EU Council forces Chat Control via fast-track

For context, this refers to "Chat Control 1.0", allowing facebook and other messaging providers to scan chats for harmful content (which they had been temporarily allowed to do by a recently expired law).

This is still problematic, but the far more dangerous Chat Control 2.0 that would weaken end-to-end-encrypted messengers like Signal is not being discussed here.

Not to diminish the gravity of the new development, but the defeatist "no way to prevent this" narratives that are already popping up here are getting old -- when in fact it looks like 2.0 is off the table for good because protest against it has proven effective.

The central bank, council, and commission have to get thoroughly investigated. The amount of questionable decisions coming from those three in the recent (15) years is extremely unsettling. The parliament and courts are practically the only institutions preventing things from hitting the fan at this point, and struggling to do so, it seems.

Do also see:

# Italy warns against Chat Control mass surveillance, but votes in favour of it (digitalcourage.social)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48783340

Do, because already there nuances (towards the better or worse) are revealed, which are not evident in journalism as we have it. The whole story needs more investigation than the stubs.

But the way they are managing it in the workflow does not seem too linear...

The main argument for this seems to be that they catch many pedos by using image recognition tech on facebook etc.

Thus, discontinuing the permit to use these techniques did have enforcement numbers of those crimes found drop significantly.

I'm wondering if they've given up real policing of these crimes completely?!

Spreading pedo content on Facebook, those people have to be the dumbest of the dumb? Everyone spending even a single critical thought on their crimes won't be caught by this.

And they say enforcement numbers drop significantly? Meaning they don't catch many other people? What the fuck are they even doing? Did they completely give up trying to find the real criminals, and instead fall back on sugar-coated figures to conceal that failure?

There is no way to stop these so just lets get going. The sooner we have age and ID verification on every single website and app the sooner we will have a working decentralised internet that avoids it.

They're not going to stop, are they?

Am I crazy or is this website not allowing me to opt out of cookie tracking unless I sign up for a subscription?

I know the EU cookie banners have basically ruined the internet, but this seems like a whole 'nother level of obnoxious.

What frightens me is, as usual, the assumption of conformism that may just remove people from services.

"Present a document" // "No, certainly not to you" // "Do without then"

The straight will say "no", but their lives will be extremely complicated, possibly in the unawareness of those that just take compliance to the absurd for granted - as the weak call survival paramount and cannot see that their modus is subjective. That we won't have it is something that they cannot even conceive. Adults are noise to them.

So what platforms will this apply too? What platforms Dow sit already apply too? All SMS, large email providers (Gmail?), WhatsApp, Apple services?

it will %100 pass at some point. no way around it.

i thought apple is already doing this on all it's devices?

Please email your members of parliament: https://fightchatcontrol.eu

This means the council has systematically overridden the will of both EU parliaments and states' objections in pushing this legislation. TLDR: there are, roughly and not 100% accurately speaking, 4 ways to make legislation at the EU level

1) commission + parliament (meaning the EU commission has initiative (veto rights over any law, like the US president), and parliament can only "propose amendments", which pass with 50% of votes, or deny). This is what normally happens.

Parliament denied the law. Twice.

Member states vetoed the legislation at least 3 times (it doesn't technically work like this but member states can force the commission to veto legislation, and Belgium, Hungary and Denmark have done so) (technically member states can force the EU commission not to introduce legislation and because nobody else can do so either, this is normally effectively a veto)

2) council + parliament. This is where we are. If the executives of the member states (NOT parliaments) want to push through a vote, they can use this path. The difference is that only 2/3 majority of parliament can stop the law from passing or put in amendments.

Technically, this is meant for bypassing the EU commission. But of course, in reality it is for getting past the Danish and potential Belgian and Hungarian and other's vetoes. The commission really wants this.

3) council + commission. This completely overrides any legislative involvement in ... well, legislation. They have already threatened to do this.

4) the council can just force legislation through without anyone's approval

Normally "democracy" in the EU means that legislation requires BOTH a majority of Europeans to agree (Parliament) AND no executive government. Both have already been bypassed.

This refers to "Chat Control 1.0", allowing facebook and other messaging providers to scan chats for harmful content (which they had been temporarily allowed to do by a recently expired law). It means current scanning is illegal.

Just so we're clear, this basically means that all messengers (not any specific one) will have to intercept everyone's messages, scan for specific words, and if found report the whole chat history to the police.

Of course, it already turned out "BTW carrousel" (an illegal tax avoidance strategy) is one of the sentences they scan for to "protect the children".

The article itself also contains evidence against the idea that this protects children (that child protection investigations keep increasing despite the scanning not taking place anymore)

Governments don’t work for people. Yet they use terms like democracy all the time. The repeated attempts at chat control are so blatantly anti civil rights but also disrespectful of democratic principles. Why do EU citizens tolerate this? Are they okay being made a fool of or is this just not an issue for them after all?

This is democracy manifest. What a joke.

The same as every other fascist control measure. Voted down. Voted down. Voted down. Then forced through through some obscure mechanism bypassing the will of the people and becoming law forever.

At that point it has become clear to most Europe is not a democracy anymore. It has lost any legitimacy.

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> Although the Council emphasizes that the *scans will be limited to the absolutely necessary extent* and that no general, indiscriminate surveillance will take place

I'm 100% sure that this is the case and about the good intentions of the proposers.

/s

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Hn is a goofy place. It feels like on odd days we see posts like this, about the EU creating this legal framework for the destruction of privacy. On even days we see posts about quitting American saas in favor of Europeans on the basis of privacy. Somehow the dots never connect.