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EU Council has withdrawn the vote on Chat Control

Ambroos
84 replies
8h10m

Yesterday and early this morning there has luckily been a massive push from Belgian media. The proposal this time around came from the Belgian presidency, so it was up to them to withdraw the vote.

It's unlikely we'll see any admission on why exactly the vote was withdrawn, but it's probable that the situation became untenable for the political parties involved, one of which lost massively in the Belgian elections about two weeks ago.

In an short interview in De Tijd [1] with one of the Belgian MEPs pushing this (Hilde Vautmans, OpenVLD, liberal, lost big), and another short line in De Morgen [2] from outgoing Belgian Minister of the Interior who was part of the talks for this new version (Annelies Verlinden, CD&V, Christian democrats), both of them made it appear like they mostly just care about getting it done (because nobody else has succeeded yet). There is a lot of "but think of the children", and zero technical expertise.

This morning, after the press attention, high rank party officials across the spectrum (and from the parties mentioned above) publicly called the proposal dangerous, so it's likely the pressure worked this time.

Next time this can come up for the vote will likely be from Hungary. They are taking over the EU presidency in a few weeks, and have already said this is on the agenda for them. Considering the current political climate there I would assume they are more likely to bring it to a vote, but hopefully that vote is less likely to succeed. Still, there's no time to rest, the proposal isn't dead.

[1] https://www.tijd.be/ondernemen/technologie/fel-privacyprotes...

[2] https://www.demorgen.be/snelnieuws/verlinden-buigt-voor-luid...

barrenko
28 replies
7h29m

As mentioned, the shittiest part of the EU is that we don't ever get any insight. I wish we could launch some civil legal probe into EU institutions themselves, but that would probably end up being like staring at floating points of a tensor.

Vinnl
14 replies
6h40m

We don't get a lot of insight, but we do get some. For example, when it does come up for a vote in the Council, we'll know which countries voted in favour (something you can take into account in your next national elections).

Then the Parliament will have to agree as well, and we can see which parties there voted in favour, which you can take into account in the next European elections.

The Commission is toughest to hold accountable. The Commissioner pushing it (Ylva Johansson in this case) was nominated by a country's (Sweden, in this case) government, so Swedish voters could hold the parties in that government accountable in their next national election, I suppose, but that's a very weak signal.

bux93
5 replies
5h25m

And you know, fund lobbyists. Shocking I know, but it's not just corporations who have lobbyists, NGOs too.

toomuchtodo
1 replies
2h41m

I've been donating forever to Signal, and at this point, I'm resigned that it won't reach WhatsApp parity. Just hire some lobbyists to keep encrypted communications legal as a human right.

Renaud
0 replies
1h57m

That wouldn’t help. The proposal “got around” weakening encryption without outright removing it.

They “just” wanted anything you sent to be scanned before it was sent encrypted.

Stupid and dangerous, the even have sections in the proposal that talk about encryption being important, but somehow less important than thinking about the children and putting a cop looking over the shoulder of every single citizen.

moffkalast
1 replies
1h47m

That's like saying only a good guy with a gun can stop a bad guy with a gun.

The solution is to remove guns/lobbyists, not attempting to beat them at their own game because you will absolutely lose.

WaitWaitWha
0 replies
1h33m

With your solution bureaucrats only have access to registered lobbyist to be eliminated. Bribery remains.

Log_out_
0 replies
59m

I wonder why NGO advice does not correlate with decision directions at all. Remember the CCC talks by NGO lobbists, usually culminating for everything they do in a"anyway that was what we advised, they however would vote/do/the thing we advised against". Had a huge speakerscorner going nowhere vibe and europes youth kicked that play pretend democracy in the nuts last election.

throwAGIway
3 replies
4h19m

What can I do about foreign politicians?

toyg
0 replies
3h32m

Push your own politicians to talk to them. Most serious EU Parliament groups are trans-national.

It's like asking what can you do about parliamentarians elected in other districts.

Vinnl
0 replies
2h53m

That's always problematic. The best shot you have is pressure your own politicians (at whatever level) to try to strongarm them.

For example, US policy has quite a lot of influence on me, but I can't vote for US politicians. Or Russian policy, for that matter.

DoughnutHole
0 replies
2h43m

Your MEPs are likely part of a parliamentary group with foreign politicians and coordinate with them on policy.

If your commissioner and MEPs have been solidly opposed to a policy there might not be much you can do. But do you know that that’s a case? Many governments tend to blame unpopular proposals on the EU while the commissioner that they themselves chose vote in favour.

wasmitnetzen
2 replies
3h46m

Ylva Johansson was proposed by the previous Swedish government though (a Social Democratic one), which (sort of) lost the last election. No idea why the current (right wing) government is keeping her in place.

In practise, that means she's supported by all except one of the relevant Swedish parties.

toyg
0 replies
3h34m

Commissioners are typically not replaced when a national government changes, which is a good thing from a stability perspective (countries can often have two or three different executives in a single year). In the end, a Commissioner is proposed by a country but is then meant to work in the interest of the entire Union, in what is largely an administrative role (Council and Parliament are the real political entities). They are supposed to be uncontroversial people, respected across the entire political spectrum, and typically will stay in post for the duration of their mandate unless embroiled in scandals.

sakjur
0 replies
2h46m

The commissioner before her was Cecilia Malmström 2010-2019, a liberal party politician (right bloc) whose second term was wholly during a social democratic (left bloc) government because the nomination happened before the election.

Unfortunately, both Sweden’s most recent commissioners have been prominently advocating against encryption and for mass surveillance. I really hope our new commissioner for the 2024-2029 period ends up with a better track record on privacy advocacy.

agilob
0 replies
2h41m

when it does come up for a vote in the Council, we'll know which countries voted in favour

Isn't it kinda late to act?

fredgrott
5 replies
7h19m

makes a nice plot for a Dr. Who episode.

justinclift
4 replies
5h24m

Didn't they can Dr Who finally?

HeatrayEnjoyer
1 replies
4h5m

Why would they end it?

semanticist
0 replies
3h3m

They did in the '80s, after a run longer than the current revival. Sometimes things come in and out of fashion.

swarnie
0 replies
4h27m

No its still going on as "The most BBC show ever made by the BBC"

maleldil
0 replies
2h51m

They did a soft reset, with Ncuti's new season being marked as the Season 1 of the 2023 version. It's still going strong, with this season being very strong, IMO.

EasyMark
4 replies
2h34m

I think this is what happens when you get an appointed council making decisions rather than a democratically elected one. It's a bad idea because it lets the appointees and appointers to point fingers and dilute blame, which is another weapon the 1% can use to get policies in their best interest (often the opposite of those for the 99%) passed.

sandworm101
3 replies
2h26m

> which is another weapon the 1% can use to get policies in their best interest

Mass surveillance is one of the few areas where the 1% generally align with the other 99%. Rich or poor, we all use the same communication infrastructure. Rich people don't want their chats monitored either. People don't want this. Intelligence agencies want this. But ask the people working at those agencies, ask them as individuals, and they won't want this on their phones either.

chongli
2 replies
2h6m

Mass surveillance is one of the few areas where the 1% generally align with the other 99%

Ideally, yes. In practice, the 1% have resources the 99% don't which allow them to minimize their exposure to mass surveillance. Whether this means carving out exemptions for their own communications or conducting their meetings in person, in private, in other jurisdictions.

quonn
1 replies
52m

Who do you imagine the 1% to be? Probably I‘m the 1% in my country. I have no extraordinary power whatsoever. Maybe you mean the 0,1% or the 0,01%.

chongli
0 replies
48m

Yes, your family doctor is also likely part of the 1%. Unfortunately, the term 1% has shifted to basically mean "the people with most of the wealth and power in a country" which is a much smaller group of people, perhaps even less than 0.01%.

Quibbling over the mathematical inaccuracy of the term is tilting at windmills. You'd have better luck getting people to stop using the word "literally" to mean its opposite.

tpm
0 replies
6h47m

That wouldn't help anyway because most important things happen between national governments and the people they nominate. The EU institutions would work very differently if they were directly formed and managed by the European parliament. Alas the national governments know very well why they won't ever allow that.

barbazoo
0 replies
2h50m

As mentioned, the shittiest part of the EU is that we don't ever get any insight.

You can get quite a bit of data, what are you looking for?

Bluestein
13 replies
7h59m

Thanks for that very thorough look into this ...

Still, there's no time to rest, the proposal isn't dead.

I wanted to say. It will return.-

There is a lot of "but think of the children", and zero technical expertise.

This is one of the things that irks me the most: The abusive, emotional "mislabeling". Children have nothing to do with this, and it is an abuse of public good faith to mislabel these sort of initiatives using "children" as leverage, preying upon a tech-lliterate public.-

In fact, that is also an issue here: The public needs to be brought up to speed (technically) and/or we should at least demand technical expertise from our politicians, when legislating or acting upon mainly technological issues.-

raverbashing
12 replies
7h51m

The public needs to be brought up to speed (technically)

Yeah this is the main thing

I think most people don't realize the value of privacy

Dalewyn
10 replies
7h38m

I think most people don't realize the value of privacy

After like 2 decades of screaming at clouds, I think it's more that most people don't care about the value of privacy.

squigz
3 replies
7h30m

I imagine it's easy to blame other citizens. Alternatively though, corporate interests are just far more influential than we realize.

memen
2 replies
7h0m

I never really understood this line of thought. Corporate interests _are_ citizen interests right? Those corporations are made up of (a lot) of people, and if those corporate systems thrive in a certain condition, then the people within these corporate systems will largely want to maintain or create those conditions. Those citizens do vote as well, and from personal experience, a lot of people vote in their own interest rather than national or moral interest. From research, I could not find conclusive numbers regarding altruistic [0] vs self-interested voting rates.

The more people are working for these corporations, the more we create and sustain the conditions that hold these systems in place. Whether that is 'good' is another debate.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altruism_theory_of_voting

afiori
1 replies
6h51m

On a sinking ship one way to get to higher ground is to go to one end and make sure that the opposite side gets more water faster.

throwAGIway
0 replies
4h11m

That's just a way to sink faster. Even in the parallel.

dns_snek
3 replies
7h10m

What's the difference? They "don't care" about it as long as they don't suffer any direct ill effects from their indifference.

Once things get to the point where every facet of our lives is actively under surveillance, and authoritarians in power start abusing their power in ways that affect those who "don't care", they'll start caring really quickly but by then it's going to be too late.

Maybe we need a good fascism scare to remind everyone why personal freedoms should be fought for instead of being taken for granted.

rightbyte
0 replies
6h45m

Maybe we need a good fascism scare to remind everyone why personal freedoms should be fought for instead of being taken for granted.

Ironically since fascist (in the broader sense) parties and the likes don't seem to support Chat control (yet, I guess) the other parties have a harder time passing it to not lose votes to them.

It is strange how such an anti-democratic law is pushed so hard but there is still tip toeing around actually passing it.

pjmlp
0 replies
6h32m

Being a child from Portuguese revolution, and witness of how the Berlin wall went down, it is really bad that newer generations don't have any sense of what it meant to live during those days, and vote into such parties with protest votes nonsense.

Bluestein
0 replies
6h54m

Maybe we need a good fascism scare

(And, sadly, it might serve to combat "semantic satiation" and reinvigorate now oft-bandied-about terms that are losing meaning)

jorvi
0 replies
6h28m

Privacy is a very ephemeral thing.

The retail service price of Gmail, Maps, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok etc. together probably would exceed a couple hundred dollars a year. People would rather pocket that money, especially with how tight budgets are becoming.

digging
0 replies
2h58m

After like 2 decades of screaming at clouds, I think it's more that most people don't care about the value of privacy.

I think you've betrayed your own argument, because talking with people would have been more effective than screaming at clouds, to use your metaphor.

Just because you're putting something out there doesn't mean anyone else is receiving it. And if they're not receiving it, you can't judge whether or not they care.

Bluestein
0 replies
7h38m

I think most people don't realize the value of privacy

Sadly, like much of everything, only once you lose it ...

ginko
12 replies
7h24m

It's always the Council (i.e. the national governments) with the worst proposals and then the EU has to take the blame.

tpm
3 replies
6h51m

And the Commission is formed by national governments.

Vinnl
2 replies
6h46m

The Commission is formed by commissioners, each of which has been nominated by a different nation's government. The Council consists of actual members of the national governments.

The third party that can't propose legislation but has to approve it (and which strongly opposed this) is the Parliament, which is directly elected.

tpm
1 replies
5h56m

No. The Commission is formed by the national governments and of commissioners.

Vinnl
0 replies
2h51m

OK, this is probably some nuance of the English language that I'm missing as a non-native speaker, but I meant that the people that make up the Commission are not part of the national governments. The people that are part of national governments each get to nominate one commissioner though, in addition to being part of the Council.

toyg
0 replies
3h28m

The Commission agenda and mandate is set by the Council that nominates it, and periodically reviewed by the same Council. Items are set in meetings, the agenda of such meetings is typically public.

If the Commission pushes, it's because the Council told it to push.

munksbeer
0 replies
2h25m

Only the Commission can propose new legislation.

That is a technicality relying on a shallow look at the word "propose". The commission frequently takes direction from the council when deciding what to focus on which leads to them "proposing" legislation. In this case the push for this has come from the Council and certain national governments combined with a particular commissioner.

eigenket
0 replies
6h40m

Specifically this is being pushed by Ylva Johansson [1] from Sweden, who has (reportedly) financial connections to the organisation Thorn which is hoping to sell this chat monitoring software.

[1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ylva_Johansson

pohuing
1 replies
7h17m

It's only them and the commission who can make proposals right

arlort
0 replies
6h37m

Only the commission

But commission and council aren't acting in a void (parliament neither), if there's appetite for a legislation amongst national governments the commission will work on a proposal

The same works to a lesser extent with the commission and parliament as well

arlort
1 replies
6h35m

The Council is as much part of the EU institution and as legitimate a part of them as the Parliament

There's no avatar of the EU manifesting out of thin air in brussels so it makes sense for the EU as a whole to bear the blame for the actions it takes, regardless of where it originated

avianlyric
0 replies
4h10m

I think the point is that the EU hasn’t actually taken any actions yet. This is just infighting between different arms of the EU governance structures, trying to figure out what actions should be taken.

So it is unfair to label rubbish coming out of the commission or council as something the EU has decided, when it’s only the first step of many for actually making a decision.

It would be like taking any random bit of legislation proposed by a member of congress, and labelling it as the collective stance of the entire U.S. government, completely ignoring the fact there’s a long road from proposal to enactment.

rmbyrro
10 replies
2h12m

Proposals should have an exponential backoff algorithm. Otherwise they'll keep proposing over and over until it passes.

moffkalast
7 replies
1h50m

Problem is that they can just keep rewording and repackaging it endlessly until the checksum doesn't match but the final effect is mostly the same.

rmbyrro
3 replies
1h30m

I know a similar principle is successfully applied in judicial courts, in some cases.

If it's possible in justice, why not in law making?

TeMPOraL
2 replies
53m

Perhaps because courts are not a democracy? This class of problems gets much easier when an individual is designated to make a binding declaration (e.g. that these three seemingly different feelings are effectively the same) that's hard to challenge. Democracy has a hard time dealing with "obvious when you see it" problems.

puzzledobserver
1 replies
38m

The US House and Senate have parliamentarians, who have some power about what bills can be voted on. This was in the news some years ago, when they (if memory serves) blocked some bills from being voted on.

I am unsure of the limits of this power, and how easy it is to change parliamentary rules in the first place.

didntcheck
0 replies
34m

Similarly in 2019 John Bercow (then speaker of the British House of Commons) notably rebuffed the government when they attempted a third vote on what he considered to be basically the same motion

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-47614074

Mr Bercow cited a convention dating back to 1604 that a defeated motion could not be brought back in the same form during the course of a parliamentary session.
Bluestein
2 replies
37m

Solution, perhaps, is equally persistent opposition.-

rmbyrro
0 replies
5m

Opposition needs public support.

The public, in general, gets tired of repeated messages.

I suspect their motivation to pass orwellian laws are higher than the public's resiliency.

kelnos
0 replies
22m

But that's a problem. People get tired of having to fight against the same thing over and over and over.

Put another way, we have to successfully oppose things like this every single time it comes up. But the people pushing it just have to win once.

navane
0 replies
24m

Can't we just pass a law that is incompatible with this proposal? Or can a new law always overrule existing laws?

ljm
0 replies
1h6m

This has been the strategy of every political party to hold office in the UK for as long as I've been alive.

There is always some privacy-defeating 'online safety' bill going through the parliament. Every time it gets knocked down, but almost immediately returns with slightly different wording.

Vinnl
7 replies
6h44m

They are taking over the EU presidency in a few weeks, and have already said this is on the agenda for them. Considering the current political climate there I would assume they are more likely to bring it to a vote, but hopefully that vote is less likely to succeed.

Even if it does succeed, that would mean the Commission and the Council are in favour, but they'll still have to reach an agreement with Parliament as well. Parliament has already come out strongly against the proposal, but we just voted in a new, more conservative, Parliament, so I'm a bit anxious to see whether it'll stick to that stance.

cbeach
4 replies
4h16m

I get the feeling most of those conservatives entering the parliament are of the libertarian and anti-establishment variety.

Within the European Parliament, The ID Party represents many of the rising rightwing national parties, such as AfD, RN, Lega, PVV. Among other things, the ID Party stands for "Defense of individual freedoms and protection of freedom of expression, in particular digital freedoms"

https://id-party.eu/program

The concept of a centrally-managed surveillance apparatus in the EU runs contrary to the stated beliefs of the Euro-skeptic ID Party, which wants to reverse the centralisation of power within the EU.

Fredkin
2 replies
4h11m

There are definitely factions of both the extreme right and extreme left (outdated terms) that understand privacy and dislike mass surveillance.

Authoritarianism is on the rise in the 'Third-Way' corporatist, technocratic 'center' which is increasingly worried about losing control to perceived or real extremist parties that threaten their funding model and rock the boat.

orwin
0 replies
1h48m

Authoritarian center is called 'extreme center' for a reason.

AJ007
0 replies
1h52m

I wonder if conservative/progressive and right/left were false dichotomies. At the extremes there are remarkably similar outcomes. Corruption is present at the extremes and the more moderate center. Some of the corruption is more explicit and illegal (pay me and I'll do this), other less so and legal (you did this while in office so now we hire you for big $ to do little.)

Vinnl
0 replies
2h49m

I'm not so much concerned about the rise of the ID party in this regard, but instead the growth of EPP and decline of the Greens. And possibly also Renew, though I'm not sure where they stood - if they were in favour then I guess their decline helps here.

arlort
1 replies
6h41m

This doesn't really fall across conservative / progressive lines, and those lines are already pretty blurred in the EP

We'll see how it goes but it's hard to say what the result will be purely based on the elections results.

Vinnl
0 replies
2h50m

That is absolutely true, and the best thing to do is indeed to wait and see. And cross our fingers.

morsch
6 replies
7h7m

It's unlikely we'll see any admission on why exactly the vote was withdrawn

There may be more than one reason, but yesterday Germany said they'd vote against the proposal so it was DOA.

pjmlp
5 replies
6h37m

This kind of access to information still brings up Stasi memories in lots of us, or PIDE/DGS, in my case.

But there are too many interests to make it in, sadly.

g15jv2dp
4 replies
2h54m

How the hell is the stasi relevant in any way whatsoever?

bjoli
2 replies
2h33m

I am not German, but when I lived in Germany I got the impression they were very wary of political proposals that infringed on the privacy and liberties that the German people enjoyed.

Not that they didn't pass any shitty laws, but that the question "how can this be misused?" always was present.

ds_opseeker
1 replies
55m

This is one of the traits I admire the most about German culture; awareness that government can abuse its power.

In the US, by contrast, I see one political power eager to give powers to their candidates which they would hate to give to the rival party. It's like they've forgotten that they are giving power to the Government, not to a party, and if the other party gets power they get those powers.

inglor_cz
0 replies
7m

"This is one of the traits I admire the most about German culture; awareness that government can abuse its power."

This trait can be found all over the former Soviet Bloc, because we have had enough experience with either one or two homicidal authoritarian regimes (the Nazis and the Communists). That experience was paid in a lot of pain and blood.

Places like Sweden, the UK, Canada, Australia or the US, where governments within living memory weren't as oppressive against their own population, have a lot of naive people, "well, they mean it well".

pjmlp
0 replies
2h36m

The point that you have to ask that question, in the context of state surveillance, is quite telling.

qznc
1 replies
2h39m

Germany publicly announced they will vote No. I don’t know about others. Maybe it just became clear that it wouldn’t pass?

It was a sneaky try anyways, right after the election.

generic92034
0 replies
2h5m

And during the UEFA Euro 2024.

kstrauser
75 replies
5h7m

One enormous advantage of federated systems is that they can route around this idiocy. For example, I host a Mastodon server in California. There was zero chance I’d comply with EU’s law, any more than I would PRC’s. That’s their little policy, not mine.

atmosx
37 replies
4h54m

Believing that legislative issues can be solved with technology is one of the most common fallacies among the IT crowd.

If those in power decide to push forward by increasing the penalties, eventually running a Mastodon server will become as risky as getting caught for murder. At that point, it would be naive to run a Mastodon server locally, wouldn't it?

P.S. Mind you, the average consumer/user doesn't care as long as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok are up and running. Quotes like "they already know everything" and "do you have something to hide from the government?" will become ubiquitous in public discourse.

kstrauser
27 replies
4h45m

If/when American law mirrors it or we sign a treaty, it applies to me. Until then, it doesn’t. The penalty could be “shoot on sight” and it doesn’t matter as long as I’m outside their jurisdiction.

I’m kind of fascinated by the often simultaneously held beliefs of “America doesn’t make the world’s rules!” and “…EU does!” Countries can influence each other, sure, but if EU (US or Canada or Brazil) makes a law, it doesn’t apply to people not under those jurisdictions.

logifail
13 replies
4h31m

If/when American law mirrors it or we sign a treaty, it applies to me. Until then, it doesn’t. The penalty could be “shoot on sight” and it doesn’t matter as long as I’m outside their jurisdiction.

That's great if you never need to|want to travel.

What about the time you happen to end up in transit through an airport in a country where they've put you on their watchlist, they grab you airside and hold you for hours while they look at your devices....?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/18/glenn-greenwal...

stickfigure
4 replies
3h54m

Theoretically a valid risk, and when the first person gets arrested over a cookie banner, I'll take it more seriously.

toyg
3 replies
3h45m

Let's not mix contexts. This legislation was (and is) pushed by European security services. If it passes, I guarantee that it will be (ab)used widely.

eigenket
2 replies
3h20m

It was mostly pushed by people (Ylva Johansson) linked to American organisations (Thorn) who are in the business of selling chat monitoring software.

toyg
1 replies
2h58m

And their customers are...?

eigenket
0 replies
2h39m

Currently random companies [1], if the shitty legislation gets passed then every EU government.

[1] https://www.thorn.org/solutions/for-platforms/

Their website lists oracle, slack, ancestry.com and others

kstrauser
3 replies
4h28m

I’m not going to live my life worried about hypotheticals. What if my plane goes down, I get rescued by North Korea, and they get mad at something I said about Kim Jong Number Un? That’d suck, but the possibility isn’t going to make me self-limit in the mean time. There are enough real concerns on my plate.

MacrohardDoors
2 replies
3h17m

Yes, there are a lot of people living their lives like that. Live fast, die young kind of mentality.

Hypotheticals in tech pretty much always come true in the end. And especially fast these days.

The world is gearing up for something, and personally I smell a global war and a reshuffling of world powers in my lifetime.

kstrauser
1 replies
3h12m

Do you comply with PRC law, or even know what it asks of you? If not, why?

I don’t know and don’t care because I don’t have to. I live in a sovereign nation and I’m not obligated to follow their rules, any more than their citizens are obligated to follow mine. That’s how countries work.

If my country signs a treaty with them, then I have to obey that specific law. Absent that, I don’t.

MacrohardDoors
0 replies
2h59m

Hell no I don’t abide by laws of the PRC.

If they had all the things I’d ever said in my life time they’d probably execute me. I speak my mind all the time. That’s what terrifies me though, because in 20 years time they could be running the show. So why would I want to make it so easy for them to know everything I have ever said, why would I want that data stored about me.

bee_rider
2 replies
3h38m

If the EU is really coming down hard on people who do mundane stuff like host a Mastodon node and chat with their friends, then I’d avoid them just like I’d avoid North Korea or any other authoritarian country.

As indicated in that article, the UK kinda sucks, so, like, don’t go there. Whatever, they don’t have any good beaches anyway.

eigenket
1 replies
3h22m

You can lay many faults at the UK's door, but they do have some very nice beaches.

Sadly outside summer the weather is usually to bad for them to be worth enjoying, but in summer they're pretty nice.

peterclary
0 replies
2h44m

We used to have some very nice beaches, but unfortunately the Tory government thought it would be a great idea to allow water companies to discharge sewage into the waterways at will (because shareholders), so I personally wouldn't take the chance nowadays, although it doesn't seem to bother everyone.

causi
0 replies
2h17m

People need to stop treating other countries as if they're just the next town over. When you visit a place or do business with them you are in part endorsing how they behave and how they govern themselves. If you have a problem locking people up for blasphemy, don't spend money in a country that does it. If you have a problem with arresting people for illegal gestures, don't fly there to take instagram photos. Stop ignoring behavior you find abhorrent for the sake of personal convenience.

Onavo
5 replies
3h48m

If/when American law mirrors it or we sign a treaty, it applies to me. Until then, it doesn’t. The penalty could be “shoot on sight” and it doesn’t matter as long as I’m outside their jurisdiction.

Try ignoring the GDPR, they will get upset at you really quickly.

kstrauser
2 replies
3h18m

And if they do?

I like the GDPR. I comply with the local CCPA version. I’m not legally obligated to follow the GDPR though. I’m unaware of any agreement the US has with EU that puts me under its jurisdiction.

kstrauser
0 replies
2h53m

What regulations does that apply to me?

inamorty
0 replies
2h50m

Who is "they" and where is it being ignored? GDPR is quite clear on where it applies.

bee_rider
0 replies
3h22m

What are they going to do, invade the US to arrest one guy?

deaddodo
2 replies
3h35m

If/when American law mirrors it or we sign a treaty, it applies to me. Until then, it doesn’t. The penalty could be “shoot on sight” and it doesn’t matter as long as I’m outside their jurisdiction.

Except the part where the CANZUK/US/EU blocs generally have reciprocal agreements and Interpol is perfectly empowered to enact international law inside of the US, as of 2009.

Choosing to take this stance in one of the Western Nations is foolish to an almost ignorant degree. If one of them feels you broke a big enough law, it's trivial (at best) to execute upon it.

kstrauser
1 replies
3h32m

This isn’t international law. If it had passed, it would have been an EU law without a US counterpart.

deaddodo
0 replies
2h16m

Yes, but you can break EU law outside of the EU, especially digital crimes.

Foreign national hackers are arrested all over the western world for offenses in other countries, for instance.

Dah00n
2 replies
4h21m

doesn’t apply to people not under those jurisdictions.

Of course not but if an American company in the US caters to EU users with, for example, a localized site it does absolutely apply to them. Same the other way around. Just because you or your server are too small to matter doesn't mean it is irrelevant.

America doesn't make the world rules is often said when they create one set of rules for them and another for everyone else (US can have warships near china but if it was reversed we would have a new Cuban crisis) and when they create rules in places they have the most power to create international laws that fit their world view but not their enemies. In a perfect world the US would have zero power and zero say a meter outside its borders.

stickfigure
0 replies
3h56m

Nobody is going to extradite you for not having a cookie banner. EU can't _actually_ make laws like that.

The reason gambling/child porn/fincrime/etc are enforced across national boundaries is that everyone (at least, in the western world) respects those laws and absolutely will extradite. Cookie laws, anti-encryption laws, anti-(adult)-porn laws are not like this.

bee_rider
0 replies
3h25m

Did we actually complain about a Chinese freedom of navigation activity? I think the US vigorously supports the right of all countries to send a carrier fleet to hang out in international waters wherever…

chx
0 replies
3h45m

The United States has arrested Marcus Hutchins for violating its laws while he was not inside the United States. This was not the first time, they also arrested Sklyarov for writing software they didn't like -- but the software was written in Russia. This is plain insanity and only the United States could get away with it. (The Sklyarov arrest together with the CFAA was one of the reasons I have chosen not to immigrate to the USA btw.)

For example, imagine you being arrested at Frankfurt airport because you posted something a year ago that falls under Strafgesetzbuch section 86a. You would need to review your entire post history going back years and compare it to the laws of every country you touch during your travels.

talldayo
2 replies
3h48m

This is defeatist and wrong. Technology can be used to cross political barriers and solve issues, that's what the government intends to stop. They like the App Store and Google Play store, because if dissenting apps pop up they only have 2 companies to call to get it removed[0]. They like people perceiving an iMessage/RCS duopoly because that's only 2 secure channels to backdoor[1]. Threatening you with jail-time is all they can do for escaping their ire, but that's an unjust and disproportionate response from any state-level actor.

The "average consumer" has been joking about their 'FBI guy' and freaking them out with weird porn or spurious Amazon carts for a decade now. We've hit the peaks of disillusionment, we've started down the road of exploitation and most of us are starting to worry that this trend of technological limitation is specifically intended to make us politically weak.

[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/09/17/navalny-g...

[1] https://apnews.com/article/canada-us-india-sikh-activist-kil...

Retr0id
0 replies
1h16m

It's not defeatist. The point is that legislative decisions still matter, a lot.

Take the Chinese Great Firewall, for example. Yes, you can use technical means to circumvent it, but the effort required (and inevitably degraded performance) means that the median citizen does not.

Bluestein
0 replies
3h18m

I like the quote attributed to Vitalik Buterin about how "whereas most technologies tend to automate on the periphery, blockchains automate away the center."

If you descentralize, you democratize.-

jauntywundrkind
0 replies
3h39m

This isn't using technology (technology happens to be involved). This is a political challenge to Big Cloud (and it's systems being steered around by the many powers that be of the word).

Federation is politics. Federation is about governance. It's about a place between centralized/authoritarian and distributed/anarchy.

If those in power decide to push forward by increasing the penalties, eventually running a Mastodon server will become as risky as getting caught for murder.*

It's unlikely to be enforced globally. Every millimeter wrong that statement is, ever chance higher that connecting-with-one-another does try to get shut down on a broadscale, is another reason why we should be doing it, now, asap, and normalizing it.

jappgar
0 replies
3h14m

all political issues can be solved with technology.

it is called "war".

imiric
0 replies
3h17m

Legislation is much easier to enforce on centralized services than decentralized ones.

As long as encrypted peer-to-peer communication exists on an open internet, there will be no way for a 3rd party to intercept this traffic, or for any government to control it. They can ban the use of specific software, but new software will always be written.

digging
0 replies
2h54m

Having such a narrow view of technology appears to be an even more common fallacy. Legislation is technology. New systems can be invented which continue to work around it, and further, law can be extended to protect certain actions. I don't have a specific answer to this specific problem, but "there's no technological solution" is categorically wrong in almost all cases because it assumes technology is limited to some arbitrary subset of technology that can't solve the problem.

didntcheck
0 replies
18m

Plus it's naive to think it's just legislature you need to worry about. In recent years VISA and MasterCard have been demonstrating their intent and ability to work as worldwide unelected morality police. And then there's the infrastructure platforms and associated deplatforming (and unfortunately you usually need to work with one of the "big guys" otherwise a cheap DDoS can destroy you)

And the worst part is most of the internet have been cheering it on

carlosjobim
0 replies
3h45m

Mind you, the average consumer/user doesn't care as long as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok are up and running.

The enormous success of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok is because the average consumer/user can express themselves there and broadcast to the world. Normal people are actually participating in public discourse again, after most of a century of public discourse being one way with the government screaming into the citizens ear what to think and what to do, via radio and TV.

aloha2436
12 replies
4h54m

GDPR is also their little policy and I assure you plenty of non-European people are made to care about it.

kstrauser
11 replies
4h50m

The businesses who care about taking money from Europeans care. I worked at an American healthtech company and we weren’t GDPR-compliant because 1) we weren’t targeting Europeans, and 2) GDPR and HIPAA are incompatible so we picked the relevant one.

Since my server doesn’t do business in EU, I couldn’t care less about GDPR or other local laws, even the ones I think are good ideas.

American law doesn’t apply to someone running a server in Brussels. The converse is also true.

ceejayoz
6 replies
4h31m

GDPR and HIPAA are incompatible so we picked the relevant one.

The GDPR explicitly permits "processing [as] necessary for compliance with a legal obligation to which the controller is subject" in Article 6.

kstrauser
5 replies
4h25m

Which rules it out almost entirely for HIPAA covered entities. Quick example: right to be forgotten vs record retention laws. A European who receives healthcare in the US can’t demand that the provider delete their medical record afterward because HIPAA says they must retain it.

rswail
0 replies
3h17m

And they couldn't demand that the provider deletes it in EU either, because maintaining medical records is a legal requirement, which overrides the right to be forgotten.

But it does require you to document that requirement and make sure that the data isn't shared beyond that requirement without consent.

HIPAA and GDPR aren't conflicting, they're orthogonal and cover different things.

macguillicuddy
0 replies
4h11m

The right to be forgotten has an explicit exception for circumstances where there's a legal obligation on retention, although it does reference Union and Member State law and not other international entites. https://gdpr-info.eu/art-17-gdpr/

ivan_gammel
0 replies
3h4m

Record retention laws are not the only exception. E.g. you can execute your Hausverbot right only if the person you refuse to serve cannot demand that you forget them. This position was already confirmed by German regulator at least once.

ceejayoz
0 replies
3h13m

Quick example: right to be forgotten vs record retention laws.

Record retention laws win, as explicitly stated in the GDPR.

Same reason a murderer can't (successfully) issue a right-to-be-forgotten request to the cops investigating them.

(There's also "processing is necessary for the purposes of the legitimate interests pursued by the controller" as another exception, which allows, for example, your bank to retain the fact that you owe them $100k on your house still, even if you don't want them to.)

TheCoelacanth
0 replies
3h39m

It doesn't prevent a HIPAA covered entity from needing to delete marketing data that they've collected about you.

Right to be forgotten still applies, there is just some limited data that will still be kept.

mfru
2 replies
4h37m

American law doesn’t apply to someone running a server in Brussels.

Except when the one running and renting out the server is Microsoft, Amazon, or some other US entity and the Patriot Act exists.

kstrauser
1 replies
4h30m

True, regrettable, and irrelevant. Host it in a local data center and it’s out America’s control.

I’d have a different opinion about my service if I were hosting my server on Hetzner in Helsinki. Since I’m not, I don’t.

mfru
0 replies
4h20m

Sorry, but haven't you noticed how many companies and public bodies in Europe are using Azure, AWS and GCP?

I'd say that is rather very relevant.

The Patriot Act is the foremost frontier in the ongoing dispute about the so-called Privacy Shield.

cuu508
0 replies
4h20m

GDPR and HIPAA are incompatible

Out of curiosity, could you give a few examples of incompatibilities?

doe_eyes
8 replies
4h58m

This is the advantage of being small enough to fly under the radar, more than the advantage of federation. It's also why Signal can get away with approaches that would have gotten any Big Tech player testifying in front of the Congress, with parents of kids killed by fentanyl or kidnapped by sex predators sitting right behind.

If your service becomes big and important enough, and if politicians hear enough from law enforcement and intelligence agencies that you're a major problem, then all of sudden, your "zero chance" becomes a "non-zero chance" if you ever need to travel to or through the EU, do any business there, etc.

Another case in point: cryptocurrencies. They were government-proof until they weren't, because ultimately, there are people running exchanges and mixers, as well as other counterparties, who can be threatened with prison and fines.

kstrauser
4 replies
4h54m

That’s true of any provincial law. I’m sure North Korea doesn’t like the things I allow me people to say about their leadership. I’m not going to change what I’m doing here to appease their inapplicable laws though.

doe_eyes
3 replies
4h48m

North Korea seems like a flimsy example because it's an international pariah, and their reach in the West is essentially limited to hacking you. It's a fairly uncommon situation that's quite different from decisions made by the EU.

(As an aside, the legislators in the US broadly believe the same things about online communications than their EU counterparts, so the noose will keep tightening either way.)

kstrauser
2 replies
4h41m

That is legally untrue, absent a treaty or a company’s international presence subjecting them to it.

At least I can contact my local legislators to campaign against it here.

Dah00n
1 replies
4h18m

"international presence" can be as simple as a localized site for your German users. Then you are under GDPR etc. Sure you can ignore it if you are irrelevant but that doesn't change the fact that this is how laws work.

kstrauser
0 replies
3h44m

You’re under the GDPR if you’re subject to the GDPR’s laws describing who is subject to the GDPR.

Does American law apply globally if it says it does, absent any treaty making it so?

ndriscoll
2 replies
4h0m

The advantage of federation is you don't need to become big. XMPP works like email; you set up your DNS records and other servers can talk to yours when someone wants to chat with an address in your domain.

toyg
0 replies
3h42m

It's all fun and games until you get blocked at the DNS level and effectively shadowbanned by all mainstream ISPs. This already happens today in many, many European countries.

michaelt
0 replies
3h39m

Yes and no.

Federation certainly helps, in that Americans can run American instances and not worry if the EU dislikes it.

However, federation wouldn't help EU users much if the EU state decided to go for full-on Chinese style control, firewalling the foreign-hosted instances, banning the apps from the app stores, blocking access to payment infrastructure, jail for anyone found with the app sideloaded, PR campaign saying this app is used for child porn and encouraging people to turn in anyone they see using it to the cops, and so on.

Zak
6 replies
4h20m

You would avoid it. The criminals it's ostensibly meant to target will avoid it.

Who won't avoid it is the hundreds of millions of Europeans who use WhatsApp as their primary means of telecommunication, many of whom don't even know what "end to end encryption" means, but effortlessly gain resistance to mass surveillance.

kstrauser
5 replies
4h6m

That’s all true. It’s also why we should have smaller networks that are resistant to a given jurisdiction’s laws. WhatsApp has offices and business presences all over the world and now they’re stuck complying with everyone’s laws. That’s a bad situation for us to be in.

Zak
4 replies
3h50m

I won't argue with that, and I would certainly like for Matrix to get good enough to use as a primary messaging system. Right now, I think if I tried to convince non-technical people to use it, they would find the experience unsatisfactory.

kstrauser
3 replies
3h42m

Very true. I like it. I wouldn’t want to explain to my extended family how to contact me through it.

I really really wish Mastodon had E2E messaging. Non-techies are using it today. I’d much rather get my sibling set up on that.

acheong08
2 replies
3h7m

That’s the opposite of my experience. I’ve gotten most of my (very non-technical) family to use matrix through my home server. It’s a simple sign up and tell me your username type of thing and that’s it. One major advantage is that it works perfectly fine even in China which means there is one platform that everyone can use (WeChat is invite only, WhatsApp is blocked).

Zak
1 replies
40m

I find the barrier isn't usually lack of technical skill, but lack of interest and patience. The average American can reach everyone they know by SMS and it's hard to convince them to use Signal or WhatsApp, which take under a minute to set up, are fast and reliable, and have almost no learning curve for people already used to SMS.

You describe a situation where people can't reach everyone all of their family members in the popular ways, and Matrix offers a way to keep in touch you can guide them through and admin for them.

I've had speed and reliability issues with Matrix myself, so I wouldn't try to talk people into using it.

Arathorn
0 replies
23m

historically matrix has had perf problems for sure; we are in the final stages of fixing that tho. to quote someone earlier today in one of the community rooms:

just downloaded element x from f-droid and wowza it just.. loads instantly? can't believe i now live in the age of element being faster than discord
chgs
3 replies
3h18m

Of course some counties decide their laws are to be applied globally. Ask Dimitri Skylarov. Or Kim Dotcom.

kstrauser
2 replies
3h15m

We can and should protest those abuses, not use them as precedence to defend others doing the same thing.

chgs
1 replies
38m

I don’t believe the eu has ever tried to enforce EU laws outside the EU.

Only the US and some dictatorships seem to do that.

kstrauser
0 replies
13m

A big chunk of this conversation is an assertion that the GDPR applies to Americans.

pantalaimon
1 replies
3h37m

The legislation was about the client, not the server side.

kstrauser
0 replies
3h27m

Mastodon ships with a web client that’s enabled be default.

noirscape
1 replies
4h32m

Most federated systems likely wouldn't be affected by the proposal as-is. Since most of them are non-commercial, they'd be exempt from chat control as I understand it due to a resolution vote done in the European Parliament.

kstrauser
0 replies
11m

None of them outside the EU, even the commercial ones, would be affected by it.

sva_
37 replies
7h13m

In July, the Council Presidency will transfer from Belgium to Hungary, which has stated its intention to advance negotiations on chat control as part of its work program.

That does not make me very hopeful.

HeckFeck
11 replies
6h50m

Connotations aside, using a well worn slogan 8 years later is uninspired. This makes it very ironic.

kibwen
4 replies
6h38m

> well worn slogan 8 years later is uninspired

Ironic considering that "Let's Make America Great Again" was Ronald Reagan's campaign slogan in 1980.

DougN7
2 replies
6h27m

And Hitler used it too.

michpoch
0 replies
5h44m

Hitler wanted to make America Great Again?

He kinda succeeded…

codetrotter
0 replies
6h14m

What's True

A prominent theme during the Nazi Party's ascendancy was restoring Germany to its former greatness, and Adolf Hitler used the phrase "make Germany great again" upon occasion.

What's False

"Make Germany Great Again" was not a (campaign) slogan employed by Hitler, and Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler are far from the only politicians who promised to make their countries "great again."

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/make-germany-great-again/

UberFly
0 replies
2h45m

Bill Clinton too I believe.

3836293648
4 replies
5h37m

Wasn't Thatcher the first?

And Make Britain Great Again is so much better than America/Europe/literally anything that doesn't have great in its name

bryanrasmussen
3 replies
5h33m

It's true, as an acronym MBGA just slips off the tongue.

toyg
0 replies
3h11m

It's fun to stay at the EEEEEM BE GEE AY, It's fun to stay at the EEEEM BE GEE AY...

rainsil
0 replies
2h43m

That’s a good thing. Expanded slogans have object-level meanings. Acronyms just stand as identity markers, and are much easier to dismiss.

It’s harder to argue against “Make America Great Again” or “Black Lives Matter”. Their object-level meanings are fairly anodyne and positive. It’s much easier to argue against “MAGA” or “BLM”, since the meaning is obscured by the acronym.

Political movements with nice slogans should avoid turning them into acronyms.

defrost
0 replies
5h21m

The rebuttal from The Beat flowed

    I see no joy
    I see only sorrow
    I see no chance of your bright new tomorrow

    So stand down Margaret
    Stand down please

AnimalMuppet
0 replies
4h36m

It's even more ironic when Trump uses it. Like, weren't you supposed to do that 8 years ago? What happened? You didn't do it? Why should we think you'll do it this time?

I mean, I guess it's become like a brand name. But if you think about it for a minute, it's carrying a subtext that Trump failed last time.

kergonath
3 replies
6h35m

It’s doublespeak. Orbán is not interested in making Europe or the EU any stronger, just in extracting as much as he can from it. He only cares about Hungary.

However, it is a signal (we cannot really talk of dog whistle here, it’s rather obvious) to other far-right parties with similar nationalist agenda that he’s on their side. So a better reading might be “make [individual countries in] Europe great again”.

rebolek
1 replies
6h29m

He only cares about himself, not Hungary.

cenamus
0 replies
6h24m

Money, power and football, in no particular order, to be precise

pilsetnieks
0 replies
5h22m

I don't think there's that much thought involved, they're just aping their Republican heroes.

Maken
0 replies
6h53m

Orban never disappoints.

eigenket
12 replies
6h37m

This time the proposal got canned because Germany said they would vote against it. Unless that changes it isn't going to make any progress.

A lot of Germans still remember the Stazi, so its pretty unlikely that this shit is going to pass.

JumpCrisscross
11 replies
6h36m

the proposal got canned because Germany said they would vote against it

Both the far left and right in Germany are against this, correct?

eigenket
4 replies
6h30m

I'm far from an expert in German politics, but there are obvious historical reasons why Germans like the idea of having a right to privacy.

flawn
2 replies
6h20m

I don't even understand why people never look and understand the history that happened outside of their country. Just the sheer risk of having a society like in the DDR is reason enough to not do stuff like that.

We never learn (long-term) from the past.

soco
1 replies
6h14m

A sizeable part of Germany is nostalgic after the good ole times, be it of 50 years ago or of 90 years ago. You can see them at the voting booths.

JumpCrisscross
0 replies
6h23m

there are obvious historical reasons why Germans like the idea of having a right to privacy

There are obvious historical reasons why they shouldn't try far-right, race-based politics, yet here we are [1].

[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/rise-germanys-most-succ...

pkos98
2 replies
6h24m

two of the three coalition parties are against it - the greens and the FDP (the social democrats are in favour), thus the government doesnt support.

they are neither far left/right

JumpCrisscross
1 replies
6h21m

they are neither far left/right

Are Linke and AfD are for chat control? They're by whom the coalition is being threatened.

Tainnor
0 replies
3h10m

The current government coalition is threatened by the CDU (centre-right), not by Linke (that has almost no voters left) or AfD (who no other party wants to form a coalition with).

The most likely outcome after the next election at this point looks like a coalition between the CDU and the Green party.

Unfortunately, CDU is probably in favour (they're pretty "law and order") and the Greens probably won't care enough to oppose strongly.

DasIch
1 replies
6h17m

Die Linke (far left), Greens (left), FDP (socially liberal-ish but economically further right than CDU) and AFD (far right) are against it. SPD (left) is internally conflicted about this topic. CDU (right) is in favour.

So essentially everyone who isn't very into law and order type politics and cares about civil rights is against this, regardless of where they are on the political spectrum. This is typical for such issues in Germany.

nebalee
0 replies
6h1m

So essentially everyone who isn't very into law and order type politics and cares about civil rights is against this, regardless of where they are on the political spectrum.

That does not apply to the afd.

DocTomoe
0 replies
5h59m

German parties always are against something until they are in power, then they magically have changed their minds or agree "with stomach pain"...

dindobre
2 replies
7h3m

I hope they don't use Hungary as the scapegoat to pass this kind of stuff, the fact that something like Chat Control is even discussed is gross already.

vasco
0 replies
6h37m

I think Hungary recently has had some spats with the EU so maybe they will use the approval of Chat Control as some sort of trade with something else they want to keep doing.

p_l
0 replies
6h8m

Orban would welcome the powers gained through Chat Control, so...

soco
0 replies
6h16m

Just because somebody is called "president" doesn't mean they enjoy the same privileges as a US president. The presidency of the Council does nothing more than calling for discussions. No extra powers, no extra influence, so whoever is in charge matters way less than they'd like to claim (in this particular case to impress Putin, I would suppose).

nalekberov
0 replies
6h43m

Sounds to me more like boiling the frog.

JumpCrisscross
0 replies
6h39m

does not make me very hopeful

Belgium proposed the damn thing.

renegat0x0
29 replies
6h56m

Until next time...

We must win every time...

ta1243
26 replies
5h29m

It's called democracy. It's better than the alternative.

guizzy
9 replies
5h27m

More "democracy", where you must win every time and the issue will keep coming up again and again, but if you lose once whoops the matter will never find its way back onto the docket and you will never get a chance to have it reversed.

JumpCrisscross
2 replies
5h17m

if you lose once whoops the matter will never find its way back onto the docket and you will never get a chance to have it reversed

The same dynamics govern passage as reversal. You keep trying until they slip up.

ksynwa
1 replies
4h36m

Yeah but these people make laws for a living while ordinary people are usually busy trying to feed their families.

blackeyeblitzar
0 replies
2h41m

And this is the main problem. Lawmakers and corporate/nonprofit/activist groups (who write bills for them) just repeatedly abuse the system in violation of unwritten democratic norms to get their way. I see this over and over where I’ve lived (blue states), for example with unconstitutional gun control laws that rely on exhausting opponents or waiting for them to not pay attention. The worst are when they submit bills with no text and substitute the text in at the last minute (so no one can oppose it earlier) with a late night weekend vote soon after. Or when they label everything an emergency measure (which makes it immune to reversal from voter initiatives in some states).

haswell
1 replies
5h6m

This is life. Most of the things humans value require constant effort and maintenance. And things are reversed all the time.

somenameforme
0 replies
5h2m

Can you think of literally any law in modern times that granted a government significant power, yet was proactively reversed (as opposed to the handful of laws that were made with time limitations and allowed to expire)?

username332211
0 replies
4h57m

but if you lose once whoops the matter will never find its way back onto the docket and you will never get a chance to have it reversed.

Why? It's normal legislation, it can be repealed the same way it's passed.

The EU doesn't pass legislation trough it's supreme court.

fauigerzigerk
0 replies
4h55m

There are certain protections against the government of the day taking away fundamental rights with a simple majority. In the EU, these constitutional principles are enshrined in the treaties that can only be changed unanimously.

On that basis, the highest EU court (CJEU) has ruled several times that mass surveillance is unlawful. Governments are still trying to find a way around these protections, but it's not a certainty that whatever ultimately passes parliament will hold up in court.

achenet
0 replies
3h1m

Probably a bad counter example but:

Abortion got reversed recently.

abecedarius
0 replies
4h14m

Several replies say passing and repealing legislation (and regulation) is technically symmetrical. Who really thinks that's more than technically true?

RealStickman_
4 replies
5h25m

Still, there should be a mechanism to avoid bringing up the same issue every year or two. Maybe 5 or 10 years.

woodruffw
0 replies
5h17m

This mechanism would be prone to abuse: a group that opposes a particular issue could effectively time that issue out to prevent a replacement group from pursuing it.

The adage about “being the worst system except for all the other ones” applies well here: your (and my) participation in democracy is a required component, not just a nice thing to have. Devising hacks around our participation will ultimately result in a system that doesn’t allow our participation.

ta1243
0 replies
5h13m

It will only be brought up again if there's a chance that the representatives you vote for will back it.

karaterobot
0 replies
4h51m

The mechanism is for people to vote for representatives who don't bring up those issues every year or two. The problem is that people just vote along party lines, and then vote for incumbents within those party lines. Without the threat of losing their office, politicians have no incentive to change their behavior from year to year.

Think about how your suggestion would work for other topics, like crime, immigration, social services, etc. It would undermine the government's ability to respond quickly to changes in the external world. It's not worth doing that over this one issue, when the real solution is to just vote for better candidates.

5Qn8mNbc2FNCiVV
0 replies
5h16m

That'd slow down decision making a lot. Imagine the effects this would have at the current pace climate changes are affecting the weather

suoduandao3
2 replies
5h18m

I think - with 5G warfare being what it is - that we need to go more granular. Democracy is a given when information is a weapon [1]. What kind of democracy serves our interests best?

I like the theory behind liquid direct myself, but it would need extensive field testing before it's the de facto governance model for, say, Mars.

[1]I realize that's a strange statement - I elaborate on my reasoning here https://eucyclos.wixsite.com/eucyclos/post/an-optimistic-loo...

alecco
1 replies
5h13m

Have you talked with the average voter? Most don't even know (or care) who their representatives are. Direct democracy works for small countries with high education and social cohesion, like Switzerland. And even there it's only used for specific hot issues like pensions.

suoduandao3
0 replies
2h18m

direct liquid democracy still has vote delegation, it's just possible to reassign your vote in real time. Representatives vote on issues based on how many people assign them their vote, but people can reassign their vote any time.

I actually favor something with a more Bayesian twist that I haven't heard a catchy name for, where I could delegate my vote to different people depending on the subject up for debate. Essentially fantasy sports but for cabinet ministers. That would also be good because someone I trust on most issues might delegate both our votes to someone they defer to in a particular field without me needing to study whose expertise I trust in that field. If someone's heard of a name for that system I'd be interested to hear it. Hard to research innovation in a field when you don't know the buzzwords.

pessimizer
1 replies
5h2m

It's not called democracy, democracy just means rule by commoners (the demos.) It's called parliamentary democracy. And there are not only many alternatives, but also multiple types of parliamentary democracies, of which the EU is just one.

snowpid
0 replies
3h26m

which systems do you think are better?

patates
1 replies
5h13m

The tools that maintain democracy, such as media and communication, should not be vulnerable to undermining, even through democratic processes.

ta1243
0 replies
5h7m

And who decides what undermines those tools?

wolframhempel
0 replies
5h6m

I'm wondering if at this point its more of an autocracy of systems. And whilst you can vote for the top layer that (nominally?) governs the system/institution, the system itself is permanent and continuous.

somenameforme
0 replies
4h53m

I think the names of systems is largely secondary to what's happening within those systems. James Madison has an excellent quote on this: "The accumulation of all powers, Legislative, Executive, and Judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny."

It's from Federalist Papers #47 [1].

[1] - https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed47.asp

smeej
0 replies
5h13m

It's still disappointing that after all this time, nobody's been able to implement a less bad option.

andyjohnson0
0 replies
5h4m

Your parent comment is alluding to how "we" have to win every time (the proposal is made) but "they" only have to win once (because once surveillance exists its extremely hard to undo).

Thats not democracy. Democracy isn't one side wins - it's the means by which societies balance the needs and contributions of everyone. Valuing the "needs" of spy agencies and corporations over the rights of natural people is the opposite of democracy.

sackfield
1 replies
4h59m

Is there any reason this couldn't be made into a right to prevent the constant legislative onslaught? Is it a lack of organisation/will or is it something intrinsic to the way the system is setup?

dsign
0 replies
4h50m

The right to privacy is in quite a few constitutions. The reason nobody wants to stomp Chat Control for good is because of how it has been framed: it’s to protect the children. Parents are fiercely protective, and I suspect that for a majority of them, mass surveillance and a police state is not too high a price to pay for the safety of their little ones.

jmull
27 replies
5h57m

The wave of authoritarianism sweeping the world is pretty alarming.

This bill (only temporarily sidelined) would treat every single person as a suspect of child porn crimes. Previously, you'd need substantial cause to put someone under heavy surveillance.

People talked about how that was due to principles of civil liberty, human rights, and freedom. But apparently it was actually just because it wasn't feasible to watch everything everyone says and does all the time. Now that the technology is here to enable it, our "free democracies" can't rush fast enough to put the boot to everyone's neck all the time.

Pretty obviously this is just the first step. CP is a tactical choice of the first step since practically everyone can agree on how horrible it is. (Come to think of it, this is low key exploiting the vulnerability of children -- nice one, government!) Once everything you say or do is sent to the government for review, you can bet it won't be for just that one thing only.

BTW, I think the government policy makers blow past all the problems with false positives that will inevitably occur because, when your goal is control of the population not the prevention of child abuse, that's a feature not a bug. You want everyone nervous and afraid. You want the stories of the lives of innocent people ruined to circulate. That helps keeps everyone cowed.

wait_a_minute
12 replies
5h0m

Why are EU citizens electing these types of politicians?

bilvar
6 replies
4h55m

Because if you don't want to vote for them you are immediately branded far-right and a racist, and Europe will fall into a slippery-slope of re-Nazifying itself.

wait_a_minute
3 replies
4h52m

Based on this Chat Control debacle, sounds like the people saying that have no idea what they’re talking about and should be encouraged to shut up or to be more precise and rigorous in their arguments lol

agile-gift0262
1 replies
4h32m

I'd prefer a society where when people say something stupid they are pointed out where they were wrong and why, instead of encouraging people to shut up

wait_a_minute
0 replies
4h17m

Right, but the hall monitors don’t grant that benefit of the doubt to others in the first place. Otherwise what parent pointed out wouldn’t be the case.

jerojero
0 replies
3h58m

I don't think this is the right approach.

In fact, I think this kind of effort alienates people and turns them precisely into a direction where they vent their frustration with the system on wrong avenues.

In many ways, the people are voting for far-right politicians because there's been an intellectual elite that has told them again and again "your concerns don't matter, so just shut up for a moment". It turns out, they do matter. We ought to respect each other and listen to each other truthfully to be able to reach agreements.

Overall, I'd say, large groups of people are more than capable of reaching reasonable outcomes. The problem is our system of politics are not really encouraging dialogue and change of mind. In fact, a politician changing their mind is seen as a bad thing and is usually punished. But that's just how the system is set up to be, of course, a politician is supposed to represent an electorate so the politician needs to be rigid in their views and the electorate is the one that needs to change. But this comes with the problem that electorate cycles are slow and "the people" have a much harder time accessing and parsing information than a politician might have.

Ideally we'd ought to have a system where our representatives are capable and encouraged to come into an issue with an open mind, and upon deliberation decanting into a certain position. Regardless of political color.

And I think that's kind of completely the opposite to "these people should shut up", no, they should speak up and be heard. But it should be done in a context that allows for a fair and reasonable debate.

Fredkin
1 replies
3h55m

You may also be branded far-left too. The authoritarians in the 'center' are also afraid of a strong leftist movement taking their power and money away, not just a rightist one.

You can tell because different pro-surveillance arguments are concocted depending on the audience: for conservatives they say "think of the children, Islamic terrorism, drugs, etc." for leftists they say: "toxic content online, disinformation, right-wing-terror, hate crimes". And because everyone is terrified of the other side, and the Internet and mainstream media can be used to target these messages, we have what we have today.

bilvar
0 replies
1h58m

Nobody cares about being branded far-left. It's not a smear. Afterall, "Antifa is just an idea", said the centrist ;)

jerojero
1 replies
4h5m

This is probably a much more difficult question to answer than you might expect.

If you asked me, I think liberal democracies all around the world are going through a legitimacy crisis. People have not been feeling, for a while now, properly represented by their politicians so they are always seeking to vote for someone that seems like the outsider. Right now, that is represented by these sort of authoritarian, big demagogue politicians.

I think a lot of the problems of the modern world require much more innovative ways of doing politics and our liberal democracies which are based on this concept of the "vote for your representative" are at the limits of what they can do. The systems we have are slow and inefficient in a world that changes rapidly and requires politics to adapt much more quickly than they can.

For this reason, imo, people have grown dejected from politics and the response of the electorate is a sort of self-destruction where they will vote for anyone that can resonate with a message of "i can fix it". Whatever that character might be. It's easy for politicians to play certain cards; say, immigration is the problem and the fix is to stop it. That seems like a simple solution and it's a message that can be understood pretty easily.

But what are the real problems of the 21st century, in Europe, in the USA, in the rest of the world? I think a lot of people might hyper-focus on certain problems and offer solutions just for those problems and act as if that could solve a much more systemic failure. Ultimately, it is my opinion that the problem is politicians/politics itself and so it is rather difficult for politicians to solve it. Politicians are quick to say "we've failed you" but they don't really mean it, it's true though.

A couple books that have really changed my perspective on how politics should be and why our systems are failing are: Systemic Corruption by Camila Vergara and Open Democracy by Helene Landemore. If you wanna know more.

toyg
0 replies
3h13m

Part of the problem is just scale.

National governments were formed to solve nation-sized issues (trains, taxation rates not changing every 50km, consistent languages and education systems, etc). Modern problems are bigger than that: globalized production chains, tax havens, climate change, migration flows, and superpower conflicts, simply cannot be fixed at the national level.

I can guarantee that all the boats in the Mediterranean and the North Sea will be shot on sight by my navy, but people will still get into Europe from somewhere else. I can ensure all the manufacturers in the country respect stringent pollution laws, but people will still buy cheaper and more polluting Chinese goods. And so on and so forth.

So we move to a super-national, continent-sized model, and we have a better chance to address these problems - but then we're adding more layers of indirection between citizenry and representatives, and we get an issue of legitimacy. It's a thorny subject.

jmull
0 replies
4h0m

The thing is, the kind of people who become politicians at all are predisposed to this -- they are the kind of people who want to be in charge, to control, to decide.

(It's not just the EU, it's everywhere.)

Without pushback, politicians will just naturally move toward increasing their own authority. The new technology has opened up a new opportunity, so of course they are making their push.

Democracy, as messy, inefficient, and imperfect as it is, is the only form of government that gives all us non-politicians a reasonable chance to push back.

Let's keep doing that.

cbeach
0 replies
4h3m

When the UK was in the EU we didn't care about the EU elections. Turnout peaked in 2004 at 38.9%, but could be as low as 24%.

If you asked the average UK citizen who their MEPs were, they wouldn't be able to tell you. And if we didn't care enough to know their names, we certainly weren't paying attention to the policies they voted for.

That makes MEPs very susceptible to lobbying, and the EU system very susceptible to corruption in general.

I wrote to all the UK MEPs when the awful Copyright Directive was being proposed, with its completely impractical technical demands and chilling consequences. Most of the MEPs didn't have a clue what was going on, and they didn't seem to care, because they just parrotted the talking points that the Commission had put forward when it pushed the Directive through, and the MEPs planned to obediently vote for the Directive. The only ones that didn't plan to support the Copyright Directive were the Euro-skeptic MEPs, and thank goodness they were there in the mix.

avianlyric
0 replies
4h5m

EU citizens don’t directly elect these politicians. They’re made up of heads of state, so people are voting for whoever they think is their best state government, and those resulting heads of state go to the council.

Also the EU isn’t some homogeneous entity, it’s made up of many different countries with many different views, that don’t all align. Asking why EU citizens vote for these types of politicians, is equivalent to asking why some Americans vote for abortion banning republicans. The answer as always is complicated, and there are many different issues that might feed into someone’s vote, and this specific issue might not have been the most important.

JumpCrisscross
6 replies
5h54m

our "free democracies" can't rush fast enough to put the boot to everyone's neck all the time

You're saying this in respect of a bill that has repeatedly failed. Yes, the authoritarian pressure is real. But it only wins if this attitude takes root.

from-nibly
4 replies
5h36m

But it only wins if this attitude takes root.

Or if someone slips up.

Or if it gets bundled with something everyone is really afraid of just right (see also the patriot act)

JumpCrisscross
2 replies
5h18m

Or if someone slips up

You're talking about a legislative process. In the EU. This would require months if not years of repeated slipping up.

pessimizer
1 replies
4h57m

If someone opposing it slips up. The reason it failed is because the legislative process slipped up. The public were accidentally given a few days warning.

JumpCrisscross
0 replies
4h49m

public were accidentally given a few days warning

To the Commission passing it. More steps before it’s law.

avianlyric
0 replies
4h1m

Most countries don’t let you bundle legislation together like that. US problem with stuffing everything in giant uber-legislations to work around the congress’s ability to do anything is fairly unique to US, and doesn’t everywhere else.

Heck, in the UK there are even rules around the naming of legislation which makes it illegal to give legislation marketing type titles like “The Patriot Act”. The titles have to explicitly outline the purpose and objective of the legislation (which then results in some very long titles).

digging
0 replies
2h50m

I think it wins unless this attitude takes root. We cannot trust our "democratic" institutions to survive without constant outward pressure to resist the press of authoritarianism. It is a never-ending fight, and authoritarianism is on the rise because our underfunded history classes tell us it was already won before we were born (among other reasons).

constantcrying
5 replies
3h35m

since practically everyone can agree on how horrible it is.

I certainly do, but the German government does not. They recently lowered the sentences for it, is now roughly on par with theft.

Which makes this whole thing even more disingenuous. Either it is so bad that half a billion people need surveillance or it is a crime where you can get a couple of months in prison. The third option is, of course, that it is just a cynical argument.

aktenlage
3 replies
2h52m

The government not only lowered the sentence, but the "categorization" (lacking a better word) of it, downranking it from a felony.

They did this, because with a felony it is not possible to stop prosecution for "possession of child porn" when common sense would suggest it, e.g. when minors send each other nude pictures of themselves. If you are 16, take a picture of your boobs, you are officially a criminal. According to this official page, those cases made up 41% of the cases: https://www.bmi.bund.de/SharedDocs/pressemitteilungen/DE/202...

And if the possessor of the image is not a minor, as in case of a mother who reported nude pictures from her daughters WhatsApp group to the school principal, they had to be sentenced to at least a year of prison.

dinglestepup
1 replies
2h25m

I don't understand this argument. How does talking a picture of your own boobs make you a criminal?

SpaghettiCthulu
0 replies
1h48m

Because according to these laws, it's criminal even if a child takes their own picture, even if they don't distribute it.

constantcrying
0 replies
3m

They did this, because with a felony it is not possible to stop prosecution for "possession of child porn" when common sense would suggest it

This is obviously a nonsensical justification. The law should be written in a way, which excludes these cases from prosecution to begin with.

It's completely insane to reduce a sentence for a pretty bad crime just because you can't be bothered to formulate the law properly. And even if you were to do that it still proves that you aren't particularly concerned over that crime.

If the politicians can't write a law which distinguishes a minor sending pictures of him/her to another minors, from organized CSAM distribution, then what can they do. It's either malice or enormous incompetency.

toyg
0 replies
3h25m

Tbf, the German government also committed to a No vote on this proposal, so at least they are consistent.

marginalia_nu
0 replies
5h21m

Yeah, it's kind of ridiculous given that parts of the EU has a living memory of living in a system like this. This isn't some imagined hypothetical scenario. The east bloc had this exact type of arbitrary mass surveillance 40 years ago. It wasn't great.

irusensei
20 replies
6h43m

The EU Council did not make a decision on chat control today, as the agenda item was removed due to the lack of a majority, confirmed by Council and member state spokespersons

Wait so does it mean they will only propose when they have chance to pass? Is it just me or here is something really wrong with this? It has no chance to be rejected and gone for good?

JumpCrisscross
8 replies
6h41m

does it mean they will only propose when they have chance to pass?

This is typically how legislative bodies work--it's why vote counting is an essential component of whipping. (Sorry, American political terminology.)

It has no chance to be rejected and gone for good?

I have never seen a way to do this proposed that doesn't have horrific side effects. (One, who decides which issues are too similar to previously-mooted ones. Two, how do you avoid one side deliberately "spoiling" an issue to prevent the other from taking action on it in the future.)

The best you can do is require a total process re-start each time. That doesn't prevent reintroduction, but it adds significant cost and delay.

arlort
3 replies
6h29m

I have never seen a way to do this proposed that doesn't have horrific side effects

There's some sort of fetishism of systems and technology on the internet and especially in technical forums like HN where people have this idea that technical solutions can fix social issues

Governance systems have mostly been unchanged at their core for the past 100-200 years and people are under the impression that makes them somewhat antiquated so we definitely can fix this with some good code and automated judging.

It helps that that's much easier than having to accept the responsibility of being involved and proactively interested in the work of institutions which most people find boring and not worth the effort to learn about

JumpCrisscross
2 replies
6h4m

Governance systems have mostly been unchanged at their core for the past 100-200 years

I actually disagree with this notion. We had three big spurts of new-country formation in the last 100 years: after WWI, after WWII/decolonisation and after the collapse of the USSR. I'd argue we've been better each time around at creating a larger fraction of resilient governments.

easier than having to accept the responsibility of being involved

Correct. Strongmen are convenient.

toyg
0 replies
3h0m

> I'd argue we've been better each time around at creating a larger fraction of resilient governments.

Looking at the state of a lot of ex-USSR countries, I'd say this is not correct. Quite a few of them ended up as dictatorships. If anything, I would argue the immediate post-WWII was an apex of democratic creation that we are unlikely to match any time soon.

arlort
0 replies
4h6m

new-country formation in the last 100 years

Yes, but they didn't really introduce new ideas and philosophies of government, at most slightly different ways of implement old ideas

rhetenor
2 replies
6h27m

I'm definitely with you on your first statement, but

The best you can do is require a total process re-start each time. That doesn't prevent reintroduction, but it adds significant cost and delay.

Democracy is not all about efficiency. In fact it is important that these costs are added, especially for passing new laws. As it is in IT Security, there is always DoS Potential if the defender has to do more work than the attacker. As such the one proposing a new law must be seen as the attacker and it is important that he must do a significant more amount of work than the defender.

An example where this fails, also for the EU legislative, are the various Safe Harbor Agreements with the US and their corresponding Schrems judgements. They all passed more than easily and Schrems needed years to fight against their unjustice. As a result the EU had many years under an unsound law.

I think there is much potential to improve the democratic institutions of the EU and not being able to withdraw a proposal (or maybe only in extraordinary circumstances) would be one of them.

JumpCrisscross
1 replies
5h15m

Democracy is not all about efficiency

In that context, I meant cost and delay as a benefit.

not being able to withdraw a proposal

This empowers anyone who can introduce proposals with fillibustering the forum.

rhetenor
0 replies
4h50m

Thanks for the clarification. Misread that it's something unwanted.

In my opinion filibustering would only be a problem, if there are no speech limits. As far as I'm aware of the internal workings of the EU institutions there are tight schedules and every member has limited speech time and the vote is set on a fixed date.

And as I stated, there should also be exceptions which allow for a withdrawal. It just shouldn't be as easy as: Let's withdraw until I got a stable majority.

Stable and flexible legislative sure is an important thing in democracy, but there must also be some kind of disruptive process to correct and the MPs should only be bound to their own conscience at the end of the process.

Could you maybe elaborate a bit further how this would enable filibustering?

gpderetta
0 replies
4h8m

The best way to do this is via constitutional protection that can't be overridden by ordinary law. The EU has a de-facto a constitution in the form of the ECHR and the various treaties, which do protect fundamental rights, but there are so many caveats on those rights that a carefully worded law always risks slipping through.

gostsamo
7 replies
6h40m

That's how EU politics works. There is no sense of officially voting on something if it is clear from previous negotiations that it will not pass. With only 27 members, the counting usually is done well in advance and the final vote is showing that agreement has been reached. If someone votes against, it is for pr purposes, because if they are really against it, they have a veto right.

JumpCrisscross
2 replies
6h37m

how EU politics works

It's how any sovereign body must work. Putting something to a vote and failing demonstrates weakness, so it's avoided. And the body cannot be bound in deliberation. (Else it's not sovereign, but a vassal of whoever sets the agenda.)

gostsamo
1 replies
6h27m

Mostly agree, but often parliaments are a place to make a point to the observing voters and some things are proposed with the full knowledge that they will be rejected. The proposer though turns to the public and says: "I made a promise and I deliver, but the other side is stopping us from implementing it. So, please, vote for me next time in grater numbers to give me the ability to pass it the second time." Also, when you have a bigger assembly, last minute twists happen for unexpected reasons like a coalition partner deciding to screw their partners and ruin their agenda.

JumpCrisscross
0 replies
5h56m

some things are proposed with the full knowledge that they will be rejected

Sure, these are messaging bills [1]. If you're clearly out of power, they're an effective tactic.

If you're in power, a good way to lose it is by embracing messaging bills.

[1] https://www.kansascity.com/news/politics-government/article2...

wait_a_minute
1 replies
5h3m

There is no sense of officially voting on something if it is clear from previous negotiations that it will not pass.

This means that it was implicitly voted upon and rejected by the people, therefore it should not be put up for a vote again.

gostsamo
0 replies
3h52m

No, it means that those who want it did not manage to trade enough compromises on other topics to those who don't want it or do not oppose it at least. If let's say a french economy sector benefits from policy A while a polish sector might lose from it, and Romania is neutral. In such a situation France might promise Poland their support for policy B which is beneficial for the pols, and they might promise a smaller favor to Romania to make them form the majority. If the pols are unhappy with the trade, they will bid for Romania's support against policy A. The show is funnier with 27 participants and fields that span through dozens of policies and over decades.

dbttdft
0 replies
2h58m

It's always funny to see how these simple things play out in the obvious way.

kergonath
2 replies
6h31m

It has no chance to be rejected and gone for good?

Not really. Besides, how would that work? Wouldn’t a new law proposal be just that, a new proposal to be debated and voted on, even if its intent or wording is similar to a previous rejected proposal? Is there any country with the equivalent of dismissal with prejudice for new laws?

account42
1 replies
3h38m

A constitution kinda is that - limits on what laws the country can make. Maybe there should be another softer but automatic mechanism though. For example you could increase the required consensus for passing laws with similar goals to those that that have failed recently.

kergonath
0 replies
3h29m

A constitution kinda is that - limits on what laws the country can make.

Right, but constitutional changes can be unmade or superseded. Even in a notoriously conservative country like the US, constitutional amendments are repealed on occasion. And a lot of other countries’ constitutions get complete overhauls every now and then, at which point the details of the previous constitution cease to matter. So the fact that something gets to the constitution does not mean that nobody can discuss it, ever, it just changes the process of doing it.

I don’t know if any country where a draft law is rejected because it was too similar to another failed proposal. Although I wouldn’t put past the English having something like that in a dusty corner of their constitutional hodgepodge.

PaulKeeble
14 replies
6h49m

I am really fed up of governments constantly trying to pass stuff like this that is clearly a breach of the fundamental principles of human rights. Its also become almost impossible to get governments to adopt sensible positions that don't target certain sub groups to harm them.

eigenket
12 replies
6h38m

Its not really governments, its specifically Ylva Johansson, the commissioner from Sweden who keeps pushing this, every time she does the rest of the EU apparatus slaps her down because it fundamentally won't work.

uyzstvqs
5 replies
4h51m

She was previously a member of a political party actually called "Left Party, The Communists". Her primary topics of interest are enabling as much migration by asylum seekers as possible, and deploying digital mass-surveillance on every European resident.

In the most sarcastic way possible; what a great asset to our democratic institutions!

short_sells_poo
2 replies
4h43m

It's these kind of people who really enable the far right to exist as well. Once you get to this level of lunacy, whether it's left or right is irrelevant.

jeltz
0 replies
23m

No, she is just corrupt and she is not near as left-wing as that post tries to pretend. She just has financial interests in this.

eigenket
0 replies
4h37m

I would argue she is behaving rationally. She has financial interests in organisations which sell chat monitoring software, they're going to make a shittone of money if her laws ever get passed.

She's a standard corrupt slug, not a misinformed ideologist.

eigenket
0 replies
4h40m

I mean in this case the problem isn't realy any of that, its that she has financial and personal links to American organisations (Thorn and Co.) who are in the business of selling this chat monitoring software.

SahAssar
0 replies
2h56m

The Left Party are one of the strongest opponents to Chat Control (and no longer include communism in their party platform). Ylvas actual career has been with the Social Democrats, who are basically the only party strongly for Chat Control.

rightbyte
1 replies
5h39m

Can one commissioner push the machinery by her self? I need to read up on the rules. Surely there is support in the commission?

eigenket
0 replies
4h39m

She can, but then she gets slapped down when the legislation makes it outside the commission.

eu_cc
1 replies
4h52m

So I guess it might disappear with the new commission? Will she be nominated again?

jeltz
0 replies
23m

It is possible that the lobbyists will find a new commissioner to buy.

kriops
0 replies
6h24m

I read her wiki page after seeing this comment, and it all makes sense now ...

BurningFrog
0 replies
5h7m

Ylva Johansson?

We're not sending our best!

/Swede in the US

Kim_Bruning
0 replies
6h28m

Right, we need positive legislation that instead enshrines our rights.

Secrecy of correspondence does not currently extend to phones. But more and more of our life is happening on phones, not on paper. If anything, we need secrecy of correspondence on our phones more!

127
10 replies
4h52m

Being a constructive part of a democracy is not just standing in the way of every change without budging. It's also about solving problems and finding solutions. Most social and technological issues will not just magically go away if you wait and ignore them to the best of your ability.

tomjen3
1 replies
4h43m

Correct, but this is not a solution. Life imprisonment for pedos is. Execution would be better but that’s never going to fly

Dah00n
0 replies
4h31m

You sound like an awful human being.

agile-gift0262
1 replies
4h40m

child abuse is not a technological issue, but a societal one. Child abuse won't stop or even be reduced by running a hash lookup or an AI model prediction before every single time a picture is sent in a chat platform. It will just introduce a new layer of complexity that bad actors can abuse.

hgyjnbdet
0 replies
4h34m

And easily bypass too.

Zak
1 replies
4h44m

I believe standing in the way of mass surveillance is always constructive for democracy. Spying on the private communications of nearly every person is fundamentally incompatible with a free and democratic society.

btown
0 replies
4h24m

And, notably, in any kind of government, a group with temporary political power will naturally want to optimize for the preservation of that power. A dampening function that resists rapid change, and specifically resists things like mass surveillance that can distort democratic processes, is a feature, not a bug.

softg
0 replies
4h26m

What's even worse would be enforcing the wrong solution that will cause more damage. The French have a saying, fuite en avant (lit. escape forwards) when someone insists on doing something knowing full well that it will not work but they do it anyways because it's better than inaction.

Considering the rise of the far right in the last EU elections, anyone who's seriously considering weakening public encryption must be out of their minds.

nlakaq
0 replies
4h9m

That is a general statement that does not apply here. This "solution" would have created tens of thousands of false positives, which means the victims, even if not prosecuted, would have been put on an observation list for life.

The "solution" would have been abused for other surveillance or been used as a rationale for even more surveillance.

It is a social issue that does not have technical solutions. The worst abuse cases (like the horrific Regensburg Dome boys choir case: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/18/boys-abused-ge...) occurred before the Internet. If the EU is so interested in the issue, how about prosecuting known cases instead of a half apology. Chat Control could have done exactly nothing here.

kmacdough
0 replies
4h23m

The point is adding a centralized control structure in front of E2E encrypted traffic fundamentally undermines the principals that make E2E work. It creates a massive centralized point of failure, creating an obvious and fundamentally brittle target for hackers to exploit in what's otherwise our only effective privacy and security measures.

There will always be tradeoffs between security/privacy and enforcement. There are ways to target harmful content without undermining E2E. There is no way to replace the privacy and security guarantees of E2E.

atoav
0 replies
4h19m

The problem you're hinting at being what? The fact that people use messengers to coordinate crimes?

You might wanna consider that the people you critique here already weighed the pros and cons of the question. E.g. I am pretty convinced some crimes are also discussed in European bedrooms while people have sex. Yet for some reason I believe the police should not be allowed to spy and listen to things happening in every bedroom indiscriminately.

In a world of AI you either have private communications or you don't. In the analog world of the past surveillance systems were still limited by the number of people you had to employ to listen in on your population. This is no longer the case. And that no longer being the case shifts the power dynamic between the state and its citizens in favour of the state. This can be a real problem if you you trust your state, but becomes a terrible problem once you have people in power who don't believe the people are entitled to choosing their leaders.

I don't buy that police is suddenly unable to figure out crimes just because they are unable to read every conversation people have on messengers. If you want total safety and you're so frigthened of the world that you long for a all powerful leader that has insight into all our lives, I got bad news. Historically that kind of arrangment hasn't been particularily safe or stable, because such a leader doesn't care about people doing a good job, he cares about having loyal people around him. And that means all the lower ranking people will be left to fight among themselves, as police is no longer doing the job of keeping people safe, but the job of keeping governments safe.

Our democratic systems are brittle and every power you give to the state or other actors needs to be considered in its consequences.

interactivecode
7 replies
7h7m

What really gets me with these types of "safety" proposals is that we already have quite some ways to get someone's private information and communication if they are being investigated. Has everyone forgotten that? All that these wide reaching laws do is to allow for governments to investigate without substantiated reasons.

tzs
2 replies
5h12m

What really gets me with these types of "safety" proposals is that we already have quite some ways to get someone's private information and communication if they are being investigated

How does that work if I'm using an E2E encrypted messaging app?

wizzwizz4
0 replies
4h39m

Same way it works if you're posting letters: the powers-that-be apply for a warrant to search for evidence.

martijnvds
0 replies
3h27m

Traffic analysis also exists.

"Every time a message goes from X to Y, suddenly Y does (thing) a day later"

And then investigate from there.

gambiting
1 replies
6h20m

I'm fact even the German police force said that this law isn't necessary and they have all the tools they need to investigate.

dleeftink
0 replies
5h40m

Keen to read a source on this, as this would be valuable to bring up whenever new data harvesting measures are on the table.

tonetegeatinst
0 replies
6h48m

Yep, same thing in most countries. Their exists a legal method to do it if they can get a warrant.... Or a FISA court order.....or a National Security Letter....or they can get around the need for this via just paying some data company or the company to access your data....

Zak
0 replies
5h33m

Chat Control is explicitly a proposal for a new mass surveillance mechanism, not a mechanism for targeted surveillance of a person suspected of a crime.

Oarch
4 replies
7h18m

It feels like this has become an annual tradition...

sva_
2 replies
7h17m

I think biannual by now

Rinzler89
0 replies
4h20m

The EU presidency doesn't have executionary powers like the US presidency. It can set up meetings and topics for discussion but can't enforce or shoot them down.

eigenlicht
0 replies
6h5m

While I still believe it's mainly about attention seeking and remaining the topic of discussions on the part of the EU, which is not an easy task yet as such mildly effective as we see again, one could get the feeling there's somehow more to it. Like a collusion, however tacit or pragmatic, that would in general work both ways but in this case so as to provide national governments an opportunity to make a few extra points from time to time, (mainly) on domestic ground, and to look prudent or generous, at least to certain groups of voters. In this case a benefaction to the unlikely German "critics" in particular. Its ruling coalition certainly is desperate for it. For anything really. I already had this feeling years ago when we were wearing ourselves out on the darned question of so-called "upload-filters" amid the entire EU copyright law issue. What even became of it? Well, due to ultimately national implementation and copious room for legal interpretation, at least in Germany not much. A kind of nothingburger in fact, certainly relative to to the racket that went before, or shall we say, was supposed to go before. Back at the time it made (then) Merkel's big-coalition government suddenly look a little sunnier. To be blunt, it feels rather artificial to me and I don't expect anything like it being supposed to actually transpire no matter what. That is even without considering how unclear matters of technical realization remain, even if you've seen all the polito-pseudotechnical BS bingo there is to see at the moment. Like, how to even enforce client-side scanning when applications (or OS) are free software? It's just rubbish, and supposedly can be as no one never seriously planned for anything like it. But why not just talk the big talk about it? Maybe it helps. A few very optimistic quarters may even hope for some sort of (shallow) deterrence effect. For a bit of ruffling and scaring up the evil agents. Good luck as for that one.

zero0529
3 replies
6h53m

Really important! However it seems that the battle will continue in July with Hungary instead..

533ghghh
2 replies
3h28m

Orban is a true liberal - not a fake liberal. He opposes government control of private communications.

notavalleyman
0 replies
3h6m

I think you might be being sarcastic, but here is the truth on the topic.

Orban and his government spent a huge amount of time and effort, making private communications LESS liberal and more difficult to speak freely.

https://www.hrw.org/report/2024/02/13/i-cant-do-my-job-journ...

SahAssar
0 replies
3h3m

Orban is authoritarian. During his rule the freedom and democracy of Hungary have taken huge steps back and the country is no longer considered "free" by for example Freedom House.

meindnoch
3 replies
49m

They will try again.

ls612
1 replies
41m

It didn't even get to the point this time where messenger apps threatened to leave. That was what ended up sinking the UK effort last year.

jacooper
0 replies
25m

It didn't change anything, the law passed. OFCOM just has to activate the clause in the law to backdoor e2ee apps.

ThatMedicIsASpy
0 replies
17m

UEFA finals should be a great day!

nemo44x
2 replies
2h36m

They’ll probably just rejigger it in the name of fighting the “far right” and it will pass through with celebrity and pomp.

dinglestepup
0 replies
2h32m

Off-topic, but the current trend to label anything the government disagrees with or feels threatened by as "far right" is very worrisome.

Hamuko
0 replies
43m

Did you miss the election? The parliament is more conservative than before. Why would they be happier with that packaging?

dbttdft
2 replies
3h0m

Ah, so I won't just have all of private conversations monitored for no reason at birth, oh wait, but what about those 40 cameras that are on every residential street owned by Amazon and Google?

zdragnar
0 replies
2h53m

The chat applications in question are private spaces (with terms based on the owner / host of the space).

Streets are public spaces, with all the possibility of observation by an observer that entails.

The two are not at all similar, at least under US law. It seems the EU is taking a similar stance.

aDyslecticCrow
0 replies
1h44m

I'd rather have a public camera in my bedroom than a recording of every conversation I've ever had with anyone stored and searchable by governments, police, and the inevitable dark scammer for all eternity.

That is not to say that cameras everywhere aren't dystopian. But their existence doesn't undermine the added danger of chat control.

cescott997
2 replies
4h23m

The fight is not over yet, if you live in the EU, please vote these people out of office. They do not represent you, nor the general public.

avianlyric
1 replies
4h18m

You can’t vote Council Members out of office. The council is made up of the heads of state for each member country. Depending on the exact flavour of democracy your state operates, will determine if their role is directly elected or not. There are many countries where the head state isn’t directly elected, and even where they are directly elected, there many more pressing national issues that make other candidates even more unsavoury.

toyg
0 replies
3h7m

> You can’t vote Council Members out of office.

Well, technically you can, just not through EU institutions. Chances are the current French members, for example, will not be there for the next round of Council votes.

sharpshadow
0 replies
1h51m

Reading the "...European Commission proposed monitoring all chat messages and other forms of digital communication..." astonishes me every time.

sandworm101
0 replies
2h25m

I'd bet good money that the bulk of European intelligence people use Signal, both personally and for non-classified work stuff. So the announcement that Signal would pull out of Europe was probably more influential than anyone will acknowledge.

rdm_blackhole
0 replies
6h6m

This law is going to pass at some point. They started this crap 4 years ago with Chat Control 1.0 and they won't stop trying.

This is pure madness.

I have decided I am not going to wait around to be spied upon by the EU so I am going set up my own server and move to FOSS IOS/Android clients since these ones are currently exempted from the draft.

The hardest part will be to convince friends and family to move over though.

alvincodes
0 replies
6h41m

More people should know about this so there's even more push back when it comes to a vote

WaitWaitWha
0 replies
1h38m

. . . for now.

"... The proposal will return to the drawing board, as the European Commission and the European Parliament continue to deliberate on the best way forward."

I am always fascinated by the hubris bureaucrats have.

Havoc
0 replies
2h25m

So I guess see you in three months for another round?