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Thanks Joachim! Still frustrating that Politico still implies that the bill has any power to stop CSAM, given that everyone who wants to trade it will obviously

• raverbashing 1y ago
  > But Danish Justice Minister Peter Hummelgaard, one of the loudest proponents of tough measures Good, this is the person that should be blamed loud and clear
  • nickslaughter02 1y ago
    Peter Hummelgaard, Danish Minister of Justice: "I indisputably believe that surveillance creates an increased sense of security ... and given that the prerequisite for freedom is security, yes, I believe that more surveillance equates to more freedom" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45473136 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45473136
    • Telaneo 1y ago
      I'm sure the Stasi would very much agree with him. The fact that he's actually saying this is incredible, and not in a good way. I'd love to hear him explain the government exemptions in the bill with this in mind.
      • nickslaughter02 1y ago
        Peter Hummelgaard, Danish Minister of Justice: "We must break with the totally erroneous perception that it is everyone's civil liberty to communicate on encrypted messaging services." https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/danish-justice-minister-we-must-break-perception-of-right-to-private-messaging/ar-AA1MA98T https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/danish-justice-min...
        • galangalalgol 1y ago
          Perhaps the EU should consider adding access to secure encrypted communication to the human intrinsic rights to prevent such things in the future. He seems to be motivated by increases in gang crime that he will get blamed for.
          • nickslaughter02 1y ago
            > He seems to be motivated by increases in gang crime that he will get blamed for ...which is the government's fault and they should be blamed.
        • Telaneo 1y ago
          I'd love to see this argument transfered to physical mail. Should it be illegal to send physical letters that are encrypted without also somehow providing the government with an unencrypted copy? If that somehow seams reasonable on its face to someone, then I don't know where to begin a reasonable discussion.
          • reginamary32 1y ago
  • type0 1y ago
    He's the one screaming "Dude, where's my Chat Control?" the loudest, but there are a lot of those digital-Stasi politicians
• silicon5 1y ago
  A metaphor: I once played in a D&D campaign where a player tried to create an extremely overpowered but technically legal character. His justification was that he would only use the extreme powers in moderation, so it would not be unfair or unbalanced. But why would he ask for such unprecedented powers if he didn't intend to use them?
  • varispeed 1y ago
    Another one: someone buys a sports car and promises to drive within legal speed limits at all times.
    • dgfitz 1y ago
      Nobody does that.
      • swiftcoder 1y ago
        I mean, every person who purchases a car does so, at least implicitly. The very act of obtaining a driving license contains an (often explicit) promise to abide by the rules of the road.
        • dgfitz 1y ago
          You’re conflating two things and ignoring the thrust of the point: nobody buys a fast car to drive it slowly. Maybe some people do, the vast majority do not. If promises about licenses meant a damn, we wouldn’t have speeding cameras.
          • swiftcoder 1y ago
            The promise is still made, regardless of whether one plans to keep it
            • dgfitz 1y ago
              No, the “promise” is forced. It’s like an arranged marriage.
• FirmwareBurner 1y ago
  >Still frustrating that Politico still implies that the bill has any power to stop CSAM, given that everyone who wants to trade it will obviously just use another layer of encryption. MSM today has no choice but to parrot or echo the opinions of those in power if they want to stay in business otherwise they get shut down for $REASON witch can be any of the following labels: hate speech, misinformation, fake news, woke left, radical right wing, Putin supporters, etc. Just spin the roulette and pick one. >What is a dialog, then? A dialogue between well-connected lobbyists and bureaucrats, and everyone else should just shut up and take it? Yes, that's precisely how it works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtdbF-nRJqs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtdbF-nRJqs
  • davedx 1y ago
    > MSM today has no choice but to parrot or echo the opinions of those in power if they want to stay in business otherwise they get shut down for $REASON What a load of crap! There is still tons of "mainstream media" outlets that don't do this. One of the biggest in the UK would be The Guardian, there are hundreds like it. The decision to toe the line, like the WaPo, are purely because of money (Jeff's and his readership's), not because anyone is "shutting them down" for X or Y.
    • FirmwareBurner 1y ago
      >One of the biggest in the UK would be The Guardian I used to like the Guardian in 2009-214 but now, I trust someone's "it came to me in a dream", before I trust The Guardian, given their recent flops and biases.
      • Zenst 1y ago
        The quote from Yes, Prime Minster - "The only way to understand the press, is to remember that they pander to their readers prejudices" which makes those news aggregations sites more appealing, though cheaper to stick with other avenues for balance. So much wisdom on comedy, even 80s comedy Who reads the papers? - Yes, Prime Minister - BBC comedy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGscoaUWW2M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGscoaUWW2M
• Simulacra 1y ago
  If I didn't know any better, I would think you are describing Congress.
• cess11 1y ago
  "Still frustrating that Politico still implies that the bill has any power to stop CSAM" Why wouldn't they? It's a NATO aligned, pro-Israel rag under Axel Springer, of course they're helping to sell surveillance technology that can be abused by militaries and state agencies, one of the main israeli exports and generally appreciated industry by NATO.
• nickslaughter02 1y ago
  > is far more balanced than the Commission’s original version It doesn't require analyzing of all text and sound. Everything else is still fair game.
• spankibalt 1y ago
  > "[...] A dialogue between well-connected lobbyists and bureaucrats, and everyone else should just shut up and take it?" Why, yes... that's exactly what the types of outfits like the European People's Party [1] expect on many things. But year after year these incompetent grouches get the majority of votes. And that's before one has to deal with the full-blown far right, fascists, and the like (e. g. ESN [2], PfE [3], et cetera). 1. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_People's_Party https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_People's_Party] 2. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europe_of_Sovereign_Nations_Group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europe_of_Sovereign_Nations_Gr...] 3. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriots_for_Europe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriots_for_Europe]
  • port11 1y ago
    Given the dealings with Pfizer and the blocking of an ethics committee, why, yes, the EPP prefers lobbying to remain opaque.
  • ncruces 1y ago
    This is not a left-right issue. You have the danish S&Ds pushing it and ALDE opposing it.
    • mrandish 1y ago
      Agreed. Even in the U.S. personal privacy is not a left/right issue. Both major political parties will sometimes pay lip service to privacy when campaigning yet when in power they both engineer votes that permit further erosion of privacy rights and expand exceptions for law enforcement and intelligence agencies to vacuum up personal data from citizens with little oversight.
    • spankibalt 1y ago
      Conservatives and allied centrists have, and traditionally always had, much more access to the levers of power than leftists even in democratic countries. And right-wingers will oppose such intrusive government power only until they get to be the ones calling the shots and it's finally time to "drain the swamp". ;) Besides, your reading of the decidedly centrist Danish Socialdemokraterne as leftists is bizarre to me, especially since they moved more and more towards the right. Something they share with other classic social democrat, i. e. centrist (status quo), parties in the S&D, e. g. their German compatriots from the SPD.
• uhgseyjnn 1y ago
  The bill is bad, but this is disingenuously stupid: > Still frustrating that Politico still implies that the bill has any power to stop CSAM, given that everyone who wants to trade it will obviously just use another layer of encryption. Obviously, many people will not because many are already caught not using any, and many more are just using simple consumer options that this legislation would eliminate. We can agree that the legislation is horrible without lying to ourselves and asserting that it would have zero impact
  • marcus_holmes 1y ago
    Agree that it would have impact, but not the good kind. The services that deal with CSAM would be flooded with false positives from the automated scanning. They would, in turn, have to find methods of short-cutting the assessment of these false positives so that they can actually function. The real CSAM would be drowned out by family snaps of kids in pools, of teenagers sexting each other, etc. The ability of the relevant services to actually detect and catch real abusers would be severely hampered. Actual abuse would be caught less and more kids would be harmed. Five minutes of thought leads to this obvious conclusion. Which implies that this was never about protecting kids in the first place. It's about controlling what people say, as always.
• xinayder 1y ago
  Let's not forget that a former politician AND member of the Danish parliament, colleague of Peter Hummelgaard, went on trial this year for being in possession of CSAM, his name Henrik Sass Larsen [0]. [0] https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2025/08/21/trial-begins-for-former-danish-minister-accused-of-possessing-child-sexual-abuse-material https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2025/08/21/trial-begins-f...
  • jeroenhd 1y ago
    It's not so surprising that the original proposal includes an exception for politicians, they don't want to be scanned themselves: https://european-pirateparty.eu/chatcontrol-eu-ministers-want-to-exempt-themselves/ https://european-pirateparty.eu/chatcontrol-eu-ministers-wan...
• guerrilla 1y ago
  > given that everyone who wants to trade it will obviously just use another layer of encryption. Anyone remember OTR on Pidgin/gaim back in the day? That kind of system could work on any medium rendering this whole thing completely pointless.
  • ExoticPearTree 1y ago
    > Anyone remember OTR on Pidgin/gaim back in the day? That kind of system could work on any medium rendering this whole thing completely pointless. Fun days those were. Somehow I think in the eyes of the politicians the next step would be that you can only install government approved chat apps on your phones. Desire for control knows no limits.
• ExoticPearTree 1y ago
  > “In terms of dialog within a democracy, this is not a dialog,” said Lena Düpont. She's German, so probably a letter on approved paper in an approved envelope. And you will get a response via a certified letter. Or maybe a fax? Or the dialog should be in the next election cycle when she is voted out and then it will be interpreted as "the people have spoken". I find it funny how politicians when they're cornered start claiming that this is not the right way to stall for time to pass whatever laws they want to pass anyway.
  • eqvinox 1y ago
    Fax. Definitely fax. It's legislated to be equivalent to a certified letter, and cheaper, and you don't have to walk to the post office like an animal! headdesk (Did you know it's a criminal offense in Germany to have your fax "participant ID" set incorrectly? The one transmitted in-band, that you configure on your fax device, not the network provided caller ID.)
    • zoobab 1y ago
      Maybe she would prefer a phone call?
• miohtama 1y ago
  It's a dialogue between Thorn, who sells scanning software and the EU commission working group, and the relationship is murky at the best: https://www.heise.de/en/news/Chat-control-EU-Ombudsman-criticizes-flying-change-from-Europol-to-Thorn-10302636.html https://www.heise.de/en/news/Chat-control-EU-Ombudsman-criti... Thorn hires Europol police officers to lobby their software.
• deaux 1y ago
  > Still frustrating that Politico still implies that the bill has any power to stop CSAM Their framing it as "Spam campaign" is just as awful, rather than "Outreach campaign". Politico is just another capital interests establishment outfit despite occasionally pretending otherwise.
• neop1x 1y ago
  It is a really bad bill idea. It’s ironic that the proponents want to exempt thrmselves from the very mass surveillance they're proposing! It definitely isn't about protecting children and it can't work this way. What a propagandist article. :/
• rsynnott 1y ago
  > This is amazing, and makes me regain a bit of (much destroyed) faith in democracy. As a general rule, politicians don't actually have a strong opinion on, or much context on, most things which they are asked to vote on. This can make this sort of lobbying/campaigning quite effective; at a certain point you're forcing the politician to _think_ about it, and that's half the battle.
• tremon 1y ago
  > and would mean that scanning would only happen as a last resort. This is completely besides the point, and illustrates exactly what he doesn't want to understand: as long as that last-resort mechanism is available, it will be used and abused. The latest clear example of that exact same thing is the terrorism charges brought against the pro-Palestine campaigners in London: terrorism legislation was also brought in under the excuse that "it would only be used in the narrowest of circumstances". This kind of legislation is a red line that democracies should never cross.