> According to Breyer, the existing voluntary system has already proven flawed, with German police reporting that roughly half of all flagged cases turn out to be irrelevant.
A failure rate of only 50% is absurdly good for a system like this. If we have to:
> Imagine your phone scanning every conversation with your partner, your daughter, your therapist, and leaking it just because the word ‘love’ or ‘meet’ appears somewhere.
then apparently either there are so many perpetrators that regular conversations with partners etc. are about as common as crime, or such regular conversations don't have such a high risk of being reported after all.
I don't think chat surveillance is a good idea. But please use transparent and open communication. Don't manipulate us just like the enemy does.
”2 There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right EXCEPT such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.”
Are we reading the same thing?
This linked statement clearly authorizes invasion of privacy by public authorities, in the name of any of the very vaguely listed reasons – as long as there’s some law to allow it.
>A 2014 report to the UN General Assembly by the United Nations' top official for counter-terrorism and human rights condemned mass electronic surveillance as a clear violation of core privacy rights guaranteed by multiple treaties and conventions and makes a distinction between "targeted surveillance" – which "depend[s] upon the existence of prior suspicion of the targeted individual or organization" – and "mass surveillance", by which "states with high levels of Internet penetration can [] gain access to the telephone and e-mail content of an effectively unlimited number of users and maintain an overview of Internet activity associated with particular websites". *Only targeted interception* of traffic and location data in order to combat serious crime, including terrorism, is justified, according to a decision by the European Court of Justice.[23]
It's weird how "rights" went from "the government can't do X to you" to "the government can force private actors to do Y (but these rules don't apply to us)."
Not under ECHR, which has twice as much signatories as EU has members and the other half is twice less chill compared to the EU.
I don't remember whether the EU top court can repeal EU laws, but general answer is no. It's politics -- if the government is full shitheads that somebody voted for and then haven't protested hard enough to boot out -- then they can ignore constitution, jail judges, behead journalists in a forest and send army to shoot at protesters of the wrong kind.
Do EU treaties per se contain any language that might be relevant to privacy?
It seems axiomatic that legal systems contain provisions that prevent their violation. However, democracy requires that laws are voted on by elected representatives or plebiscites, which can of course mean repealing prior laws.
However the EU institutions are not sovereign, which might be the loophole here?
Edit: I'm aware that the EU is only afforded "competences" given to it by treaties, so perhaps human rights don't fall into any of these...?
However, I also wonder if legislation such as Chat Control, etc, might fall outside its competences.
In the end, the question is whether there is a legal mechanism by which the introduction of laws such as those in question here can be prohibited?
There is no loophole really, EU can repeal it's own laws the same way it passes them -- it needs to get the commission, the parliament and enough national governments on board.
>Do EU treaties per se contain any language that might be relevant to privacy?
Doesn't matter really. No right in any treaty is absolute. Not even the right to life itself -- the police can and does shoot people and it's legal for them to do under specific conditions. And of course the chat control law says that whatever it is supposed to be doing should be done in the most privacy respecting way possible.
In theory the court (any court really) can weight whether the measures are proportionate and whether negative obligations (not invade privacy) are in a balance with positive obligations (you know -- protective children is also important) and whether the balance is appropriate of a democratic society.
The problem everybody is trying to not see - there is no right to E2E encryption under any law right now. There is no right to have a communication channel that government can't possibly listen to. It's not a thing. The same way there is no right to have your house unsearchable by police and your freedom unbound by a court that can jail you. There are strict limits when any of those things happen, but they do fact happen all the time for good reasons and for bad ones too.
Add: if I would attack it from a legal standpoint, I would not focus on privacy so much, but rather say that creating mass-scaning capability is a threat to the democracy itself.
It's not that I like chat control or think that mass surveillance can lead to any good.
What I'm saying, is -- just because the balance isn't where you want it to be, and the policy is bad, that alone doesn't mean the law is unconstitutional, against the EU treaties or ECHR or should be impossible to pass through the legislative.
It's the same in French (obviously), though equally this does not permit mass surveillance:
>Article 8 de la Convention européenne de sauvegarde des droits de l'homme et des libertés fondamentales:
>Droit au respect de la vie privée et familiale
>1. Toute personne a droit au respect de sa vie privée et familiale, de son domicile et de sa correspondance.
>2. Il ne peut y avoir ingérence d'une autorité publique dans l'exercice de ce droit que pour autant que cette ingérence est prévue par la loi et qu'elle constitue une mesure qui, dans une société démocratique, est nécessaire à la sécurité nationale, à la sûreté publique, au bien-être économique du pays, à la défense de l'ordre et à la prévention des infractions pénales, à la protection de la santé ou de la morale, ou à la protection des droits et libertés d'autrui.
ECHR is a convention with a court hearing the cases, as opposed to declarations which is just good vibes PR. Of course the actual working instrument has loopholes.
it escapes you because all these treaty clauses read like safeguards, but in practice they’re just friction. Once a government decides it needs mass surveillance for ‘security,’ the law bends. The real question isn’t what the ECHR allows... it’s why people still think legal frameworks can meaningfully restrain a state that has already decided not to be restrained.
the comment thread here is obnoxiously naive, and speaks to the privilege some people having been raised under the calm of supposedly democratic societies.
you're all arguing about the syntax of rights while governments rewrite the grammar. once a state decides ubiquitous surveillance is necessary, it’ll find or fabricate a justification. the "law" doesn’t restrain power, power instructs law where to kneel.
stop treating the ECHR like some talisman that keeps the wolves at bay, as if authoritarian drift politely obeys paperwork. stop playing with this whole “actually, the loophole is X,” “no, the loophole is Y,” like you're debugging a bad API instead of staring at the obvious: when a state wants to expand surveillance, it does, and the justifications are retrofitted later, be it "public safety", or "keeping your children safe."
(6) Online child sexual abuse frequently involves the misuse of information society services offered in the Union by providers established in third countries. In order to ensure the effectiveness of the rules laid down in this Regulation and a level playing field within the internal market, those rules should apply to all providers, irrespective of their place of establishment or residence, that offer services in the Union, as evidenced by a substantial connection to the Union.
The article links to the text of the revised proposal. It reads like they're openly planning to push it again, and soon, and worldwide. The UK and EU seem to be setting aside their differences at least.
(f) ‘relevant information society services’ means all of the following services:
(i) a hosting service;
(ii) an interpersonal communications service;
(iii) a software applications store;
(iv) an internet access service;
(v) online search engines.
(2) ‘internet access service’ means a publicly available electronic communications service that provides access to the
internet, and thereby connectivity to virtually all end points of the internet, irrespective of the network technology
and terminal equipment used
===
Calling it Chat Control is itself an understatement, one that evokes "well I'm not putting anything sensitive on WhatsApp" sentiments - and that's incredibly dangerous.
This bill may very well be read to impose mandatory global backdoors on VPNs, public cloud providers, and even your home router or your laptop network card!
(Not a lawyer, this is not legal advice. But it doesn't take a lawyer to see how broadly scoped this is.)
Laws targeting service providers usually always apply to all providers providing services in the respective jurisdiction. It would be unusual if it was any different.
> (6) Online child sexual abuse frequently involves the misuse of information society services offered in the Union by providers established in third countries.
It's quite wild to see child sexual abuse continue to be cited as a justification for far-reaching, privacy-invading proposals, allegedly to empower government actors to combat child sexual abuse.
Meanwhile, we have copious and ever-increasing evidence of actual child sexual abuse being perpetrated by people with the most power in these very institutions, and they generally face few (if any) consequences.
I am going to assume your question is genuine and not rethorical hyperbole.
Every sovereign nation has legal supremacy over its own territory. Any company doing business in the EU, no matter its origin, must follow EU laws inside the EU. However, these laws do not apply anywhere else (unless specified by some sort of treaty), so they are not forced to comply with them in the US when dealing with US customers.
If they still abide by EU law elsewhere, that is their choice, just like you can just choose to abide by Chinese law in the US — so long as it does not conflict with US law. If these rules do conflict with the first amendment, enforcing them in the US is simply not legal, and it's up to the company to figure out how to resolve this. In the worst case, they will have to give up business in the EU, or in this case, prohibit chat between US and EU customers, segregating their platform.
I mean this (mostly) as a joke, however, I kinda wish US businesses would just firewall off the EU at this point (yes, I know this would mean losing some customers/marketshare and thus would never happen).
But the near daily proposals getting tossed out in their desperate attempt to turn their countries into daycare centers is just annoying to people trying to build things for other adults.
"First Amendment Rights" only applies to the State, not private companies.
For example, Hacker News has no obligation to preserve your "First Amendment Rights" on this website. They are free to mute you, ban you, or even just surreptitiously change what you say without you knowing.
If a website which otherwise wouldn’t censor you begins to censor you because of threats from foreign nations, that’s a foreign nation pressuring an American company into suppressing rights of American citizens.
That’s a foreign nation imposing on your rights. In the past that used to require an invasion, so it was a bit more obvious what was happening, but the result is still the same.
Yes it’s through a website, which is owned by a company, which technically speaking owes you nothing.
In the digital age though, where are you going to use your speech, if not on a website?
What you (and others) are doing is trying to reduce the significance of a major transgression over a minor technicality. Way to miss the forest for trees.
The EU can stuff it on this one. And I supported (still support!) the GDPR.
Semantics are literally the only reason we write laws down and argue endlessly about exactly which words to use
Outside of law, I have never once heard "that's just semantics" in a context that made sense, or said by an intelligent person. Not once. Maybe it turns out semantics are never "just semantics", and instead it's something that always matters.
So you’re just going to accept a digital invasion happening and not care, because of some semantics and details somewhere in a document which was penned 200 years prior to the internet being invented?
I don’t know about you, but to me that seems kind of naive and short sighted.
You can still care about forthcoming invasions of one's privacy and while still understanding that the 1st Amendment to the US Constitution is only intended to prevent state and federal governments from censoring you. Not corporations.
Semantics are very important when it comes to legal matters.
You can object to the "digital invasion", but using the phrase "freedom of speech" as some sort of magical shield is pointless.
> Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
The U.S. federal or state governments, courtesy of that amendment, have very limited authority to control your speech. That's where the legal authority ends.
So you see no problem with using jurisdiction washing like Five Eyes to remove our rights?
If we don't tolerate a government we elect abridging our freedom of speech, why would we accept a foreign government doing that?
When foreign governments try to force conpanies to abridge free speech by Americans on American soil, that is an attack on something that we deem important enough to have enshrined in our constitution.
I sort of hope someone will leak all private information about Peter Hummelgaard. He is one of the people behind this proposal, just so he would get a taste of his own medicine.
Isn’t it (ChatControl) also „marketed” as „safe and secure”? If they (politicians) don’t have their comms backdoored and still get their data stolen, then why would I trust them to secure (read „safely snoop on”) mine or even know what they’re talking about?
I just don't believe they would be able to roll it out. A lot of messaging services won't implement chat control. If half of the messaging apps are getting blocked, people will get angry.
There will be massive backlash towards EU. Texting is just so embedded to the daily life, if the EU causes inconveniences or trouble with texting, this might create massive anger. It could start off Brexit-like campaigns in some countries.
I'm not saying that it is impossible this is going to be implemented. But I think it's just some bureaucrats dreaming.
Power/wealth asymmetries. The incumbent organizations are powerful, have many resources and actively work to prevent other organizations from achieving the same level if competency.
The number of laws/rules added vs. removed in any given year is like 100:1.
New rules lead to profitable business opportunities (and future lobbies), incumbents get to entrench their positions using the new rules, and people get stockholm syndrome and just end up accepting the new normal.
Modern representative democracy is Parkinson's law at work. Government is the purest form of bureaucracy and monopoly. Thus, it finds ways to grow itself every year regardless of what happens.
There is also an alternative, which is the way problems with governments used to get solved in the past. Not that we should aim for that to be necessary, but it often seems that our politicians are hellbend on getting there quickly. I guess it's all "to hell with the consequences!" for them.
Nothing greenlit in a “closed-door EU working group session” can become law. These things need to go through all phases of legislation including the approval of parliament.
So yes, if you don’t like chat control, talk to your MEPs and stop voting in populist ministers and council members/presidents.
Denmark mostly has authoritative politicians in government. Pragmatic and without ideology. The misguided tools believe they are doing us all a big favor.
They handwavingly dismiss all privacy-related criticism with “well our experts say something else!” and insist there are no privacy issues - but at the same time require exemption for their own caste.
The EU and European parliaments are very much on the technocracy side, where they defer to experts and studies for everything instead of focusing on the popular interests of the public
I would not categorize Denmark as particularly technocratic, on the contrary. Many politicians here go against science and research because “I simply disagree”.
America is mostly a failure of their own congress, not a lack of listening to self-chosen experts.
Everything that’s popular in the US gets pushed to the executive branch because congress is so dysfunctional. Then the executive branch just puts out half baked solutions. This is a pattern that started long before the current admin.
Just take immigration, it’s not controversial simply because it’s following the popular will (the #1 polled issue during the election)… it’s the poor implementation that pushes law enforcement into grey areas of the law. It lacks process and oversight. That’s what Congress is supposed to define. But they consistently failed to address the issue for over a decade.
Europe (and Canada) on the other hand lean heavily on a thorough expert process for everything but never gets anything done except invent new ways to administer society in ways the public usually never asked for.
This was done to appease the racist voters, who are unfortunately a relatively big factor here.
The law was installed in 2016, (colloquially called “Smykkeloven”/The Jewelry Law) after Syrian refugees walked up through Europe and Denmark, and a myth arose about super rich refugees with bags full of gold.. in 2022 this law had been used in 17 instances.
I cannot roll my eyes enough at the policians here.
Denmark is pretty famous for the fact that people consider themselves pretty centrist and moderate, while the policies they implement, each analyzed separately, are the most leftist of all the EU on all modern topics (ie not classical communism of course - just climate change, women, immigration etc). But when you’re surrounded with likeminded people and little diversity of the press, it sounds logical.
Genuine question: is that Denmark reintroducing this proposal? It's not clear when it's mentioned "the EU commission's revised proposal..." - and second question, if it's "Denmark", who from Denmark has the authority to do so? Any elected Danish member from the EU council?
Denmark holds the EU Presidency. That means they chair the Council of the EU, set the agenda, organize meetings, and drive forward legislative work in that period.
EU council works like US senate worked before senators were elected. So the right answer for who is Danish PM.
Not to be confused with EU parliament which is elected by popular vote and EU comission, which is the executive branch of EU and us voted in by Parliament
There are monied interests and special interest groups behind it. No matter who is at the head, it will continue to be pushed by these interests.
Europol, Julie Cordua (CEO of Thorn), Cathal Delaney, former Europol who now is on Thorn's board, Alan Parker, billionaire and founder of the Oak Foundation that's been bankrolling the fake charities lobbying for chat control, Chris Cohn, another billionaire and hedge fund manager who has been funding anti-encryption lobbying in both the US and the EU, Sarah Gardner, former Thorn employee and part of the network of fake charities lobbying to ban encryption. SHe also focuses on lobbying in the US as well, and Maciej Szpunnar, Polish Advocate General and the European court of justice, wants to use chat control for prosecuting copyright infringement.
And don't forget Peter Hummelgaard: "We must break with the totally erroneous perception that it is everyone's civil liberty to communite on encrypted messaging services."
So you have a few billionaires running lobbying organizations disguised as fake "for the children" charities that operate in both the EU and the US, Europol, and a group of powerful people that are fundamentally opposed to privacy.
> Thorn works with a group of technology partners who serve the organization as members of the Technology Task Force. The goal of the program includes developing technological barriers and initiatives to ensure the safety of children online and deter sexual predators on the Internet.
> Various corporate members of the task force include Facebook, Google, Irdeto, Microsoft, Mozilla, Palantir, Salesforce Foundation, Symantec, and Twitter.
Apparently Thorn scratched that list from their current website, but the Wiki page has an archive link.
This can backfire bigly for the EU. The whole union is sustained on shared values and interests. Sneaking in surveillance is extremely offputting for the sentiment towards EU in many circles. Every member state has plenty of skeptics who want to brexit and this is gasoline for them. And rightly so. This isn’t a fluke from some misinformed non-technical stray politician who ”wants to save the children” (yes, they exist too), but rather a deliberate anti-democratic sabotage of core human rights.
In a nation state, it’s easier to pull off authoritarian shifts, because citizens will not usually revolt over such things alone. But the EU relies on sustained support and a positive image. There are already at the very least 10s of thousands EU skeptics created from the last wave alone, and probably much much more to come.
Zooming out, I think this is the time when the EU is needed the most, given the geopolitical developments. Both Russia and China are drooling about a scattered Europe consisting of isolated small states. That makes it more infuriating. Someone, ideally the press, needs to dig into the people behind this and expose them.
The strength of the EU is based on the EU institutions not having too much power. It's why the EU does not attempt to expel, hopefully temporarily, reprobate nations such as Hungary.
This legislation has a potential to "radicalize" a lot of people. I don't agree with many of the decisions by the EU, but at the end of the day the pros do outweigh the cons and in a hypothetical Brexit-like referendum I wouldn't consider agreeing with leaving.
If this passes, however, the pencil in my hand would definitely hover above the YES checkbox for a while and, actually, maybe even tick it. This alone would be enough of a straw to break the camel's back.
If they really ban everyone under 16 from texting, this would also become kind of a time bomb. A lot of those affected teens will be allowed to vote very soon. And they might have a very different mental image of the EU than the generations before. The EU used to be a gate to all of Europe, free traveling, no cell roaming fees, Erasmus student exchange. The next generation of voters might perceive the EU as some dystopian institution that takes away fun and freedom.
Unfortunately I don't think so, it'll be more the writing on the wall or the canary ik the coal line but it wont radicalize a lot of people I think because this legislation won't rock the boat enough unless they fuck it up a la UK age verification law.
The UK normalized surveillance for decades. In most other European countries this is a completely different story. The backlash would be far stronger than in the UK.
I guessed the term Chat Control had to be made up by opponents of the legislation, so searched for the real name.
The official name of the legislation is:
“Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council laying down rules to prevent and combat child sexual abuse” (COM/2022/209 FINAL).
It is often referenced more simply as the “Child Sexual Abuse Regulation” (CSA Regulation).
> to scan every private message, including those protected by end-to-end encryption.
Then it's no end to end, or at least end to end while traveling but easily collectible at rest, I mean it already is, who would stop meta from collecting messages in clear on the whatsapp ui? We should opt for a peer to peer solution or implement one
Yeah but was it to the same extent? People are regularly posting guillotines these days and our economic outlooks for much of the world, and especially the US, is not all roses and sunshine.
The urgency comes from having the actual war on the East side of the EU and whatever the hell is happening down South with refugees and what not. Then in the EU proper -- sabotage acts, ammunition dumps being blown up, cabels cut and drones flying above the military bases hosting nuclear fucking warheads, Chinese and r===an spyies in the parliament, armed nazis in the military, etc, etc.
The shit has hit the fan about a decade ago already and not calming down at all, but intelligence gathering capability of secret services of all EU countries are being continiously degraded, because everything is E2E by default and money flows are obscured too.
Nobody likes to see shit being on fire and having all the dashboards down.
Another happening happens, the services are asked why they didn't prevent it or report it being likely -- what do they answer? "We can't read the damn messages, so we can't know if there is a cell that plans to do it again".
It's because they have finally found the perfect trojan horse—"think of the children!"—in a time when people are too busy entertaining themselves to death.
This is their best chance for them to enact mass surveillance, before the hoi polloi crack and finally get out of their couches.
That strain of libertarian rhetoric is overwhelmingly encountered on American-dominated fora. I won’t say it doesn’t exist in Europe, since Europeans can pick up on American internet culture, too, but it is too marginal in Europe to affect politics much. There is no significant libertarian party in the EU. Some of the far-right parties stoking and benefiting from popular discontent even promise to uphold the welfare state, but simply deny it to immigrants.
Not as a major political force to which Denmark’s Chat Control could be responding as the OP claims. Moreover, expressions like “milked and oppressed” ring American libertarianism to the ears of this European poster who is familiar with long years of European cypherpunk activism.
Cypherpunk activism is closer to anarchist ideals, and criticism of the State and its coercive power is central to its ethos. Yes, citizens are being milked and oppressed against a state and a political caste that has grown too powerful.
American right-libertarianism is a joke that originally started as an anarchist branch and has degenerated into getting in bed with the state to further its selfish ideals. Criticism of the state has nothing to do with those posers, as their goal is solely to become the state (i.e. the oppressor), rather than truly pursue the ideal of a free society.
This is an asymmetric conflict. The factions who want this to pass have more resources, time and background influence and can keep pushing this until they get lucky.
And once in place repealing it will be tremendously difficult.
How does society resolve this kind of abuse of the democratic process? It is a dynamic that is repeated in many areas.
Governments don't change constitutions pretty much anywhere. More also constitution changes are notoriously hard from requiring 75% of parliament votes, to 66% in two consecutive parliament assemblies (need to pass an election), and all versions in-between (or not having a codified constitution).
> Governments don't change constitutions pretty much anywhere.
They do sometimes manage to just ignore parts that they don't like sometimes, at least temporarily, as the recent and continuing mess in the DPR-US illustrates.
This seems to be more about political power and government overreach than money. The narrative seems to be focused solely on concentration of the later, lately.
I expect economical and political power to get along well. You normally acquire both organically; except in some cases, suddently acquiring much of one will buy some of the other.
It's too bad we can't withdraw our votes for a politician continuously, with the politician having to leave office if the vote changes enough.
I'm not sure it can be solved without everybody writing down their vote, but this would be one way that would make pushing through unpopular policies, whether because of changing opinions, mismatches where politicians misrepresent their plans or corruption, much more difficult.
I have had this idea for a long time: An online realtime voting platform, where you can change your mind about policies at any time, and what the people want needs to be implemented. And of course all issues and policies must be put on the platform for people to vote on.
Of course initially we would have to learn, that changing our minds too often will lead to things not getting done at all. And it is doubtful, that a lot of people are even capable of becoming informed and reflecting beings, not to be swayed by a hip populist radical, and thus causing shit to happen. Also the sheer number of issues and policies would be so many, that most people couldn't make up their mind on everything. But that's OK, since people can raise awareness and simply vote later, when they became aware. Another issue would be what the choices are that people have on the platform. How to give all relevant opinions as choices? How to know what is relevant? Or can voters apply for adding a new opinion? But then who grants the right to add a choice? How to prevent spam?
So there certainly are huge issues with the idea. But maybe, over time, we would develop into politically reasonable societies and politicians would have to fear the opinion of the people, because one scandal uncovered, and they could end up kicked out tomorrow. Maybe it could also better designed, so that there is some minimum time between being able to change ones stance about something. Or some maximum of policies one can have an opinion about per day.
Even initially to have such a platform without real political consequences of voting, would be super interesting, because you could lookup what the current opinions of the people are.
> It's too bad we can't withdraw our votes for a politician continuously, with the politician having to leave office if the vote changes enough.
I think that would empower ill-conceived (and/or ill-willed) populist & short term movements, with everyone in constant fear of being "un-vote bombed" by armies of easily led, and likely make the lobbying problem worse.
If not continuously, there needs to be mechanisms to recall a politician (or an entire government), and re-hold elections for both failing to govern and failing to represent the interests of the people over the interest of billionaires.
To use the recent US shutdown as an example. Passing a budget is like one of the basic requirements of governing. If the current government cannot accomplish that, it should immediately dissolve and elections be held. Every single position in power at the time, gone, the whole thing gets re-elected because they have proven that the current group cannot adequately govern.
The ability to recall needs to work similarly. Vote should be able to be initiated by the people at anytime, and a successful vote means the government dissolves and new elections are held.
We could also have a "cooling off" period after a piece of legislation (like chat control) fails. It failed the first time, it should not be able to be immediately reintroduced whether in the same or a different form. There should be some sort of cooling off period where that piece of legislation (or its goals) cannot be reintroduced for x number of years.
These are good ideas, but they do have some pretty big sticking points. The ability to trigger a re-election has the same problems we're trying to avoid in the larger thread: If a bad actor (say a business) wants a politician out, they can just continually issue recall votes until they wear out the population and get lucky. Unfortunately, I think the only solution here is exactly what we have: Politicians have to be re-elected every couple of years.
The cooling off period also has problems, because sometimes a piece of legislation is a good idea, but has a major flaw that causes people to vote against it. What happens when people want a law passed, but not in the form it's presented in?
Re-election every couple of years does not solve the issues, as demonstrated by most elected governments around the world. People are too lazy, uninformed, stupid, to vote for their own good, and will be made to vote against their own interest, time and time again. As societies we are mostly not ready mentally to vote properly. This is in the interest of the people in power. Have stupid and confused subjects, so that you can rally them for whatever cause you need them to rally for.
> Passing a budget is like one of the basic requirements of governing. If the current government cannot accomplish that, it should immediately dissolve and elections be held.
It's important to note that this is a basic principle, almost the basic principle, of English-style parliamentary democracy. You have a monarch who makes decisions (through their chosen government, ever since the English cut off a few heads), and the rest of the Parliament (a bunch of nobles, clergy, and eventually representatives of commoners) is there to withdraw financing from that government when they disapprove.
> We could also have a "cooling off" period after a piece of legislation (like chat control) fails.
We usually do, it is called a "session." The problem is the inability to pass negative legislation (which also has a pretty long history) i.e. we will not do a thing. Deliberative assemblies explicitly frown on negative legislation, and instead say that purpose is served simply by not doing the thing.
The problem is that individual rights are provided by negative legislation against the government: think the US Bill of Rights. Instead, we have systems where exclusively positive legislation is passed by majorities, and repealing that legislation takes supermajorities. The only pragmatic way to create new rights becomes to challenge legislation in courts, and get a decision by opinionated, appointed judges that X piece of legislation is superseded by Y piece of legislation for unconvincing reason Z, and this new "right" is about as stable as the current lineup of the sitting justices.
What we need is to pretend like "democracy" is a meaningful word rather than an empty chant, or more often simply a euphemism for the US, Anglosphere, Western and Central Europe, and whoever they currently approve of. Democracy is rule by the ruled, and the exact processes by which the decisions are made define the degree of democracy. Somehow, elites have decided that process is the least important part of democracy, and the most important part is that elites get their preferred outcomes. Anything else is "populism."*
Decisionmaking processes in "democracies" need to be examined, justified, and codified. The EU needs either to cede a lot more leverage to its individual members (and make that stupid currency a European bancor, rather than a German weapon) OR become more directly responsive to European individuals. If you're not serving the individual states, and you're not serving the individual citizens, you're exclusively serving elites.
What happens when you get what you want, and rather than magically solving every problem confronting society, it doesn't solve anything at all, and in fact creates several more problems, as generally happens when such ideas are put into practice?
What's plan B? Lower the threshold to a million dollars?
> as generally happens when such ideas are put into practice
Is this true? Lots of countries with high living standards have high taxes. It doesn't need to solve every problem but it does help solve the problem of one unelected person holding too much power and influence.
> What's plan B? Lower the threshold to a million dollars?
1B = 1000M. I think thats high enough. Don't see why you need to make it 1000x smaller to try and make a point.
It doesn't need to solve every problem but it does help solve the problem of one unelected person holding too much power and influence.
It does? Really?
What are they teaching kids in school these days? According to the books I studied, nominally-egalitarian leaders racked up an eight-digit body count in the 20th century alone.
Taxes are ~irrelevant to billionaires. When you say "you can't be a billionaire" what you're saying is "you cannot own any significant amount of a large business" because billionaires aren't liquid, their status is based on their assets and primarily their shares in large businesses.
I agree that wealth inequality is horrible and taxes on the wealthy should be much higher. But if someone owns 10% of a trillion dollar company, that's $100B in shares. They can sell off 900M$ worth of shares and "not be a billionaire" in terms of income and money (and thus taxation). So what do you do?
- Seize control of their shares and thus their control over private industry
- Or, accept that billionaires exist
This is basically the core fight between capitalism (private ownership of the means of production) and communism (government control of the means of production).
Most people hate the idea of billionaires, but people generally also hate a centrally planned government where the government owns a controlling stake in all businesses preventing any insider from having any real control.
Also how do you avoid billionaires worldwide? Not everyone lives under your government. Even if you could, how do you know for a fact that some people don't secretly control hidden assets? Is Xi openly a billionaire? China is a "communist" country on paper. How does he hold so much power?
The sad reality is that the world has a nonzero percentage of power-hungry narcissists. We need governments that are more democratic and robust. We all know that the current government processes are broken and corrupted.
>EU parliament is the only legislature in the world that needs permission to legislate
It makes sense, because EU law is mostly technical stuff that commission has to draft and all the national governments have to agree to.
With the commission being elected by the parliament itself and vote of no confidence being a thing, it's not like the parliament doesn't have power -- the power is intentionally nerfed to not overreach where national governments don't want it to.
On paper the UK house of commons can pass a bill. In reality bills are driven by the executive. The same executive that (until brexit) drove the bills via appointing the EU commissioner and being the EU council.
The reason that EU Parliament can't pass bills is because constituent governments don't want to lose power to parliament.
People are not able to be experts in everything they are asked to vote on, thats why we delegate it, just like people delegate their healthcare, plumbing, flying to a holiday destination, growing food, etc.
People en-mass are just as easy to manipulate as elected members, if not easier.
Can you point to examples of bad outcomes in Switzerland’s referendums? I mean unequivocal examples, of the sort that would convince everyone here that that model is undesirable as a whole.
How about that time in 2020 the Swiss voted in favor of an immigration restriction proposal that was so fundamentally incompatible with existing EU treaties, the government was forced to bullshit their way out of implementing entirely because doing so would have basically ended Switzerland as a nation? This is the kinda thing that really cannot happen in a working system. The only reason the government is not sued into following through is because the courts have conspired with other branches to shut down any attempt at doing so. Real democratic.
Generally speaking, people are stupid. Really REALLY f-cking stupid. Giving the average Joe this kind of unmoderated power in a modern world that almost entirely eludes his understanding is no different from handing him a loaded gun; eventually, someone will get hurt real bad. As someone living in Switzerland, the main reason things are as stable as they are is because:
* Changing anything significant requires a referendum, which is a huge pain in the ass. So politicians just kinda avoid important changes that require referenda, finding other ways to enrich themselves and leaving society stagnating. This means that actually important changes come about very slowly or not at all. Read up on how long it took for women's suffrage to become universal – and the outright threats of internal military action the federal government resorted to...
* Whether the Swiss like it or not, Switzerland is mostly a loud, spoilt economic annex of the EU. It will remain stable for as long as the EU is, and well off for as long as the EU wants to be seen as a peaceful and magnanimous partner in international relations. After all, "bullying" tiny and surrounded Switzerland into agreeing to anything – which the Swiss will cry about at any opportunity you give them – is a bad look.
So yeah, Swiss direct democracy is not all it's made out to be, and really not all that great up close. Admirers remind me a lot of Weaboos, strangely shortsighted in their admiration of a system they know little about.
> How does society resolve this kind of abuse of the democratic process?
You need a means for citizens to hold the powers that be accountable. Unfortunately, the EU is largely designed without such a mechanism, as its initial scope and ambition was much smaller than the superstate it is growing into it wasn't deemed necessary.
Every branch except for the European Parliament risks consequences only if they fuck up so badly that the majority of EU citizens in their home countries (or in some cases, the majority of member states) deem their actions so reprehensible that they consider punishing the EU more important than electing their own national government, since it's effectively the same vote.
This is technically still a means of accountability, but it's not really a threat in practice.
That doesn't mean anything, because they're not necessarily educated on the topic, and yet are making decisions that affect everyone.
When it's so cheap to enact mass propaganda, selective omission and manufactured intent, it becomes impossible to just say, "well, the people want it." Their decision making process is compromised by the same people pushing these policies through.
Democracy is indeed broken, and we have to take that seriously if we're going to fix it.
Please quantify "a lot". What percentage of the population wants all private communication between adults to be monitored and censored by a government agency? Can we put it to a vote - right after publicly discussing (debunking) all of the false beliefs that its proponents have?
The question that is at the core is “police can wire tap calls but they cannot wire tap chats. Should this change?” The details are not all that important to people.
Legal interception requires a court order, Chat control is mass surveillance.
Trying to build support for mass surveillance by misrepresenting it as targeted tool with checks and balances is exactly the kind of bad faith discourse I'm talking about.
> How does society resolve this kind of abuse of the democratic process?
Other than hoping for a large meteorite or the second coming to end this misery, or stirring up the bloodbath a la Nepal - then, by recognizing the power of large numbers of people doing little things, like sabotaging the system at the personal level. But that implies unity, and unity and mutual support have been deliberately annihilated in this society for too long. Thus, this outcome is even less probable than the first two.
I'm downvoting you because complaining against downvotes like this is against site guidelines. Your comment would have a better foundation if that part was omitted.
The States are learning the hard way that the disproportionate accumulation of wealth is an irresistible force which will eventually erode all checks and balances, corrupt all systems, and ultimately capture the entire government. We we were doing mostly okay with "constrained capitalism" but as soon as we let our guard down, money flooded into politics and that was the end of restraint.
Chat Control isn't something being pushed in the States though, so your criticism just seems like you're taking a random shot at the USA rather than accepting the uncomfortable truth that the EU is becoming increasingly authoritarian.
> How does society resolve this kind of abuse of the democratic process? It is a dynamic that is repeated in many areas.
Relating our experience in the US, we planned for exactly this, it went okay for a while, until it didn't. The answer to parent is "do this but a little better" :-)
I’ve seen this strategy many times in the US. For example, in blue states they will repeatedly propose the same gun control laws that restrict the rights of law abiding citizens and violate the constitution, which guarantees a right to own firearms. Each time such a law is proposed, people have to show up to hearings, submit comments, pressure legislators, protest, and all of that. Those laws may then be pulled back, but the same laws will get brought up every single legislative season, and citizens who have other responsibilities in life have to give up time and money repeatedly to fight for their constitutional rights.
I’m sure there are other examples of such legal abuse of different political biases - I’m just using this as an example because there is such a long history of it. Eventually, legislators will pass whatever they want anyways. And then your recourse to regain rights is to go through an expensive years-long legal battle that ultimately requires the Supreme Court to take the case. This type of “attack” is a serious flaw in many modern democracies.
I think the fix is to have personal consequences for legislators, judges, etc that make bad decisions that violate the constitutional rights or fundamental rights of citizens. The idea that people are immune from consequence just because they’re serving in an official capacity is insane. This shouldn’t be the case for anyone serving in political office or other public roles - as in, you shouldn’t get immunity whether you are a lawmaker or policeman or teacher or whatever else.
That was more than a decade ago. Think how many normies have come online since then that have only ever used a smartphone. Sadly the average computer literacy of those times are gone.
> Think how many normies have come online since then that have only ever used a smartphone. Sadly the average computer literacy of those times are gone.
I remember a few years ago, being shocked to see that over 50% of applicants for a software engineering role applied directly from their smartphones. So it's not even just normies who see their phone as "the computer".
> How does society resolve this kind of abuse of the democratic process?
By choosing "people-vs-individual-politician" fight over "people-vs-government-system". Like, literally, make politicians personally responsible for this bs.
Germany first voted against chat control 2.0, then they clarified why they were against it, became "undecided". And now "Denmark" came out with a (lighter) version "some others" are more willing to vote for. [0]
What a joke. In front of our eyes.
Then they wonder why people hate their guts and are becoming increasingly violent, euro-skeptical, etc.
Society can't win this without fighting the personalities who drive it. In the end, there's a individual that pushes this, so this very person should be targeted personally.
Someone said it's an asymmetric conflict, so we need to pull it to our (human-size) level and fight on our chessboard.
The "risk-mitigation" loophole in EU Chat Control uses the same vague, discretionary language in the Digital Services Act that Elon Musk and others warned lets regulators coerce platforms into censorship and surveillance.
I think "oops" or "d'oh" are the phrases we're looking for here.
This is an ongoing terrorist attack and authorities fail to stop it. Please report these people to the police as attempted terrorist attack. People behind Chat Control should be arrested.
A snippet I posted before:
If terrorism is defined as using violence or threats to intimidate a population for political or ideological ends, then “Chat Control” qualifies in substance. Violence doesn’t have to leave blood. Psychological and coercive violence is recognised in domestic law (see coercive control offences) and by the WHO. It causes measurable harm to bodies and minds.
The aim is intimidation. The whole purpose is to make people too scared to speak freely. That is intimidation of a population, by design.
It is ideological. The ideology is mass control - keeping people compliant by stripping them of private spaces to think, talk, and dissent.
The only reason it’s not “terrorism” on paper is because states write definitions that exempt themselves. But in plain terms, the act is indistinguishable in effect from terrorism: deliberate fear, coercion, and the destruction of free will.
While I agree with the sentiment, I don't think hyperbole is the solution.
This legislation, while reprehensible, is not terrorism. Defining terrorism is particularly difficult (the UN has been trying since the 60s and is trying again this year), but if all intimidation for political gains is terrorism then so is every other political ad from the last 30 years. Banksy would probably argue that regular advertising also qualifies - after all, that's what the "F" in "FOMO" stands for and beauty products are definitely pushing an ideology.
You don't have to like the official definition of terrorism, but that doesn't mean that you alone get to decide what it should be.
The irony is that we only get stuck in semantic arguments because the authorities refuse to treat this as the kind of act it actually is. If prosecutors applied their own standards consistently, we wouldn’t be debating vocabulary on a message board.
Germany’s criminal code already recognises coercion of a population for political ends as a serious offence. If a private organisation tried to impose a system that eliminated private communication, criminalised encryption defaults, and created a permanent climate of fear around ordinary speech, they wouldn’t get a policy debate. They’d get an arrest warrant.
The only thing making this “controversial” is institutional hesitation. Everyone knows issuing warrants against EU-level actors would cause political embarrassment, so we pretend the behaviour is something milder, something safer to acknowledge. That gap between what the law says and what the state is willing to enforce is exactly where tragedies start.
This isn’t about inflating the meaning of terrorism. It’s about refusing to downgrade coercion just because it comes from people in respectable offices. Words shouldn’t shrink to protect those in power. They should describe what is happening.
edit: and whilst we are at the semantics - the word “terrorism” comes from the French Reign of Terror, where the state used fear as an instrument of governance. The original meaning was quite literally state-driven intimidation of an entire population to enforce ideological conformity.
I guess pretty much all of us will become criminals if this passes. Have a phone that is running GrapheneOS you are a potential criminal. Running linux probably also a potential criminal.
This shady approach of trying it again and again is so disgusting to me. Just be upfront about. If you will do it anyway at some point, just fucking do it. It's not like other countries like China that are much further than we are in this regard are in constant turmoil over it. I guess we won't be either.
Instead we take a moral high ground over Russia banning and blocking what are basically non-compliant messaging platforms and pushing Russian citizens to Max, which is controlled by the government. All the while these legislations in Europe will lead to the same end result.
How am I supposed to to argue against chat control in Russia when we are doing it too, just with a different twist.
Honestly I think privacy is lost. Regardless of what side you were (big fan of privacy here) I feel we have nothing to do but move on and think how to live in a world without privacy.
I never wanted privacy anyway: I wanted no discrimination, inclusion, healthy democracy, etc, etc.
Privacy has always been a tool for me.
At this point, selective privacy like we are experiencing today (we cannot know what’s in the epstein files, but google can send a drone and look into my backyard) serves none of the things I am interested in!
The basic structure of your argument is equivalent to, "I've given up on being allowed to leave my house, I just want to go to the places I need to go."
what a ludicrously insane take. how can you not believe in privacy? do you think what you do in your home should be private, or do you think it’s fine for someone to put cameras in there? If you do, please feel free to invite them to do so; do not feel free to invite them to put cameras in my home.
Privacy for me is not that important. I have nothing to hide, nothing I am ashamed of. For me it's more of a way of protecting from abuse that a need of its own. I realize it's just me and I do advocate for privacy, but if you look around: we lost. Our data is everywhere and there are no consequences whatsoever.
PS: I did mention in my original comment that Google and many others already send drones with cameras to spy on your backyard and that is considered "fine". I am not inviting them to come to your house; they are already doing it. Just check Google Maps.
Over the last 5000 years it's been very rare for plebs to have any privacy. For a brief period from ww2 through to the early 21st century power shifted to the plebs, but since the 1980s that power has shifted back to the feudal barons, and our rights will eventually regress.
But the SP500 will be at record highs so everyone will be told they should be happy.
What I’m taking issue with is that you said you never really cared about privacy. I care about my family’s privacy. I’m not asking you to care about yours. I’m sorry you’ve given up on something that wasn’t important to you anyway, or whatever.
I think you misunderstood him for me. Regardless, giving up is not something I mentioned. You guys just inferred it. I just feel we need to approach the battle very differently. What we have been doing it's not working.
> According to Breyer, the existing voluntary system has already proven flawed, with German police reporting that roughly half of all flagged cases turn out to be irrelevant.
A failure rate of only 50% is absurdly good for a system like this. If we have to:
> Imagine your phone scanning every conversation with your partner, your daughter, your therapist, and leaking it just because the word ‘love’ or ‘meet’ appears somewhere.
then apparently either there are so many perpetrators that regular conversations with partners etc. are about as common as crime, or such regular conversations don't have such a high risk of being reported after all.
I don't think chat surveillance is a good idea. But please use transparent and open communication. Don't manipulate us just like the enemy does.
The right to privacy is enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights, article 8 [0].
It escapes me how politicians can repeatedly attempt to violate this.
[0] https://fra.europa.eu/en/law-reference/european-convention-h...
”2 There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right EXCEPT such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.”
Are we reading the same thing?
This linked statement clearly authorizes invasion of privacy by public authorities, in the name of any of the very vaguely listed reasons – as long as there’s some law to allow it.
Mass surveillance has already been ruled to be in contravention of the Human Rights act:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_8_of_the_European_Conv...
>A 2014 report to the UN General Assembly by the United Nations' top official for counter-terrorism and human rights condemned mass electronic surveillance as a clear violation of core privacy rights guaranteed by multiple treaties and conventions and makes a distinction between "targeted surveillance" – which "depend[s] upon the existence of prior suspicion of the targeted individual or organization" – and "mass surveillance", by which "states with high levels of Internet penetration can [] gain access to the telephone and e-mail content of an effectively unlimited number of users and maintain an overview of Internet activity associated with particular websites". *Only targeted interception* of traffic and location data in order to combat serious crime, including terrorism, is justified, according to a decision by the European Court of Justice.[23]
The loophole there is "targeted" so they'll declare that Son of Chat Control is to be targeted.
Yeah the whole thing is full with these loopholes. Your rights are rights only as long as we wish at some point to add laws that inhibit them.
It's weird how "rights" went from "the government can't do X to you" to "the government can force private actors to do Y (but these rules don't apply to us)."
The way it's written and the way ECHR court works, the government has to actually argue it's way, not just say "national secirity".
ECHR court however can't repeal the law, only fine the governmemt for actual violation of convention rights.
Is there any mechanism for preventing the introduction of a law that violates the ECHR? It would seem obvious that that should be the case, no?
Not under ECHR, which has twice as much signatories as EU has members and the other half is twice less chill compared to the EU.
I don't remember whether the EU top court can repeal EU laws, but general answer is no. It's politics -- if the government is full shitheads that somebody voted for and then haven't protested hard enough to boot out -- then they can ignore constitution, jail judges, behead journalists in a forest and send army to shoot at protesters of the wrong kind.
Do EU treaties per se contain any language that might be relevant to privacy?
It seems axiomatic that legal systems contain provisions that prevent their violation. However, democracy requires that laws are voted on by elected representatives or plebiscites, which can of course mean repealing prior laws.
However the EU institutions are not sovereign, which might be the loophole here?
Edit: I'm aware that the EU is only afforded "competences" given to it by treaties, so perhaps human rights don't fall into any of these...?
However, I also wonder if legislation such as Chat Control, etc, might fall outside its competences.
In the end, the question is whether there is a legal mechanism by which the introduction of laws such as those in question here can be prohibited?
There is no loophole really, EU can repeal it's own laws the same way it passes them -- it needs to get the commission, the parliament and enough national governments on board.
>Do EU treaties per se contain any language that might be relevant to privacy?
Doesn't matter really. No right in any treaty is absolute. Not even the right to life itself -- the police can and does shoot people and it's legal for them to do under specific conditions. And of course the chat control law says that whatever it is supposed to be doing should be done in the most privacy respecting way possible.
In theory the court (any court really) can weight whether the measures are proportionate and whether negative obligations (not invade privacy) are in a balance with positive obligations (you know -- protective children is also important) and whether the balance is appropriate of a democratic society.
The problem everybody is trying to not see - there is no right to E2E encryption under any law right now. There is no right to have a communication channel that government can't possibly listen to. It's not a thing. The same way there is no right to have your house unsearchable by police and your freedom unbound by a court that can jail you. There are strict limits when any of those things happen, but they do fact happen all the time for good reasons and for bad ones too.
Add: if I would attack it from a legal standpoint, I would not focus on privacy so much, but rather say that creating mass-scaning capability is a threat to the democracy itself.
Most rights are held in balance, as you describe.
However, mass surveillance cannot reasonably be held in balance with detection of crimes, as most people are not criminals
It's not that I like chat control or think that mass surveillance can lead to any good.
What I'm saying, is -- just because the balance isn't where you want it to be, and the policy is bad, that alone doesn't mean the law is unconstitutional, against the EU treaties or ECHR or should be impossible to pass through the legislative.
It's just bad because it's bad.
Good god what a meaningless "right" where all of the exceptions eat the rule.
It depends the version of the declaration, the french one has zero exception listed.
It's the same in French (obviously), though equally this does not permit mass surveillance:
>Article 8 de la Convention européenne de sauvegarde des droits de l'homme et des libertés fondamentales:
>Droit au respect de la vie privée et familiale
>1. Toute personne a droit au respect de sa vie privée et familiale, de son domicile et de sa correspondance.
>2. Il ne peut y avoir ingérence d'une autorité publique dans l'exercice de ce droit que pour autant que cette ingérence est prévue par la loi et qu'elle constitue une mesure qui, dans une société démocratique, est nécessaire à la sécurité nationale, à la sûreté publique, au bien-être économique du pays, à la défense de l'ordre et à la prévention des infractions pénales, à la protection de la santé ou de la morale, ou à la protection des droits et libertés d'autrui.
—
Is that the same France which arrested the CEO of a E2E chat provider (without even trumped up charges) and forced them to make backdoors for them?
ECHR is a convention with a court hearing the cases, as opposed to declarations which is just good vibes PR. Of course the actual working instrument has loopholes.
> It escapes me how politicians can repeatedly attempt to violate this.
There is no penalty for doing so.
If something is outlawed but there is no negative consequence for doing it, then it’s not really outlawed in practical terms.
it escapes you because all these treaty clauses read like safeguards, but in practice they’re just friction. Once a government decides it needs mass surveillance for ‘security,’ the law bends. The real question isn’t what the ECHR allows... it’s why people still think legal frameworks can meaningfully restrain a state that has already decided not to be restrained.
it escapes me hwo so many can be so naive.
First time?
Think of the children.
You want the police to solve crimes, right?
If you are against this it is because you have something to hide.
Also it is more than possible that those politicians do not agree with that Convention.
Wow, it’s always crazy how the folks who have nothing to hide get mad when the lock on the stall door in a public bathroom doesn’t work…
"having something to hide" or defending a human right. who cares. easy to tell where this one gets their feed
I assumed the post was sarcastic, but Poe's Law I suppose, sadly..
Only boring people have nothing to hide.
Gotta find those with illegal opinions somehow.
the comment thread here is obnoxiously naive, and speaks to the privilege some people having been raised under the calm of supposedly democratic societies.
you're all arguing about the syntax of rights while governments rewrite the grammar. once a state decides ubiquitous surveillance is necessary, it’ll find or fabricate a justification. the "law" doesn’t restrain power, power instructs law where to kneel.
stop treating the ECHR like some talisman that keeps the wolves at bay, as if authoritarian drift politely obeys paperwork. stop playing with this whole “actually, the loophole is X,” “no, the loophole is Y,” like you're debugging a bad API instead of staring at the obvious: when a state wants to expand surveillance, it does, and the justifications are retrofitted later, be it "public safety", or "keeping your children safe."
> once a state decides ubiquitous surveillance is necessary, it’ll find or fabricate a justification
This is defeatist, fatalist nonsense.
From https://docs.reclaimthenet.org/council-presidency-lewp-csa-r... pp 35:
(f) ‘relevant information society services’ means all of the following services: (i) a hosting service; (ii) an interpersonal communications service; (iii) a software applications store; (iv) an internet access service; (v) online search engines.
And via https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELE... pp 8:
(2) ‘internet access service’ means a publicly available electronic communications service that provides access to the internet, and thereby connectivity to virtually all end points of the internet, irrespective of the network technology and terminal equipment used
===
Calling it Chat Control is itself an understatement, one that evokes "well I'm not putting anything sensitive on WhatsApp" sentiments - and that's incredibly dangerous.
This bill may very well be read to impose mandatory global backdoors on VPNs, public cloud providers, and even your home router or your laptop network card!
(Not a lawyer, this is not legal advice. But it doesn't take a lawyer to see how broadly scoped this is.)
> worldwide
Laws targeting service providers usually always apply to all providers providing services in the respective jurisdiction. It would be unusual if it was any different.
> (6) Online child sexual abuse frequently involves the misuse of information society services offered in the Union by providers established in third countries.
It's quite wild to see child sexual abuse continue to be cited as a justification for far-reaching, privacy-invading proposals, allegedly to empower government actors to combat child sexual abuse.
Meanwhile, we have copious and ever-increasing evidence of actual child sexual abuse being perpetrated by people with the most power in these very institutions, and they generally face few (if any) consequences.
So they’re asking American companies to repeal the first amendment rights of American citizens on all websites accessible in the EU.
How this not a declaration of war?
I am going to assume your question is genuine and not rethorical hyperbole.
Every sovereign nation has legal supremacy over its own territory. Any company doing business in the EU, no matter its origin, must follow EU laws inside the EU. However, these laws do not apply anywhere else (unless specified by some sort of treaty), so they are not forced to comply with them in the US when dealing with US customers.
If they still abide by EU law elsewhere, that is their choice, just like you can just choose to abide by Chinese law in the US — so long as it does not conflict with US law. If these rules do conflict with the first amendment, enforcing them in the US is simply not legal, and it's up to the company to figure out how to resolve this. In the worst case, they will have to give up business in the EU, or in this case, prohibit chat between US and EU customers, segregating their platform.
I mean this (mostly) as a joke, however, I kinda wish US businesses would just firewall off the EU at this point (yes, I know this would mean losing some customers/marketshare and thus would never happen).
But the near daily proposals getting tossed out in their desperate attempt to turn their countries into daycare centers is just annoying to people trying to build things for other adults.
I was under the impression that the strong and independent Americans had thicker skin than this.
luckily, this is a sample size of one (1)
Neither the EU nor American companies are Congress, so they are not bound by the 1st amendment.
"First Amendment Rights" only applies to the State, not private companies.
For example, Hacker News has no obligation to preserve your "First Amendment Rights" on this website. They are free to mute you, ban you, or even just surreptitiously change what you say without you knowing.
That’s just semantics.
If a website which otherwise wouldn’t censor you begins to censor you because of threats from foreign nations, that’s a foreign nation pressuring an American company into suppressing rights of American citizens.
That’s a foreign nation imposing on your rights. In the past that used to require an invasion, so it was a bit more obvious what was happening, but the result is still the same.
Yes it’s through a website, which is owned by a company, which technically speaking owes you nothing.
In the digital age though, where are you going to use your speech, if not on a website?
What you (and others) are doing is trying to reduce the significance of a major transgression over a minor technicality. Way to miss the forest for trees.
The EU can stuff it on this one. And I supported (still support!) the GDPR.
Semantics are important when talking about matters of law. Very important, in fact.
Semantics are literally the only reason we write laws down and argue endlessly about exactly which words to use
Outside of law, I have never once heard "that's just semantics" in a context that made sense, or said by an intelligent person. Not once. Maybe it turns out semantics are never "just semantics", and instead it's something that always matters.
So you’re just going to accept a digital invasion happening and not care, because of some semantics and details somewhere in a document which was penned 200 years prior to the internet being invented?
I don’t know about you, but to me that seems kind of naive and short sighted.
You can still care about forthcoming invasions of one's privacy and while still understanding that the 1st Amendment to the US Constitution is only intended to prevent state and federal governments from censoring you. Not corporations.
Semantics are very important when it comes to legal matters.
You can object to the "digital invasion", but using the phrase "freedom of speech" as some sort of magical shield is pointless.
> Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
The U.S. federal or state governments, courtesy of that amendment, have very limited authority to control your speech. That's where the legal authority ends.
> That's where the legal authority ends.
So you see no problem with using jurisdiction washing like Five Eyes to remove our rights?
If we don't tolerate a government we elect abridging our freedom of speech, why would we accept a foreign government doing that?
When foreign governments try to force conpanies to abridge free speech by Americans on American soil, that is an attack on something that we deem important enough to have enshrined in our constitution.
> accept a digital invasion
It looks like the possibilities are endless once you throw semantics out of the window, so I could see why you're so fond of doing so.
It isn't your right to comment on somebody else's website. Your argument makes no sense.
I sort of hope someone will leak all private information about Peter Hummelgaard. He is one of the people behind this proposal, just so he would get a taste of his own medicine.
That would only "prove" that government officials should be exempt from government surveillance.
Isn’t it (ChatControl) also „marketed” as „safe and secure”? If they (politicians) don’t have their comms backdoored and still get their data stolen, then why would I trust them to secure (read „safely snoop on”) mine or even know what they’re talking about?
I just don't believe they would be able to roll it out. A lot of messaging services won't implement chat control. If half of the messaging apps are getting blocked, people will get angry.
There will be massive backlash towards EU. Texting is just so embedded to the daily life, if the EU causes inconveniences or trouble with texting, this might create massive anger. It could start off Brexit-like campaigns in some countries.
I'm not saying that it is impossible this is going to be implemented. But I think it's just some bureaucrats dreaming.
Eternal vigilance is needed to stop this. Good luck! It will take just one (manufactured) crisis.
We have to win every time. They only have to win once and it's game over.
Why can't we put up legislation to repeal over and over until it is repealed?
> Why can't we put up legislation to repeal over and over until it is repealed?
We can. It’s just easier to throw a wrench in a legislative process than to start it. (By design.)
Power/wealth asymmetries. The incumbent organizations are powerful, have many resources and actively work to prevent other organizations from achieving the same level if competency.
Because legislation like this is a ratchet.
"Over and over" is the hint.
The number of laws/rules added vs. removed in any given year is like 100:1.
New rules lead to profitable business opportunities (and future lobbies), incumbents get to entrench their positions using the new rules, and people get stockholm syndrome and just end up accepting the new normal.
Modern representative democracy is Parkinson's law at work. Government is the purest form of bureaucracy and monopoly. Thus, it finds ways to grow itself every year regardless of what happens.
There is also an alternative, which is the way problems with governments used to get solved in the past. Not that we should aim for that to be necessary, but it often seems that our politicians are hellbend on getting there quickly. I guess it's all "to hell with the consequences!" for them.
The original article says: "The legislative package could be greenlit tomorrow in a closed-door EU working group session." That was November 12th.
On the 13th, Breyer wrote:
> Yesterday, EU gov'ts rejected changes to mandatory backdoor #ChatControl & anonymity-destroying age checks.
https://digitalcourage.social/@echo_pbreyer/1155418089245415...
Nothing greenlit in a “closed-door EU working group session” can become law. These things need to go through all phases of legislation including the approval of parliament.
So yes, if you don’t like chat control, talk to your MEPs and stop voting in populist ministers and council members/presidents.
Denmark has a month and a half as EU presidency to go. I still don't get why they want this to be their legacy so badly.
Denmark mostly has authoritative politicians in government. Pragmatic and without ideology. The misguided tools believe they are doing us all a big favor.
They handwavingly dismiss all privacy-related criticism with “well our experts say something else!” and insist there are no privacy issues - but at the same time require exemption for their own caste.
The EU and European parliaments are very much on the technocracy side, where they defer to experts and studies for everything instead of focusing on the popular interests of the public
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocracy
I would not categorize Denmark as particularly technocratic, on the contrary. Many politicians here go against science and research because “I simply disagree”.
Populism largely runs Denmark.
Look at America to see what happens when things are decided based on the popular interests vs actual data and expertise.
America is mostly a failure of their own congress, not a lack of listening to self-chosen experts.
Everything that’s popular in the US gets pushed to the executive branch because congress is so dysfunctional. Then the executive branch just puts out half baked solutions. This is a pattern that started long before the current admin.
Just take immigration, it’s not controversial simply because it’s following the popular will (the #1 polled issue during the election)… it’s the poor implementation that pushes law enforcement into grey areas of the law. It lacks process and oversight. That’s what Congress is supposed to define. But they consistently failed to address the issue for over a decade.
Europe (and Canada) on the other hand lean heavily on a thorough expert process for everything but never gets anything done except invent new ways to administer society in ways the public usually never asked for.
One does not take out the other, balance is always the best.
I agree; that's just not the impression I got from GP.
Denmark is a strange nation with regards to liberty and personal belongings:
https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/4963/Denmark:-Exemptin...
This was done to appease the racist voters, who are unfortunately a relatively big factor here.
The law was installed in 2016, (colloquially called “Smykkeloven”/The Jewelry Law) after Syrian refugees walked up through Europe and Denmark, and a myth arose about super rich refugees with bags full of gold.. in 2022 this law had been used in 17 instances.
I cannot roll my eyes enough at the policians here.
Denmark is pretty famous for the fact that people consider themselves pretty centrist and moderate, while the policies they implement, each analyzed separately, are the most leftist of all the EU on all modern topics (ie not classical communism of course - just climate change, women, immigration etc). But when you’re surrounded with likeminded people and little diversity of the press, it sounds logical.
I respectfully disagree that Denmark is left-leaning wrt. immigration. 20-30 years ago that was true, today not at all.
From https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm2lknr2d3go.amp
“UK seeks Danish inspiration to shake up immigration system”
“Shabana Mahmood will model some of her new measures on the Danish system - seen as one of the toughest in Europe.”
Genuine question: is that Denmark reintroducing this proposal? It's not clear when it's mentioned "the EU commission's revised proposal..." - and second question, if it's "Denmark", who from Denmark has the authority to do so? Any elected Danish member from the EU council?
Denmark holds the EU Presidency. That means they chair the Council of the EU, set the agenda, organize meetings, and drive forward legislative work in that period.
EU council works like US senate worked before senators were elected. So the right answer for who is Danish PM.
Not to be confused with EU parliament which is elected by popular vote and EU comission, which is the executive branch of EU and us voted in by Parliament
There are monied interests and special interest groups behind it. No matter who is at the head, it will continue to be pushed by these interests.
Europol, Julie Cordua (CEO of Thorn), Cathal Delaney, former Europol who now is on Thorn's board, Alan Parker, billionaire and founder of the Oak Foundation that's been bankrolling the fake charities lobbying for chat control, Chris Cohn, another billionaire and hedge fund manager who has been funding anti-encryption lobbying in both the US and the EU, Sarah Gardner, former Thorn employee and part of the network of fake charities lobbying to ban encryption. SHe also focuses on lobbying in the US as well, and Maciej Szpunnar, Polish Advocate General and the European court of justice, wants to use chat control for prosecuting copyright infringement.
And don't forget Peter Hummelgaard: "We must break with the totally erroneous perception that it is everyone's civil liberty to communite on encrypted messaging services."
So you have a few billionaires running lobbying organizations disguised as fake "for the children" charities that operate in both the EU and the US, Europol, and a group of powerful people that are fundamentally opposed to privacy.
Adding to that from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorn_(organization):
> Thorn works with a group of technology partners who serve the organization as members of the Technology Task Force. The goal of the program includes developing technological barriers and initiatives to ensure the safety of children online and deter sexual predators on the Internet.
> Various corporate members of the task force include Facebook, Google, Irdeto, Microsoft, Mozilla, Palantir, Salesforce Foundation, Symantec, and Twitter.
Apparently Thorn scratched that list from their current website, but the Wiki page has an archive link.
Worth noting that Thorn also makes scanning software and would stand to profit greatly from chat control.
As with all these types of legislation, always follow the money.
Presumably someone is paying really well to push this over and over again.
Article on Breyer’s own site: https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/chat-control-2-0-through-th...
Thanks, we'll put that in the toptext as well.
This can backfire bigly for the EU. The whole union is sustained on shared values and interests. Sneaking in surveillance is extremely offputting for the sentiment towards EU in many circles. Every member state has plenty of skeptics who want to brexit and this is gasoline for them. And rightly so. This isn’t a fluke from some misinformed non-technical stray politician who ”wants to save the children” (yes, they exist too), but rather a deliberate anti-democratic sabotage of core human rights.
In a nation state, it’s easier to pull off authoritarian shifts, because citizens will not usually revolt over such things alone. But the EU relies on sustained support and a positive image. There are already at the very least 10s of thousands EU skeptics created from the last wave alone, and probably much much more to come.
Zooming out, I think this is the time when the EU is needed the most, given the geopolitical developments. Both Russia and China are drooling about a scattered Europe consisting of isolated small states. That makes it more infuriating. Someone, ideally the press, needs to dig into the people behind this and expose them.
Agreed.
The strength of the EU is based on the EU institutions not having too much power. It's why the EU does not attempt to expel, hopefully temporarily, reprobate nations such as Hungary.
This legislation has a potential to "radicalize" a lot of people. I don't agree with many of the decisions by the EU, but at the end of the day the pros do outweigh the cons and in a hypothetical Brexit-like referendum I wouldn't consider agreeing with leaving.
If this passes, however, the pencil in my hand would definitely hover above the YES checkbox for a while and, actually, maybe even tick it. This alone would be enough of a straw to break the camel's back.
If they really ban everyone under 16 from texting, this would also become kind of a time bomb. A lot of those affected teens will be allowed to vote very soon. And they might have a very different mental image of the EU than the generations before. The EU used to be a gate to all of Europe, free traveling, no cell roaming fees, Erasmus student exchange. The next generation of voters might perceive the EU as some dystopian institution that takes away fun and freedom.
Unfortunately I don't think so, it'll be more the writing on the wall or the canary ik the coal line but it wont radicalize a lot of people I think because this legislation won't rock the boat enough unless they fuck it up a la UK age verification law.
The UK normalized surveillance for decades. In most other European countries this is a completely different story. The backlash would be far stronger than in the UK.
Isn’t there precedent for many other governments secretly or openly doing exactly this? Snowden etc?
There’s an arms race element to this that I don’t see people discussing.
Do EU citizens have any privacy from US tech? Is there anything to protect?
Do we want the USA to have exclusive right to spy on the world?
Is it better to have 1 Big Brother or 10?
I guessed the term Chat Control had to be made up by opponents of the legislation, so searched for the real name. The official name of the legislation is: “Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council laying down rules to prevent and combat child sexual abuse” (COM/2022/209 FINAL). It is often referenced more simply as the “Child Sexual Abuse Regulation” (CSA Regulation).
Oof good luck trying to convince a popular vote against that.
How Could You Possibly Be Against This?!?!? Regulation
> to scan every private message, including those protected by end-to-end encryption.
Then it's no end to end, or at least end to end while traveling but easily collectible at rest, I mean it already is, who would stop meta from collecting messages in clear on the whatsapp ui? We should opt for a peer to peer solution or implement one
what is it they’re so concerned about people talking about these days exactly anyway?
The usual stuff.
- members of opposition of the wrong kind (as defined by incumbent);
- journalists investigating the government;
(if the incumbent is brazen enough, those above can be and already are selectively targeted with paid exploits)
- political opponents of the wrong kind (aka the extrimists, which kinda overlaps with #1);
- actual enemy combatants (aka the terrorists), spys and traitors;
- organized crime of the day with unwarranted delusions of grandeur (R. Taghi, his antics and aspirations to kill the Dutch PM);
- immigrants and immigrants to be of the wrong kind and people who smuggle them;
Gotta make sure you aren’t saying the wrong things, like criticising rich and powerful people.
people have been doing that for a long time, but the level of urgency from the system hasn’t been at this level.
Yeah but was it to the same extent? People are regularly posting guillotines these days and our economic outlooks for much of the world, and especially the US, is not all roses and sunshine.
The urgency comes from having the actual war on the East side of the EU and whatever the hell is happening down South with refugees and what not. Then in the EU proper -- sabotage acts, ammunition dumps being blown up, cabels cut and drones flying above the military bases hosting nuclear fucking warheads, Chinese and r===an spyies in the parliament, armed nazis in the military, etc, etc.
The shit has hit the fan about a decade ago already and not calming down at all, but intelligence gathering capability of secret services of all EU countries are being continiously degraded, because everything is E2E by default and money flows are obscured too.
Nobody likes to see shit being on fire and having all the dashboards down.
Another happening happens, the services are asked why they didn't prevent it or report it being likely -- what do they answer? "We can't read the damn messages, so we can't know if there is a cell that plans to do it again".
It's because they have finally found the perfect trojan horse—"think of the children!"—in a time when people are too busy entertaining themselves to death.
This is their best chance for them to enact mass surveillance, before the hoi polloi crack and finally get out of their couches.
That they're so damn tired being milked and oppressed by the organized crime groups calling themselves governments, maybe?
That strain of libertarian rhetoric is overwhelmingly encountered on American-dominated fora. I won’t say it doesn’t exist in Europe, since Europeans can pick up on American internet culture, too, but it is too marginal in Europe to affect politics much. There is no significant libertarian party in the EU. Some of the far-right parties stoking and benefiting from popular discontent even promise to uphold the welfare state, but simply deny it to immigrants.
Half of Europe has living memories of oppressive governments, from fascism in Franco's Spain to communism in East Europe.
Are you aware that anti-big-government and pro-privacy political philosophy is not limited to (the joke that is) American right-libertarianism?
Not as a major political force to which Denmark’s Chat Control could be responding as the OP claims. Moreover, expressions like “milked and oppressed” ring American libertarianism to the ears of this European poster who is familiar with long years of European cypherpunk activism.
Cypherpunk activism is closer to anarchist ideals, and criticism of the State and its coercive power is central to its ethos. Yes, citizens are being milked and oppressed against a state and a political caste that has grown too powerful.
American right-libertarianism is a joke that originally started as an anarchist branch and has degenerated into getting in bed with the state to further its selfish ideals. Criticism of the state has nothing to do with those posers, as their goal is solely to become the state (i.e. the oppressor), rather than truly pursue the ideal of a free society.
This is an asymmetric conflict. The factions who want this to pass have more resources, time and background influence and can keep pushing this until they get lucky.
And once in place repealing it will be tremendously difficult.
How does society resolve this kind of abuse of the democratic process? It is a dynamic that is repeated in many areas.
Constitutions are a pretty common way to say "no to this kind of thing".
Constitutions have a lot of "except in cases prescribed by the law" exceptions which makes it possible to pass into law all kinds of abuses.
Indeed. It seems that the only way out is to elect a government that would have that on their program. Dubious that this will happen.
Governments don't change constitutions pretty much anywhere. More also constitution changes are notoriously hard from requiring 75% of parliament votes, to 66% in two consecutive parliament assemblies (need to pass an election), and all versions in-between (or not having a codified constitution).
> Governments don't change constitutions pretty much anywhere.
They do sometimes manage to just ignore parts that they don't like sometimes, at least temporarily, as the recent and continuing mess in the DPR-US illustrates.
We stop allowing the rich to become so rich. Billionares are not compatible with democracy or the greater good.
This seems to be more about political power and government overreach than money. The narrative seems to be focused solely on concentration of the later, lately.
Money is political power. A billionaire can afford to lobby and “donate” as much as they want.
Billionaires inherently get political power. When they’re more socially adept than Musk, they can even have the power without having the plebs notice.
Yup, going full autist in public is a good way to get the public angry at you and try to find a way to make your life more difficult.
You mean, going full asshole. Not all autists are assholes.
The issue isn’t that he was being an asshole - plenty of politicians can be assholes and be cheered for it.
He was being straightforward, direct, matter of fact, technical, and an asshole.
You gotta lube up the plebes, or they get butthurt, and that is what is causing the issue.
You see this happening a lot where criticisms of capitalism gets laundered in with criticisms of political power as a means to deflect.
I expect economical and political power to get along well. You normally acquire both organically; except in some cases, suddently acquiring much of one will buy some of the other.
TLDR: Billionaires hold political power.
It's too bad we can't withdraw our votes for a politician continuously, with the politician having to leave office if the vote changes enough.
I'm not sure it can be solved without everybody writing down their vote, but this would be one way that would make pushing through unpopular policies, whether because of changing opinions, mismatches where politicians misrepresent their plans or corruption, much more difficult.
I have had this idea for a long time: An online realtime voting platform, where you can change your mind about policies at any time, and what the people want needs to be implemented. And of course all issues and policies must be put on the platform for people to vote on.
Of course initially we would have to learn, that changing our minds too often will lead to things not getting done at all. And it is doubtful, that a lot of people are even capable of becoming informed and reflecting beings, not to be swayed by a hip populist radical, and thus causing shit to happen. Also the sheer number of issues and policies would be so many, that most people couldn't make up their mind on everything. But that's OK, since people can raise awareness and simply vote later, when they became aware. Another issue would be what the choices are that people have on the platform. How to give all relevant opinions as choices? How to know what is relevant? Or can voters apply for adding a new opinion? But then who grants the right to add a choice? How to prevent spam?
So there certainly are huge issues with the idea. But maybe, over time, we would develop into politically reasonable societies and politicians would have to fear the opinion of the people, because one scandal uncovered, and they could end up kicked out tomorrow. Maybe it could also better designed, so that there is some minimum time between being able to change ones stance about something. Or some maximum of policies one can have an opinion about per day.
Even initially to have such a platform without real political consequences of voting, would be super interesting, because you could lookup what the current opinions of the people are.
> It's too bad we can't withdraw our votes for a politician continuously, with the politician having to leave office if the vote changes enough.
I think that would empower ill-conceived (and/or ill-willed) populist & short term movements, with everyone in constant fear of being "un-vote bombed" by armies of easily led, and likely make the lobbying problem worse.
That would just strengthen the incentives for continual populism and propaganda.
If not continuously, there needs to be mechanisms to recall a politician (or an entire government), and re-hold elections for both failing to govern and failing to represent the interests of the people over the interest of billionaires.
To use the recent US shutdown as an example. Passing a budget is like one of the basic requirements of governing. If the current government cannot accomplish that, it should immediately dissolve and elections be held. Every single position in power at the time, gone, the whole thing gets re-elected because they have proven that the current group cannot adequately govern.
The ability to recall needs to work similarly. Vote should be able to be initiated by the people at anytime, and a successful vote means the government dissolves and new elections are held.
We could also have a "cooling off" period after a piece of legislation (like chat control) fails. It failed the first time, it should not be able to be immediately reintroduced whether in the same or a different form. There should be some sort of cooling off period where that piece of legislation (or its goals) cannot be reintroduced for x number of years.
These are good ideas, but they do have some pretty big sticking points. The ability to trigger a re-election has the same problems we're trying to avoid in the larger thread: If a bad actor (say a business) wants a politician out, they can just continually issue recall votes until they wear out the population and get lucky. Unfortunately, I think the only solution here is exactly what we have: Politicians have to be re-elected every couple of years.
The cooling off period also has problems, because sometimes a piece of legislation is a good idea, but has a major flaw that causes people to vote against it. What happens when people want a law passed, but not in the form it's presented in?
Re-election every couple of years does not solve the issues, as demonstrated by most elected governments around the world. People are too lazy, uninformed, stupid, to vote for their own good, and will be made to vote against their own interest, time and time again. As societies we are mostly not ready mentally to vote properly. This is in the interest of the people in power. Have stupid and confused subjects, so that you can rally them for whatever cause you need them to rally for.
> Passing a budget is like one of the basic requirements of governing. If the current government cannot accomplish that, it should immediately dissolve and elections be held.
It's important to note that this is a basic principle, almost the basic principle, of English-style parliamentary democracy. You have a monarch who makes decisions (through their chosen government, ever since the English cut off a few heads), and the rest of the Parliament (a bunch of nobles, clergy, and eventually representatives of commoners) is there to withdraw financing from that government when they disapprove.
> We could also have a "cooling off" period after a piece of legislation (like chat control) fails.
We usually do, it is called a "session." The problem is the inability to pass negative legislation (which also has a pretty long history) i.e. we will not do a thing. Deliberative assemblies explicitly frown on negative legislation, and instead say that purpose is served simply by not doing the thing.
The problem is that individual rights are provided by negative legislation against the government: think the US Bill of Rights. Instead, we have systems where exclusively positive legislation is passed by majorities, and repealing that legislation takes supermajorities. The only pragmatic way to create new rights becomes to challenge legislation in courts, and get a decision by opinionated, appointed judges that X piece of legislation is superseded by Y piece of legislation for unconvincing reason Z, and this new "right" is about as stable as the current lineup of the sitting justices.
What we need is to pretend like "democracy" is a meaningful word rather than an empty chant, or more often simply a euphemism for the US, Anglosphere, Western and Central Europe, and whoever they currently approve of. Democracy is rule by the ruled, and the exact processes by which the decisions are made define the degree of democracy. Somehow, elites have decided that process is the least important part of democracy, and the most important part is that elites get their preferred outcomes. Anything else is "populism."*
Decisionmaking processes in "democracies" need to be examined, justified, and codified. The EU needs either to cede a lot more leverage to its individual members (and make that stupid currency a European bancor, rather than a German weapon) OR become more directly responsive to European individuals. If you're not serving the individual states, and you're not serving the individual citizens, you're exclusively serving elites.
* A term made into meaningless invective by elites who hated https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Populist_Party_(United_States), a party who believed in things that were good.
It seems more likely to me this is being pressed by intelligence agencies than billionaires. Billionaires have secrets too.
What happens when you get what you want, and rather than magically solving every problem confronting society, it doesn't solve anything at all, and in fact creates several more problems, as generally happens when such ideas are put into practice?
What's plan B? Lower the threshold to a million dollars?
> as generally happens when such ideas are put into practice
Is this true? Lots of countries with high living standards have high taxes. It doesn't need to solve every problem but it does help solve the problem of one unelected person holding too much power and influence.
> What's plan B? Lower the threshold to a million dollars?
1B = 1000M. I think thats high enough. Don't see why you need to make it 1000x smaller to try and make a point.
It doesn't need to solve every problem but it does help solve the problem of one unelected person holding too much power and influence.
It does? Really?
What are they teaching kids in school these days? According to the books I studied, nominally-egalitarian leaders racked up an eight-digit body count in the 20th century alone.
Taxes are ~irrelevant to billionaires. When you say "you can't be a billionaire" what you're saying is "you cannot own any significant amount of a large business" because billionaires aren't liquid, their status is based on their assets and primarily their shares in large businesses.
I agree that wealth inequality is horrible and taxes on the wealthy should be much higher. But if someone owns 10% of a trillion dollar company, that's $100B in shares. They can sell off 900M$ worth of shares and "not be a billionaire" in terms of income and money (and thus taxation). So what do you do?
- Seize control of their shares and thus their control over private industry
- Or, accept that billionaires exist
This is basically the core fight between capitalism (private ownership of the means of production) and communism (government control of the means of production).
Most people hate the idea of billionaires, but people generally also hate a centrally planned government where the government owns a controlling stake in all businesses preventing any insider from having any real control.
We iterate.
Also how do you avoid billionaires worldwide? Not everyone lives under your government. Even if you could, how do you know for a fact that some people don't secretly control hidden assets? Is Xi openly a billionaire? China is a "communist" country on paper. How does he hold so much power?
The sad reality is that the world has a nonzero percentage of power-hungry narcissists. We need governments that are more democratic and robust. We all know that the current government processes are broken and corrupted.
> And once in place repealing it will be tremendously difficult.
as in: not possible
the EU parliament can't legislate to remove it, at least not without permission from the two organs (commission, council) that keep pushing this
EU parliament is the only legislature in the world that needs permission to legislate
>EU parliament is the only legislature in the world that needs permission to legislate
It makes sense, because EU law is mostly technical stuff that commission has to draft and all the national governments have to agree to.
With the commission being elected by the parliament itself and vote of no confidence being a thing, it's not like the parliament doesn't have power -- the power is intentionally nerfed to not overreach where national governments don't want it to.
> With the commission being elected by the parliament itself and vote of no confidence being a thing
you only need 50%+1 to appoint the commission, but 66% to vote them out
so practically impossible
On paper the UK house of commons can pass a bill. In reality bills are driven by the executive. The same executive that (until brexit) drove the bills via appointing the EU commissioner and being the EU council.
The reason that EU Parliament can't pass bills is because constituent governments don't want to lose power to parliament.
>How does society resolve this kind of abuse of the democratic process?
Swiss style democracy with public referendums?
"Think of the children" buys a lot of votes of common people.
plebiscite -> populism -> bad outcomes
People are not able to be experts in everything they are asked to vote on, thats why we delegate it, just like people delegate their healthcare, plumbing, flying to a holiday destination, growing food, etc.
People en-mass are just as easy to manipulate as elected members, if not easier.
Can you point to examples of bad outcomes in Switzerland’s referendums? I mean unequivocal examples, of the sort that would convince everyone here that that model is undesirable as a whole.
How about that time in 2020 the Swiss voted in favor of an immigration restriction proposal that was so fundamentally incompatible with existing EU treaties, the government was forced to bullshit their way out of implementing entirely because doing so would have basically ended Switzerland as a nation? This is the kinda thing that really cannot happen in a working system. The only reason the government is not sued into following through is because the courts have conspired with other branches to shut down any attempt at doing so. Real democratic.
Generally speaking, people are stupid. Really REALLY f-cking stupid. Giving the average Joe this kind of unmoderated power in a modern world that almost entirely eludes his understanding is no different from handing him a loaded gun; eventually, someone will get hurt real bad. As someone living in Switzerland, the main reason things are as stable as they are is because:
* Changing anything significant requires a referendum, which is a huge pain in the ass. So politicians just kinda avoid important changes that require referenda, finding other ways to enrich themselves and leaving society stagnating. This means that actually important changes come about very slowly or not at all. Read up on how long it took for women's suffrage to become universal – and the outright threats of internal military action the federal government resorted to...
* Whether the Swiss like it or not, Switzerland is mostly a loud, spoilt economic annex of the EU. It will remain stable for as long as the EU is, and well off for as long as the EU wants to be seen as a peaceful and magnanimous partner in international relations. After all, "bullying" tiny and surrounded Switzerland into agreeing to anything – which the Swiss will cry about at any opportunity you give them – is a bad look.
So yeah, Swiss direct democracy is not all it's made out to be, and really not all that great up close. Admirers remind me a lot of Weaboos, strangely shortsighted in their admiration of a system they know little about.
For one, we can try to get laws passed that point in the opposite direction: explicitly ban the things being proposed here as broadly as possible.
> How does society resolve this kind of abuse of the democratic process?
You need a means for citizens to hold the powers that be accountable. Unfortunately, the EU is largely designed without such a mechanism, as its initial scope and ambition was much smaller than the superstate it is growing into it wasn't deemed necessary.
Every branch except for the European Parliament risks consequences only if they fuck up so badly that the majority of EU citizens in their home countries (or in some cases, the majority of member states) deem their actions so reprehensible that they consider punishing the EU more important than electing their own national government, since it's effectively the same vote.
This is technically still a means of accountability, but it's not really a threat in practice.
> How does society resolve this kind of abuse of the democratic process? It is a dynamic that is repeated in many areas.
A lot of society wants this. A lot of parents are asking for this.
That doesn't mean anything, because they're not necessarily educated on the topic, and yet are making decisions that affect everyone.
When it's so cheap to enact mass propaganda, selective omission and manufactured intent, it becomes impossible to just say, "well, the people want it." Their decision making process is compromised by the same people pushing these policies through.
Democracy is indeed broken, and we have to take that seriously if we're going to fix it.
Please quantify "a lot". What percentage of the population wants all private communication between adults to be monitored and censored by a government agency? Can we put it to a vote - right after publicly discussing (debunking) all of the false beliefs that its proponents have?
The question that is at the core is “police can wire tap calls but they cannot wire tap chats. Should this change?” The details are not all that important to people.
Legal interception requires a court order, Chat control is mass surveillance.
Trying to build support for mass surveillance by misrepresenting it as targeted tool with checks and balances is exactly the kind of bad faith discourse I'm talking about.
The people that push this agenda reside on secrecy. We need to expose the people involved and let the press do their jobs.
Agree, but it's rather "expose the people involved and DON'T let their pocket press puppets do their jobs!"
It's just Ashton Kutcher trying to save our children.
Which press? The same that keeps this war in the shadows?
> How does society resolve this kind of abuse of the democratic process?
Other than hoping for a large meteorite or the second coming to end this misery, or stirring up the bloodbath a la Nepal - then, by recognizing the power of large numbers of people doing little things, like sabotaging the system at the personal level. But that implies unity, and unity and mutual support have been deliberately annihilated in this society for too long. Thus, this outcome is even less probable than the first two.
Agree completely. We're like sheep that are cluelessly watching other sheep being slaughtered.
This.
I'm downvoting you because complaining against downvotes like this is against site guidelines. Your comment would have a better foundation if that part was omitted.
Now that's some recursive self-fulfilling prophecy, my friend! But thanks for chiming in.
The States are learning the hard way that the disproportionate accumulation of wealth is an irresistible force which will eventually erode all checks and balances, corrupt all systems, and ultimately capture the entire government. We we were doing mostly okay with "constrained capitalism" but as soon as we let our guard down, money flooded into politics and that was the end of restraint.
Chat Control isn't something being pushed in the States though, so your criticism just seems like you're taking a random shot at the USA rather than accepting the uncomfortable truth that the EU is becoming increasingly authoritarian.
No, I was directly responding to parent:
> How does society resolve this kind of abuse of the democratic process? It is a dynamic that is repeated in many areas.
Relating our experience in the US, we planned for exactly this, it went okay for a while, until it didn't. The answer to parent is "do this but a little better" :-)
I’ve seen this strategy many times in the US. For example, in blue states they will repeatedly propose the same gun control laws that restrict the rights of law abiding citizens and violate the constitution, which guarantees a right to own firearms. Each time such a law is proposed, people have to show up to hearings, submit comments, pressure legislators, protest, and all of that. Those laws may then be pulled back, but the same laws will get brought up every single legislative season, and citizens who have other responsibilities in life have to give up time and money repeatedly to fight for their constitutional rights.
I’m sure there are other examples of such legal abuse of different political biases - I’m just using this as an example because there is such a long history of it. Eventually, legislators will pass whatever they want anyways. And then your recourse to regain rights is to go through an expensive years-long legal battle that ultimately requires the Supreme Court to take the case. This type of “attack” is a serious flaw in many modern democracies.
I think the fix is to have personal consequences for legislators, judges, etc that make bad decisions that violate the constitutional rights or fundamental rights of citizens. The idea that people are immune from consequence just because they’re serving in an official capacity is insane. This shouldn’t be the case for anyone serving in political office or other public roles - as in, you shouldn’t get immunity whether you are a lawmaker or policeman or teacher or whatever else.
This is true and yet we managed to kick SOPA to the curb (one of Aaron Swartz's finest hours)
That was more than a decade ago. Think how many normies have come online since then that have only ever used a smartphone. Sadly the average computer literacy of those times are gone.
> Think how many normies have come online since then that have only ever used a smartphone. Sadly the average computer literacy of those times are gone.
I remember a few years ago, being shocked to see that over 50% of applicants for a software engineering role applied directly from their smartphones. So it's not even just normies who see their phone as "the computer".
Did you notice that SOPA reappears every couple of years since then?
> How does society resolve this kind of abuse of the democratic process?
By choosing "people-vs-individual-politician" fight over "people-vs-government-system". Like, literally, make politicians personally responsible for this bs.
But I was told that the EU was the good guys…
It seems it was a matter of time.
Germany first voted against chat control 2.0, then they clarified why they were against it, became "undecided". And now "Denmark" came out with a (lighter) version "some others" are more willing to vote for. [0]
What a joke. In front of our eyes.
Then they wonder why people hate their guts and are becoming increasingly violent, euro-skeptical, etc.
[0]: https://euperspectives.eu/2025/09/germany-backtracks-chat/
Society can't win this without fighting the personalities who drive it. In the end, there's a individual that pushes this, so this very person should be targeted personally.
Someone said it's an asymmetric conflict, so we need to pull it to our (human-size) level and fight on our chessboard.
They will keep trying until some version of it passes.
I remember that back a few weeks ago on reddit, before I left it, I warned people about this.
Well - colour me not so surprised. The lobbyists are back at it.
I think we need to permanently crush them now. They attack us here. This is a war.
It will eventually pass, it's EU after all.
Privacy needs codified! The illusion of safety is not worth it for the fascist regime who turn keys it into a panopticon.
Again? Seriously? We shut them down, what, last week? They really are going for the activism fatigue approach aren't they?
I wonder if one could train an LLM to automatically protest all the new chat-control? This is getting ridiculous.
The "risk-mitigation" loophole in EU Chat Control uses the same vague, discretionary language in the Digital Services Act that Elon Musk and others warned lets regulators coerce platforms into censorship and surveillance.
I think "oops" or "d'oh" are the phrases we're looking for here.
Elon Musk said just the truth about EU until now. Why did he do that, I don't care, but that's a fact.
Plus, when you see politicians react the way they did, it's like a code smell.
This is an ongoing terrorist attack and authorities fail to stop it. Please report these people to the police as attempted terrorist attack. People behind Chat Control should be arrested.
A snippet I posted before:
If terrorism is defined as using violence or threats to intimidate a population for political or ideological ends, then “Chat Control” qualifies in substance. Violence doesn’t have to leave blood. Psychological and coercive violence is recognised in domestic law (see coercive control offences) and by the WHO. It causes measurable harm to bodies and minds.
The aim is intimidation. The whole purpose is to make people too scared to speak freely. That is intimidation of a population, by design.
It is ideological. The ideology is mass control - keeping people compliant by stripping them of private spaces to think, talk, and dissent.
The only reason it’s not “terrorism” on paper is because states write definitions that exempt themselves. But in plain terms, the act is indistinguishable in effect from terrorism: deliberate fear, coercion, and the destruction of free will.
While I agree with the sentiment, I don't think hyperbole is the solution.
This legislation, while reprehensible, is not terrorism. Defining terrorism is particularly difficult (the UN has been trying since the 60s and is trying again this year), but if all intimidation for political gains is terrorism then so is every other political ad from the last 30 years. Banksy would probably argue that regular advertising also qualifies - after all, that's what the "F" in "FOMO" stands for and beauty products are definitely pushing an ideology.
You don't have to like the official definition of terrorism, but that doesn't mean that you alone get to decide what it should be.
The irony is that we only get stuck in semantic arguments because the authorities refuse to treat this as the kind of act it actually is. If prosecutors applied their own standards consistently, we wouldn’t be debating vocabulary on a message board.
Germany’s criminal code already recognises coercion of a population for political ends as a serious offence. If a private organisation tried to impose a system that eliminated private communication, criminalised encryption defaults, and created a permanent climate of fear around ordinary speech, they wouldn’t get a policy debate. They’d get an arrest warrant.
The only thing making this “controversial” is institutional hesitation. Everyone knows issuing warrants against EU-level actors would cause political embarrassment, so we pretend the behaviour is something milder, something safer to acknowledge. That gap between what the law says and what the state is willing to enforce is exactly where tragedies start.
This isn’t about inflating the meaning of terrorism. It’s about refusing to downgrade coercion just because it comes from people in respectable offices. Words shouldn’t shrink to protect those in power. They should describe what is happening.
edit: and whilst we are at the semantics - the word “terrorism” comes from the French Reign of Terror, where the state used fear as an instrument of governance. The original meaning was quite literally state-driven intimidation of an entire population to enforce ideological conformity.
This Chat Control 2.0 nonsense has to be killed off once for all.
If I'm an EU citizen, who do I call and email to yell at about this? I assume my relevant MEP, but anyone else?
https://fightchatcontrol.eu/#contact-tool
Dystopian BS. It's unfortunate that we've got people in society that are keen on mass surveillance
I guess pretty much all of us will become criminals if this passes. Have a phone that is running GrapheneOS you are a potential criminal. Running linux probably also a potential criminal.
This shady approach of trying it again and again is so disgusting to me. Just be upfront about. If you will do it anyway at some point, just fucking do it. It's not like other countries like China that are much further than we are in this regard are in constant turmoil over it. I guess we won't be either.
Instead we take a moral high ground over Russia banning and blocking what are basically non-compliant messaging platforms and pushing Russian citizens to Max, which is controlled by the government. All the while these legislations in Europe will lead to the same end result.
How am I supposed to to argue against chat control in Russia when we are doing it too, just with a different twist.
Honestly I think privacy is lost. Regardless of what side you were (big fan of privacy here) I feel we have nothing to do but move on and think how to live in a world without privacy.
I never wanted privacy anyway: I wanted no discrimination, inclusion, healthy democracy, etc, etc.
Privacy has always been a tool for me.
At this point, selective privacy like we are experiencing today (we cannot know what’s in the epstein files, but google can send a drone and look into my backyard) serves none of the things I am interested in!
The basic structure of your argument is equivalent to, "I've given up on being allowed to leave my house, I just want to go to the places I need to go."
what a ludicrously insane take. how can you not believe in privacy? do you think what you do in your home should be private, or do you think it’s fine for someone to put cameras in there? If you do, please feel free to invite them to do so; do not feel free to invite them to put cameras in my home.
Privacy for me is not that important. I have nothing to hide, nothing I am ashamed of. For me it's more of a way of protecting from abuse that a need of its own. I realize it's just me and I do advocate for privacy, but if you look around: we lost. Our data is everywhere and there are no consequences whatsoever. PS: I did mention in my original comment that Google and many others already send drones with cameras to spy on your backyard and that is considered "fine". I am not inviting them to come to your house; they are already doing it. Just check Google Maps.
Whether you or I want it or not is irrelevant
Over the last 5000 years it's been very rare for plebs to have any privacy. For a brief period from ww2 through to the early 21st century power shifted to the plebs, but since the 1980s that power has shifted back to the feudal barons, and our rights will eventually regress.
But the SP500 will be at record highs so everyone will be told they should be happy.
What I’m taking issue with is that you said you never really cared about privacy. I care about my family’s privacy. I’m not asking you to care about yours. I’m sorry you’ve given up on something that wasn’t important to you anyway, or whatever.
I think you misunderstood him for me. Regardless, giving up is not something I mentioned. You guys just inferred it. I just feel we need to approach the battle very differently. What we have been doing it's not working.
What??
For 5000 years there were no surveillance cameras or ways to surveil communications! (other than the little that was said by mail)
Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45908672
My Europe doing european stuff...
The GDPR, DMA, DSA are good.