I wonder how it can be legal to repeatedly undermine constitution and push or vote for later high-court-nullified laws and be allowed to repeat as if nothing was wrong with that. Like drunk driving forever. We ban counter-constitutional activities outside parliament and authorities. Why not inside?
I am much for 3-strikes here.
Fear will always lead to an erosion of personal rights. Fear of child predators will lead to erosion of privacy rights, and fear of terrorists has deprived all Americans of the right to protection against unreasonable search/seizure. Welcome to modernity.
How much is 'modernity' screwing up your life right now?
Covid measures, enshittification of internets. Chat control in Russia has outcomes in people being exploited by thugs in the whole country. How can you observe the world without immediately seing these?
I'm actually surprised people wake up an give two fucks about any of this to be honest. It sounds like people looking for things to complain about.
The "enshitification" of the internet makes me laugh.
The "enshitification" of the internet makes me laugh.
Because doing that is your job?
I work in open source (donations based) and I don't believe the internet has been ruined.
The same reason most people are a bit “thick” , stuff just won’t go into their brains or register with them. They have the mind of children but are in adult bodies with adult voices
Given it has suppressed an entire planet of innovation, prosperity, possibility, and experience, I would say it has negatively impacted all of us in ways you can't fathom.
At least in the US, modernity has pretty well trashed our food supply and education system. Those both seem pretty important.
I for one blame the NPC Population that can't think more than 5 Minutes ahead in terms of policy.
The NPC population doesn’t know about this and doesn’t care. They haven’t heard of this and they don’t know what “e2ee” means. They have “nothing to hide”. They are your parents and grandparents, and your friends from work.
I blame people who do know and write internet comments instead of taking action.
How many of you have deleted your Instagram and Facebook accounts? How many of you are still reachable on WhatsApp and iMessage? How many people have you onboarded to Signal? How many people have you taught to sideload?
The NPC population doesn’t know about this and doesn’t care. They haven’t heard of this and they don’t know what “e2ee” means. They have “nothing to hide”. They are your parents and grandparents, and your friends from work.
You got it right: They do not care. They do not care that privacy, democracy and freedom are taken away from them because they never cared that they had that in the first place. It's the eternal conservative vote that will never consider an alternative regardless of fact.
They vote Republican in the US and CDU here in Germany. Doesn't matter if they vote for a convicted criminal or that they ruin the future of their children and grandchildren. They got theirs, fuck everyone else. Doesn't matter what I do there's a block of at least a third to half the population that is not open to argument, reason or even facts.
Fuck those People!
It's not really a left/right thing. These things always have "bipartisan support".
blame people who do know and write internet comments instead of taking action
Amen. I’ve worked on privacy issues in the states. Never again. The overlap between people who care about privacy and those who are too lazy and/or nihilistic to engage with the civic process might as well be perfect.
If you care about this, call your elected. If you won’t, that’s the problem.
They're nihilistic for a reason, I won't call my representative because its a waste of time. Privacy-minded Americans are a tiny subset of the population vs. the most powerful corporate entities and intelligence agencies in the world, there isn't anything we (or my representatives) can do or say that's going to make a meaningful difference. If the snowden leaks weren't enough to trigger a reckoning on this issue then nothing will. At this point civic engagement on privacy in the US basically amounts to political masturbation, it feels good but does nothing
Calling others "NPC" is really telling about what kind of person you are.
Yes, you're the only person who experiences inner thought and a complex existence.
Welcome to post-modernity*. It's evil and communism in a progressive jacket.
It's evil and communism in a progressive jacket
funny to read something like this as a response to a comment blaming spreading fabricated fear.
The irony of this is I don't think this will substantially reduce either the percieved or actual danger present to children.
I don't think this will make parents stop worrying about their kids being grabbed by strange men, and the danger will be just as present as before.
That's only a fraction of the problem though. You have no idea how easy it is for for example, kids on the fortnite subreddit to end up on the NSFW fortnite subreddits and talk to others and start exchanging pictures.
The other thing nobody wants to talk about is that it's not always adult creepy men approaching kids, it's the kids themselves that seek out sexual conversations with strangers on the internet.
Sure, this is also the parents responsibility. But even with open phone access, internet filters, etc they will find a way, especially if their school gives them laptops and there's open wifi everywhere.
That's where this is also for. Parents cannot monitor all their children's internet access at all times. Children will resist and find ways around parents' control, as it has always been.
I don't think many people fear those things, they're just used as a rhetorical cudgel.
Many do, many don't.
It's been known since ancient times that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Fear is a completely normal and often useful emotion.
What scares me is how terribly bad we are at dealing with it. This is the weakness that terrorists try to exploit, of course.
We, as a society, seem to posess the emotional intelligence and maturity of a toddler being scared of the monster under the bed but happily following the friendly guy with a van full of candy.
It makes me so sad.
It's a really nasty feeling to live in a society influenced by politicians in power with ideas so far away from my own, while also having little influence over their decisions, unless I give up what I like doing and go into lobbying (or politics, which seems to me like the poor man's lobbying)
I've sent an e-mail to the permanent representative in the country I live in, but I feel particularly blindsided knowing about such a decision on the same day it is voted. And angry for all the people, especially journalist friends, that are out there and unaware of what's going on.
I'm not sure this is what democracy is supposed to feel like, but if it is, it feels like shit.
You are missing historical perspective - listen to recordings of western political leaders from the 70’s - whether good or evil, left or right, it is obvious they are clever, talented people in their prime years.
To have someone like Trump, Biden or Boris Johnson I charge would be unthinkable. We are governed by low calibre people that should already be in retirement.
Core of the problem is that talented people no longer go into governance in the West, it’s now low-status career. (You age to consider all career paths, not just becoming president).
In China it’s a high status career, and the results speak for themselves.
Until we have high-calibre, ambitious and talented people go into politics again, we will continue this muddling decline.
And they never will because they insist on paying peanuts. The government is stuck on a lots of stupid people model when they need to be on a few smart people model. That's why they can't execute on complex projects and need to always contract it out to the private sector.
And then you wind up with the mirror-image problem of ambitious and avaricious people using politics as a path for their own advancement at the expense of others.
Why not both, if both were on the table? I.e. incentivizing competent people to seek office, while decentralizing power and properly constraining the reach of any single office.
> We are governed by low calibre people that should already be in retirement.
> Core of the problem is that talented people no longer go into governance in the West, it’s now low-status career.
> Until we have high-calibre, ambitious and talented people go into politics again, we will continue this muddling decline.
I very much resonate with this. Also, with concerns that the opposite might just be as bad: I could name en European, western country of several dozen million people governed by (downright) a career, borderline pyscho narcisist career politician. How do we keep -that- from happening?
It’s one of the reasons I’m against the continued growth of centralized power structures. Local governments aren’t perfect and tend to be more easily dominated by a little tyrant, but in general, the more decentralized the power structures are, the easier it is for people to change their situation. Your vote has a bigger impact, it’s easier to hold local officials accountable, and of course, you can move to a different town / county / province more easily than moving to a different country / continent.
Warren Buffett said something to the effect of: “I prefer to invest in a business that could be run by a monkey, because eventually it will be.”
A similar principle holds for governments. You will eventually (possibly consistently) have a government that is led by incompetent (or corrupt) politicians. How can you structure your system in such a way that their negative effects are minimal?
Please don't bring that old American libertarian fantasy about moving if you don't like a local law to Europe.
The amount of people who would consider selling their house, moving their family and job because they don't like some local policy or its implementation is essentially zero.
And it's really unbelievable how political parties in the EU (and US) who won't shut up about the threat from the extremist right gaining power also seem to have no fear of giving their enemy these tools.
But that’s the thing. The EU commission is by far vastly shielded from politics. They are not elected, they are nominated by the member states government, but due to the complexity of the EU they are always chosen from this limited and fairly homogeneous pool of professional bureaucrats. It is not that they are even people or conspiring to create a Orwellian nightmare. But is the nature of power in the hands of the professional managerial class without real democratic input.
And we don’t know how to fix that. Politics is a spectacle ensuring that we vote for people who are poorly equipped to make the real decisions in a vastly complex system. The people itself are becoming dumber and less cultured.
I am starting to really think that being governed by an AI maybe is not a bad idea as long as no human can control this AI.
I don't think that the problem lies with the commission. If we had a Senate like the US or if Parliament decided to introduce new laws then nothing would really be different. They would still make these boneheaded decisions that are unattached to reality.
Organize. There are lots of digital right groups in many forms and shapes.
And if you can't find a group to your liking, create one.-
At any rate, move. Act.-
This is why anarchism is an important philosophy and practice. It asks, how can we build societies which operate without coercion and hierarchies?
The politicians don’t actually represent you. The world is a democracy for the donor class.
Being delusional, I would say that the only reason for the EU existence is to pass legislation that would apply to the whole EU, that would not be possible to pass even in a single country.
That's why the EU is structured in such a way that unelected and irresponsible people are given such enormous power over sovereign countries.
Previously, I thought it's about peace in Europe, more freedom for the people, but after such legislation is enacted, the EU is no more than a way to enslave the whole continent and bring it to the state not a single European voted for.
It is easy to tune in to their frequency: just be an increadibly lazy pretentious figure with no talent to do real job that produces value that people are willing to pay for.
From that perspective writing a short legal paper quickly that facks up the life of everyone is much more logical than catching criminals. The latter one needs some work, also some brain to do.
I feel particularly blindsided knowing about such a decision on the same day it is voted.
That. I get the local newspaper, and I am not sure if I have seen any report of Chat Control at all in the last few weeks.. If it does get mentioned at all, it is usually a 5-10 line paragraph :|
Don’t fret.
Those who wield power today have absolutely and completely forgotten just how brittle power is. They feel absolutely untouchable, and their self-serving remits are absolutely normalised to them.
Which is to say, this trajectory typically ends in violent revolt. You can only continue with edicts if you have complete control over all of the apparatuses of state power, and have a police state. If you rely on the illusion of power (policeman in your head, etc.), as most western democracies do, then a rude awakening awaits.
Demagoguery seems like a wise tactic until you’re upside down on a fence with your balls in your mouth.
So don’t fret. The pendulum will swing a few more times, but the bob will pop off the end of its tether and bounce under the awkward sofa of revolutionary change soon enough.
It's a really nasty feeling to live in a society influenced by politicians in power with ideas so far away from my own
This has made me realize that there is little difference in living in a "free" society compared to "unfree". It didn't get to be that way because of morals or sound reasoning. It ended up that way because of dumb luck in the past that and enough propaganda cemented it. That's it.
Either way, what matters is what you're allowed to do now and in the close future. Bets are off for everything else. Our societies aren't governed by what the right thing to do is.
The funny thing about the EU is that while they do all this theatre of parliamentary elections, the bulk of such decisions are always taken by an unelected organ, the EU commission. It is not that I think they have mischievous intentions, on the contrary, but any unchecked managerial bureaucracy always go to the path of endless regulation and control.
The EU commission is not unchecked. Unelected governments (and instead appointed by the parlament) are the norm in most European states. Why on HN people feel entitled to make such comments? Is it a Krueger effect on politics?
Depends how you define unchecked. The European Parliament's only real recourse against the Commission is censure, and it's never been successfully done (although it came close in 1999 (Santer) and in 2004 (Barroso)). On the other hand, the EP has successfully picked off a handful of individual Commission initiatives, probably most relevant to HN being the 2005 Software Patents Directive. The problem with one-offs though is that it doesn't stop the overall direction the Commission wants to go; it comes back again and again, as it has done here with chat control coming back rebranded as upload moderation. There's no way to get them to change direction wholesale other than censure, which as noted above has never been successfully done.
checked means clearly bounded by laws and institutions. There are judges who disagree the EC. The council and the parliament have to say yes to new law. This is clearly checked.
The courts are arguably the least worse institutions of the EU, but they are slow and not really applicable in many matters.
The """parliament""" is a joke. Do you know of any other democratic parliament in the entire world which doesn't have the power to propose laws? I don't.
As people have pointed out, the commission can just keep pushing and pushing and pushing the legislation they want, as they are doing with Chat Control. It only needs to win once, whereas the other side needs to win every time.
"The courts are arguably the least worse institutions of the EU, but they are slow and not really applicable in many matters." Slowness don't matter if we talk about unchecked EC.
"The """parliament""" is a joke. Do you know of any other democratic parliament in the entire world which doesn't have the power to propose laws? I don't." don't matter if we claim ah unchecked EC.
"As people have pointed out, the commission can just keep pushing and pushing and pushing the legislation they want, as they are doing with Chat Control. " EC can't because the parlament, the council and the judges can disagree. As again the EC is not unchecked.
AFAIK there aren't any other major examples of directly elected governing bodies who don't have the power of legislative initiative. There are more examples if you count indirectly elected bodies like the German Bundesrat.
The core governance issue isn't so much about the ability to propose new bills as it is about not being able to function as a true counterbalance. I think if the European Parliament simply had the power to propose repeal of legislation (even if they didn't get the power to initiate legislation), that would go a long way to improving the usefulness of the EP as an institution.
Oh Sorry man! you're right!
An analog form of this is found in several European countries, so, of course its not unchecked! How could I miss that?
Oh no, I know. Dunning-Krueger!
My bad! Thanks for enlightening me with our perfectly logical argument!
I find this bizarre as well. The EU Parliament has no initiative, possessing only the power to approve or veto legislation proposed by the Commission. And then when they occasionally exercise their veto power, the Commission can just resubmit substantially the same legislation as before, as is happening here.
This also means the Parliament has no independent power to repeal previous law that it might have regretted passing. It must again wait for the Commission to propose repeal. I can count how many times an unelected administrative bureaucracy has proposed removing its own power on zero hands.
The whole thing strikes me as a sham democracy.
It is (a sham).-
Then again, I am, personally, split: The standards, and process, to become a part of this technocratic body that is the EU are very high, and they will (ostensibly) select amongst the best candidates ...
... might this "technocracy" be an option in today's age of political mediocrity and populism?
The standards, and process, to become a part of this technocratic body that is the EU are very high
[citation needed] :) As far as I see it's just opaque dealings between the individual member-states' governments.
Pan-European party Volt is going to change that. They are slowly gaining popularity and on recent elections to EUP performed better in Germany than some mainstream parties (3% nation-wide, but much better in politically affluent Berlin). I‘m sure they will become mainstream in the next 2-3 election cycles.
Highly doubt it. As mentioned, the backroom and opaque dealings among the individual member-states' governments are the real power in the EU. Even if Volt would win a good-sized bench in the EP (which they aren't), it doesn't change the balance of power.
"The European Union does not have a democratic deficit same as the moon doesn't have an oxygen deficit"
The EU is a profoundly dysfunctional institution, and one of the main reasons why is the lack of democracy. I say this as a pro-Europe person.
(2022)
More context: this was written back before the first iteration of chat control got turned down by European Parliament, and even links to that revision. A few details has changed since then -- still it's basically the same thing, although now you need to opt in, otherwise you won't be able to send images and videos. Allegedly, it could be passed by European Council tomorrow.
It's a little ironic how the same legislative body that came up with GDPR is now implementing coerced consent. I believe they would also bar you from sending links, so no easy bypass with an image server.
It shouldn't be. In 2006, the Commission proposed, and Parliament agreed on, the Data Retention Directive. It forced all ISPs to save all browsing data on everyone for 6-24 months.
The idea that the commission or Parliament in any way cares about privacy is nonsense.
For those interested, this one has since been annulled for violating the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights [0].
[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Retention_Directive#Ann...
But it took 8 years to get there. It was basically law of the land for a decade.
And some EU member states ignored that decision and still to this day keeps recording this data...
It's the same body indeed (European Commission) but all (or almost all) commissioners are new -- appointed in 2019, so they weren't behind GDPR.
Valid point. Let us not forget that it is an executive unelected body, but its policies and/or bent might (will) change as incumbents get replaced ...
How about data URLs?
How is this ironic? It's in exactly the same spirit of coercing people to "consent"
Another change is that some groups will be exempt from invigilation.
Are the recent shifts in electoral preferences the reason for the push?
As a backhanded way to surveil those politicians and citizens with the "wrong views" on remigration, etc.?
Yes, the push for electronic surveillance that's been ongoing for at least 15 years was caused by last week's election result... Sheesh
The shift in voter opinion didn't happen last week, that was only when the most recent data point was recorded.
Hardly to do with it unless you're deep into some conspiracy theory I'm not familiar with.
Just notice it's mostly left-wing parties voting against chat control.
If anything, such ideas are usually to appease people who are in favor of deportation.
Edit: well like someone pointed out instead of party programmes and declarations, we should look at past voting behaviour on the 2021 vote: https://mepwatch.eu/9/vote.html?v=134463&eugroup=ID
Seems like only the Greens, The Left and Afd within ID were against that first version of Chat Control.
___
This isn't the case though: the right-wing Identity and Democracy faction is explicitly pro-privacy, digital rights and against Chat Control.
- https://id-party.eu/program/ (ID Party Official Site)
- https://idgroup.eu/news/online-censorship-is-a-threat-to-eur... (ID Group News)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_and_Democracy (Wikipedia Overview)
- https://id-party.eu/declaration-of-antwerp/ (ID Party Official Site)
The ID group is opposed to EU-wide surveillance measures, and promises to protecting individual privacy and national sovereignty.
Now ECR is also sceptical and have expressed concerns, though their voting record on privacy related legislation is more inconsistent, I believe.
Remigration is a code word used by right wing extremists to say deportation, at least in Germany. I wouldn't use it as if it were a thing.
So true. Only the left is allowed to play word games vis-a-vis illegal aliens. I mean illegal immigrants. I mean undocumented immigrants. I mean migrants. I mean undocumented citizens.
It's downright dangerous when the right does it!
I'm really convinced that this should be done in a two-phase rollout.
In the first phase, every civil servant must use (be affected by) the system, as well as politicians (including their families). Basically everyone who gets a salary or pension paid by normal citizens.
Also, every piece of software used by the government, or providers, which is related to this policy, must be open sourced, and attempts at finding security related issues or bugs in general by anyone must not be considered an illegal activity, but considered a helpful activity.
If they are ok with this for five years, and no unfixable problems or possibilities of misuse are found, then it can be applied to the rest of the population.
After all, one must assume that child predators are also among civil servants and politicians. It would enable the measurement of the success of this policy.
Of course politicians will have exceptions and government made secure phones.
Like guns for civilians. Nobody should have one, except the Politician body guard.. I am not advocating for guns in Europe! it is just an example. We can use the example with private health insurance, private schools and so on.. it is more like to exemplify the "Do what I say, don't do what I do" kind of politics
Except that civilians CAN have guns, they just need - just like police and military - a background check, training, certifications and permits. Police and military can't take their guns home, anyway. On paper.
In most European countries, you are only ever allowed to be in possession of a gun in public if you are travelling to or from the shooting range.
Civil servants are indeed well known for their non-conformity and appetite for freedom
Assuming it passes, what are some good alternative ways to communicate securely?
I was thinking a webapp of an open source app such as Element (matrix) is a good candidate. Also converse.js, and Movim (xmpp).
Me being Swedish I totally expect to have one Android phone for my eID app, and one with an open source OS for everything else.
It was good while it lasted, making orders on my phone from anywhere in the world. But now I'll have to go home to get my eID device, which is fine.
Since for now this is supposed to force the messenger developers a way to circumvent would be to directly download and install APKs of messengers that refuse to implement this and/or left the EU market.
This is obviously merely a short term solution since it should be clear that targeting hosts and developers of non complying solutions would likely be the next step.
Technical countermeasures have been doing a pretty good job at combating insane copyright rules for a while now. It's often said that technical solutions don't solve political problems, but I think it's important to retain our freedom to run whatever code we like on our computers because that does seem effective at enabling freedom of communication regardless of laws made to quash it.
I don't know, mobile phones and messengers in particular are a very small target compared to general personal computing.
There are very few relevant messengers and adoption rate is king, because at the end of the day we want to use these messenger to communicate with people.
Getting people to try out new/different messengers is already a pain. And here every blow against an uncompromised messenger to make them harder to get will lower its usercount and push more people towards the compromised software they can easily get on the store.
Sure I'd say some way of circumventing this will probably remain available for a while, but I'd say it is extremely easy to make this very inconvenient.
After all this isn't about having some way to communicate safely, this is about being able to communicate safely in our daily lives is what I'd say.
Meet up in real life I suppose. This is one of the examples where if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear, but I'm aware this is a broken statement to make because a new government may decide that something that was OK to talk about is now no longer OK to talk about.
When I am elected God-Emperor, I will banish discussions about apple pie recipes, and all those that have been involved with apple pie recipes and discussion thereof will receive a Stern Talking To by the newly formed Agency of Apple Pie Suppression.
A few things people may have to hide that they arguably should be able to, depending on the culture:
- Embarrassing medical conditions
- Minority ethnic heritage
- Being LGBT
Brexit looking good right now.
Britain is already terrible when it comes to matters of privacy and/or encryption
They are just lazy and occupied with other means of pretend right now, that's the only reason they did not pull a more drastic version of this just yet. It will come eventually.
Yep - or world leading depending on which side of the fence you sit :-)
This is from 1981.....
https://www.duncancampbell.org/content/big-brother-listening...
You must not have a great eyesight then.
One reason behind Brexit was that there were EU privacy laws in place that prevented UK citizens' data to be sold or exported to US based companies, like NHS data [0] https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/dec/08/nhs-gives-am... or https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-us-data-bridge....
Also with protecting the internal market; the UK is interested in importing US produce like chlorinated eggs and chickens, but EU laws said nu uh: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/25/business/chlorinated-chic...
It's interesting how this isn't a left-right issue. Both the more populist left and the more populist right oppose this, it originates from our elderly-home technocrats whom are clinging to power, like von der Leyen.
IMO, saying it originates from elderly-home technocrats really downplays the role of lobbyists who want to peddle their surveillance tech. In this case, Ashton Kutcher.
https://netzpolitik.org/2022/dude-wheres-my-privacy-how-a-ho...
And, you know, the whole "intelligence community" folks.
Except the intel community doesn't need a law. Nice to have maybe. But if you think those are people who let little things like laws stop them from doing what they believe they need to do, you're being a bit naive.
One thing is to do little things and hide, another is to have the backdoors to everyone handed to you for your dragnet needs.
It would be more fair incarcerating each adult male citizen for 5-7 days, all female citizen for 0.5-1 days of high security prison in the name of child abuse mitigation.
Reasoning: they all have the opportunity to do such.
Is that even the correct ratio?
<= 14 males per female?
Surely it’s even more skewed than that.
It is substantially less skewed than that.
This is a weird take.
So is mass surveillance as a solution for stopping CSAM.
I'd love to see Europe again becoming a beautifully decentralized region - with many shared values but no shared politicians.
Can you give more details as to when, and how, it was a "beautifully decentralized region"?
In my opinion it was so before the American smartphones took the prevalent market share.
Absolutely. Brexit proofed that this is a really great idea. Who doesn't want to start paying through the nose for roaming again?
The idea that just abandoning a thing with some issues is better than trying to repair it (or even just keep it as is), does not seem quite realistic today. Even the various national politicians who wanted to do a *xit before the UK did this have quietly dropped those ambitions.
Dumb laws exist globally. Don't expect this to go away if tomorrow it was all up to the national governments again. Collectively getting bad laws like these repealed or changed is much more likely though.
Sweden's parliament just voted to support chat control in the Council of Ministers at EU level.
As per the comments there, this still has to go through Parlament and the ECJ is the 'last stop' on this
My understanding is the ECJ can overturn legislation that has been passed and appealed, but it can't pre-emptively block legislation?
That's a good question, I'd say you are right but I'm not sure of all the details
(but then again, between passing and actual implementation there's a much to unfold)
Those people would ban printing press and jail Gutenberg to protect the children.
They would not ban it, they would insist that only they have the moral high ground to use it. Whenever laws like these come up they write explicit exemptions for themselves into them.
They don't see themselves as merely human, they consider themselves as our betters. The closest thing to a ruling class with divine mandate we have today. That von der Leyen got her position in spite of election results is only the icing on the cake.
Don't think they need to legalese around exemptions, they can just do as they wish - as the Pfizer-gate shows they are not wrong so far.
No, the center of European power needed printing presses for their own propaganda.
Instead the center of European power banned heretical works with the Index Librorum Prohibitorum and executed heretics like Giordano Bruno, Jan Hus, Michael Servetus, Aonio Paleario, and Lucilio Vanini. Even if they were already dead, like John Wycliffe.
It's fascinating that this is what they are claiming the legal basis is:
The legal basis to support action in this area is Article 114 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU). The article provides for the establishment of measures to ensure the functioning of the Internal Market.
In other words: in order to trade efficiently in goods and services with each other countries need harmonised regulations. Countries have started to introduce individual laws to combat CSAM. Therefore these inconsistent laws interfere with operation the "internal market". Hence the EU can shut down private speech.
So somehow they twisted streamlining of commerce into termination of individual rights. It's wild to think how far that can be extended, if it can be the basis for this.
It also seems particularly ugly if you actually do frame it within the context that they are claiming: this is not "think of the children". It's actually "think of the commercial profit" - they literally say it themselves.
Yeah, authoritarians love provisions like that.
They abused a similar one in the US constitution (the commerce clause) to rule that growing wheat on your own land for personal consumption counted as "interstate commerce" (Wickard v Filburn) and backdoored into the federal government controling basically everything physical.
Yup, very easy to twist 'interstate commerce' clauses into anything you want and the US has a long history of it. The entire war on drugs on the federal level was justified by the 'interstate commerce' clause in the constitution as well, much easier than amending the constitution like they did with alcohol
This is reason enough for me to support leaving the EU. I always suspected it to become something else. And since VDL it has become rather clear that staying will make things worse.
The Irony is in the UK we are about to get a socialist state, not renowned for their libertarian acceptance of other points of view. I am sure the new Labour government will make sure we have the same system in the UK in the name of co-operation.
If you think Kier Starmer's Labour party is socialist, you need better sources.
His platform is notably unambitious and centrist, more so than New Labour, who managed to be in power for thirteen years without introducing gulags.
I'm surprised the law doesn't require operating systems to duplicate all network calls over to a govt sink.
Isn't there a law - or intelligence agency mandate - that does that already? See Snowden, FISA court requests, etc from 10+ years ago.
I ask "does that already?", but the way these things work is that they are not allowed to publicly say whether they channel messages to intelligence agencies. If you're doing things that intelligence agencies may find interesting, you already wouldn't be using these services.
That will be the end of whatsapp then and any other mainstream secure messaging platforms. Probably will do eff all for the real bad actors, paedos and deviants.
I don't think it will be the end because the vast majority of users will be completely unaware and/or indifferent to this - just what the parties behind it want them to be.
But you're right about the real bad actors, they already don't trust these platforms anyway.
That said, "grooming" in the broadest sense of the word happens on channels like Whatsapp, Instagram, even Pinterest for some reason because it's not blocked as social media by popular wifi filters.
Ex: girl (14) our son was friends with "had sex" with someone who claimed to be 18, but he recorded the interaction and used it to blackmail her to do more / other stuff. I don't know the details but that kinda thing happened via Whatsapp.
Isn't this a duplicate of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40715449?
Same issue, other source.
The more the better.
These fuckers are about to go to war with all the hackers in the EU
The direction of travel was known for years, but people were called tin foil hatters. The divine EU would have never even tried to do something like this. And if they do? Well, they are doing to for greater good and you probably have something to hide if you don't like it. EU is the best thing since sliced bread you far right flag shagging fascist!
The way to win a war, is to demotivate and demoralize a population, not win a battle or destroy an army, but to make it so that the army never mobilizes.
Look how demotivated and demoralized everyone in the EU is becoming. I really wonder why that is.....
Live by the nanny state, die by the nanny state.
The evergreen "think of the children" excuse to make you forego of your privacy rights.
European elites seem willing to sacrifice all their liberal values just to crack down on people who oppose unlimited unskilled immigration.
There isn't one EU country willing to say no to complying with this legislation?
Respecting the Fundamental rights of the individual in the digital realm is really the only thing that needs regulation on the internet.
All the various AI, targeted ads,... regulation could be solved with that simple focus. I see arguing about chat control or AI as downstream of the central issue.
If real privacy was the norm with minimal data collection the other issues take care of themselves. I believe the issue is linking the digital world to an individual without their knowledge.
We are not lead by our betters, is all I can surmise.
This is more proof that the GDPR was nothing more than a part of the EU’s trade war on its best ally for defense.
Well, obviously everyone is against child abuse. If you are not for this kind of governmental regulation of all communications you are FOR CHILD ABUSE. And that makes your opinion irrelevant.
/s
The power of government + media, both nearly captured by unaccountable interests, has me worried. Does everyone remember the 'soft rollout' of Total Information Awareness back in 2002? There was even a logo for the proposed new government program (US). They have not given up on this for a single minute.
Can we please also ban smartphones in parliament?
0-strike. It should be expected that elected officials respect the constitution.
I agree with 0-strikes. Elect officials should be under constant investigation for any form of nefarious behavior and they should be prosecuted as any citzen would be.
Do you understand what would happen to the system if politicians could be prosecuted for proposing laws?
Well, proposed laws would need to pass constitutionality test done by some constitutional court stuffed by legal field experts. If passed, no prosecution can occur.
I could be prosecuted for driving if the result is death of pedestrian for example. I still drive. So why our fucking "servants" are special?
Then , presumably, you would need another, lesser court, to vet a bill before it reached the constitutional court.
Unfortunately this just creates another layer of abstraction and each layer adds myriad perverse incentives for power brokering and abuse.
It’s a very thorny problem that humanity has yet to solve, and is probably unsolvable until we can solve the “power opens opportunities for abuse of those powers “ problem.
The only ideal form of government is the benign and just king, which of course does not exist.
I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords.
This might work in very small society where said king can be quickly brought to senses if he pisses off enough people. Anything larger is fucked up no atter what we do.
No fuck that
Congratulations, you re-invented the politburo.
No it is an attempt to bring runaway politicians back to senses.
As for politburo: HR in big corporations already does the task quite well. They just do not like to be called what they are.
Hungary had that. It didn't really work.
we germans learn in history lessons at school what can happen once a democratic process abolishes enough fundamental rights.
politicians don't propose law in the EU. appointed bureaucrats do. politicians get to vote on them eventually, but it'll get passed one way or another.
You make a good point, I was not clear at all on the scope of my statement. I am thinking about my own countries constitution. I am not familiar with UKs constitution [1], so I don't really know if "control chat" violates the UK's constitution or not. When I said "nefarious", I was in part referring to undermining a countries constitution, as it is illegal to do so. No, I think that proposing laws that clearly undermine the constitution should be stopped immediately at the time of proposal by the constitution itself. 0-strikes for the proposal. 0-strikes here was not meant to suggest the politician be thrown in jail or anything like that. But, I agree with you in that I was unclear.
Again, my statement above was poorly worded. This is what I meant by prosecuting for nefarious behavior: It is my belief that government behavior would be better kept in check if elect officials were under constant investigation for criminal acts. Society should have gauntness that their nation is being run by good actors. Those running our country should be legally obligated to be working towards making the society that they serve thrive, not using it as a platform for organized crime, influencing the outcomes of their personal investments, or traitorous behavior like ruining a nations economy to empower another nation.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_Kin...
I mean nefarious behaviour, sure, but idk if you mean in any context or just this specific one.
That said, if they commit illegal acts they should be tried and convicted like any other civilians, if not with a more severe punishment because they are our leaders that set the example.
I attempted to clarify my statement in my response to sneak. I am concerned that if there are people in government acting nefariously, these bad actors are free to continue unchallenged. If that is what is happening, then I suspect that this flaw exists in many democracies, if not all of them. I am by no means an expert in government, but I believe that with the way things are currently structured those leading our nations are operating without sufficient checks and balances to ensure their good intent. I am talking about investigating every government leader with a utility to ensure they are acting favorably with respect to peace, order, and good government in perpetuity.
This.
Anyone that voted for a law that is later struck down committed an illegal act, and should be liable for it.
This is a shortsighted kneejerk take to be honest. What about laws you agree with that get rescinded? What if a law that protects your privacy gets struck down, do you think the privacy advocates that made it happen in the first place "committed an illegal act and should be liable for it"?
Which constitution are you referring to?
The EU doesn’t have a constitution [1], simply enabling treaties [2].
The solution would be in ratifying a constitution.
Careful. A party in power will seek to nullify issues by putting forward and then defeating sham bills.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_establishing_a_Consti...
[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaties_of_the_European_Uni...
That certainly doesn't prevent politicians from voting for unconstitutional laws.
At that point you no longer have a legislative body, but an advisory council to whomever it is that decides what votes are and aren’t punishable. (See: Iran, China, the Roman Principate, early parliamentary monarchies.)
difficult balancing act. Having a legislative body throwing fundamental rights out of the window isn't appealing either.
They’re not. They’re discussing it. Even if they pass it, it’s subject to court review.
Yes, it's subject to court review... Five years down the line. Meanwhile they will force member states to act according to it. If they refuse they will sue them!
This is exactly what happened with the Data Retention Directive: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Retention_Directive
First passed: March 15, 2006
Came into force: May 3rd, 2006
The law was introduced in Romania, but a year later the constitutional court struck it down. In 2011 the European Commission sued Romania for not implementing the law and fined them for it. This forced Romania to sign a new law in 2012, which was also declared unconstitutional in 2014.
And the kicker is that the UK has tried to implement a similar law domestically two more times.
It's only difficult because people keep voting for politicians willing to throw fundamental rights out the window. I don't think any solution exists in this circumstance. People want to vote for bad politicians but to get good results. Good luck designing a system that does that, and does not just discount what people vote for.
Presumably the three strikes would be for the politicians, e.g. if you have voted in favor of three bills that courts have subsequently found unconstitutional, you're barred from holding office.
Would you look at that, everyone who was passing court reform is now barred from office.
You’re looking for a cheat code to effort in government. It doesn’t exist. Power is ephemeral. The person in power is always more powerful than the person who just had it, almost by definition.
We are looking for checks and balances for politicians acting against the interests of the populace. Without them a government is always one step away from tyranny.
The ultimate check is people voting for better politicians. Without this, no system of checks can do anything significant. No checks in the US will limit Trump and the republicans, if they get voted over and over again. No checks in France or Germany or Italy will limit the extreme right, if they keep getting more and more of parliament. Eventually they would be powerful enough to change the constitution, change judges and so on. No system of checks can stop Putin or Xi or the Taliban.
Checks are useful if people mostly vote right, but occasionally make mistakes. If you double down on the mistakes, you get the situation that it would be undemocratic for some rules made 100 years ago to stand in the way of what the majority of the population wants today.
Plus, who knows what are the "interests of the populace". Who can decide that? If the populace votes one way, you saying "they're voting against their interests so they should be prevented from getting what they want" is functionally equivalent to saying "what I want should be done and what others want should not, even if I am in a minority". I know it does not feel that way to you, but try to see it from the perspective of someone who disagrees with you.
In a democracy, the only possible arbiter of what should happen is the majority. Anything else is the tyranny you decry.
But then the population sees this, still wants court reform (now more than ever) and votes in new politicians to take it up. The new politicians haven't yet voted on anything and so can't be barred this way and the first bill they take up is court reform.
I'm looking for checks and balances. Something outside of the whims of populism should cause politicians who repeatedly attempt to violate fundamental rights to suffer consequences.
Try a cooling-off period. Switzerland does it for referendums. Absent a super-majority, a bill needs a certain amount of time between initial and final approval.
What problem here would be solved by ratifying a constitution?
Like -- ISTM that the relevant property here is the ability of the courts to overturn ordinary legislation for incompatibility with basic human rights provisions. But the EU already has this. the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU (which is pretty much a superset of the european convention on human rights) is incorporated into the Lisbon treaty, and all EU legislation must be compatible with it. EU courts have overturned legislation for incompatibility with the CFR, eg Digital Rights Ireland[0].
The collection of member state treaties is for ~all intents and purposes a constitution, just not in a single document, and without the word "constitution" at the top.
[0] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A...
Admittedly, a narrow one: clearly delineating unconstitutional behaviour and allowing it to be called out.
That morass makes it difficult for the public to cleanly digest when something is blatantly unconstitutional. (Britain has a similar problem.)
I'm not convinced that's a relevant issue here. For some parts of EU treaty law, sure, but here the context here is disapplying EU legislation that's incompatible with fundamental human rights. Those parts are all in one document in one treaty: the Charter of Fundamental Rights[0], which was incorporated into the Lisbon treaty.
(besides, whether in the EU, somewhere with a formal constitution like the US, or the UK, the vast majority of the work of figuring out whether something is in breach of treaty / constitutional provisions is always going to be analysing caselaw)
[0] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/charter/pdf/text_en.pdf
I mean e.g. the safe harbour scandal that EUGH nullified after a 10-year legal struggle. Was violating EU core values. That's as close to unconsitutional as one may get not having one. Then came privacy shield, another 10-year legal fight and groundhog day. You get the idea.
You want something over democratic control.
Democratically elected representatives are sovereign decision makers. They can vote and decide whatever they want. Constitutions interpreted by high courts can strike laws down only afterwards.
Democracy should lead to stupid laws if people are ignorant, stupid and easily led.
If we had direct democracy, this bill would have passed decades ago.
this is an important point, rarely discussed.
Here on HN I noticed a strong adversion for EU and its politician, but I really doubt that here on HN many are aware of the opinions of the general population in EU.
Much worse laws would be in place if we had direct democracy, I am 100% confident that death penalty would be the first big come back, but also stricter immigration laws (intra-EU too) and a generalized increase in the length of penalties for petty crimes, just because people in EU are old and they believe a police state will make them safer.
edit: QED the comments show how people would make the EU a worse place. Lucky us they can't.
They simply took what's in their interest (for example immigration laws, like really EU was flooded by migrants, spoiler: it is not!) and discarded the things they don't think would happen, because people are like that: they do not think of unwanted consequences and when they happen (like the ban of intra-eu immigration, which would most likely happen, being entirely legal and very easy to stop, unlike the illegal immigration from outside the EU) it means that someone else (in this case I assume the progressists, that they would call communists) worked against it because they hate them and hate their people and traditions.
It's incredible how easy it is to prove that trusting the average Joe on long term planning of an entire sub continent leads to catastrophes.
EDIT 2: it's also incredible how disconnected people are on political matters, they have a split brain, that thing that Orwell named doublespeak.
The most extreme libertarians that scream about being deprived of their freedom to have encrypted chats where they exchange swastikas with their friends, are the most conservatives on all the social matters and are the same people that vote the same politicians that then propose the chat control for the sake of the children.
Good
Good. If you disagree spend some time in SF.
Debatable
You are good citizen like me.
result I like after 5 seconds of thinking -> good
bad outcome -> I don't think people think that way. At least not good people or majority of people.
principles -> elitism.
Case in point
2009 Swiss minaret referendum. Amendment to article 72 of the Swiss Federal Constitution reads: "The building of minarets is prohibited."
It's completely nutty to put random token issue into the constitution. Its' just gigantic fuck you for Swiss citizens with ex-Yugoslavi or Turkish roots. It breaks all legal principles and does not work serve its intended purpose of "stopping creeping islamization". They even failed to define term "minaret". Minarets are not required in Islam and fundamentalist Wahabbi/Salafi sects don't even accept them.
All that said, I support 100% the right for the Swiss people to be idiot edgelords. That's what democracy is all about.
Sounds good.
And repealed also decades ago.
It seems likely that in direct democracy European constitution would have replaced decades ago and ECJ would be neutered.
It’s because we aren’t actually nations of laws. There are certain groups in every nation (yes, even the ones you like or perhaps respect) who operate outside of the law as if it doesn’t exist.
The most popular “e2ee” messengers in use (WhatsApp, iMessage) are already clientside backdoored in this manner. Most people in most societies are already under this type of surveillance. This is just to tidy up the small loopholes like Signal etc.
No they are not. This is nonsense. The charitable interpretation is that you’re confusing the systems on iMessage that can voluntarily detect nudity and report it to you (but not the police or Apple) with the systems being proposed in TFA which have mandatory reporting to provider+police. The uncharitable interpretation is that you’re just making stuff up because it sounds good. Please don’t do either, it makes everyone worse off.
Apple's lack of reliable security is practically all they're known for at this point. They can't even protect your notifications from warrantless surveillance[0], nor can they refuse to supply your encryption keys if they're demanded[1].
You wanna talk about making stuff up? How are you possibly able to say that the iPhone doesn't have clientside backdoors when you don't have any source code to back that claim up? You are the one making stuff up because it sounds good; Apple's concerted efforts to undermine their own security features is well-documented and even exists by Apple's own admission.
[0] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/12/apple-admits-to-...
[1] https://itsecurity.blog.fordham.edu/2021/12/08/data-can-be-o...
Saying “everyone knows these products are backdoored” and then supporting your claim with “well, they’re closed source” is a ridiculous thing to do. Please stop.
Please stop? I just cited two credible sources on either side of the backdoor. It's one thing if you don't want to acknowledge what's happening, it's another thing to publicly deny it. If you've got any concrete evidence that Apple does not furnish backdoors in their products, now is a good time to show it. Otherwise I see no rational reason for anyone to assume Apple products are totally secure.
Do you have a source for this?
Can this be concluded by looking at the app traffic?
"clientside backdoored" is a vague statement, but they may mean e.g. Snowden's revelations that the NSA has secret backdoor access to the big tech companies.
Should be a crime at this point. It’s so far away from a democratic process with all the bad faith arguments and closed door discussions that I don’t see how this doesn’t count as trying to destroy the freedom of millions of people.