13 ms·

EU Chat Control: Germany's position has been reverted to undecided

417 points by doener 1y ago

amelius 1y ago
> This is not about catching criminals. It is mass surveillance imposed on all 450 million citizens of the European Union. I think it is also about catching criminals. And they should change their wording to make it more correct, otherwise they will certainly lose this fight.
- varispeed 1y ago
  Calling it “also about catching criminals” is a framing trick. Sure, if you surveil 450 million people you’ll find some criminals - that’s statistically inevitable. But you’ll also drag far more innocents into suspicion. Even under generous assumptions - 0.01% offender prevalence, 90% detection accuracy, and just 1% false positives - you’d correctly flag ~40,500 offenders while generating ~4.5 million false alarms. For every offender, over 110 innocents are treated as suspects. That imbalance isn’t collateral damage - it’s the defining flaw of mass scanning. It would overwhelm police, damage lives, and normalise suspicion of everyone. And “compromise” here only means deciding how much of that broken trade-off to accept.
  - pcrh 1y ago
    Agreed. Targeted surveillance of individuals under suspicion can be legitimate, however it surprises me that such mass surveillance continues to be promoted again and again, despite it being demonstrably harmful. Along with breaking encryption, which would introduce risks of large financial and commercial harm. I often wonder what arguments are actually deployed behind closed doors in favor of mass surveillance, apart from the ever-present "think of the children" argument. It can't be the case that the downsides of such surveillance are unknown to those supporting it (or maybe it can?).
    - aleph_minus_one 1y ago
      > however it surprises me that such mass surveillance continues to be promoted again and again, despite it being demonstrably harmful. Because citizens don't send the respective politicians to hell.
    - bux93 1y ago
      It's the same reason police (in every country) are always asking for more powers, and then end up not using them effectively. It's a cycle where crime is not perfectly prevented/punished, politicians blame the police, police blame not having enough powers, and then they get more. But the wrong ones to prevent the next tragedy, well, in hindsight of course. So new powers are needed yet again. (And no-one needs to examine why the existing powers are not used effectively, since the underlying problems there would probably be a lot more expensive and boring to fix, e.g. better pay/hours, better management, education, outreach, blahblahblah.) Then those powers are abused, curtailed a bit, and the cycle starts again.
  - amelius 1y ago
    Yeah but that wasn't my point. My point is that "this isn't about catching criminals" is the wrong wording. You don't start a debate by twisting the words of the other party. No matter how right you are. Otherwise you will be seen as a pariah.
    - varispeed 1y ago
      But this isn't about catching criminals.
      - amelius 1y ago
        For _you_ it isn't. If you want to be heard in a heated debate, choose your words wisely.
        varispeed 1y ago
        That’s a common derail - shifting from the substance to “watch your wording.” It’s a form of concern-trolling: pretending the problem is rhetoric while sidestepping the actual flaw. The numbers don’t change based on phrasing. Mass scanning at EU scale inevitably flags orders of magnitude more innocents than offenders. Saying “this isn’t about catching criminals” isn’t twisting words, it’s highlighting that the stated goal is statistically self-defeating. The “catching criminals” line is deliberate gaslighting. It’s crafted to reassure people who don’t understand how these systems work, while the real function is mass surveillance of everyone.
        amelius 1y ago
        > That’s a common derail - shifting from the substance to “watch your wording.” You're acting like I'm trying to derail the argument. That is not the case. You are putting a lot of assumptions in your wording. This will not help you.
        varispeed 1y ago
        Classic gaslight: accuse me of twisting and ‘acting’ while you’re the one twisting. The wording isn’t the issue - the substance is. And you’ve avoided it entirely.
  - amelius 1y ago
    > Even under generous assumptions - 0.01% offender prevalence, 90% detection accuracy, and just 1% false positives - you’d correctly flag ~40,500 offenders while generating ~4.5 million false alarms. For every offender, over 110 innocents are treated as suspects. Playing devil's advocate here, but you can skew those numbers however you want. I.e., given any classifier and corresponding confusion matrix, you can make the number of false positives arbitrarily low, at the cost of more false negatives.
    - p_l 1y ago
      We have already experience with how false positives are skewed in practice, even case goes all the way to court. Because ostensibly good people do not want to see the CSAM material, they believe what algorithm/first reporter stated, and ofc nobody "good" wants to let a pedophile go free. And so the algorithm tries to hang a parent for making photo of skin rash to send to doctor (happened with Google Drive scanning) or a grandparent for having a photo of their toddler grandkids playing in kiddy pool (happened in UK, computer technician happened upon the photo and reported to police, if not for lawyer insisting to actually verify the "CSAM material" the prosecution would not actually ever check what the photo was of)
- maybewhenthesun 1y ago
  I agree. The opponents (I am one for sure) are often saying 'This is not about catching criminals'. And they are correct in the sense that it goes much further than catching criminals alone. But there are a lot of people who are no experts in the matter (even among the politicians deciding this matter) and they will discard reasoning which start with 'it's not about catching criminals', because in many cases that is where the idea originates. Law enforcement has the problem that they can't really do (analog) wiretaps anymore in the digital age and they want to remedy that. However, everybody needs to realize that 'restoring the ability to wiretap' has side effects which are way more dangerous than the loss of the wiretap ability.
  - Okawari 1y ago
    I think 'restoring the ability to wiretap' is misleading as this is not 'restoring the ability', its more akin to 'wiretapping everyone all the time'. Wiretapping requires probable cause and a court order in order to be used chat control does not. It will report thousands daily and no one will be blamed or punished for false reports which turned out did not have probable cause. It was a reactive tool in the police's arsenal, it was not proactive like this is supposed to be. Wiretapping requires/required significant manpower investment in order to surveil a single potential criminal which rightfully forced the police to prioritize their resources. Chat Control is automated and will enable the same amount of police to police more people. Wiretapping was not retroactive. This system will create records that can be stored for a long time for very cheap. This is not restoring wiretapping, this is supercharging wiretapping.
    - Jensson 1y ago
      > Wiretapping requires probable cause and a court order in order to be used chat control does not Chat control does not allow the government to read anyones messages for any reason, so no that is not true. > Wiretapping was not retroactive. This system will create records that can be stored for a long time for very cheap. But storing these messages is illegal.
      - Okawari 1y ago
- Lio 1y ago
  It seems to be mostly about mass survellance. The quote I've seen from Danish Minister of Justice, Peter Hummelgaard seems to make that clear: > We must break with the totally erroneous perception that it is everyone's civil liberty to communicate on encrypted messaging services, https://www.ft.dk/samling/20231/almdel/REU/spm/1426/index.htm https://www.ft.dk/samling/20231/almdel/REU/spm/1426/index.ht... What they want is everyone to be watched, all of the time. Crimes will be determined later.
Yokolos 1y ago
I can't believe with our history involving the Third Reich and the Stasi that we aren't staunchly opposed. Especially with the impending political upheaval when AfD finally gets enough votes to form a ruling government. Our politicians are insanely shortsighted and somehow don't understand the danger they're enabling.
- varispeed 1y ago
  > Third Reich and the Stasi It looks like German population actually enjoys these things. Third time lucky? edit: how would you explain lack of protests or that the authors of proposal don't face criminal investigation? After all this is authoritarian regime refresh, just without the labels.
  - WinstonSmith84 1y ago
    Yes, Germany is very hypocritical, a lot of people have short memories. On another hand, Germany is on the spotlight because it's the country which is going to decide at the end. Less critics about the usual suspects who love to restrict personal freedoms like France, Spain, Italy ..
    - dmix 1y ago
      Spain is particularly bad for meddling with the internet, mostly with regards to piracy. While Germany has arrested many thousands of people for online speech, similar to the UK. But the UK gets much more media attention over it. > Battling far-right extremism, Germany has gone further than any other Western democracy to prosecute individuals for what they say online, testing the limits of free speech on the internet. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/23/technology/germany-internet-speech-arrest.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/23/technology/germany-intern...
      - varispeed 1y ago
        Chat Control is extremist - a terrorist attack on civil liberties. If Germany were serious about its commitments, the architects behind this assault would already be facing prosecution. Instead, authorities focus on token speech prosecutions while leaving the machinery of mass surveillance untouched. The optics are chilling: yesterday it was door-to-door searches under authoritarian regimes; today it’s device-to-device searches for wrongthink. That isn’t protecting against extremism - it’s repeating it with new tools.
Longhanks 1y ago
This chat control topic is undemocratic, allegedly illegal in many jurisdictions (such as Germany), yet, keeps coming up ever and ever again, and the politicians face no consequences whatsoever. Endeavour like these make people vote for extremists, distrust the EU and democracies, or just give up on politics for good. These EU politicians endangering freedom, justice and democracy must be held accountable, with the most powerful punishments available.
- gadders 1y ago
  It's the EU way - "We will keep holding the vote until we get the result that we want."
  - justinclift 1y ago
    That approach has spectacularly backfired for the UK, as they used to do the same thing too. ;)
    - cynicalsecurity 1y ago
      UK is much worse than EU in terms of privacy and encryption.
      - graemep 1y ago
        It will not be if chat control passes, and I am not sure it was true most of the time before (there was no significant change between Brexit and the Online Safety Act) There were similar problems in areas other than privacy and encryption, or indeed technology.
        nickslaughter02 1y ago
        See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45274678 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45274678
nickslaughter02 1y ago
> "I find it extremely worrying that the German government is so shirking its responsibility to take a position on this," said Left Party MP Donata Vogtschmidt, who chairs her group's digital committee. "Because in the Council of the EU, the current blocking minority against chat control depends directly on Germany." If the German government does not stick to the position of its predecessor, "the dam could break and the largest surveillance package the EU has ever seen could become reality." > Jeanne Dillschneider, Green Party spokesperson on the committee, wrote to netzpolitik.org about her impression of the meeting: "The CDU/CSU, in particular, has often shown in the past how little the protection of fundamental digital rights means to them. I fear the same thing will happen now, even more so, with the CDU/CSU-led Ministry of the Interior." She therefore considers it "all the more crucial whether the Ministry of Justice upholds our fundamental digital rights during this legislative period." > "I'm cautiously hopeful that some colleagues from the coalition parties apparently share my criticism of chat control," Dillschneider continues. "The question now will be whether they can actually bring themselves to reject chat control. However, I'm not particularly optimistic here." > Dillschneider's committee colleague, Vogtschmidt, wants to ensure that the Bundestag is forced to take a position on the issue beyond statements made in committee meetings. This is permitted by Article 23 of the Basic Law, which allows parliament to adopt European policy statements. The government must then consider these in negotiations. Vogtschmidt believes: "Now I think chat control will have to be brought back to the Bundestag plenary session to raise awareness of this monstrous danger among a wider public. I will work towards this in the coming days!"
flanked-evergl 1y ago
EU must go.
- patates 1y ago
  Well that escalated quickly, didn't it?
  - jtbayly 1y ago
    Yes, the EU did escalate things to such an extent that absolutely countries should be considering leaving over the EU’s insane push to destroy all privacy and thus free speech.
- nickslaughter02 1y ago
  Good luck. EU has been producing one Europe crippling law and regulation after another and it still enjoys wide support for some reason. Ursula is facing two more no confidence votes in October so hopefully the tide is changing.
  - flanked-evergl 1y ago
    People were told the lie that without the EU there will be war again. Like the economic stagnation and decline of Europe is somehow the final solution and the end of history.
    - nickslaughter02 1y ago
      You don't have to convince me. You have to convince people who will immediately reject anything negative about EU, even here on HN (see the coming downvotes).
      - phtrivier 1y ago
        EU is not enough. I'm sometimes not happy with the decision taken by governments in France, so what really has to happen is HauteGaronnExit, where my departement is freed from the influence of borders decided in a Revolution two centuries ago, of which I was never explicitly asked to approve. And, come to think of it, I don't like all the decisions taken by the departement either. Surely things will work great when my street is responsible for the electrical grid, immigration or international commerce. And when I say "my street", I obviously mean "my half of the street". I'm not against odd-numbered houses "per se", but, you know...
dsign 1y ago
I think the surveillance state is gonna stay; we have been slipping into it just so and every electronic system out there wants to spy on us, beginning with our Windows and Mac computers and even the Sonos speaker. Small mystery that police forces want their slice of pie so badly. Freedom of expression has been of a limited nature already for some years (just cast Israel in a bad light in USA and see what happens). With the coming wave of AI-powered surveillance, which may be even powerful enough to read your sexual orientation from examining direction and duration of glances in survtech feeds, we just need a small misstep (say, another twin towers-type catastrophe) for even freedom of thought to become a privilege to be had in isolated and protected places. Source: I write dystopias on the subject. https://w.ouzu.im https://w.ouzu.im
- ptero 1y ago
  Freedom of speech is doing not great, but still OK in the US. The government is not prosecuting for speech, which is what the free speech protections can and should guarantee. What now happens more is that big private companies, having huge influence on individual life in everything from communication to banking, attack people for their views. The cure for it might be to ease and speed up the way for people to push back against that. From de-monopolization to government mediators and arbitrage binding for companies (but not for the individuals so they can still sue), etc.
  - DocTomoe 1y ago
    Between 'the government is no prosecuting for speech' and 'the government makes up unrelated charges when they do not like your speech', as seem to happen a lot these days is only a very, very thin line. Rümeysa Öztürk comes to mind [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detention_of_Rümeysa_Öztürk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detention_of_Rümeysa_Öztürk
    - ptero 1y ago
      Using another pretext to target someone for their views is definitely a thing. This is not new (e.g., the Assange case) but its frequency is increasing. I am going to offend both sides with what comes next (and curious how many downvotes it will attract), but I put only a small fraction of the blame for the increase in the above on the government which always wants to do this unless they feel a strong, popular pushback. The real blame goes to the population that is happy to tolerate the government abuse of the laws as long as they think the blows are landing on their opponents. Silencing covid restriction protesters and BLM riots critics? Well, we are not defending antivaxxers and racists. Throwing out any idea of a due process in ICE raids? Well, we need to do something about the crime. And so on... Whereas 50 years ago, at least in the US, any jury would have thrown an attempt to break laws for a good cause out of court so the government would not even try to prosecute any of it. In order to roll back government overreach we need to fight government overreach, even in cases where we strongly dislike the current target of that overreach. My 2c.
codeptualize 1y ago
One interesting line in the proposal: > Detection will not apply to accounts used by the State for national security purposes, maintaining law and order or military purposes; If it's all very safe and accurate, why is this exception necessary? Doesn't this say either that it's not secure, or that there is a likely hood that there will be false positives that will be reviewed? If they have it all figured out, this exception should not be necessary. The reality is that it isn't secure as they are creating backdoors in the encryption, and they will flag many communications incorrectly. That means a lot of legal private communications will leak, and/or will be reviewed by the EU that they have absolutely no business looking into. It's ridiculous that they keep trying this absolutely ridiculous plan over and over again. I also wonder about the business implications. I don't think we can pass compliance if we communicate over channels that are not encrypted. We might not be able to do business internationally anymore as our communications will be scanned and reviewed by the EU.
- Bairfhionn 1y ago
  The exclusion includes politicians because there would suddenly be a paper trail. Especially in the EU there were lots of suddenly lost messages. Security is just the scapegoat excuse.
- p0w3n3d 1y ago
  Oh Harry, don't worry! Everyone can happen to have bloated his aunt by an accident! (quoting from memory), and also I like Ludo. He was the one who got us such good tickets for the Cup. I did him a bit of a favour: His brother, Otto, got into a spot of trouble — a lawnmower with unnatural powers — I smoothed the whole thing over."
- erlend_sh 1y ago
  That one line on its own should be enough put the illegitimacy of this proposal on clear display. Privacy for me (the surveillance state) but not for thee (the populace).
- munksbeer 1y ago
  > It's ridiculous that they keep trying this absolutely ridiculous plan over and over again. There is a certain group of politicians who are pushing for this very hard. In this case, the main thrust seems to be coming from Denmark, but from what I understand there are groups (eg. europol) pushing this from behind the scenes. They need the politicians to get it done.
tietjens 1y ago
What does this mean for `Datenschutz` in Germany? I can't imagine the courts would let this stand.
- aleph_minus_one 1y ago
  > What does this mean for `Datenschutz` in Germany? Datenschutz - Schmatenschutz. "Datenschutz" is something that politicians talk about in their "Sonntagsreden" [Sunday sermons; a term hard to translate into English]. During the rest of the week, the politicians pass laws to gouge out civil liberties (because of "think of the children", "terrorists", "child abusers", "right-wing movements" - whatever is opportune in the current political climate).
  - tietjens 1y ago
    I get what you mean, but Datenschutz and the bizarre processes built to appease it make an appearance almost every day here.
- eqvinox 1y ago
  Datenschutz doesn't prevent court-ordered telecomms surveillance either. This would presumably fall in the same category. (Or in fact be unconstitutional, as BVerfG has already ruled several times regarding blanket data collection in other context.)
  - tietjens 1y ago
    Ah, so my email address is highly private info. But all of my communications are not. Great.
    - DocTomoe 1y ago
      No, you see, you can trust Father State. He would never ever do anything bad with your data. Trust him. 1933-1945? 1948-1990? Those were ... different times. He's been on a twelve steps program. He's better now. Data to private companies? That baker that remembers your telelphone number that's DANGEROUS. He could sell the info how many breadrolls you buy per week to the FSB or the MSS. Also, we would lose a chance to add extra fines to small and medium companies, and no-one wants that, do we? ⸮ The older I become, the more 'government' - regardless of the colors it is wearing at the time - looks like Thénardier to me.
flumpcakes 1y ago
People are so emotive about this issue and the online safety act in the UK. They jump to conclusions that applied to any other issue would be conspiratorial. It's not about "control" and "spying". The fact is it is policing that has been made extremely hard due to technology. silk road was only busted because the guy had his http proxy responding on the VPS's IP and not just the tor eth. Silly mistake and unfathomably good luck that someone in the investigating team was just googling around. The politicians are lay people, and only have one tool in their toolbox: laws. So every solution is a legal one. "Sorry we can't catch the people sexually abusing one million children every year because they use a VPN." Solution? Create a law requiring VPNs to be registered to a user with their address. There's no conspiracy here - it's simple cause and effect. This is a contrived worst case example because this level of accountability? is not currently proposed. I would prefer other solutions, but these solutions are firstly much easier for the politicians to understand and also much cheaper to implement and see results.
- Bairfhionn 1y ago
  But they do find them without the tools. Every other week there are terror suspects arrested. Every week some pedophiles are arrested. If something does happen later it comes out that the suspects were known already but they just didn't act on the suspicion.
- ethin 1y ago
  This is utter nonsense. The "technology and encryption make law enforcement harder" narrative is pushed by people to gain power. That's all there is to it. Technology has, if anything, made surveillance and law enforcement so much easier than it ever has been before. Law enforcement always wants to look helpless and like the victim though because they want absolute control over your life.
- pakitan 1y ago
  > "Sorry we can't catch the people sexually abusing one million children every year because they use a VPN." Bullshit. The UK police basically ignored a pedophile ring under their noses, with zero VPNs involved. I'm not expert on the matter but I'm pretty sure a E2E is not an essential part of sexual abuse.
littlecranky67 1y ago
Can someone please explain to me how that law will prevent anything or anybody from encrypted messaging, if I can just whip up a website and use javascript plus websockets/webrtc to implement encrypted chat? Like, yes, you can prevent the FANANG from implementing it, but criminals will just use the secure one...
- nickslaughter02 1y ago
  It will not. Criminals will move elsewhere and they will be spying on regular citizens. As intended.
  - cindyllm 1y ago
    [dead]
- probably_wrong 1y ago
  I believe the concept is that I may not be able to jail you for your criminal activity but I can still jail you for breaking the encryption law. But more generally I think one has to account for the power of the default option - with so many criminals posting their crimes on social media and/or their Venmo descriptions, the likelihood of criminals abandoning (say) WhatsApp and coding their own is rather slim.
- rollcat 1y ago
  > [...] I can just whip up a website and use javascript plus websockets/webrtc to implement encrypted chat? HTTPS relies on centralised authority. It's right there in the name: Certificate Authority. Tell me, Mr. Anderson, what good is a phone call when you are unable to speak?
  - littlecranky67 1y ago
    chrome --disable-web-security Here, fixed it for you Mr. Criminal.
- topranks 1y ago
nickslaughter02 1y ago
A few comments about the state of security and privacy in the UK so let me reply with a top level comment instead: People forget that the UK has ChatControl. It was made into law as part of the Online Safety Act 2023. It has not been enforced so far because it's not "technically feasible to do so" and because companies threatened to leave the UK with their services. You can be 100% certain it will suddenly become feasible if EU does the same. > The Act also requires platforms, including end-to-end encrypted messengers, to scan for child pornography, which experts say is not possible to implement without undermining users' privacy.[6] The government has said it does not intend to enforce this provision of the Act until it becomes "technically feasible" to do so.[7] The Act also obliges technology platforms to introduce systems that will allow users to better filter out the harmful content they do not want to see.[8][9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Safety_Act_2023 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Safety_Act_2023 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-66028773 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-66028773
- yuumei 1y ago
  Worth noting that with RIPA (2000, activated in 2007) UK has enforced key disclosure. It is illegal to fail to disclose a password for any data for any reason (including random data). I would say the UK has worse privacy than any other country on earth. I'm really hoping for plausible deniability to become more common to help protect against the government. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_disclosure_law#United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_disclosure_law#United_King...
  - nickslaughter02 1y ago
    More countries will follow after they ratify Russia's "United Nations Convention against Cybercrime" which has key disclosure explicitly stated in the text. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Convention_against_Cybercrime https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Convention_agai...
  - rollcat 1y ago
    > It is illegal to fail to disclose a password for any data for any reason [...]. So it's also illegal to not know the password? I've forgotten my own debit card PIN or phone unlock code on a couple occasions. > (including random data) Encrypted data is indistinguishable from random data. The only hint is the presence of metadata (GPG armor, bootloader password prompt, etc). This law is catch-all BS designed to persecute people for no other reason.
brainzap 1y ago
Why cant they just record meta data and hand it out on courts order. Why must it be a backdoor
DonHopkins 1y ago
Wish we the public could read all the private chat logs of all the people who decided to be undecided.
AndyMcConachie 1y ago
As a Dutch citizen Chat Control is the first time I genuinely wish the Netherlands was not part of the EU.
- Freak_NL 1y ago
  That seems naive — this was pushed by several Dutch ministers over the past decades. It would have been made law here in any case. Law and order, tuff-on-crime political parties (PVV, VVD, CDA¹) just love the idea of control over citizen's chat messages. This is not 'because of the EU'. We are part of the EU and influence its policies. 1: https://chatcontrole.nl/stemwijzer2023/ https://chatcontrole.nl/stemwijzer2023/
thegreatursula 1y ago
[dead]
bgwalter 1y ago
It should be implemented for politicians: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pfizergate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pfizergate "Von der Leyen previously used her phone to award contracts worth several hundred million euros while acting as defense minister of Germany, effectively bypassing public procurement processes. She subsequently deleted all messages from her phone when investigators probed her. While awarding the COVID-19 vaccine contracts worth billions of euros as head of EU commission, she similarly bypassed procurement processes via her phone and withheld messages on it."
rdm_blackhole 1y ago
Whatever happens, at least Signal will not be complicit in this shit show. Will WhatsApp and IMessage bend the knee? I guess we will see.
- topranks 1y ago
  I mean it’s not hard to predict. Inevitably they will as their parent companies won’t give up such a big market. How well a ban on signal would be enforced if they don’t comply would be interesting. I still feel like this will fail to come into effect like all the other times. But we gotta keep eyes on it.
  - rdm_blackhole 1y ago
    Apple did not bend the knee in the UK, it forced the hand of the UK to reveal it's goals. Obviously we will see, I don't have much hope either. As for Signal, I hope they pull out as it will get media coverage somewhat on this issue.
  - AAAAaccountAAAA 1y ago
    I have understood that Whatsapp is not a terribly profitable product for Meta, so it is possible that it would just be withdrawn from Europe, instead of making expensive and controversial modifications. iMessage is not really a thing in Europe. Apple phones are simply not popular enough here for it to be an useful feature. I guess Apple would just disable it for European users.
jcarrano 1y ago
It's sad to see Germans have not learned the lessons of the past. If you are in Berlin I highly recommend the Stasi Museum to understand how dystopic mass surveillance can get.
DoingIsLearning 1y ago
This dystopian direction of the European Commission coincided with a lot of interaction between Thorn, the European Commission, and Europol. [0][1][2] Thorn is coincidently is also the vendor of Spotlight, software which solves exactly the problem they are lobbying against. Thiel's Palantir also has overlapping software capabilities and is also raising questions in their work with Europol. [3] Connecting these dots was the only thing that made sense to me in order to explain why these repeated repackaged proposals keep steam rolling everything despite all the security concerns, unconstitutionality, and general lack of common sense. [0] https://www.euronews.com/next/2024/07/18/european-ombudsman-slams-commission-for-secretive-approach-to-child-sexual-abuse-law https://www.euronews.com/next/2024/07/18/european-ombudsman-... [1] https://www.ftm.eu/articles/ashton-kutchers-non-profit-start-up-makes-millions-from-fighting-child-abuse-online https://www.ftm.eu/articles/ashton-kutchers-non-profit-start... [2] https://www.ombudsman.europa.eu/en/decision/en/200017 https://www.ombudsman.europa.eu/en/decision/en/200017 [3] https://www.cpomagazine.com/data-privacy/dutch-group-calls-for-scrutiny-of-palantir-over-opaque-partnerships-with-eu-law-enforcement-agencies-possible-privacy-violations/ https://www.cpomagazine.com/data-privacy/dutch-group-calls-f...
russnes 1y ago
This insane push for surveillance and privacy infringements could be the catalyst needed for the next state exit from the EU
- saubeidl 1y ago
  and thus further decline of the only democratic superpower left? Why would that be desirable?
  - russnes 1y ago
    The EU is accelerating into a bureaucratic Rube Goldberg machine that does nothing except say the word Democracy out loud and tax their citizens
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- maxhille 1y ago
  I think the worst european country in terms of online freedom right now is the UK, which kind of defeats your point entirely.
tomgag 1y ago
I like to think I wrote a good analogy of what ChatControl/client-side scanning really is. They say "it's not a backdoor, it doesn't break E2E encryption", and they're right. > It's like asking to an alcoholic schizo with a history of corruption, who only speaks Russian, and that you are forced by law to feed and host at your place at your own expense, to check your private letters before you're allowed to put them in an envelope. https://gagliardoni.net/#20250916_clientside https://gagliardoni.net/#20250916_clientside https://infosec.exchange/@tomgag/115213723470901734 https://infosec.exchange/@tomgag/115213723470901734
coretx 1y ago
Since it's politically incorrect to write nazi germany, ill just write Soviet Germany. This type of bullshit is rooted in their culture.
Kim_Bruning 1y ago
So, does it make sense for citizens of other countries to call Denmark? Buy advertising on Denmark billboards? And can one do something in Germany?

417 points by doener 1y ago

> This is not about catching criminals. It is mass surveillance imposed on all 450 million citizens of the European Union. I think it is also about catching criminals. And they should change their wording to make it more correct, otherwise they will certainly lose this fight.

varispeed 1y ago
Calling it “also about catching criminals” is a framing trick. Sure, if you surveil 450 million people you’ll find some criminals - that’s statistically inevitable. But you’ll also drag far more innocents into suspicion. Even under generous assumptions - 0.01% offender prevalence, 90% detection accuracy, and just 1% false positives - you’d correctly flag ~40,500 offenders while generating ~4.5 million false alarms. For every offender, over 110 innocents are treated as suspects. That imbalance isn’t collateral damage - it’s the defining flaw of mass scanning. It would overwhelm police, damage lives, and normalise suspicion of everyone. And “compromise” here only means deciding how much of that broken trade-off to accept.
- pcrh 1y ago
  Agreed. Targeted surveillance of individuals under suspicion can be legitimate, however it surprises me that such mass surveillance continues to be promoted again and again, despite it being demonstrably harmful. Along with breaking encryption, which would introduce risks of large financial and commercial harm. I often wonder what arguments are actually deployed behind closed doors in favor of mass surveillance, apart from the ever-present "think of the children" argument. It can't be the case that the downsides of such surveillance are unknown to those supporting it (or maybe it can?).
  - aleph_minus_one 1y ago
    > however it surprises me that such mass surveillance continues to be promoted again and again, despite it being demonstrably harmful. Because citizens don't send the respective politicians to hell.
  - bux93 1y ago
    It's the same reason police (in every country) are always asking for more powers, and then end up not using them effectively. It's a cycle where crime is not perfectly prevented/punished, politicians blame the police, police blame not having enough powers, and then they get more. But the wrong ones to prevent the next tragedy, well, in hindsight of course. So new powers are needed yet again. (And no-one needs to examine why the existing powers are not used effectively, since the underlying problems there would probably be a lot more expensive and boring to fix, e.g. better pay/hours, better management, education, outreach, blahblahblah.) Then those powers are abused, curtailed a bit, and the cycle starts again.
- amelius 1y ago
  Yeah but that wasn't my point. My point is that "this isn't about catching criminals" is the wrong wording. You don't start a debate by twisting the words of the other party. No matter how right you are. Otherwise you will be seen as a pariah.
  - varispeed 1y ago
    But this isn't about catching criminals.
    - amelius 1y ago
      For _you_ it isn't. If you want to be heard in a heated debate, choose your words wisely.
      - varispeed 1y ago
        That’s a common derail - shifting from the substance to “watch your wording.” It’s a form of concern-trolling: pretending the problem is rhetoric while sidestepping the actual flaw. The numbers don’t change based on phrasing. Mass scanning at EU scale inevitably flags orders of magnitude more innocents than offenders. Saying “this isn’t about catching criminals” isn’t twisting words, it’s highlighting that the stated goal is statistically self-defeating. The “catching criminals” line is deliberate gaslighting. It’s crafted to reassure people who don’t understand how these systems work, while the real function is mass surveillance of everyone.
        amelius 1y ago
        > That’s a common derail - shifting from the substance to “watch your wording.” You're acting like I'm trying to derail the argument. That is not the case. You are putting a lot of assumptions in your wording. This will not help you.
        varispeed 1y ago
        Classic gaslight: accuse me of twisting and ‘acting’ while you’re the one twisting. The wording isn’t the issue - the substance is. And you’ve avoided it entirely.
- amelius 1y ago
  > Even under generous assumptions - 0.01% offender prevalence, 90% detection accuracy, and just 1% false positives - you’d correctly flag ~40,500 offenders while generating ~4.5 million false alarms. For every offender, over 110 innocents are treated as suspects. Playing devil's advocate here, but you can skew those numbers however you want. I.e., given any classifier and corresponding confusion matrix, you can make the number of false positives arbitrarily low, at the cost of more false negatives.
  - p_l 1y ago
    We have already experience with how false positives are skewed in practice, even case goes all the way to court. Because ostensibly good people do not want to see the CSAM material, they believe what algorithm/first reporter stated, and ofc nobody "good" wants to let a pedophile go free. And so the algorithm tries to hang a parent for making photo of skin rash to send to doctor (happened with Google Drive scanning) or a grandparent for having a photo of their toddler grandkids playing in kiddy pool (happened in UK, computer technician happened upon the photo and reported to police, if not for lawyer insisting to actually verify the "CSAM material" the prosecution would not actually ever check what the photo was of)
maybewhenthesun 1y ago
I agree. The opponents (I am one for sure) are often saying 'This is not about catching criminals'. And they are correct in the sense that it goes much further than catching criminals alone. But there are a lot of people who are no experts in the matter (even among the politicians deciding this matter) and they will discard reasoning which start with 'it's not about catching criminals', because in many cases that is where the idea originates. Law enforcement has the problem that they can't really do (analog) wiretaps anymore in the digital age and they want to remedy that. However, everybody needs to realize that 'restoring the ability to wiretap' has side effects which are way more dangerous than the loss of the wiretap ability.
- Okawari 1y ago
  I think 'restoring the ability to wiretap' is misleading as this is not 'restoring the ability', its more akin to 'wiretapping everyone all the time'. Wiretapping requires probable cause and a court order in order to be used chat control does not. It will report thousands daily and no one will be blamed or punished for false reports which turned out did not have probable cause. It was a reactive tool in the police's arsenal, it was not proactive like this is supposed to be. Wiretapping requires/required significant manpower investment in order to surveil a single potential criminal which rightfully forced the police to prioritize their resources. Chat Control is automated and will enable the same amount of police to police more people. Wiretapping was not retroactive. This system will create records that can be stored for a long time for very cheap. This is not restoring wiretapping, this is supercharging wiretapping.
  - Jensson 1y ago
    > Wiretapping requires probable cause and a court order in order to be used chat control does not Chat control does not allow the government to read anyones messages for any reason, so no that is not true. > Wiretapping was not retroactive. This system will create records that can be stored for a long time for very cheap. But storing these messages is illegal.
    - Okawari 1y ago
Lio 1y ago
It seems to be mostly about mass survellance. The quote I've seen from Danish Minister of Justice, Peter Hummelgaard seems to make that clear: > We must break with the totally erroneous perception that it is everyone's civil liberty to communicate on encrypted messaging services, https://www.ft.dk/samling/20231/almdel/REU/spm/1426/index.htm https://www.ft.dk/samling/20231/almdel/REU/spm/1426/index.ht... What they want is everyone to be watched, all of the time. Crimes will be determined later.

Yokolos 1y ago

I can't believe with our history involving the Third Reich and the Stasi that we aren't staunchly opposed. Especially with the impending political upheaval when AfD finally gets enough votes to form a ruling government. Our politicians are insanely shortsighted and somehow don't understand the danger they're enabling.

varispeed 1y ago
> Third Reich and the Stasi It looks like German population actually enjoys these things. Third time lucky? edit: how would you explain lack of protests or that the authors of proposal don't face criminal investigation? After all this is authoritarian regime refresh, just without the labels.
- WinstonSmith84 1y ago
  Yes, Germany is very hypocritical, a lot of people have short memories. On another hand, Germany is on the spotlight because it's the country which is going to decide at the end. Less critics about the usual suspects who love to restrict personal freedoms like France, Spain, Italy ..
  - dmix 1y ago
    Spain is particularly bad for meddling with the internet, mostly with regards to piracy. While Germany has arrested many thousands of people for online speech, similar to the UK. But the UK gets much more media attention over it. > Battling far-right extremism, Germany has gone further than any other Western democracy to prosecute individuals for what they say online, testing the limits of free speech on the internet. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/23/technology/germany-internet-speech-arrest.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/23/technology/germany-intern...
    - varispeed 1y ago
      Chat Control is extremist - a terrorist attack on civil liberties. If Germany were serious about its commitments, the architects behind this assault would already be facing prosecution. Instead, authorities focus on token speech prosecutions while leaving the machinery of mass surveillance untouched. The optics are chilling: yesterday it was door-to-door searches under authoritarian regimes; today it’s device-to-device searches for wrongthink. That isn’t protecting against extremism - it’s repeating it with new tools.

Longhanks 1y ago

This chat control topic is undemocratic, allegedly illegal in many jurisdictions (such as Germany), yet, keeps coming up ever and ever again, and the politicians face no consequences whatsoever. Endeavour like these make people vote for extremists, distrust the EU and democracies, or just give up on politics for good. These EU politicians endangering freedom, justice and democracy must be held accountable, with the most powerful punishments available.

gadders 1y ago
It's the EU way - "We will keep holding the vote until we get the result that we want."
- justinclift 1y ago
  That approach has spectacularly backfired for the UK, as they used to do the same thing too. ;)
  - cynicalsecurity 1y ago
    UK is much worse than EU in terms of privacy and encryption.
    - graemep 1y ago
      It will not be if chat control passes, and I am not sure it was true most of the time before (there was no significant change between Brexit and the Online Safety Act) There were similar problems in areas other than privacy and encryption, or indeed technology.
      - nickslaughter02 1y ago
        See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45274678 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45274678

nickslaughter02 1y ago

> "I find it extremely worrying that the German government is so shirking its responsibility to take a position on this," said Left Party MP Donata Vogtschmidt, who chairs her group's digital committee. "Because in the Council of the EU, the current blocking minority against chat control depends directly on Germany." If the German government does not stick to the position of its predecessor, "the dam could break and the largest surveillance package the EU has ever seen could become reality." > Jeanne Dillschneider, Green Party spokesperson on the committee, wrote to netzpolitik.org about her impression of the meeting: "The CDU/CSU, in particular, has often shown in the past how little the protection of fundamental digital rights means to them. I fear the same thing will happen now, even more so, with the CDU/CSU-led Ministry of the Interior." She therefore considers it "all the more crucial whether the Ministry of Justice upholds our fundamental digital rights during this legislative period." > "I'm cautiously hopeful that some colleagues from the coalition parties apparently share my criticism of chat control," Dillschneider continues. "The question now will be whether they can actually bring themselves to reject chat control. However, I'm not particularly optimistic here." > Dillschneider's committee colleague, Vogtschmidt, wants to ensure that the Bundestag is forced to take a position on the issue beyond statements made in committee meetings. This is permitted by Article 23 of the Basic Law, which allows parliament to adopt European policy statements. The government must then consider these in negotiations. Vogtschmidt believes: "Now I think chat control will have to be brought back to the Bundestag plenary session to raise awareness of this monstrous danger among a wider public. I will work towards this in the coming days!"

flanked-evergl 1y ago

EU must go.

patates 1y ago
Well that escalated quickly, didn't it?
- jtbayly 1y ago
  Yes, the EU did escalate things to such an extent that absolutely countries should be considering leaving over the EU’s insane push to destroy all privacy and thus free speech.
nickslaughter02 1y ago
Good luck. EU has been producing one Europe crippling law and regulation after another and it still enjoys wide support for some reason. Ursula is facing two more no confidence votes in October so hopefully the tide is changing.
- flanked-evergl 1y ago
  People were told the lie that without the EU there will be war again. Like the economic stagnation and decline of Europe is somehow the final solution and the end of history.
  - nickslaughter02 1y ago
    You don't have to convince me. You have to convince people who will immediately reject anything negative about EU, even here on HN (see the coming downvotes).
    - phtrivier 1y ago
      EU is not enough. I'm sometimes not happy with the decision taken by governments in France, so what really has to happen is HauteGaronnExit, where my departement is freed from the influence of borders decided in a Revolution two centuries ago, of which I was never explicitly asked to approve. And, come to think of it, I don't like all the decisions taken by the departement either. Surely things will work great when my street is responsible for the electrical grid, immigration or international commerce. And when I say "my street", I obviously mean "my half of the street". I'm not against odd-numbered houses "per se", but, you know...

dsign 1y ago

I think the surveillance state is gonna stay; we have been slipping into it just so and every electronic system out there wants to spy on us, beginning with our Windows and Mac computers and even the Sonos speaker. Small mystery that police forces want their slice of pie so badly. Freedom of expression has been of a limited nature already for some years (just cast Israel in a bad light in USA and see what happens). With the coming wave of AI-powered surveillance, which may be even powerful enough to read your sexual orientation from examining direction and duration of glances in survtech feeds, we just need a small misstep (say, another twin towers-type catastrophe) for even freedom of thought to become a privilege to be had in isolated and protected places. Source: I write dystopias on the subject. https://w.ouzu.im https://w.ouzu.im

ptero 1y ago
Freedom of speech is doing not great, but still OK in the US. The government is not prosecuting for speech, which is what the free speech protections can and should guarantee. What now happens more is that big private companies, having huge influence on individual life in everything from communication to banking, attack people for their views. The cure for it might be to ease and speed up the way for people to push back against that. From de-monopolization to government mediators and arbitrage binding for companies (but not for the individuals so they can still sue), etc.
- DocTomoe 1y ago
  Between 'the government is no prosecuting for speech' and 'the government makes up unrelated charges when they do not like your speech', as seem to happen a lot these days is only a very, very thin line. Rümeysa Öztürk comes to mind [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detention_of_Rümeysa_Öztürk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detention_of_Rümeysa_Öztürk
  - ptero 1y ago
    Using another pretext to target someone for their views is definitely a thing. This is not new (e.g., the Assange case) but its frequency is increasing. I am going to offend both sides with what comes next (and curious how many downvotes it will attract), but I put only a small fraction of the blame for the increase in the above on the government which always wants to do this unless they feel a strong, popular pushback. The real blame goes to the population that is happy to tolerate the government abuse of the laws as long as they think the blows are landing on their opponents. Silencing covid restriction protesters and BLM riots critics? Well, we are not defending antivaxxers and racists. Throwing out any idea of a due process in ICE raids? Well, we need to do something about the crime. And so on... Whereas 50 years ago, at least in the US, any jury would have thrown an attempt to break laws for a good cause out of court so the government would not even try to prosecute any of it. In order to roll back government overreach we need to fight government overreach, even in cases where we strongly dislike the current target of that overreach. My 2c.

codeptualize 1y ago

One interesting line in the proposal: > Detection will not apply to accounts used by the State for national security purposes, maintaining law and order or military purposes; If it's all very safe and accurate, why is this exception necessary? Doesn't this say either that it's not secure, or that there is a likely hood that there will be false positives that will be reviewed? If they have it all figured out, this exception should not be necessary. The reality is that it isn't secure as they are creating backdoors in the encryption, and they will flag many communications incorrectly. That means a lot of legal private communications will leak, and/or will be reviewed by the EU that they have absolutely no business looking into. It's ridiculous that they keep trying this absolutely ridiculous plan over and over again. I also wonder about the business implications. I don't think we can pass compliance if we communicate over channels that are not encrypted. We might not be able to do business internationally anymore as our communications will be scanned and reviewed by the EU.

Bairfhionn 1y ago
The exclusion includes politicians because there would suddenly be a paper trail. Especially in the EU there were lots of suddenly lost messages. Security is just the scapegoat excuse.
p0w3n3d 1y ago
Oh Harry, don't worry! Everyone can happen to have bloated his aunt by an accident! (quoting from memory), and also I like Ludo. He was the one who got us such good tickets for the Cup. I did him a bit of a favour: His brother, Otto, got into a spot of trouble — a lawnmower with unnatural powers — I smoothed the whole thing over."
erlend_sh 1y ago
That one line on its own should be enough put the illegitimacy of this proposal on clear display. Privacy for me (the surveillance state) but not for thee (the populace).
munksbeer 1y ago
> It's ridiculous that they keep trying this absolutely ridiculous plan over and over again. There is a certain group of politicians who are pushing for this very hard. In this case, the main thrust seems to be coming from Denmark, but from what I understand there are groups (eg. europol) pushing this from behind the scenes. They need the politicians to get it done.

tietjens 1y ago

What does this mean for `Datenschutz` in Germany? I can't imagine the courts would let this stand.

aleph_minus_one 1y ago
> What does this mean for `Datenschutz` in Germany? Datenschutz - Schmatenschutz. "Datenschutz" is something that politicians talk about in their "Sonntagsreden" [Sunday sermons; a term hard to translate into English]. During the rest of the week, the politicians pass laws to gouge out civil liberties (because of "think of the children", "terrorists", "child abusers", "right-wing movements" - whatever is opportune in the current political climate).
- tietjens 1y ago
  I get what you mean, but Datenschutz and the bizarre processes built to appease it make an appearance almost every day here.
eqvinox 1y ago
Datenschutz doesn't prevent court-ordered telecomms surveillance either. This would presumably fall in the same category. (Or in fact be unconstitutional, as BVerfG has already ruled several times regarding blanket data collection in other context.)
- tietjens 1y ago
  Ah, so my email address is highly private info. But all of my communications are not. Great.
  - DocTomoe 1y ago
    No, you see, you can trust Father State. He would never ever do anything bad with your data. Trust him. 1933-1945? 1948-1990? Those were ... different times. He's been on a twelve steps program. He's better now. Data to private companies? That baker that remembers your telelphone number that's DANGEROUS. He could sell the info how many breadrolls you buy per week to the FSB or the MSS. Also, we would lose a chance to add extra fines to small and medium companies, and no-one wants that, do we? ⸮ The older I become, the more 'government' - regardless of the colors it is wearing at the time - looks like Thénardier to me.

flumpcakes 1y ago

People are so emotive about this issue and the online safety act in the UK. They jump to conclusions that applied to any other issue would be conspiratorial. It's not about "control" and "spying". The fact is it is policing that has been made extremely hard due to technology. silk road was only busted because the guy had his http proxy responding on the VPS's IP and not just the tor eth. Silly mistake and unfathomably good luck that someone in the investigating team was just googling around. The politicians are lay people, and only have one tool in their toolbox: laws. So every solution is a legal one. "Sorry we can't catch the people sexually abusing one million children every year because they use a VPN." Solution? Create a law requiring VPNs to be registered to a user with their address. There's no conspiracy here - it's simple cause and effect. This is a contrived worst case example because this level of accountability? is not currently proposed. I would prefer other solutions, but these solutions are firstly much easier for the politicians to understand and also much cheaper to implement and see results.

Bairfhionn 1y ago
But they do find them without the tools. Every other week there are terror suspects arrested. Every week some pedophiles are arrested. If something does happen later it comes out that the suspects were known already but they just didn't act on the suspicion.
ethin 1y ago
This is utter nonsense. The "technology and encryption make law enforcement harder" narrative is pushed by people to gain power. That's all there is to it. Technology has, if anything, made surveillance and law enforcement so much easier than it ever has been before. Law enforcement always wants to look helpless and like the victim though because they want absolute control over your life.
pakitan 1y ago
> "Sorry we can't catch the people sexually abusing one million children every year because they use a VPN." Bullshit. The UK police basically ignored a pedophile ring under their noses, with zero VPNs involved. I'm not expert on the matter but I'm pretty sure a E2E is not an essential part of sexual abuse.

littlecranky67 1y ago

Can someone please explain to me how that law will prevent anything or anybody from encrypted messaging, if I can just whip up a website and use javascript plus websockets/webrtc to implement encrypted chat? Like, yes, you can prevent the FANANG from implementing it, but criminals will just use the secure one...

nickslaughter02 1y ago
It will not. Criminals will move elsewhere and they will be spying on regular citizens. As intended.
- cindyllm 1y ago
  [dead]
probably_wrong 1y ago
I believe the concept is that I may not be able to jail you for your criminal activity but I can still jail you for breaking the encryption law. But more generally I think one has to account for the power of the default option - with so many criminals posting their crimes on social media and/or their Venmo descriptions, the likelihood of criminals abandoning (say) WhatsApp and coding their own is rather slim.
rollcat 1y ago
> [...] I can just whip up a website and use javascript plus websockets/webrtc to implement encrypted chat? HTTPS relies on centralised authority. It's right there in the name: Certificate Authority. Tell me, Mr. Anderson, what good is a phone call when you are unable to speak?
- littlecranky67 1y ago
  chrome --disable-web-security Here, fixed it for you Mr. Criminal.
topranks 1y ago

nickslaughter02 1y ago

A few comments about the state of security and privacy in the UK so let me reply with a top level comment instead: People forget that the UK has ChatControl. It was made into law as part of the Online Safety Act 2023. It has not been enforced so far because it's not "technically feasible to do so" and because companies threatened to leave the UK with their services. You can be 100% certain it will suddenly become feasible if EU does the same. > The Act also requires platforms, including end-to-end encrypted messengers, to scan for child pornography, which experts say is not possible to implement without undermining users' privacy.[6] The government has said it does not intend to enforce this provision of the Act until it becomes "technically feasible" to do so.[7] The Act also obliges technology platforms to introduce systems that will allow users to better filter out the harmful content they do not want to see.[8][9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Safety_Act_2023 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Safety_Act_2023 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-66028773 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-66028773

yuumei 1y ago
Worth noting that with RIPA (2000, activated in 2007) UK has enforced key disclosure. It is illegal to fail to disclose a password for any data for any reason (including random data). I would say the UK has worse privacy than any other country on earth. I'm really hoping for plausible deniability to become more common to help protect against the government. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_disclosure_law#United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_disclosure_law#United_King...
- nickslaughter02 1y ago
  More countries will follow after they ratify Russia's "United Nations Convention against Cybercrime" which has key disclosure explicitly stated in the text. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Convention_against_Cybercrime https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Convention_agai...
- rollcat 1y ago
  > It is illegal to fail to disclose a password for any data for any reason [...]. So it's also illegal to not know the password? I've forgotten my own debit card PIN or phone unlock code on a couple occasions. > (including random data) Encrypted data is indistinguishable from random data. The only hint is the presence of metadata (GPG armor, bootloader password prompt, etc). This law is catch-all BS designed to persecute people for no other reason.

brainzap 1y ago

Why cant they just record meta data and hand it out on courts order. Why must it be a backdoor

DonHopkins 1y ago

Wish we the public could read all the private chat logs of all the people who decided to be undecided.

AndyMcConachie 1y ago

As a Dutch citizen Chat Control is the first time I genuinely wish the Netherlands was not part of the EU.

Freak_NL 1y ago
That seems naive — this was pushed by several Dutch ministers over the past decades. It would have been made law here in any case. Law and order, tuff-on-crime political parties (PVV, VVD, CDA¹) just love the idea of control over citizen's chat messages. This is not 'because of the EU'. We are part of the EU and influence its policies. 1: https://chatcontrole.nl/stemwijzer2023/ https://chatcontrole.nl/stemwijzer2023/

thegreatursula 1y ago

[dead]

bgwalter 1y ago

It should be implemented for politicians: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pfizergate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pfizergate "Von der Leyen previously used her phone to award contracts worth several hundred million euros while acting as defense minister of Germany, effectively bypassing public procurement processes. She subsequently deleted all messages from her phone when investigators probed her. While awarding the COVID-19 vaccine contracts worth billions of euros as head of EU commission, she similarly bypassed procurement processes via her phone and withheld messages on it."

rdm_blackhole 1y ago

Whatever happens, at least Signal will not be complicit in this shit show. Will WhatsApp and IMessage bend the knee? I guess we will see.

topranks 1y ago
I mean it’s not hard to predict. Inevitably they will as their parent companies won’t give up such a big market. How well a ban on signal would be enforced if they don’t comply would be interesting. I still feel like this will fail to come into effect like all the other times. But we gotta keep eyes on it.
- rdm_blackhole 1y ago
  Apple did not bend the knee in the UK, it forced the hand of the UK to reveal it's goals. Obviously we will see, I don't have much hope either. As for Signal, I hope they pull out as it will get media coverage somewhat on this issue.
- AAAAaccountAAAA 1y ago
  I have understood that Whatsapp is not a terribly profitable product for Meta, so it is possible that it would just be withdrawn from Europe, instead of making expensive and controversial modifications. iMessage is not really a thing in Europe. Apple phones are simply not popular enough here for it to be an useful feature. I guess Apple would just disable it for European users.

jcarrano 1y ago

It's sad to see Germans have not learned the lessons of the past. If you are in Berlin I highly recommend the Stasi Museum to understand how dystopic mass surveillance can get.

DoingIsLearning 1y ago

This dystopian direction of the European Commission coincided with a lot of interaction between Thorn, the European Commission, and Europol. [0][1][2] Thorn is coincidently is also the vendor of Spotlight, software which solves exactly the problem they are lobbying against. Thiel's Palantir also has overlapping software capabilities and is also raising questions in their work with Europol. [3] Connecting these dots was the only thing that made sense to me in order to explain why these repeated repackaged proposals keep steam rolling everything despite all the security concerns, unconstitutionality, and general lack of common sense. [0] https://www.euronews.com/next/2024/07/18/european-ombudsman-slams-commission-for-secretive-approach-to-child-sexual-abuse-law https://www.euronews.com/next/2024/07/18/european-ombudsman-... [1] https://www.ftm.eu/articles/ashton-kutchers-non-profit-start-up-makes-millions-from-fighting-child-abuse-online https://www.ftm.eu/articles/ashton-kutchers-non-profit-start... [2] https://www.ombudsman.europa.eu/en/decision/en/200017 https://www.ombudsman.europa.eu/en/decision/en/200017 [3] https://www.cpomagazine.com/data-privacy/dutch-group-calls-for-scrutiny-of-palantir-over-opaque-partnerships-with-eu-law-enforcement-agencies-possible-privacy-violations/ https://www.cpomagazine.com/data-privacy/dutch-group-calls-f...

russnes 1y ago

This insane push for surveillance and privacy infringements could be the catalyst needed for the next state exit from the EU

saubeidl 1y ago
and thus further decline of the only democratic superpower left? Why would that be desirable?
- russnes 1y ago
  The EU is accelerating into a bureaucratic Rube Goldberg machine that does nothing except say the word Democracy out loud and tax their citizens
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
maxhille 1y ago
I think the worst european country in terms of online freedom right now is the UK, which kind of defeats your point entirely.

tomgag 1y ago

I like to think I wrote a good analogy of what ChatControl/client-side scanning really is. They say "it's not a backdoor, it doesn't break E2E encryption", and they're right. > It's like asking to an alcoholic schizo with a history of corruption, who only speaks Russian, and that you are forced by law to feed and host at your place at your own expense, to check your private letters before you're allowed to put them in an envelope. https://gagliardoni.net/#20250916_clientside https://gagliardoni.net/#20250916_clientside https://infosec.exchange/@tomgag/115213723470901734 https://infosec.exchange/@tomgag/115213723470901734

coretx 1y ago

Since it's politically incorrect to write nazi germany, ill just write Soviet Germany. This type of bullshit is rooted in their culture.

Kim_Bruning 1y ago

So, does it make sense for citizens of other countries to call Denmark? Buy advertising on Denmark billboards? And can one do something in Germany?