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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

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 It's unlikely we'll see any admission on why exactly the vote was withdrawn, but it's probable that the situation became untenable for the political parties involved, one of which lost massively in the Belgian elections about two weeks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-privacyprotest-tegen-eu-voorstel-om-kinderporno-aan-banden-te-leggen-droom-van-elke-dictator/10552092.html https://www.tijd.be/ondernemen/technologie/fel-privacyprotes... [2] https://www.demorgen.be/snelnieuws/verlinden-buigt-voor-luide-kritiek-controversieel-eu-voorstel-om-je-berichten-te-scannen-uitgesteld~ba223aaa/ https://www.demorgen.be/snelnieuws/verlinden-buigt-voor-luid...

qznc 2y ago
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 2y ago
  And during the UEFA Euro 2024.
- 0rzech 2y ago
  Poland, Netherlands, Austria and Luxembourg are against as well: https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/council-to-greenlight-chat-control-take-action-now/ https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/council-to-greenlight-chat-... .
rmbyrro 2y ago
Proposals should have an exponential backoff algorithm. Otherwise they'll keep proposing over and over until it passes.
- moffkalast 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    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 2y ago
      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 2y ago
        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 2y ago
        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 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.
Krasnol 2y ago
Thank you for the background information.
elric 2y ago
Verlinden's remarks are pretty galling. She wanted to push it through because it would have made her (and Belgium) look good. What an absolutely insane reason to nibble away at people's freedoms. Her tenure as minister had been pretty underwhelming, notable only for her ineptitude.
kabes 2y ago
I found it very frustrating that in the recent Belgian elections, because the EU and local elections were combined, there was very little debate on this subject and EU programs in general. Luckily it was finally brought up in the media (although way overdue IMO)
Bluestein 2y ago
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 2y ago
  > 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
  - andruby 2y ago
    > I think most people don't realize the value of privacy That is so true. There is one point I like to use whenever I get into a privacy debate. If they'll say "But I have nothing to hide", then I'll ask "well then give me your email password". Originally from a TED talk, possibly from Chris Anderson.
  - Dalewyn 2y ago
    >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.
    - digging 2y ago
      > 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.
barrenko 2y ago
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.
- barbazoo 2y ago
  > 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?
  - Vinnl 2y ago
    One thing would be interesting was to know who pushed for it to be withdrawn for now, and why.
    - Propelloni 2y ago
      This is trying to be a democratic process. There is no single "hero" to worship, but a number of things to consider. The German Bundesregierung signalled a few days ago they would vote against Chatcontrol (IIRC, it is part of the Ampel coalitions founding contract to vote against surveillance enhancing measures on the EU level.) Nancy Faeser, Social Democrats, Germany's interior minister and usually not against surveillance, and Marco Buschmann, Liberal Democrats, Germany's justice minister, released statements that Chatcontrol is irreconcilable with liberal democratic states of law. The Greens were opposed anyhow and said so the last few weeks. So, unity of sorts. France had said from the start they would vote against it (but apparently backtracking after the EU election) and with the two biggest countries in the EU against it now, the law had little chance to pass the informal council vote. Add on top that around 30 MEPs from the Greens, Liberals and Social Democrats already wrote a letter stating that their fractions are opposed, thus ratification would have been unlikely. Add on top strong efforts by economic lobby groups, I guess the Belgian president of the council saw no reason to put the vote forward anymore. Of course, all this could be wrong. I'm just puzzling things together I read over the last few days and weeks.
ginko 2y ago
It's always the Council (i.e. the national governments) with the worst proposals and then the EU has to take the blame.
- deliciousturkey 2y ago
  This is just not true. Only the Commission can propose new legislation. This very proposal also is quite aggressively pushed by the Commission (see for example the advertising campaign: https://noyb.eu/en/noyb-files-complaint-against-eu-commission-over-targeted-chat-control-ads https://noyb.eu/en/noyb-files-complaint-against-eu-commissio...).
  - toyg 2y ago
    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 2y ago
    > 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.
  - tpm 2y ago
    And the Commission is formed by national governments.
    - Vinnl 2y ago
      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.
morsch 2y ago
> 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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    How the hell is the stasi relevant in any way whatsoever?
    - pjmlp 2y ago
      The point that you have to ask that question, in the context of state surveillance, is quite telling.
    - bjoli 2y ago
      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 2y ago
        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.
Vinnl 2y ago
> 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 2y ago
  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 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 2y ago
    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.
    - AJ007 2y ago
      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.)

qznc 2y ago

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 2y ago
And during the UEFA Euro 2024.
0rzech 2y ago
Poland, Netherlands, Austria and Luxembourg are against as well: https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/council-to-greenlight-chat-control-take-action-now/ https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/council-to-greenlight-chat-... .

rmbyrro 2y ago

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

moffkalast 2y ago
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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    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 2y ago
      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 2y ago
        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 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.

Krasnol 2y ago

Thank you for the background information.

elric 2y ago

Verlinden's remarks are pretty galling. She wanted to push it through because it would have made her (and Belgium) look good. What an absolutely insane reason to nibble away at people's freedoms. Her tenure as minister had been pretty underwhelming, notable only for her ineptitude.

kabes 2y ago

I found it very frustrating that in the recent Belgian elections, because the EU and local elections were combined, there was very little debate on this subject and EU programs in general. Luckily it was finally brought up in the media (although way overdue IMO)

Bluestein 2y ago

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 2y ago
> 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
- andruby 2y ago
  > I think most people don't realize the value of privacy That is so true. There is one point I like to use whenever I get into a privacy debate. If they'll say "But I have nothing to hide", then I'll ask "well then give me your email password". Originally from a TED talk, possibly from Chris Anderson.
- Dalewyn 2y ago
  >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.
  - digging 2y ago
    > 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.

barrenko 2y ago

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.

barbazoo 2y ago
> 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?
- Vinnl 2y ago
  One thing would be interesting was to know who pushed for it to be withdrawn for now, and why.
  - Propelloni 2y ago
    This is trying to be a democratic process. There is no single "hero" to worship, but a number of things to consider. The German Bundesregierung signalled a few days ago they would vote against Chatcontrol (IIRC, it is part of the Ampel coalitions founding contract to vote against surveillance enhancing measures on the EU level.) Nancy Faeser, Social Democrats, Germany's interior minister and usually not against surveillance, and Marco Buschmann, Liberal Democrats, Germany's justice minister, released statements that Chatcontrol is irreconcilable with liberal democratic states of law. The Greens were opposed anyhow and said so the last few weeks. So, unity of sorts. France had said from the start they would vote against it (but apparently backtracking after the EU election) and with the two biggest countries in the EU against it now, the law had little chance to pass the informal council vote. Add on top that around 30 MEPs from the Greens, Liberals and Social Democrats already wrote a letter stating that their fractions are opposed, thus ratification would have been unlikely. Add on top strong efforts by economic lobby groups, I guess the Belgian president of the council saw no reason to put the vote forward anymore. Of course, all this could be wrong. I'm just puzzling things together I read over the last few days and weeks.

ginko 2y ago

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

deliciousturkey 2y ago
This is just not true. Only the Commission can propose new legislation. This very proposal also is quite aggressively pushed by the Commission (see for example the advertising campaign: https://noyb.eu/en/noyb-files-complaint-against-eu-commission-over-targeted-chat-control-ads https://noyb.eu/en/noyb-files-complaint-against-eu-commissio...).
- toyg 2y ago
  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 2y ago
  > 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.
- tpm 2y ago
  And the Commission is formed by national governments.
  - Vinnl 2y ago
    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.

morsch 2y ago

> 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 2y ago
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 2y ago
  How the hell is the stasi relevant in any way whatsoever?
  - pjmlp 2y ago
    The point that you have to ask that question, in the context of state surveillance, is quite telling.
  - bjoli 2y ago
    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 2y ago
      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.

Vinnl 2y ago

> 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 2y ago
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 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 2y ago
  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.
  - AJ007 2y ago
    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.)