosity as to good intentions. We've all been children, we've all done stupid things. Now throw in the brilliant and surely-not-to-scar-a-child-for-life situations where parents and strangers looking at something they thought was private, and have a "grown up discussion" about. I shiver at the thought.
Thirdly, and aside from directly harming children in situations where they selves use technology and naively, and unwisely share pictures, consider how many take pictures of their own kids without clothes, because they are normal human beings, who do not consider there to be anything sexual about said depiction. You want to throw law enforcement in the mix here? Child protective services?
Fourthly, consider the possible negative for this abuse. If normal behavior (e.g. children being children, and e.g. normal parents otherwise sharing normal pictures if you are a normal person) can be selectively chosen as being a heinous crime, this should scare anyone, especially consider the political shifting trends towards fascism.
In this case, the phrase “consumer protections” is almost insulting when the things it’s supposedly protecting us from are a triviality compared to the horror show being introduced.
They're strong protections relative to most other jurisdictions, where there is no need to pass laws exceptionally allowing certain uses of private data, since such uses were never forbidden and sometimes are mandatory beyond what Chat Control 2.0 would mandate.
Here's a quote from the article itself, which works for both pro and con arguments:
"What is still NOT being scanned: End-to-end encrypted chats, such as those on WhatsApp, have always been exempt from these scans. Additionally, European providers of messaging and email services have never implemented chat control measures."
As I'm not trained in law, I have no strong opinions on if this proposal is a net positive or negative, almost any big name LLM will do a better job than I can manage by looking at the legal text, stroking my goatee and saying "I recon…". But what I can say that I've just seen a headline about a class action lawsuit in the USA due to grok making CSAM and the company failing to assist the police in their investigations, and another about Meta facing a lawsuit in India for delivering advertising for CSAM on Instagram.
My steelman in favour of the legislation:
The regulation closes a legal gap that would otherwise force platforms to stop using existing CSAM detection systems; it's a temporary framework that doesn't require universal mandatory scanning or ban E2EE, just keeps the legal basis for companies which choose to use detection/scanners while lawmakers continue negotiating a more comprehensive longterm solution.
My steelman against the legislation:
Scanning private communications, even allowing companies to "voluntary" do this, sets the precedent that the confidentiality of private correspondence is conditional rather than fundamental. Also, automated scanning inevitably has false positives. Also, has chilling effect on free speech, undermines trust in encrypted messaging.
Also, situationally, that it's "voluntary" means offenders can migrate to platforms which don't "voluntarily" do this.
This article seems to make good points about how useless and invasive Chat Control 1.0 is, but then posits Chat Control 2.0 as the answer. Is the latter not also terrible for privacy, demanding backdoors in all encrypted chat tech?
So much effort and emotions wasted. EU should have a mechanism that disallows repeatedly pushing for things until they are greenlit. Lack of this type of measure renders whole governance incapable of being taken seriously.
From Google: "The law seeks to require digital platforms and messaging services (like WhatsApp and Gmail) to automatically scan users' private messages, emails, and photos to detect and report illegal content"
-- EU policy makers are really honest people, hats off to them. There's no way politicians in my country allow their chats to be scanned, because they're very corrupt.
If the EU just were to redirect the resources they're currently allocating to regulations like AI and Chat Control rather towards developing a genuinely competitive OpenAI or Anthropic alternative …
Or you can just host your own server like IRC. This is beyond idiotic, if they think that pedophiles will begin to suddenly use WhatsApp then I very much doubt about their basic literacy.
Such a weak reasoning and method which they used to push this is ridiculous agenda lead me to strongly suspect there must be something else behind it.
How do we design such apps? Let's rule out age attestation (to allow only some age ranges) or scan of content because they are orthogonal to apps. What are the design patterns that prevent adults to meet kids? No messaging?
Once you realise the age group that are in that bracket of european law making you realise it's gen X AKA the helicopter parent generation and it all becomes less shocking.
I'm curious where I can go to see real regularpeople who support this, is there like a different side of reddit, comments section? I don't know anyone who is blatantly anti-privacy and I want to hear their reasoning. Otherwise this just seems to be the EU rolling into a weird distributed autocracy without anyone blinking an eye.
It's not so much "support" as "not caring." Most "regular" people, when they hear about measures like this, say "oh no, the government can see my boring text messages to grandma, who cares", much they same way they shrug off the dangers of having a robot vacuum live-streaming the inside of their house to China ("there's nothing interesting in my house, who cares").
I do not believe solutions to these issues will be found with government regulators. I believe they can be enabled by new technology that is designed to balance interests on all sides and actually enforce the guarantees IN CODE AND PROTOCOLS.
Having said that, I don’t think the tech industry is what it once was, dominated by cypherpunks working to create a better world. It has been captured by greed and “moving fast and breaking things”, as well as infighting. Greed (both in the form of web3 numbers go up, and benefiting from the greater fool while delivering no utility) and moving fast (web2 facebook / VC / dump shares on the public / lock in / extract rents). So no wonder the government eventually steps in, when the industry spends a decade without adults steering the ship. We have giant platforms controlling everything, and the rest has devolved into zero sum games and memecoins. The tech industry hasn’t led or even organized enough to get behind technology that can liberate users. Instead it’s been captured by for-profit interests. Mozilla and Apache are rounding errors.
Here is what open source can do when it comes to mass surveillance, and this would also solve the Flock problem here in the States, too:
> In these talks, the EU Parliament is pushing for a paradigm shift in how we approach online child safety, demanding: [..] Strict security standards for messaging apps (“Security by Design”) to prevent cyber grooming.
It's dispiriting to see a supposedly pro-privacy politician launder backdoors as "strict security standards".
I think they mean local scanning for CSAM - which feels like a reasonable solution that preserves privacy, but still addresses the real problem of, y'know, child abuse?
What is the false positive rate that you would be comfortable with such a scan having? What would be the risk of your personal photos and videos being recognized as CSAM and reported to your local police (and thus being shown to your local police) that you would be happy to accept?
Would you also be ok with not being allowed to send any mail unless you first scan the contents of everything in that envelope and include a generated signature that might tell the post office that you're sending CSAM? And then having the envelope delivered directly to police if the scan did indicate that?
Weaponizing our own property against us, mandating that it spies and tattles on us, turning inanimate objects into policemen to construct the most total surveillance dystopia, is not in any way "reasonable". In no way does it "preserve privacy".
And let's not pretend there are not already many other ways in which child abuse is detected and fought. When schoolteachers or doctors or neighbors or other family members notice something is amiss, when a CSAM group is infiltrated by police, or when a predator falls for a honeypot. This triggers an investigation, and at that point no digital lock can withstand modern targeted covert surveillance. But we are supposed to pretend none of this exists, and that encryption is an unassailable castle, and play along with the "going dark" lie, despite being more surveilled than at literally any point in history, including under the Stasi.
They only don't address child abuse, if by "child abuse" is meant a photo existing in some private shared-with-nobody hard drive, and not an actual human child being abused.
> What changes with the return of Chat Control 1.0—and what stays the same:
> What is coming back: US tech companies are once again allowed to scan private messages without a warrant or prior suspicion. This affects direct messages on platforms like Instagram, Discord, Snapchat, Skype, and Xbox, as well as emails via Google’s Gmail and Apple’s iCloud.
> What remains unchanged: Public social media posts and files hosted in cloud storage could already be scanned without this law. Furthermore, private messages can always be reported by users, or monitored by authorities using targeted, court-ordered wiretapping.
> What is still NOT being scanned: End-to-end encrypted chats, such as those on WhatsApp, have always been exempt from these scans. Additionally, European providers of messaging and email services have never implemented chat control measures.
> Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.
Don't get me wrong, I feel a desire to engage with this as well, but there is nothing I can possibly say about this that is not political, because this is purely a political choice.
This was overwhelmingly approved by "The Left in the European Parliament" (that's their actual coalition name) as well as the Greens. It was overwhelmingly rejected by the European People's Party (AKA "The Right"). And mixed among other groups (S&D and Conservatives).
Then you are wrong. This does not care about ideology and I would have to look for her, but that one was in commie party. Our mentally ill cunt voted against, but she votes against everything so broken clock.
Man, the EU is supposed to be the beacon of liberal democracy (after the light of Reagan's shining city on the hill is now truly extinguishing), but with shit like this, it's really making enemies left and right (metaphorically and spectrally).
Exactly. I consider myself euro federalist but bullshit like this creating a very strong antipathy.
If this is not some shady maneuver to scan user messages for security reason, because of, for example, possible incoming war then it's beyond absurd.
I would doubt that politicians pushing this are not understanding that pedophiles simply do not need to use these apps they are scanning. But I saw questioning of tech CEOs by older US officials and the lack of even basic knowledgeable about current technologies was ridiculously astounding.
How would this have worked in practice though? How could things like trade standards been harmonised or a common currency adopted without the trade union being able to do legislation?
And once you get there, you're no longer a trade union. Or a trading block, which is probably the better word since a trade union already means something else.
Roberta Metsola's actions this week jeopardise the legitimacy of the EU project as a whole.
It's clear that member countries use the EU as a blame-laundering mechanism to pass domestically unpopular laws, but the forcing of this vote under the urgency procedure that requires absolute majority to reject, on the last EP session before summer break is so blatant that it might awaken people that might've overlooked the structural failures of the EU and finally radicalise them
EDIT: bad wording, it's not that the urgency procedure causes the voting to require absolute majority, it's that an absolute majority second-reading is forced through an emergency procedure which is designed for first readings of legislation that's the implied meaning above
I'm really surprised at the hurry. The EU, and many EU governments, have been ramming through deeply unpopular legislation at a breakneck pace for no apparent reason, lately.
It feels like the last turn in a board game where everyone is busy taking points with no regard for the impact of the decisions on the theoretical next turn - because there is no next turn. Its really weird.
> blame-laundering mechanism
Also, I'm stealing this.
At least in some member states, that's a well used pattern when the soccer world cup is on (as in: people are focused on something else). Which at least has been going on in the last weeks.
Whenever you see people complaining that the EU is "too slow", more often than not it's because they benefit directly from EU rushing things without thinking.
To understand whether/to what extent this is brazen, I'd be interested to learn the reasoning why urgency procedures are possible, and in particular, why the apparent majority against shouldn't have been enough, and what is needed to classify something as urgent.
Afaik, EU rules provide for urgent procedure only for proposals at first reading, while here it was used to compress a second reading vote and skip committee, just perfectly timed for the last sitting before recess.
The absolute majority seems to be an anti-paralysis instrument, where the onus is on the Parliament to reject something put in motion by the Council. I think the the asymmetry is that a vote to trigger the urgency procedure only requires a simple majority, whereas a rejection of that same legislation requires absolute majority.
To my reading, this reinforces the idea that Parliament is designed to be more of a rubber stamp for the Council.
Thanks. Do you know then why of the majority that voted against today, enough people voted in favour of the urgency procedure?
> it might awaken people that might've overlooked the structural failures of the EU and finally radicalise them
Haha, no. As long as there is bread and circus, nothing wil happen.
This removes circus from the children.
This comment does not add any value to the discussion.
What should worry everybody is the big picture (trying to abstract from politics, ideologies and specific situation). In recent years we had:
- Europe is now at war with Russia (neighbor)
- Its relationship with the US is rapidly deteriorating (main partner, de facto protector)
- Its relationship with China is also rapidly deteriorating
- It is getting very antagonistic with it own citizen and some individual member countries (such as Hungaria or Romania recently)
So there are a lot of justifications in each case but the overall picture is worrisome. You can't be antagonistic with everyone.
There is a reason why the North Korean regime is still around, they never forgot they need to keep a good relationship with at least one powerful ally.
Yes, this basically means the EU pushed a new censorship regulation using lawfare tricks without ever having a majority vote for the proposal.
If it's not a dictatorship, a regime, a shithole, a kleptocracy, or whatever name they use for a government they don't like, I don't know what it is.
The regulation was rejected today with 314 votes against, 276 in favor, and 17 abstentions, but because of Metsola's lawfare that classified this regulation as under an "urgent procedure", an absolute majority was required to reject.
I wonder if the abstentions are counting "missing MEPs" or MEPs present but who did not vote
The EU parliament has 720 representatives (at the moment 719, one seat is vacant apparently), so 113 representatives didn't show up for the vote. The absolute majority would've been reached with 361 votes.
Chat Control 2.0 is the censorship regulation. Chat Control 1.0 just legalized what Facebook was doing anyway.
Sure, then just let the normal legislative process run its course, no need to bleed political capital and get an already polarised electorate to hate the EU even more by shoving this legislation through in this way.
> no need to bleed political capital
I'm not sure the EU needs to worry about political capital in the way that many national and regional governments do. Power moves through negotiations between institutions, party groups, lobbyists, activists, and heads of government rather than through anything voters can trace. If one is being unkind, it's basically backroom deals all the way down. Naturally, the EU has more respectable terms for this sort of thing, like "trilogue".
Look at how the President of the European Commission got her job in 2019 - there was an election campaign in which major parties presented lead candidates for the post and she wasn't one of them, then post-election - ta da - she's nominiated for the post and there's a confirmatory vote in the Parliament on which the ballot paper had precisely one name listed - hers.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-48853746
https://www.alamy.com/16-july-2019-france-france-straburg-a-...
I agree, my point about political capital was about the overton window shifting to allow a more mainstream EU-skeptic platform for national parties, platforms which up until recently were easily labelled Russophiles or European traitors for US money.
I was aware that VDL obtained her role by routing around the Spitzenkandidaten process, but I was never aware that her confirmatory vote was done in this way.
Her unpopularity at home also reinforces the idea that unpopular politicians can be sent to Brussels, because "in Brussels, you can't hear them scream".
It's absolutely legitimate to be upset. However, identifying a lawfare trick in a close vote to a dictatorship is serious hyperbole. I'm afraid that's counterproductive.
Close vote?
They passed a regulation with 276 votes in favor, 314 votes against, and 17 abstained. The minority decided instead of the majority.
If this is not a dictatorship, what is it then? In any case, it has nothing to do with the democracy.
FTA:
What changes with the return of Chat Control 1.0—and what stays the same:
*What is coming back:* US tech companies are once again allowed to scan private messages without a warrant or prior suspicion. This affects direct messages on platforms like Instagram, Discord, Snapchat, Skype, and Xbox, as well as emails via Google’s Gmail and Apple’s iCloud.
*What remains unchanged:* Public social media posts and files hosted in cloud storage could already be scanned without this law. Furthermore, private messages can always be reported by users, or monitored by authorities using targeted, court-ordered wiretapping.
*What is still NOT being scanned:* End-to-end encrypted chats, such as those on WhatsApp, have always been exempt from these scans. Additionally, European providers of messaging and email services have never implemented chat control measures.
So, E2E is unaffected?
The Internet Watch Foundation, the group, funded almost entirely by big tech, who pushed for this vote to be held under emergency procedure, is already at work lobbying for the end of E2EE [1].
In a couple years time, Chat Control 2.0 will come about, and the same tyrants will use the EU admission [2] that there is no evidence that suspicionless scanning of private communications has led to an increase in criminal convictions or in rescued children to argue that we need to go further, and break E2EE.
[1]: https://www.iwf.org.uk/resources/end-to-end-encryption-and-k... [2]: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELE...
Yes.
Chat Control 2.0 was the big one in those regards.
(Also, LOL @ Skype mention.)
Don't downplay Skype, as Teams is still just rebranded Skype for Business (LYNC).
Then I'm not very moved about this. I always assumed that anything unencrypted is scanned one way or another. What I care is not having a backdoor for E2E, i.e. like client-side scanning telling me what I am allowed to talk about like with the LLMs. CSAM excuse is a great excuse to turn every conversation to what we have with AI today.
And the temperature of the frog pot rises by one degree.
The frog thing describes a transition period, All maximalist will lose because there is indeed need for privacy and need to deal with bad actors.
Privacy maxxers will pave the way to security maxxers. Maxxers are cancer, what needs to be done is to derive a stable system where all legitimate concerns are addressed.
Are my AIM chats safe?! /s
You kid, but there are still some active AIM users (or at least, a revival of it)
Does this apply only to new messages or also to history?
Are the messages to LLMs scanned (beyond normal collection for future training purposes) or is that just for human-to-human messenging?
Yes. I see no reason to think otherwise.
This is a nice piece of democracy right here:
"a measure it had rejected twice in March. Although a majority of voting Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) actually opposed the regulation (314 against, 276 in favor, 17 abstentions), the motion to reject it failed to secure the required absolute majority of 361 votes. As a result, mass scanning is now permitted again until 2028."
"Oh no we can't get a majority to pass the law!"
"Have you tried getting a majority to not pass the law?"
"Worth a shot!"
"It worked, should we also do this multiple times?"
"Of course not! Pass the law, quickly!"
What I don't understand, based on this: https://howtheyvote.eu/votes/195775 the votes are the other way around, with the majority being for. I'm guessing that site has it reversed then or I don't fully understand the proposal? Looking at which politicians from my country voted "no" on this site it seems to be mostly the ones that I'd expect to vote "yes", so that would support this site just having the options reversed.
Found this here: https://fightchatcontrol.eu/
On 7 July, MEPs voted 331–303 to fast-track the return of Chat Control 1.0 mass scanning. A binding vote follows Thursday, 9 July, where an absolute majority of 361 MEPs is needed to stop it. Take action now to demand they defend your private messages.
Assuming "yes" means stop control, parties in favor of chat control were:
- European People’s Party and
- Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats.
Countries in favor of chat control were:
- Spain, Poland, Romania, Sweden, Hungary, Portugal, Greece, Ireland, Lithuania, Lavia, Cyprus
Democracy is when you just try and try again and again until it passes with 51/49. Then its democratic and legitimized and only evil terrorists would oppose those laws we have all democratically agreed upon.
Also, see the case of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%BCseyin_Do%C4%9Fru - if you aren't liked by the EU courts, they just accuse you of "collusion with Russia" and ban your bank account via "sanction policies". The ECJ doesn't have to provide any evidence of crime, you have to provide counter-evidence of the absence of crime (and good luck defending yourself without money). The ECJ judges, who interpret and impose these laws, are also not democratically really elected or anything, yet they hold power over your bank account. Makes ya think.
Good. Usually, I would be against this like any other normal human being, but I can’t lie I’m gloating about this one.
We have had lots of similar cases where people not only blindly followed new regulations (for example, regarding cash) but also encouraged them — and the justification was always the same: "Why do you use cash? Are you hiding something? Cash is for criminals!" Now that the government is about to monitor their chats, they suddenly complain. Why are you bothered by chat control? Are you hiding anything? Encryption is for criminals!
There are at least two options to verify age without humiliating procedure of taking a selfie with a passport like a porn actor.
Also, employees who do verification, sometimes create internal chats where they post pictures of clients and mock their appearance. We had such case with Alfa-Bank in Russia, where the photo of a funny client with a passport leaked to Instagram account of employee's friend. The bank paid approximately $20 as a compensation.
First, there are USB tokens that can hold a private key and sign messages. Such tokens could be sold at places accessible only to adults and verify that they are indeed adult. Obviously every token should hold the same private key.
Second, OS could implement "parent mode" which allows installing only white-listed, government approved apps (no Telegram or Whatsapp or other dangerous apps, but school apps are ok) and opening only white-listed government-approved websites. Put in jail the parents who did not set up a parent mode. Problem solved without passports and verifications.
If, however, the government insists on selfies, it means they just want to identify users and compile lists of "untrustworthy", "rebelious" and other persons of interest. In Russia, for example, every online account must be linked to a phone number or a passport, and all messages in social networks or messengers must be accessible in unencrypted form to the government. The access is automated and the government does not need to provide any documents (like court orders) for getting the data. Messengers that do not provide access, are illegal and are banned.
I want to like the EU. In many ways I do. They're making it really easy to not like them.
All for a safe and secure society.
I don't want to hear about the EU's "strong digital privacy" laws and protections ever again.
Multiple things can be true at the same time.
There can exist strong consumer protections against misuse of their personal data by various entities.
And there can simultaneously also exist governmental overreach against citizens private data.
The world is complex, few things are truly binary.
But now you have governmental overreach and legalized spying on European Citizens by (mostly) US Companies, so i would say that Law is truly binary bad.
Also how the Law was forced is extremely bad.
But hey it's once more proof that the EU is not a democratically spirited institution.
It still remains true that Mark Zuckerberg will get arrested if he is caught using the data for anything other than child porn scans.
Your a dreamer, no one in that position will ever get arrested (in the West) slap on the hand, 100M and the thing is forgotten.
I am not sure if the absurdity of that statement is intentional, or a result of just how far the Overton window has drifted.
First of all, private companies shouldn't be given that responsibility to begin with. Meta in particular, has a long history of unethical and immoral usage of personal data. I won't use the term "illegal", as the question of legality becomes moot when punishment can be factored in as a cost of doing business [1]. Given the long list of things Meta has been caught doing, together with the in grand total zero seconds of jail time. I'm genuinely curious as to why you think this would be any different. I'd be surprised if it hasn't already happened, where in some room without windows and a lot of lawyers and business analysts, they have ran models and concluded that the cost of getting caught here is "a good financial decision". Wouldn't be surprised either if it also came with a guarantee of personal protection from prosecution, from NSA and other government entities, in exchange for a hand in that data pipe.
Secondly, for this to carry any plausibility for being motivated by "protect the children" arguments, it requires a minimal effort be enacted on more effective measures, and a measured balance with the cost this comes at. There are very good arguments for why this law would actively harm children. Throw in some Bayesian understanding, and you better have a state of the art system that somehow pretty much never has false positives, nor false negatives, where this was also the only way to detect and avoid said abuse. I don't know the numbers here, but I highly doubt this is a good idea, even with infinite generosity as to good intentions. We've all been children, we've all done stupid things. Now throw in the brilliant and surely-not-to-scar-a-child-for-life situations where parents and strangers looking at something they thought was private, and have a "grown up discussion" about. I shiver at the thought.
Thirdly, and aside from directly harming children in situations where they selves use technology and naively, and unwisely share pictures, consider how many take pictures of their own kids without clothes, because they are normal human beings, who do not consider there to be anything sexual about said depiction. You want to throw law enforcement in the mix here? Child protective services?
Fourthly, consider the possible negative for this abuse. If normal behavior (e.g. children being children, and e.g. normal parents otherwise sharing normal pictures if you are a normal person) can be selectively chosen as being a heinous crime, this should scare anyone, especially consider the political shifting trends towards fascism.
[1]: https://www.creativefuture.org/facebook-scandal-timeline/
>I won't use the term "illegal", as the question of legality becomes moot when punishment can be factored in as a cost of doing business.
Woah, that's such a good, on point statement. From Boing, FightClub (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0137523/quotes/?item=qt0479130) to Cambridge Analytica (Meta) and Pegasus as a small sample ;)
In this case, the phrase “consumer protections” is almost insulting when the things it’s supposedly protecting us from are a triviality compared to the horror show being introduced.
No, "strong digital privacy" and "governmental overreach against citizens private data" is mutually exclusive.
They're strong protections relative to most other jurisdictions, where there is no need to pass laws exceptionally allowing certain uses of private data, since such uses were never forbidden and sometimes are mandatory beyond what Chat Control 2.0 would mandate.
(Based on https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2026/07/07/eu-to-extend-t... and https://www.euractiv.com/news/how-the-epp-pushed-the-chat-sc... as well as the stuff in the link).
Here's a quote from the article itself, which works for both pro and con arguments:
As I'm not trained in law, I have no strong opinions on if this proposal is a net positive or negative, almost any big name LLM will do a better job than I can manage by looking at the legal text, stroking my goatee and saying "I recon…". But what I can say that I've just seen a headline about a class action lawsuit in the USA due to grok making CSAM and the company failing to assist the police in their investigations, and another about Meta facing a lawsuit in India for delivering advertising for CSAM on Instagram.My steelman in favour of the legislation:
The regulation closes a legal gap that would otherwise force platforms to stop using existing CSAM detection systems; it's a temporary framework that doesn't require universal mandatory scanning or ban E2EE, just keeps the legal basis for companies which choose to use detection/scanners while lawmakers continue negotiating a more comprehensive longterm solution.
My steelman against the legislation:
Scanning private communications, even allowing companies to "voluntary" do this, sets the precedent that the confidentiality of private correspondence is conditional rather than fundamental. Also, automated scanning inevitably has false positives. Also, has chilling effect on free speech, undermines trust in encrypted messaging.
Also, situationally, that it's "voluntary" means offenders can migrate to platforms which don't "voluntarily" do this.
This article seems to make good points about how useless and invasive Chat Control 1.0 is, but then posits Chat Control 2.0 as the answer. Is the latter not also terrible for privacy, demanding backdoors in all encrypted chat tech?
The proponents argue that those backdoors are a good thing because then the government can keep you safe from people saying nasty things.
So much effort and emotions wasted. EU should have a mechanism that disallows repeatedly pushing for things until they are greenlit. Lack of this type of measure renders whole governance incapable of being taken seriously.
From Google: "The law seeks to require digital platforms and messaging services (like WhatsApp and Gmail) to automatically scan users' private messages, emails, and photos to detect and report illegal content"
-- EU policy makers are really honest people, hats off to them. There's no way politicians in my country allow their chats to be scanned, because they're very corrupt.
EU politicians are exempt from this measure. They thought it all the way through.
Can you cite the text where it says this?
In Chatcontrol 2.0 not this one:
>*EU politicians exempt themselves from this surveillance under "professional secrecy" rules. They get privacy. You and your family do not.
https://8bitsecurity.com/posts/chat-control-2-0-%E2%80%93-ho...
If the EU just were to redirect the resources they're currently allocating to regulations like AI and Chat Control rather towards developing a genuinely competitive OpenAI or Anthropic alternative …
The defence against this is widespread truly peer to peer messaging services, where there is no company at the middle to tell you add backdoors.
Who is working on that? I suspect the main challenge is not technical, but human - persuading users to switch messenger apps is almost impossible.
Just yggdrasil with simplex on lineageos(to get rid of gboard).
Session was recently shut down due to lack of funding.
True P2P implies knowing the IP addresses of the people you're talking to.
Session was supposed to be shut down at start of July but looks like they got enough funding from donations to keep going for now.
Or you can just host your own server like IRC. This is beyond idiotic, if they think that pedophiles will begin to suddenly use WhatsApp then I very much doubt about their basic literacy.
Such a weak reasoning and method which they used to push this is ridiculous agenda lead me to strongly suspect there must be something else behind it.
> apps that are safe by design for children
How do we design such apps? Let's rule out age attestation (to allow only some age ranges) or scan of content because they are orthogonal to apps. What are the design patterns that prevent adults to meet kids? No messaging?
Rest assured, someone is already working on circumventing this. Necessity is the mother on invention.
Sure. The criminals and political enemies of the EU will just use illegal chat apps and hardened phones. What about the others though?
Once you realise the age group that are in that bracket of european law making you realise it's gen X AKA the helicopter parent generation and it all becomes less shocking.
Related:
Chat Control 1.0 and 2.0 Explained
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48818311
Chat Control passed first round in EU Parliament
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48819008
I'm curious where I can go to see real regularpeople who support this, is there like a different side of reddit, comments section? I don't know anyone who is blatantly anti-privacy and I want to hear their reasoning. Otherwise this just seems to be the EU rolling into a weird distributed autocracy without anyone blinking an eye.
It's not so much "support" as "not caring." Most "regular" people, when they hear about measures like this, say "oh no, the government can see my boring text messages to grandma, who cares", much they same way they shrug off the dangers of having a robot vacuum live-streaming the inside of their house to China ("there's nothing interesting in my house, who cares").
The thing is... It's not even reported on the news here (Lithuania).
Just now I scrolled through our most popular news sites. 0 mentions. Wasn't on TV either.
The vast majority of the population didn't even have a clue that the vote was happening.
I checked the top 5 most popular local news sites. There was one article about chat control in April and then 2 more from 2025. That's it.
Imagine an issue as big as this and it's not even reported. Yeah I don't feel confident about the future at all.
I do not believe solutions to these issues will be found with government regulators. I believe they can be enabled by new technology that is designed to balance interests on all sides and actually enforce the guarantees IN CODE AND PROTOCOLS.
Having said that, I don’t think the tech industry is what it once was, dominated by cypherpunks working to create a better world. It has been captured by greed and “moving fast and breaking things”, as well as infighting. Greed (both in the form of web3 numbers go up, and benefiting from the greater fool while delivering no utility) and moving fast (web2 facebook / VC / dump shares on the public / lock in / extract rents). So no wonder the government eventually steps in, when the industry spends a decade without adults steering the ship. We have giant platforms controlling everything, and the rest has devolved into zero sum games and memecoins. The tech industry hasn’t led or even organized enough to get behind technology that can liberate users. Instead it’s been captured by for-profit interests. Mozilla and Apache are rounding errors.
Here is what open source can do when it comes to mass surveillance, and this would also solve the Flock problem here in the States, too:
https://community.qbix.com/t/balancing-privacy-and-accountab...
More broadly, here is what needs to be done across the board:
https://www.laweekly.com/restoring-healthy-communities/
> In these talks, the EU Parliament is pushing for a paradigm shift in how we approach online child safety, demanding: [..] Strict security standards for messaging apps (“Security by Design”) to prevent cyber grooming.
It's dispiriting to see a supposedly pro-privacy politician launder backdoors as "strict security standards".
I think they mean local scanning for CSAM - which feels like a reasonable solution that preserves privacy, but still addresses the real problem of, y'know, child abuse?
What is the false positive rate that you would be comfortable with such a scan having? What would be the risk of your personal photos and videos being recognized as CSAM and reported to your local police (and thus being shown to your local police) that you would be happy to accept?
Would you also be ok with not being allowed to send any mail unless you first scan the contents of everything in that envelope and include a generated signature that might tell the post office that you're sending CSAM? And then having the envelope delivered directly to police if the scan did indicate that?
Weaponizing our own property against us, mandating that it spies and tattles on us, turning inanimate objects into policemen to construct the most total surveillance dystopia, is not in any way "reasonable". In no way does it "preserve privacy".
And let's not pretend there are not already many other ways in which child abuse is detected and fought. When schoolteachers or doctors or neighbors or other family members notice something is amiss, when a CSAM group is infiltrated by police, or when a predator falls for a honeypot. This triggers an investigation, and at that point no digital lock can withstand modern targeted covert surveillance. But we are supposed to pretend none of this exists, and that encryption is an unassailable castle, and play along with the "going dark" lie, despite being more surveilled than at literally any point in history, including under the Stasi.
They only don't address child abuse, if by "child abuse" is meant a photo existing in some private shared-with-nobody hard drive, and not an actual human child being abused.
what are the actual consequences of that? they can read any Whatsapp encrypted chat? What changes?
FTA:
> What changes with the return of Chat Control 1.0—and what stays the same:
> What is coming back: US tech companies are once again allowed to scan private messages without a warrant or prior suspicion. This affects direct messages on platforms like Instagram, Discord, Snapchat, Skype, and Xbox, as well as emails via Google’s Gmail and Apple’s iCloud.
> What remains unchanged: Public social media posts and files hosted in cloud storage could already be scanned without this law. Furthermore, private messages can always be reported by users, or monitored by authorities using targeted, court-ordered wiretapping.
> What is still NOT being scanned: End-to-end encrypted chats, such as those on WhatsApp, have always been exempt from these scans. Additionally, European providers of messaging and email services have never implemented chat control measures.
Discord recently had an AI malfunction that resulted in square grids getting detected as CSAM and reported to cops.
As far as I understand this. It basically gives the company providing chat services the possibility to scan your messages.
I'm honestly confused about why this is on topic for HN.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
> Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.
Don't get me wrong, I feel a desire to engage with this as well, but there is nothing I can possibly say about this that is not political, because this is purely a political choice.
Brought to you - as always - by the Conservatives. Conservatism is just fascism with a slightly nicer image.
This was overwhelmingly approved by "The Left in the European Parliament" (that's their actual coalition name) as well as the Greens. It was overwhelmingly rejected by the European People's Party (AKA "The Right"). And mixed among other groups (S&D and Conservatives).
https://howtheyvote.eu/votes/195775
Eh, the commies are pretty good at this too. Best analogy for Chat Control is really a digital Stasi.
I mean sure, but there's no meaningful commie contingent in the EU.
The war on privacy at the EU level always comes from conservatives.
Then you are wrong. This does not care about ideology and I would have to look for her, but that one was in commie party. Our mentally ill cunt voted against, but she votes against everything so broken clock.
And so, step by step, in the name of child protection and similar excuses, we lose liberties and rights one by one.
Welcome to the Brave New 1984 We World. Big Brother loves us.
We are living through the time best described by Zamyatin, Orwell, and Huxley.
Man, the EU is supposed to be the beacon of liberal democracy (after the light of Reagan's shining city on the hill is now truly extinguishing), but with shit like this, it's really making enemies left and right (metaphorically and spectrally).
Exactly. I consider myself euro federalist but bullshit like this creating a very strong antipathy.
If this is not some shady maneuver to scan user messages for security reason, because of, for example, possible incoming war then it's beyond absurd.
I would doubt that politicians pushing this are not understanding that pedophiles simply do not need to use these apps they are scanning. But I saw questioning of tech CEOs by older US officials and the lack of even basic knowledgeable about current technologies was ridiculously astounding.
Chat Control 2.0 is in the name of child protection. This one, 1.0, is just in the name of pleasing big tech.
Slippery slope is fine and all but do you have any constructive argument?
Slippery slope is not a "fallacy" by default. It can be occasionally but its a perfectly reasonably argument in plenty of cases.
It is a fallacy by default. The existence and slipperiness of the slope must be justified to make it not a fallacy.
Sure, it's not a fallacy, but it does erode nuanced conversations and so it shouldn't be used without caution.
What "constructive" argument is anyone supposed to give about authorities having warrantless access to all private conversations?
"Slippery slope" does not by itself invalidate an argument, because slippery slopes do exist.
Constructive argument? Just disband the EU as a whole, including all laws, treaties, contracts ...
Europe would be a much better place if the EU stayed what it was, a trade union of sovereign nations without any political power over the people.
How would this have worked in practice though? How could things like trade standards been harmonised or a common currency adopted without the trade union being able to do legislation?
And once you get there, you're no longer a trade union. Or a trading block, which is probably the better word since a trade union already means something else.
It still is. Countries can ignore EU laws if they want to.
The EU was never just a trade union.