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EU chat control law will ban open source operating systems

263 points by Semaphor 4y ago

voidwtf 4y ago
Seems high time for some civil disobedience. Break the law collectively, let them seek to enforce their ridiculous/draconian laws and explain the knock on effects in court. Alternatively, open source projects that may be effected can withdraw access to their sites and source code and cite the law. Hopefully they forked the code already and don’t need any future updates.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- agilob 4y ago
  >Seems high time for some civil disobedience. First time ACTA was presented there were protests mostly in Poland. 2nd time it was presented there were protests in Poland, Czech and Germany. 3rd time... it just passed. No one cared to protest again.
- systemvoltage 4y ago
  Unfortunately, small guy gets a pass but medium/large businesses have an ever increasing difficulty in operating in EU. This might sound like a positive thing but it is tremendously troubling. Corporations employ a lot of people and if they leave, EU would see poverty like never before. I was involved in GDPR laws and lot of small biz in EU straight up do not follow GDPR and the chances of getting fined in EU courts is pretty negligible. But, if you're a 500 employee company, you're going to have to maintain an army of GDPR consultants and attorneys at your disposal to keep in compliance.
m_a_g 4y ago
It is almost impossible to obey this law. It shows how uninformed the EU lawmakers are when it comes to technology.
- mantas 4y ago
  Only few big players will obey this law. Maybe that's the point EU lawmakers were going for...
- marvinblum 4y ago
  Do you really think they are this stupid? Or just trying to control the public opinion?
- flangola7 4y ago
  Other than open source stuff I don't see what would be hard to comply with it. Most people use Windows, Gmail and Android or iPhone. At least half of those already do most of what this law would ask.
  - jonathanstrange 4y ago
    It seems hard to comply with because any software repository and app store falls under this law and the EU cannot control who uploads a chat app on one of these. At least people from non-EU countries will continue to develop and upload chat apps with full end-to-end encryption and without age verification. So essentially this proposed legislation seems to make all software repositories and app stores illegal, which makes it hard to enforce and comply with. My guess is that the EU would impose fines on repositories and app stores if they contain such apps and try some ostensibly silly IP geo-blocking, and people in the EU would continue to download and use these apps.
    - anthk 4y ago
      So pacman or apt over I2PD.
    - dns_snek 4y ago
      > At least people from non-EU countries will continue to develop and upload chat apps with full end-to-end encryption and without age verification. You're making it sound more trivial than it would be in practice. Google and Apple would promptly block access to those apps to EU citizens. Android users could still sideload apps but it would likely kill adoption without a massive cultural shift towards valuing privacy.
narrowtux 4y ago
I'm so tired of it all. Countless times it has been tried to enact laws like this. And it's not just this surveillance law that depresses me, reading up on the cyber resilience act just feels to me like it will suck even more fun out of software development, at least in a professional context.
- closewith 4y ago
  > And it's not just this surveillance law that depresses me, reading up on the cyber resilience act just feels to me like it will suck even more fun out of software development, at least in a professional context. God forbid people who love to use the title engineer will have to apply the rigour and standards of actual engineering to the work they do.
  - pmontra 4y ago
    Or get a degree in engineering.
    - api 4y ago
      If software dev had been licensed and regulated this way we’d have only a tiny fraction of what we have now in terms of languages, OSes, tooling, etc. There are specific areas where it makes sense but doing it broadly will just halt all innovation.
      - pmontra 4y ago
        Two notes about that. 1) There are a lot of people doing engineering without a degree. One example: many makers are not engineers and they do a lot of good stuff anyway. What they don't do is taking legal responsibility because they are not allowed to. It's no warranty / no fitness for a purpose stuff. Similarly there is a lot of software with no warranty / no fitness clauses. History demonstrated that it's good enough to keep the world spinning. 2) Most people in the software industry do engineering jobs no matter if they have a degree in Computer Science or Software Engineering (I didn't check the USA name for that, sorry) or in anything else. I know very good software developers, maybe with an architect / engineer job title, with no degree at all or with a degree in Graphic Design or Philosophy or Agronomy. They moved to software development because they tinkered with their computers, wrote some programs and discovered that they are good at it. Nobody notices the difference after 5 or 10 years of work. The only downside it's a little narrowness of expertise: they have many more unknown unknowns because nobody systematically told them what's there outside and how it works, even at high level. One example: that good software developer with the Graphic Design degree told me once that he doesn't really know how networking works. To him it's the configuration screen of his Mac and HTTP calls from Node.js.
noduerme 4y ago
It seems that application stores would only be a tiny fragment of what would be affected by the law. Basically everything involving facilitating communications between users would be subject to draconian surveillance and reporting requirements. This is not the way a free or open society progresses.
- mantas 4y ago
  EU is neither free nor open. I'm saying this as a citizen of EU member. It's getting more and more pro-big-business and pro-big-government day by day. While citizen self-governance is crushed over and over. Good example is Poland vs EU conflict for political control of judges. Meanwhile nobody bats an eye for existing political control of judges in my country. Here higher level judges have to be approved by parliament. Currently parliament speaker is a leader of a party that is trialed for corruption. This party is in ruling coalition as well. So the party that is in trial also makes a call who can work as a judge. Yet there's zero complains about that :)
  - jeoqn 4y ago
    It’s only bad if the judges are conservative ;-)
  - mbork_pl 4y ago
    Where are you from, if I may ask?
    - mantas 4y ago
      Hello from your northern neighbour, Lithuania.
  - mariusor 4y ago
    Personally I don't see how your example shows EU crushing "citizen self-governance" which sounds like a liberarian charged expression for "democracy". Could you elaborate please?
    - 4y ago
trashburger 4y ago
As usual, people who aren't familiar with the culture of software write laws that restrict software. I sincerely hope this will just be a scare like Article 10 was, but it'd be much better that whoever these insane proposals are coming from could be stopped.
- shapefrog 4y ago
  > people who aren't familiar with the culture of software write laws that restrict software My interpretation is somewhat different - they are very familiar with software and how it works, but that familiarity appears limited to just the Apple & Android app stores. A small amount of knowledge is far more dangerous than no knowledge at all.
- OJFord 4y ago
  Even the intention won't get any traction though - even if enacted defiance would be so widespread, if not total, (16 year olds no longer able to digitally communicate, come on) that it would be retracted or at least irrelevant.
stormdennis 4y ago
"The proposed Chat control EU law will" If it's a proposed law then it should read "The proposed Chat control EU law would"
- jeoqn 4y ago
  The EU is not very democratic - if they want to do something they will and there’s nothing that can be done about it.
  - mort96 4y ago
    That's not really correct. The European Commission might not be directly elected by EU citizens, but the members of the European Parliament are elected by EU citizens, and the Council of the European Union is made up of one minister from each EU member state. A law doesn't get passed without support from the democratically elected parliament members and the national representatives in the council. It's also worth noting that the President of the European Commission is elected by the European Council (not to be confused with the Council of the European Union). The European Council is made up of the heads of state of the EU member countries (who are themselves generally elected). Could it be more democratic? Yeah, sure, maybe the President should be directly elected by constituents rather than by heads of states. But it's not undemocratic, and after a law is proposed by the European Commission, the democratic process decides whether it should pass or not. EDIT: Thank you for your comment though! I'm not in an EU member state, so I haven't really known about this stuff before (I'm just affected by the laws without being a part of the EU demos). Your comment prompted me to research how this stuff actually works.
    - shapefrog 4y ago
      > The European Commission isn't very democratic The commissioners are appointed by the democratically elected government of each country, to push the agenda of the democratically elected government of each country.
      - mort96 4y ago
maxehmookau 4y ago
I'm curious to know how likely this is to pass. EU laws are proposed by the council, but passed by the (much more representative and democratic) parliament. The EU has fairly good form in terms of passing common-sense tech laws (see; GDPR) so I'd be skeptical that this is any more than a dumb proposal destined for failure.
- Semaphor 4y ago
  I agree with you, but outcries as these are needed to make it clear how bad the law is.
- jacooper 4y ago
  Don't underestimate the desire of regulators to get more and more power.
- simongray 4y ago
  Laws are proposed by the Commission, not the Council. The Council and Parliament work like different chambers in the EU system, kinda like the Senate and the House in the US, but it's the prerogative of the Commission to propose new laws. Elections work similarly in any European parliamentary system. Prime ministers are also indirectly elected in those systems. The main difference is that the executive (the Commission) is the only one that can propose laws in the EU, but the other EU lawmakers can still amend legislation. (just stating this for people reading the comments, not specifically for you)
  - maxehmookau 4y ago
    You're right, my bad. Either way, laws proposed by a small subset of indirectly appointed politicians. They're approved by a much larger body of directly elected MEPs. That hasn't happened, yet. I'm interested to know how likely that really is.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
sendfoods 4y ago
I am the first person to appreciate the pro-online-privacy legislation from the EU in the last couple of years. Yet...How can the same organization be behind this? Is it a result of the sheer size of the org, with malevolent people reeking their ugly heads? A more cynical "privacy legislation as a smoke screen with totalitarian measures in the backend"?
- mantas 4y ago
  Both pro-privacy and anti-privacy have one common theme - more power to the state. And that's the point of EU bureaucrats. To gather as much power in their fight against both outside forces (e.g. US-based multinationals) and inside forces (member states).
  - timeon 4y ago
    You really think those various actors are part of one plot? Also this is proposed not passed law. But you already have conclusion about whole org.
    - mantas 4y ago
      When this (as well as other similar laws) are pushed other and other again... I remember that saying by Juncker... We'll try again, and again, and again till it passes one time :) I'm not blaming every single bureaucrat. But direction of the organisation is pretty clear. Just like I don't blame every Facebook worker, but direction of that company is pretty clear too.
- Semaphor 4y ago
  I mean, we sent Ursula von der Leyen as head of the commission to the EU who became infamous in Germany for rather having CSAM stay online as long as she could prevent Germans from seeing it…
  - mort96 4y ago
    Leyen is in favor of CSAM staying online? Do you have a source on that? Are you sure you're not misrepresenting her views?
ndsipa_pomu 4y ago
It always seems like a bad idea to attempt a technological solution to a legal/social problem. Surely the age of people using services is a purely a social issue - similar to not allowing alcohol to be sold to underage drinkers. This kind of law would be analogous to making a law that alcohol cannot be physically consumed by underage drinkers.
- thaumasiotes 4y ago
  > This kind of law would be analogous to making a law that alcohol cannot be physically consumed by underage drinkers. We don't have a law like that in place for alcohol, but we do for any number of other substances.
  - ndsipa_pomu 4y ago
    Such as? I can't think of any examples apart from possibly child-proof caps on medication, but that is serving a slightly different purpose - safety rather than authoritarianism.
    - cpa 4y ago
      I think they were thinking of illegal drugs, which you generally can't possess. Maybe the act of consumption is not illegal per se, though, I'm not sure.
      - thaumasiotes 4y ago
        See side comment. As best as I can see, consumption is not "illegal", except that there are extremely severe legal consequences if any evidence turns up that you've consumed them. It remains to be explained in what sense that fails to constitute being illegal.
        Semaphor 4y ago
        > except that there are extremely severe legal consequences if any evidence turns up This is a bit of a sidebar, but what consequences? DUI, sure. But in Germany, where consumption (but nothing else, including possession; IANAL, not sure if someone holding a joint to your face to drag on counts as possession) of weed is legal I know of no direct consequences you’d face for having consumed marijuana.
anthk 4y ago
As an European: good luck with that/buena suerte con ello. It won't last long.
jacooper 4y ago
There is absolutely nothing good about this law, and it really will be a disaster if it passes.
FlotaDeAragon 4y ago
Can't wait for a cookie banner when I speak to my mom on whatsapp Public money well spent!
b800h 4y ago
Seems to me it'll also ban package libraries like pip, npm.
DiabloD3 4y ago
No offense, but that just means the EU will no longer be compatible with FOSS. FOSS runs the world, and Europe will find themselves without software to run the majority of their systems. Without FOSS? No Internet. No business. No nothing. You'll have maybe 2/3rds of what ships in Windows and less than half of OSX. Oh, and no Ingenuity, which iirc was a joint NASA/ESA project.
- worldofmatthew 4y ago
  It will mean every server will have to use Microsoft Windows..... Thus, handing over all control over the EU networks to 1 American company.
  - DiabloD3 4y ago
    Nope, Windows Server would be illegal in Europe. Microsoft ships too much non-trivial FOSS software in Windows now. There is no major OS that they can run, nor can they develop for it (the act of installing GCC or LLVM would now be illegal, for example).
    - worldofmatthew 4y ago
      I'm pretty sure Microsoft could compile software in the US and export it without the compiler. Other issues could be solved with a Microsoft Windows 11 EU Edition that only allows programs to be installed from the Microsoft store.
      - DiabloD3 4y ago
        FOSS is shipped by Microsoft on the Microsoft store. It, too, would be illegal.
        worldofmatthew 4y ago
        Microsoft can simply ban FOSS from its store.
- 4y ago
stonogo 4y ago
Not a very good interpretation of the law, but I'm sure it gets a lot of traffic. The EU definition of online intermediation services specifies that a contractual relationship must exist. It's focused on businesses. RPM repositories, apt repositories, pkgsrc, and so forth are therefore completely unaffected, as there's no contractual relationship between the providers and users. Elementary OS, Flatpak, and Canonical's Snap store might have trouble here, and need to implement further controls to be compliant. But nothing is going to "outlaw open source operating systems."
- tpm 4y ago
  Exactly my thought. It is hard to correctly read and understand laws (whether proposed or not). Especially if one is not a lawyer, any such commentary should be done extra carefully.
- dbernt 4y ago
  There are contractual relationships between the services and business users: the open source license agreements. These are legal agreements between the copyright holders and the distributors. Does that not fulfill requirement 2.2.c in EU regulation 2019/1150?
  - stonogo 4y ago
    No, for a couple of reasons. Primarily the services rendered (i.e. the data in the packages) are not "normally for remuneration" (i.e. nobody is paying to access them specifically). EU law is cloudier on whether a copyright license constitutes a contract. Under common law there has to be consideration for a contract. Not all EU member states require that, but enough do that I think they'd leave it alone.
jonathanstrange 4y ago
Wouldn't this also make Github illegal?
mritun 4y ago
I was about to write a knee-jerk comment about how short-sighted the EU law is, but then I stopped and rethought. EU (and India) are fundamentally trying to strengthen their local economies and severe their dependence on US based entities. I could disagree but I think it’s really important to understand that these are sovereign nations with dedicated think tanks. Policy decisions like this are debated and then enacted. It would not be surprising if the coverage of Open Source software repositories is not accidental, but actually a very well thought nuance because truth is that nearly all big Open Source entities are US based! In the eyes of the policy makers, The “big tech problem” may not be limited to commercial for-profit entities and arguably more relevant to open-source which is where EU is betting it’s future on. However absurd it may seem to a open source activist, it may not seem absurd for a policy maker to consider that open source stewardship should have an independent EU chapter as well that answers to EU policy and abides by the local laws. It may not happen on day 1, but policymakers of such wide ranging laws like the Digital Markets act, think more in decades, than years. TL;DR - Interesting interpretation is that Digital Market act purposefully covers all “big tech players” - commercial or open source. In the eyes of EU policy makers Mozilla, Apache and Debian foundations could very well be as “US controlled” and “strategically important” as commercial entities! (disclaimer: I work for a large corporation, but this comment is my own 1am thought!)
- anthk 4y ago
  The GPL it's bound to the Berna convention of Copyright. Crap out the GPL on incompatible licenses, watch the entire EU industry collaboration collapse overnight.
AstixAndBelix 4y ago
We have had physical mail for millennia, and yet I can still go send stuff completely anonymously. Before adding these insane restrictions for sending messages online, maybe these politicians should first force people to identify themselves and prove they're over 17 to send a letter? See how well that goes
mjw_byrne 4y ago
EU tech law seems to be a bit of a rollercoaster. GDPR was conceptually a great thing (although its actual implementation smacks strongly of boomers with filofaxes ranting about FaceTok and Google Siri), the right to repair is good, the USB-C thing is useful. The cookie permission thing didn't work though. It's sad to see the EU now joining the "let's use child abuse as an excuse to steal the internet" bandwagon. The UK Government has been doing this for years, and is trying it right now with the Online Safety Bill. I never know what to think of the motivation behind this stuff. Is it a well-meaning but naive attempt to protect the vulnerable, or is it the establishment desperately trying to destroy the threat posed by open communication and the empowerment of individuals?
- Y-bar 4y ago
  Why do you think GDPR is some boomer with filofaxes thing? I'm young enough to be born at about the introduction of the original Mac and have worked with ecom for a long time now and GDPR from my perspective is an excellent law with the exception of some lacklustre enforcement. Our clients all cleaned out their already collected data, they implemented deletion, and extraction/change-on-request by customers, they limited their tracking and data collection among many other things. Not only was it an immediate privacy win for their customers, it made further development easaier because we did not have to deal with as much data, and it also protects the clients in the event of a data breach since there is less customer data to lose.
  - shapefrog 4y ago
    GDPR is a light turned on that illuminated all the shitty behaviour that was "best practices" taking place in the darkness. Its no surprise that Zuck and co spent billions opposing it
  - mjw_byrne 4y ago
    "Why do you think GDPR is some boomer with filofaxes thing?" I handle the GDPR compliance for my company so I've had to get stuck into the topic. Once you start actually trying to apply the various definitions and rules to the real world, they quickly break down. Examples: 1. The core concept in GDPR, personal data, is defined sloppily: "data relating to an identifiable natural person". It doesn't work because "relating to" is a hand-wave. Your name is obviously personal data, but (according to mainstream legal interpretation) so are IP addresses, despite the fact that people do not have IP addresses, network interfaces do. 2. Personal data is not defined in terms of the context in which it appears, which is crucially important. If I have the text "John Smith" in a database in a column called "name" and it actually relates to a person called "John Smith", that's clearly personal data. But what if someone uses my platform to spin up a VM with the hostname "johnsmith" - is that personal data? According to my lawyers, the answer is "maybe". I know lawyers have a tendency to be like that, but the law itself shouldn't leave the question open. 3. The construction of the law is poorly thought-out and leads to silly contradictions, e.g. if you have someone's personal data and you are told to stop processing it, you must stop processing it. But storage, erasure and transmission are all classed as processing, and it's logically impossible not to do at least one of these things. All that being said, I'll repeat that I fully agree with GDPR's objectives and I think its real-world impact is positive. I just wish more people who understand how computers work had been involved in drafting it. EDIT: embarrassing punctuation mistake.
williamtrask 4y ago
Something worth thinking on. It’s oversimplifying to say that this is merely a case of bureaucratic greed for power (which seems to be the main theme amongst comments). Kids are being harmed and are harming others online. Parents (imperfect as they may be) have far less ability to intervene than they do in physical spaces. Technologies (and technologists) are a major cause of this autonomy. If we build technology that leads to harm, it increases the chances that a law like this is passed. Doesn’t matter if we meant to. The primary role we have to prevent legislation like this is to think creatively on how what we build can help create a better world in many aspects that are largely overlooked. Otherwise we’re feeding the political capital of bills like this. Want to preserve the current internet? Don’t settle for the current societal impacts. They’re unacceptable and politicians will have to respond, and will do so the only way they know how.
dsign 4y ago
The contents of the proposed law can be accessed here: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:52022PC0209&from=EN https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL... All of it is as bad as it sounds, but you can search for Article 7 to go directly to the surveillance bit.
- moffkalast 4y ago
  > REGULATION OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL > laying down rules to prevent and combat child sexual abuse Ah yes the tried and true "will somebody think of the children!" excuse to pass some tangential fascist laws without actually doing anything to help children in any way.
ggm 4y ago
Hot take, cites no legal opinion. My personal view is, this is a misrepresentation of the proposed act. The act may be bad, but this interpretation looks suspicious and hyperbolic. I'd like to see cites, and counterparts.
- miohtama 4y ago
  You can find them here https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/chat-control/ https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/chat-control/
  - ggm 4y ago
    Says nothing relevant to me about software repository legal implications, and free software in general. Says lots of other things about why it's a bad draft law.
    - miohtama 4y ago
      I was trying to be helpful to give you starting point for the reading, as the page will give you a lot of links to deal with. Hopefully this helps you start reading about the topic and discover the actual legislation, links to it and form your own opinion if the draft law is bad or not.
- alkonaut 4y ago
  Agreed. Unfortunately I find the European Pirate Party representatives the least reliable when it comes to reporting on privacy laws and similar. Which is pretty damning judgement considering what they see as their mission.
dang 4y ago
Related: Chat Control: The EU’s CSEM scanner proposal - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34183772 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34183772 - Dec 2022 (3 comments) EU chat control bill: fundamental rights terrorism - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31416599 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31416599 - May 2022 (5 comments) Chat control: EU Commission presents mass surveillance plan on May 11 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31329368 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31329368 - May 2022 (323 comments) The latest EU plan to outlaw encryption and introduce communication surveillance - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29308617 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29308617 - Nov 2021 (251 comments) EU interior ministers welcome mandatory chat control for all smartphones - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29200506 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29200506 - Nov 2021 (59 comments) EU Chatcontrol 2.0 [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29066894 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29066894 - Nov 2021 (197 comments) Messaging and chat control - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28115343 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28115343 - Aug 2021 (317 comments) EU Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communications - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27759814 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27759814 - July 2021 (11 comments) European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27753727 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27753727 - July 2021 (415 comments) Indiscriminate messaging and chatcontrol: Last chance to protest - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27736435 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27736435 - July 2021 (104 comments) IT companies warn in open letter: EU wants to ban encryption - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26825653 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26825653 - April 2021 (217 comments)
dalmo3 4y ago
Will this also spill all over the world like cookie banners? That would suck...
henearkr 4y ago
Let's hope that it will be amended precisely in order to let open source projects (and their users) live. And if you are a EU citizen, please contact your MEP about it. It's not voted yet. It's still time.
- stephen_g 4y ago
  The proposed law needs to be scrapped completely. The whole thing is bad, all it’s got going for it is the claim that they’re going to “protect the children”.
  - henearkr 4y ago
    Yeah in itself that's a red flag.
pelasaco 4y ago
On "[*] To define a software application store the law makes a reference to the EU Digital Markets Act, Article 2, point 12 which defines “virtual assistant”. What they actually mean is point 14, which does define “software application store”." Is any package manager defined as "software application store" ? reference: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A32022R1925 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A...
azalemeth 4y ago
The right way to respond to this is to launch a detailed EU petition about it – the EC parliament is fairly open and previous petitions with a large number of signatures have, unlike perhaps other countries, effected a change in policy, e.g. on the use of neonicotinoid pesticides ("save the bees") which are banned in the EU after much action [1]. Mullvad – or someone similar – should therefore really create one. I can't find anything relevant. Details here: https://commission.europa.eu/about-european-commission/get-involved/petition-eu_en https://commission.europa.eu/about-european-commission/get-i... [1] https://europa.eu/citizens-initiative/initiatives/details/2019/000016_en https://europa.eu/citizens-initiative/initiatives/details/20...
- miohtama 4y ago
  Most of the EU is against chat control. You can find some polls here https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/chat-control/ https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/chat-control/
feanaro 4y ago
And this has now been removed from the HN front page for some reason. :/
- dang 4y ago
  We downweighted it because this topic has had lots of discussion and the current article didn't seem to contain significant new information. More at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34615789 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34615789.
raydiatian 4y ago
I’d be interested in the data and studies backing the thesis that legal, indiscriminate, indefinite wiretaps are effective at controlling human trafficking.
rapnie 4y ago
Patrick Breyer (Member of EU Parliament for the Pirate Party) maintains an overview of all the ins and outs of the Chat Control legislation and things you can do to protest against it. https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/chat-control/ https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/chat-control/
cykros 4y ago
How hard is it for repos to just "not do business in the EU" -- especially those that are donation funded in the first place? It's been awhile since we saw the amusing maps drawn by the Pirate Bay pointing to the big pond that separates where the law is enforceable and where the servers are. Perhaps it'd require IP range blocking, but honestly, if there's no ads or any business being done in the EU, even that seems unnecessary -- the EU can take the trouble to block them if they like.
- ndsipa_pomu 4y ago
  With the use of VPNs, it's almost impossible to prevent someone in the EU from accessing a service.
  - Euphorbium 4y ago
    Is there anything preventing the ban of vpns?
    - cykros 4y ago
      Well, an outright ban would make most corporate business in the EU impossible, which is why China hasn't even gone this far. I guess you could go ahead and try to ban VPN's for private use, but frankly my suspicion is that this would not be easily enforceable, and on top of that would be easy enough to get around using a "poor man's VPN", ie, ssh -D. Going down the rabbit hole further, banning ssh would still leave the door open for things like stunnel, socks, or heck, even just http proxies. At some point you're asking to just change the way networking works in the first place. All to stop kids that can drive a car and meet strangers in person from chatting with strangers on the Internet.
    - ndsipa_pomu 4y ago
      Presumably that would lead to also banning https and encrypted traffic entirely. It's trivial to set up a VPN that looks just like https traffic.
lsiq 4y ago
"They" are in a dilemma, they either go total global control or they lose control. And it's clear they are going with the former. This is just one more law that makes no practical sense even if the intentions were noble. The WHO treaty, CBDCs, and digital IDs are all in the pipeline doing much the same. With the real-time, global, instant communication network that is the internet, "their" ONLY hope to retain control at scale is to use AI/Software and essentially force everyone to obey a computer. They will fail, that's the good news. Mostly because of entropy - that is to say, it is far cheaper and easier to disable a structure than build it up. A $2B data center can be disabled by a fire or a virus. A "too-big-to-fail-bank" can disappear overnight when customers close their accounts. The reason those don't happen normally is because people are mostly good, happy, and trusting. Once the trust is gone, there is anger, and self-interest trumps good-intentions - that's when the entropy and "Black Swan" events really kick in. I recommend Joseph Tainter's The Collapse of Complex Societies for how such processes have repeatedly taken place throughout history. The bad news is that they are going to try and force total control through anyways, so get ready. Nobody can predict how its going to unfold.
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 4y ago
  China is far ahead on that curve, and so far nobody is burning data centers or closes bank accounts.
  - wkat4242 4y ago
    No but culturally they are much more obedient there. China has never known a free society. And even there civil disobedience is growing, the CCP had to rapidly reverse its COVID policy to retain control.
hutzlibu 4y ago
And ... it is gone from the front page. HN is explicitely not the place for political activism of any kind, however justified the cause, just remember that, than you are not enraged by it. And my general point on this is: I'd like to see them try. It likely will get softened up quite a lot, but if they really go through with it, they will turn lots of technical (or just privacy concerned) people into criminals over night. Good luck with that. I live in the EU, but I certainly would not comply to any of this. And if Signal will automatically upload images from me, than I will use 100% open source and decentral solutions like Matrix based ones. Might turn out good for that.
- kreetx 4y ago
  Have recently found this to view HN: https://hckrnews.com/ https://hckrnews.com/, a "chronologic list of items that have made it onto the Hacker News homepage", by homepage I presume the first page.
- dang 4y ago
  We downweighted it because this topic has had lots of discussion [1] and the current article didn't seem to contain significant new information [2, 3]. It's possible that was a wrong call; I didn't look closely at the article. If you or anyone feel strongly about a case like this you should email us at hn@ycombinator.com and make an argument for why the article and thread are worth re-ranking. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34608595 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34608595 [2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=%22significant%20new%20information%22%20by%3Adang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so... [3] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=follow-up%20downweight&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
  - hutzlibu 4y ago
    "If you or anyone feel strongly about a case like this" Well, I do feel strongly about this case, but I know and respect, that your main motivation here, is providing a place for interesting debates and political activism often just leads to lots of rants and blowing of steam. So I would appreciate it, if topics like these sometimes are visible, so more people are aware of the topic, but I can live with the downranking of this specific article (especially since it was a bit hyperbole).
kkfx 4y ago
No law can censor a distributed system. ChatControl, so while surely large platforms would LIKE such law while little competitors would not, P2P/distributed networks of FREE software, not mere open source "commercial" services, would not be affected. It's about time to understand two things: - Open Source is a way to solve the insustainability of proprietary software AGAINST Free Software; - Surveillance and censorship can be only defeated by the People rising and imposing their will. The first is obvious to anybody who know a bit of actual state of things in IT land, the latter it's unlikely since most people are grown without knowing the meaning of freedom.
kreetx 4y ago
How about an HTTP header where it would fill the cookie consent for me? :)
demindiro 4y ago
Tangential, but it appears this submission has been pushed off the front page despite being only 2 hours old with 184 points, which seems unusual?
scaredginger 4y ago
If the article is accurate, this may be stupider than the Australian anti-encryption legislation. https://proton.me/blog/australia-anti-encryption-law https://proton.me/blog/australia-anti-encryption-law
friend_and_foe 4y ago
All the Europeans who constantly deride Americans for their government and laws, where are you on this? This is more egregious than not paying for doctor visits IMHO. You have to be 17 to talk to another human being on the internet? Anyone who hosts an application for downloadust verify user identity? This is absolutely nuts.

263 points by Semaphor 4y ago

Seems high time for some civil disobedience. Break the law collectively, let them seek to enforce their ridiculous/draconian laws and explain the knock on effects in court. Alternatively, open source projects that may be effected can withdraw access to their sites and source code and cite the law. Hopefully they forked the code already and don’t need any future updates.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
agilob 4y ago
>Seems high time for some civil disobedience. First time ACTA was presented there were protests mostly in Poland. 2nd time it was presented there were protests in Poland, Czech and Germany. 3rd time... it just passed. No one cared to protest again.
systemvoltage 4y ago
Unfortunately, small guy gets a pass but medium/large businesses have an ever increasing difficulty in operating in EU. This might sound like a positive thing but it is tremendously troubling. Corporations employ a lot of people and if they leave, EU would see poverty like never before. I was involved in GDPR laws and lot of small biz in EU straight up do not follow GDPR and the chances of getting fined in EU courts is pretty negligible. But, if you're a 500 employee company, you're going to have to maintain an army of GDPR consultants and attorneys at your disposal to keep in compliance.

m_a_g 4y ago

It is almost impossible to obey this law. It shows how uninformed the EU lawmakers are when it comes to technology.

mantas 4y ago
Only few big players will obey this law. Maybe that's the point EU lawmakers were going for...
marvinblum 4y ago
Do you really think they are this stupid? Or just trying to control the public opinion?
flangola7 4y ago
Other than open source stuff I don't see what would be hard to comply with it. Most people use Windows, Gmail and Android or iPhone. At least half of those already do most of what this law would ask.
- jonathanstrange 4y ago
  It seems hard to comply with because any software repository and app store falls under this law and the EU cannot control who uploads a chat app on one of these. At least people from non-EU countries will continue to develop and upload chat apps with full end-to-end encryption and without age verification. So essentially this proposed legislation seems to make all software repositories and app stores illegal, which makes it hard to enforce and comply with. My guess is that the EU would impose fines on repositories and app stores if they contain such apps and try some ostensibly silly IP geo-blocking, and people in the EU would continue to download and use these apps.
  - anthk 4y ago
    So pacman or apt over I2PD.
  - dns_snek 4y ago
    > At least people from non-EU countries will continue to develop and upload chat apps with full end-to-end encryption and without age verification. You're making it sound more trivial than it would be in practice. Google and Apple would promptly block access to those apps to EU citizens. Android users could still sideload apps but it would likely kill adoption without a massive cultural shift towards valuing privacy.

narrowtux 4y ago

I'm so tired of it all. Countless times it has been tried to enact laws like this. And it's not just this surveillance law that depresses me, reading up on the cyber resilience act just feels to me like it will suck even more fun out of software development, at least in a professional context.

closewith 4y ago
> And it's not just this surveillance law that depresses me, reading up on the cyber resilience act just feels to me like it will suck even more fun out of software development, at least in a professional context. God forbid people who love to use the title engineer will have to apply the rigour and standards of actual engineering to the work they do.
- pmontra 4y ago
  Or get a degree in engineering.
  - api 4y ago
    If software dev had been licensed and regulated this way we’d have only a tiny fraction of what we have now in terms of languages, OSes, tooling, etc. There are specific areas where it makes sense but doing it broadly will just halt all innovation.
    - pmontra 4y ago
      Two notes about that. 1) There are a lot of people doing engineering without a degree. One example: many makers are not engineers and they do a lot of good stuff anyway. What they don't do is taking legal responsibility because they are not allowed to. It's no warranty / no fitness for a purpose stuff. Similarly there is a lot of software with no warranty / no fitness clauses. History demonstrated that it's good enough to keep the world spinning. 2) Most people in the software industry do engineering jobs no matter if they have a degree in Computer Science or Software Engineering (I didn't check the USA name for that, sorry) or in anything else. I know very good software developers, maybe with an architect / engineer job title, with no degree at all or with a degree in Graphic Design or Philosophy or Agronomy. They moved to software development because they tinkered with their computers, wrote some programs and discovered that they are good at it. Nobody notices the difference after 5 or 10 years of work. The only downside it's a little narrowness of expertise: they have many more unknown unknowns because nobody systematically told them what's there outside and how it works, even at high level. One example: that good software developer with the Graphic Design degree told me once that he doesn't really know how networking works. To him it's the configuration screen of his Mac and HTTP calls from Node.js.

noduerme 4y ago

It seems that application stores would only be a tiny fragment of what would be affected by the law. Basically everything involving facilitating communications between users would be subject to draconian surveillance and reporting requirements. This is not the way a free or open society progresses.

mantas 4y ago
EU is neither free nor open. I'm saying this as a citizen of EU member. It's getting more and more pro-big-business and pro-big-government day by day. While citizen self-governance is crushed over and over. Good example is Poland vs EU conflict for political control of judges. Meanwhile nobody bats an eye for existing political control of judges in my country. Here higher level judges have to be approved by parliament. Currently parliament speaker is a leader of a party that is trialed for corruption. This party is in ruling coalition as well. So the party that is in trial also makes a call who can work as a judge. Yet there's zero complains about that :)
- jeoqn 4y ago
  It’s only bad if the judges are conservative ;-)
- mbork_pl 4y ago
  Where are you from, if I may ask?
  - mantas 4y ago
    Hello from your northern neighbour, Lithuania.
- mariusor 4y ago
  Personally I don't see how your example shows EU crushing "citizen self-governance" which sounds like a liberarian charged expression for "democracy". Could you elaborate please?
  - 4y ago

trashburger 4y ago

As usual, people who aren't familiar with the culture of software write laws that restrict software. I sincerely hope this will just be a scare like Article 10 was, but it'd be much better that whoever these insane proposals are coming from could be stopped.

shapefrog 4y ago
> people who aren't familiar with the culture of software write laws that restrict software My interpretation is somewhat different - they are very familiar with software and how it works, but that familiarity appears limited to just the Apple & Android app stores. A small amount of knowledge is far more dangerous than no knowledge at all.
OJFord 4y ago
Even the intention won't get any traction though - even if enacted defiance would be so widespread, if not total, (16 year olds no longer able to digitally communicate, come on) that it would be retracted or at least irrelevant.

stormdennis 4y ago

"The proposed Chat control EU law will" If it's a proposed law then it should read "The proposed Chat control EU law would"

jeoqn 4y ago
The EU is not very democratic - if they want to do something they will and there’s nothing that can be done about it.
- mort96 4y ago
  That's not really correct. The European Commission might not be directly elected by EU citizens, but the members of the European Parliament are elected by EU citizens, and the Council of the European Union is made up of one minister from each EU member state. A law doesn't get passed without support from the democratically elected parliament members and the national representatives in the council. It's also worth noting that the President of the European Commission is elected by the European Council (not to be confused with the Council of the European Union). The European Council is made up of the heads of state of the EU member countries (who are themselves generally elected). Could it be more democratic? Yeah, sure, maybe the President should be directly elected by constituents rather than by heads of states. But it's not undemocratic, and after a law is proposed by the European Commission, the democratic process decides whether it should pass or not. EDIT: Thank you for your comment though! I'm not in an EU member state, so I haven't really known about this stuff before (I'm just affected by the laws without being a part of the EU demos). Your comment prompted me to research how this stuff actually works.
  - shapefrog 4y ago
    > The European Commission isn't very democratic The commissioners are appointed by the democratically elected government of each country, to push the agenda of the democratically elected government of each country.
    - mort96 4y ago

maxehmookau 4y ago

I'm curious to know how likely this is to pass. EU laws are proposed by the council, but passed by the (much more representative and democratic) parliament. The EU has fairly good form in terms of passing common-sense tech laws (see; GDPR) so I'd be skeptical that this is any more than a dumb proposal destined for failure.

Semaphor 4y ago
I agree with you, but outcries as these are needed to make it clear how bad the law is.
jacooper 4y ago
Don't underestimate the desire of regulators to get more and more power.
simongray 4y ago
Laws are proposed by the Commission, not the Council. The Council and Parliament work like different chambers in the EU system, kinda like the Senate and the House in the US, but it's the prerogative of the Commission to propose new laws. Elections work similarly in any European parliamentary system. Prime ministers are also indirectly elected in those systems. The main difference is that the executive (the Commission) is the only one that can propose laws in the EU, but the other EU lawmakers can still amend legislation. (just stating this for people reading the comments, not specifically for you)
- maxehmookau 4y ago
  You're right, my bad. Either way, laws proposed by a small subset of indirectly appointed politicians. They're approved by a much larger body of directly elected MEPs. That hasn't happened, yet. I'm interested to know how likely that really is.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]

sendfoods 4y ago

I am the first person to appreciate the pro-online-privacy legislation from the EU in the last couple of years. Yet...How can the same organization be behind this? Is it a result of the sheer size of the org, with malevolent people reeking their ugly heads? A more cynical "privacy legislation as a smoke screen with totalitarian measures in the backend"?

mantas 4y ago
Both pro-privacy and anti-privacy have one common theme - more power to the state. And that's the point of EU bureaucrats. To gather as much power in their fight against both outside forces (e.g. US-based multinationals) and inside forces (member states).
- timeon 4y ago
  You really think those various actors are part of one plot? Also this is proposed not passed law. But you already have conclusion about whole org.
  - mantas 4y ago
    When this (as well as other similar laws) are pushed other and other again... I remember that saying by Juncker... We'll try again, and again, and again till it passes one time :) I'm not blaming every single bureaucrat. But direction of the organisation is pretty clear. Just like I don't blame every Facebook worker, but direction of that company is pretty clear too.
Semaphor 4y ago
I mean, we sent Ursula von der Leyen as head of the commission to the EU who became infamous in Germany for rather having CSAM stay online as long as she could prevent Germans from seeing it…
- mort96 4y ago
  Leyen is in favor of CSAM staying online? Do you have a source on that? Are you sure you're not misrepresenting her views?

ndsipa_pomu 4y ago

It always seems like a bad idea to attempt a technological solution to a legal/social problem. Surely the age of people using services is a purely a social issue - similar to not allowing alcohol to be sold to underage drinkers. This kind of law would be analogous to making a law that alcohol cannot be physically consumed by underage drinkers.

thaumasiotes 4y ago
> This kind of law would be analogous to making a law that alcohol cannot be physically consumed by underage drinkers. We don't have a law like that in place for alcohol, but we do for any number of other substances.
- ndsipa_pomu 4y ago
  Such as? I can't think of any examples apart from possibly child-proof caps on medication, but that is serving a slightly different purpose - safety rather than authoritarianism.
  - cpa 4y ago
    I think they were thinking of illegal drugs, which you generally can't possess. Maybe the act of consumption is not illegal per se, though, I'm not sure.
    - thaumasiotes 4y ago
      See side comment. As best as I can see, consumption is not "illegal", except that there are extremely severe legal consequences if any evidence turns up that you've consumed them. It remains to be explained in what sense that fails to constitute being illegal.
      - Semaphor 4y ago
        > except that there are extremely severe legal consequences if any evidence turns up This is a bit of a sidebar, but what consequences? DUI, sure. But in Germany, where consumption (but nothing else, including possession; IANAL, not sure if someone holding a joint to your face to drag on counts as possession) of weed is legal I know of no direct consequences you’d face for having consumed marijuana.

anthk 4y ago

As an European: good luck with that/buena suerte con ello. It won't last long.

jacooper 4y ago

There is absolutely nothing good about this law, and it really will be a disaster if it passes.

FlotaDeAragon 4y ago

Can't wait for a cookie banner when I speak to my mom on whatsapp Public money well spent!

b800h 4y ago

Seems to me it'll also ban package libraries like pip, npm.

DiabloD3 4y ago

No offense, but that just means the EU will no longer be compatible with FOSS. FOSS runs the world, and Europe will find themselves without software to run the majority of their systems. Without FOSS? No Internet. No business. No nothing. You'll have maybe 2/3rds of what ships in Windows and less than half of OSX. Oh, and no Ingenuity, which iirc was a joint NASA/ESA project.

worldofmatthew 4y ago
It will mean every server will have to use Microsoft Windows..... Thus, handing over all control over the EU networks to 1 American company.
- DiabloD3 4y ago
  Nope, Windows Server would be illegal in Europe. Microsoft ships too much non-trivial FOSS software in Windows now. There is no major OS that they can run, nor can they develop for it (the act of installing GCC or LLVM would now be illegal, for example).
  - worldofmatthew 4y ago
    I'm pretty sure Microsoft could compile software in the US and export it without the compiler. Other issues could be solved with a Microsoft Windows 11 EU Edition that only allows programs to be installed from the Microsoft store.
    - DiabloD3 4y ago
      FOSS is shipped by Microsoft on the Microsoft store. It, too, would be illegal.
      - worldofmatthew 4y ago
        Microsoft can simply ban FOSS from its store.
4y ago

stonogo 4y ago

Not a very good interpretation of the law, but I'm sure it gets a lot of traffic. The EU definition of online intermediation services specifies that a contractual relationship must exist. It's focused on businesses. RPM repositories, apt repositories, pkgsrc, and so forth are therefore completely unaffected, as there's no contractual relationship between the providers and users. Elementary OS, Flatpak, and Canonical's Snap store might have trouble here, and need to implement further controls to be compliant. But nothing is going to "outlaw open source operating systems."

tpm 4y ago
Exactly my thought. It is hard to correctly read and understand laws (whether proposed or not). Especially if one is not a lawyer, any such commentary should be done extra carefully.
dbernt 4y ago
There are contractual relationships between the services and business users: the open source license agreements. These are legal agreements between the copyright holders and the distributors. Does that not fulfill requirement 2.2.c in EU regulation 2019/1150?
- stonogo 4y ago
  No, for a couple of reasons. Primarily the services rendered (i.e. the data in the packages) are not "normally for remuneration" (i.e. nobody is paying to access them specifically). EU law is cloudier on whether a copyright license constitutes a contract. Under common law there has to be consideration for a contract. Not all EU member states require that, but enough do that I think they'd leave it alone.

jonathanstrange 4y ago

Wouldn't this also make Github illegal?

mritun 4y ago

I was about to write a knee-jerk comment about how short-sighted the EU law is, but then I stopped and rethought. EU (and India) are fundamentally trying to strengthen their local economies and severe their dependence on US based entities. I could disagree but I think it’s really important to understand that these are sovereign nations with dedicated think tanks. Policy decisions like this are debated and then enacted. It would not be surprising if the coverage of Open Source software repositories is not accidental, but actually a very well thought nuance because truth is that nearly all big Open Source entities are US based! In the eyes of the policy makers, The “big tech problem” may not be limited to commercial for-profit entities and arguably more relevant to open-source which is where EU is betting it’s future on. However absurd it may seem to a open source activist, it may not seem absurd for a policy maker to consider that open source stewardship should have an independent EU chapter as well that answers to EU policy and abides by the local laws. It may not happen on day 1, but policymakers of such wide ranging laws like the Digital Markets act, think more in decades, than years. TL;DR - Interesting interpretation is that Digital Market act purposefully covers all “big tech players” - commercial or open source. In the eyes of EU policy makers Mozilla, Apache and Debian foundations could very well be as “US controlled” and “strategically important” as commercial entities! (disclaimer: I work for a large corporation, but this comment is my own 1am thought!)

anthk 4y ago
The GPL it's bound to the Berna convention of Copyright. Crap out the GPL on incompatible licenses, watch the entire EU industry collaboration collapse overnight.

AstixAndBelix 4y ago

We have had physical mail for millennia, and yet I can still go send stuff completely anonymously. Before adding these insane restrictions for sending messages online, maybe these politicians should first force people to identify themselves and prove they're over 17 to send a letter? See how well that goes

mjw_byrne 4y ago

EU tech law seems to be a bit of a rollercoaster. GDPR was conceptually a great thing (although its actual implementation smacks strongly of boomers with filofaxes ranting about FaceTok and Google Siri), the right to repair is good, the USB-C thing is useful. The cookie permission thing didn't work though. It's sad to see the EU now joining the "let's use child abuse as an excuse to steal the internet" bandwagon. The UK Government has been doing this for years, and is trying it right now with the Online Safety Bill. I never know what to think of the motivation behind this stuff. Is it a well-meaning but naive attempt to protect the vulnerable, or is it the establishment desperately trying to destroy the threat posed by open communication and the empowerment of individuals?

Y-bar 4y ago
Why do you think GDPR is some boomer with filofaxes thing? I'm young enough to be born at about the introduction of the original Mac and have worked with ecom for a long time now and GDPR from my perspective is an excellent law with the exception of some lacklustre enforcement. Our clients all cleaned out their already collected data, they implemented deletion, and extraction/change-on-request by customers, they limited their tracking and data collection among many other things. Not only was it an immediate privacy win for their customers, it made further development easaier because we did not have to deal with as much data, and it also protects the clients in the event of a data breach since there is less customer data to lose.
- shapefrog 4y ago
  GDPR is a light turned on that illuminated all the shitty behaviour that was "best practices" taking place in the darkness. Its no surprise that Zuck and co spent billions opposing it
- mjw_byrne 4y ago
  "Why do you think GDPR is some boomer with filofaxes thing?" I handle the GDPR compliance for my company so I've had to get stuck into the topic. Once you start actually trying to apply the various definitions and rules to the real world, they quickly break down. Examples: 1. The core concept in GDPR, personal data, is defined sloppily: "data relating to an identifiable natural person". It doesn't work because "relating to" is a hand-wave. Your name is obviously personal data, but (according to mainstream legal interpretation) so are IP addresses, despite the fact that people do not have IP addresses, network interfaces do. 2. Personal data is not defined in terms of the context in which it appears, which is crucially important. If I have the text "John Smith" in a database in a column called "name" and it actually relates to a person called "John Smith", that's clearly personal data. But what if someone uses my platform to spin up a VM with the hostname "johnsmith" - is that personal data? According to my lawyers, the answer is "maybe". I know lawyers have a tendency to be like that, but the law itself shouldn't leave the question open. 3. The construction of the law is poorly thought-out and leads to silly contradictions, e.g. if you have someone's personal data and you are told to stop processing it, you must stop processing it. But storage, erasure and transmission are all classed as processing, and it's logically impossible not to do at least one of these things. All that being said, I'll repeat that I fully agree with GDPR's objectives and I think its real-world impact is positive. I just wish more people who understand how computers work had been involved in drafting it. EDIT: embarrassing punctuation mistake.

williamtrask 4y ago

Something worth thinking on. It’s oversimplifying to say that this is merely a case of bureaucratic greed for power (which seems to be the main theme amongst comments). Kids are being harmed and are harming others online. Parents (imperfect as they may be) have far less ability to intervene than they do in physical spaces. Technologies (and technologists) are a major cause of this autonomy. If we build technology that leads to harm, it increases the chances that a law like this is passed. Doesn’t matter if we meant to. The primary role we have to prevent legislation like this is to think creatively on how what we build can help create a better world in many aspects that are largely overlooked. Otherwise we’re feeding the political capital of bills like this. Want to preserve the current internet? Don’t settle for the current societal impacts. They’re unacceptable and politicians will have to respond, and will do so the only way they know how.

dsign 4y ago

The contents of the proposed law can be accessed here: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:52022PC0209&from=EN https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL... All of it is as bad as it sounds, but you can search for Article 7 to go directly to the surveillance bit.

moffkalast 4y ago
> REGULATION OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL > laying down rules to prevent and combat child sexual abuse Ah yes the tried and true "will somebody think of the children!" excuse to pass some tangential fascist laws without actually doing anything to help children in any way.

ggm 4y ago

Hot take, cites no legal opinion. My personal view is, this is a misrepresentation of the proposed act. The act may be bad, but this interpretation looks suspicious and hyperbolic. I'd like to see cites, and counterparts.

miohtama 4y ago
You can find them here https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/chat-control/ https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/chat-control/
- ggm 4y ago
  Says nothing relevant to me about software repository legal implications, and free software in general. Says lots of other things about why it's a bad draft law.
  - miohtama 4y ago
    I was trying to be helpful to give you starting point for the reading, as the page will give you a lot of links to deal with. Hopefully this helps you start reading about the topic and discover the actual legislation, links to it and form your own opinion if the draft law is bad or not.
alkonaut 4y ago
Agreed. Unfortunately I find the European Pirate Party representatives the least reliable when it comes to reporting on privacy laws and similar. Which is pretty damning judgement considering what they see as their mission.

dang 4y ago

Related: Chat Control: The EU’s CSEM scanner proposal - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34183772 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34183772 - Dec 2022 (3 comments) EU chat control bill: fundamental rights terrorism - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31416599 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31416599 - May 2022 (5 comments) Chat control: EU Commission presents mass surveillance plan on May 11 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31329368 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31329368 - May 2022 (323 comments) The latest EU plan to outlaw encryption and introduce communication surveillance - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29308617 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29308617 - Nov 2021 (251 comments) EU interior ministers welcome mandatory chat control for all smartphones - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29200506 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29200506 - Nov 2021 (59 comments) EU Chatcontrol 2.0 [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29066894 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29066894 - Nov 2021 (197 comments) Messaging and chat control - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28115343 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28115343 - Aug 2021 (317 comments) EU Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communications - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27759814 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27759814 - July 2021 (11 comments) European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27753727 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27753727 - July 2021 (415 comments) Indiscriminate messaging and chatcontrol: Last chance to protest - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27736435 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27736435 - July 2021 (104 comments) IT companies warn in open letter: EU wants to ban encryption - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26825653 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26825653 - April 2021 (217 comments)

dalmo3 4y ago

Will this also spill all over the world like cookie banners? That would suck...

henearkr 4y ago

Let's hope that it will be amended precisely in order to let open source projects (and their users) live. And if you are a EU citizen, please contact your MEP about it. It's not voted yet. It's still time.

stephen_g 4y ago
The proposed law needs to be scrapped completely. The whole thing is bad, all it’s got going for it is the claim that they’re going to “protect the children”.
- henearkr 4y ago
  Yeah in itself that's a red flag.

pelasaco 4y ago

On "[*] To define a software application store the law makes a reference to the EU Digital Markets Act, Article 2, point 12 which defines “virtual assistant”. What they actually mean is point 14, which does define “software application store”." Is any package manager defined as "software application store" ? reference: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A32022R1925 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A...

azalemeth 4y ago

The right way to respond to this is to launch a detailed EU petition about it – the EC parliament is fairly open and previous petitions with a large number of signatures have, unlike perhaps other countries, effected a change in policy, e.g. on the use of neonicotinoid pesticides ("save the bees") which are banned in the EU after much action [1]. Mullvad – or someone similar – should therefore really create one. I can't find anything relevant. Details here: https://commission.europa.eu/about-european-commission/get-involved/petition-eu_en https://commission.europa.eu/about-european-commission/get-i... [1] https://europa.eu/citizens-initiative/initiatives/details/2019/000016_en https://europa.eu/citizens-initiative/initiatives/details/20...

miohtama 4y ago
Most of the EU is against chat control. You can find some polls here https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/chat-control/ https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/chat-control/

feanaro 4y ago

And this has now been removed from the HN front page for some reason. :/

dang 4y ago
We downweighted it because this topic has had lots of discussion and the current article didn't seem to contain significant new information. More at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34615789 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34615789.

raydiatian 4y ago

I’d be interested in the data and studies backing the thesis that legal, indiscriminate, indefinite wiretaps are effective at controlling human trafficking.

rapnie 4y ago

Patrick Breyer (Member of EU Parliament for the Pirate Party) maintains an overview of all the ins and outs of the Chat Control legislation and things you can do to protest against it. https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/chat-control/ https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/chat-control/

cykros 4y ago

How hard is it for repos to just "not do business in the EU" -- especially those that are donation funded in the first place? It's been awhile since we saw the amusing maps drawn by the Pirate Bay pointing to the big pond that separates where the law is enforceable and where the servers are. Perhaps it'd require IP range blocking, but honestly, if there's no ads or any business being done in the EU, even that seems unnecessary -- the EU can take the trouble to block them if they like.

ndsipa_pomu 4y ago
With the use of VPNs, it's almost impossible to prevent someone in the EU from accessing a service.
- Euphorbium 4y ago
  Is there anything preventing the ban of vpns?
  - cykros 4y ago
    Well, an outright ban would make most corporate business in the EU impossible, which is why China hasn't even gone this far. I guess you could go ahead and try to ban VPN's for private use, but frankly my suspicion is that this would not be easily enforceable, and on top of that would be easy enough to get around using a "poor man's VPN", ie, ssh -D. Going down the rabbit hole further, banning ssh would still leave the door open for things like stunnel, socks, or heck, even just http proxies. At some point you're asking to just change the way networking works in the first place. All to stop kids that can drive a car and meet strangers in person from chatting with strangers on the Internet.
  - ndsipa_pomu 4y ago
    Presumably that would lead to also banning https and encrypted traffic entirely. It's trivial to set up a VPN that looks just like https traffic.

lsiq 4y ago

"They" are in a dilemma, they either go total global control or they lose control. And it's clear they are going with the former. This is just one more law that makes no practical sense even if the intentions were noble. The WHO treaty, CBDCs, and digital IDs are all in the pipeline doing much the same. With the real-time, global, instant communication network that is the internet, "their" ONLY hope to retain control at scale is to use AI/Software and essentially force everyone to obey a computer. They will fail, that's the good news. Mostly because of entropy - that is to say, it is far cheaper and easier to disable a structure than build it up. A $2B data center can be disabled by a fire or a virus. A "too-big-to-fail-bank" can disappear overnight when customers close their accounts. The reason those don't happen normally is because people are mostly good, happy, and trusting. Once the trust is gone, there is anger, and self-interest trumps good-intentions - that's when the entropy and "Black Swan" events really kick in. I recommend Joseph Tainter's The Collapse of Complex Societies for how such processes have repeatedly taken place throughout history. The bad news is that they are going to try and force total control through anyways, so get ready. Nobody can predict how its going to unfold.

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 4y ago
China is far ahead on that curve, and so far nobody is burning data centers or closes bank accounts.
- wkat4242 4y ago
  No but culturally they are much more obedient there. China has never known a free society. And even there civil disobedience is growing, the CCP had to rapidly reverse its COVID policy to retain control.

hutzlibu 4y ago

And ... it is gone from the front page. HN is explicitely not the place for political activism of any kind, however justified the cause, just remember that, than you are not enraged by it. And my general point on this is: I'd like to see them try. It likely will get softened up quite a lot, but if they really go through with it, they will turn lots of technical (or just privacy concerned) people into criminals over night. Good luck with that. I live in the EU, but I certainly would not comply to any of this. And if Signal will automatically upload images from me, than I will use 100% open source and decentral solutions like Matrix based ones. Might turn out good for that.

kreetx 4y ago
Have recently found this to view HN: https://hckrnews.com/ https://hckrnews.com/, a "chronologic list of items that have made it onto the Hacker News homepage", by homepage I presume the first page.
dang 4y ago
We downweighted it because this topic has had lots of discussion [1] and the current article didn't seem to contain significant new information [2, 3]. It's possible that was a wrong call; I didn't look closely at the article. If you or anyone feel strongly about a case like this you should email us at hn@ycombinator.com and make an argument for why the article and thread are worth re-ranking. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34608595 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34608595 [2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=%22significant%20new%20information%22%20by%3Adang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so... [3] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=follow-up%20downweight&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
- hutzlibu 4y ago
  "If you or anyone feel strongly about a case like this" Well, I do feel strongly about this case, but I know and respect, that your main motivation here, is providing a place for interesting debates and political activism often just leads to lots of rants and blowing of steam. So I would appreciate it, if topics like these sometimes are visible, so more people are aware of the topic, but I can live with the downranking of this specific article (especially since it was a bit hyperbole).

kkfx 4y ago

No law can censor a distributed system. ChatControl, so while surely large platforms would LIKE such law while little competitors would not, P2P/distributed networks of FREE software, not mere open source "commercial" services, would not be affected. It's about time to understand two things: - Open Source is a way to solve the insustainability of proprietary software AGAINST Free Software; - Surveillance and censorship can be only defeated by the People rising and imposing their will. The first is obvious to anybody who know a bit of actual state of things in IT land, the latter it's unlikely since most people are grown without knowing the meaning of freedom.

kreetx 4y ago

How about an HTTP header where it would fill the cookie consent for me? :)

demindiro 4y ago

Tangential, but it appears this submission has been pushed off the front page despite being only 2 hours old with 184 points, which seems unusual?

scaredginger 4y ago

If the article is accurate, this may be stupider than the Australian anti-encryption legislation. https://proton.me/blog/australia-anti-encryption-law https://proton.me/blog/australia-anti-encryption-law

friend_and_foe 4y ago

All the Europeans who constantly deride Americans for their government and laws, where are you on this? This is more egregious than not paying for doctor visits IMHO. You have to be 17 to talk to another human being on the internet? Anyone who hosts an application for downloadust verify user identity? This is absolutely nuts.