7 ms·
Chat Control proposal fails again after public opposition
- meowface 1y ago25th time's the charm
- p0w3n3d 1y agoWhile True: ProposeChatControl() and return
- tombot 1y agosorry, but why is this plastered with ads?
- creamcrackered 1y ago[flagged]
- Aqua 1y agoNo we don't.
- creamcrackered 1y ago[flagged]
- cael450 1y agoWe live in the safest time in human history. Law enforcement doesn’t need anything.
- jgilias 1y agoYes, _they_ might need it. Not we.
- creamcrackered 1y ago[flagged]
- Zigurd 1y agoIn theory it should. In practice, we're funding thick neck thugs with retrograde ideas about race and sexuality to go around intimidating people when they disrespect those thick neck thugs.
- kelseyfrog 1y agoHow long have you been a cop?
- stickfigure 1y agoSome of their work benefits us all. Unfortunately, some of their work is also rooting out homesexuals, making sure you can't buy sex toys, putting people in jail for smoking weed, and making sure everyone votes for the guys in charge.
- anthk 1y agoHail to the Big Brother
- DanHulton 1y agoThat which is presented without evidence can be discarded without evidence. Thus, no we don't.
- embedding-shape 1y ago> as a society we do need some sort of targeted backdoor into communications So just blanket "no private communication for anyone"? I mean, why shouldn't people be able to communicate privately? There is no such thing as a "single owner of backdoors", so why try play that game when it never ends with just a single owner?
- creamcrackered 1y agoMostly private, but with proportionate exceptions. For instance, law enforcement agencies can receive legal authority to wiretap your phone if they can present reasonable suspicion of criminal activity that must be investigated.
- embedding-shape 1y ago> law enforcement agencies can receive legal authority to wiretap your phone If you want that, you have to also be OK with other parties being able to do so too, as there currently doesn't exists any solutions to that specific problem of just letting one party accessing something without the risk of leaks.
- vb-8448 1y ago> as a society we do need some sort of targeted backdoor into communications why you are assuming this is true?
- creamcrackered 1y agoBecause it allows law enforcement agencies and intelligence services to do their work.
- rstat1 1y agoThat they presently have no problems doing without this crap, so proving that they don't need it.
- vb-8448 1y agooh man ... it's so wrong on so many levels ... first of all it's not true, law enforcement are already doing their work today without chat control. In case we have massive chat control, do you really expect criminals to send plain text messages via whatsapp/telegram/ecc? They will use custom-made solutions(btw they are already using them ...) to circumvent the chat control. Even if they will be forced to use whatsapp, they can easily add an extra layer of encryption that will totally circumvent the chat control ... and the only thing we will have are governants able to know every single aspect of our life ...
- jgilias 1y agoCommunications surveillance is unconstitutional in my EU country.
- SoftTalker 1y agoIf there was a way to ensure it was done only with a warrant and they weren’t hoovering up and scanning everything then perhaps. Is there a way this could be done?
- derektank 1y agoNew technology (cheap sensors, machine intelligence models) is already providing law enforcement with a wide array of new tools for identifying and building a legal case against people committing crimes. I don't see any reason to believe the law will somehow become unenforceable without gimping encrypted communications.
- scrps 1y agoI think a more elegant solution would simply be to assign everyone a minder to monitor in real time, it is simpler than securely back-dooring (hell of an oxymoron) encryption systems and you get the added bonus of massive employment numbers. In fact the minder's minder could be the minder's charge and you get 100% employment. (/s)
- zweifuss 1y ago"Chat Control" is mass surveillance, not targeted Action. Targeted action mayhaps needs some readjustment, but by and large is already easy to obtain for law enforcement. Normalizing mass surveillance would set a precedent for authoritarian regimes worldwide to demand similar access, further eroding privacy and human rights on a global scale. I also oppose it on technical grounds, since it would be some kind of local or hybrid ai that does the scanning. A high number of false positives harming innocents would certainly be the result.
- vb-8448 1y agothe real question is: when and in what form will it be re-proposed next?
- roelschroeven 1y agoProbably combined with a bunch of unrelated laws, in an unrelated legislative committee, all to try to keep it out of public attention.
- ryandrake 1y agoAs often as possible. They only have to win once. The people need to win every single time.
- marginalia_nu 1y agoThis is pretty problematic for the EU as an institution. It is actively undermining its already questionable legitimacy. The powers that be largely aren't democratically elected, and there really aren't any mechanisms with which European citizens can hold them accountable for their actions. Every time they pull a stunt like this, this becomes a little bit more clear. If the EU wants to avoid the spread of euroskeptic populist parties, they should be working to patch the system and be building legitimacy and credibility, rather than be seen working to undermine it.
- NicuCalcea 1y agoChat Control is an initiative of the Council of the European Union, which is made up of ministers from each member state. Citizens can hold them accountable the same way they hold their ministers accountable normally.
- SiempreViernes 1y agoNot really, chat control comes from the comission, the current news is about the councils struggle to formally reach a position on that proposal.
- munro 1y agoI love the irony of the site showing a MASSIVE banner with a huge green "Download Extension for Mac (Free)" button. This thing is 280px tall! I clicked it for shits and giggles and upon returning it showed a popup XD https://files.catbox.moe/sv7hb7.png https://files.catbox.moe/sv7hb7.png > Only 2 Steps (thx) > Click "Download" > Add Privacy Guard for Chrome™ Don't worry why I'm not using ad block
- tagyro 1y ago+1 https://files.catbox.moe/dbbh71.jpg https://files.catbox.moe/dbbh71.jpg yeah, hard pass
- gotekom952 1y agovictory... until we meet again.
- IshKebab 1y ago> the fundamental misunderstanding of encryption technology continues to plague policy discussions across Europe. > Client-side scanning, the technical approach favored by Chat Control advocates, attempts to circumvent this limitation by analyzing messages on users’ devices before encryption or after decryption. While this might sound like a clever workaround, it fundamentally breaks the security model of encryption. It's not a misunderstanding, it's deliberate circumvention. It doesn't do anyone any good to pretend that they just don't understand.
- beezlewax 1y agoComparing electronic chats to former communication methods... Would people have objected to the government scanning all of their physical postal letters for keywords that might suggest something illegal? Don't they need some legal ground to do this in advance of the act? Why are chats different?
- YeahThisIsMe 1y agoThe speed of communication has changed a little bit, but still, a hard "no" to the government reading everything I say. Digital communication is more direct speech, including maybe whispering, than it is writing a letter.
- cerved 1y agoYou can't break encryption "only sometimes"
- AnthonyMouse 1y agoIf you don't record every conversation that happens in a private home, you can't retroactively wiretap them "only sometimes". If you don't open and scan everyone's mail, you can't go back and read the ones they've already received "only sometimes". Why is that a problem? Then you just don't do it at all. Society can survive two people being able to have a private conversation.
- subscribed 1y ago
- dfajgljsldkjag 1y agoArticle is just AI generated slop. Don't bother clicking.
- iamnothere 1y agoGreat news. Now maybe we can go on the offense for once. Work to enable constitutional protections against this sort of thing, and develop systems that can work around it if and when this comes back again. There are places in the world today where only sneakernet communication has any semblance of privacy, so we need non-specialist tools that can provide privacy and secrecy regardless of local conditions. (I’d love to see more communication tools that don’t assume an always-on connection, or low latency, or other first world conditions.)
- varispeed 1y agoMany countries have such protections, for instance Germany. They could actually issue arrest warrant for all involved as Chat Control amounts to attempt at terrorism (act of indiscriminate violence for ideological gain) against German people and that is illegal. Problem is that there is widespread apathy and lack of will to act.
- skrebbel 1y agoThat’s a scary broad definition of “violence” you got there.
- noir_lord 1y agoYes and then again no - Given the Germans history (Nazi's then decades of the Stasi) you can understand why some of them feel that way.
- halJordan 1y agoEven then, i could see how the stasi police state was an act of violence against individual citizens (which i doubt is an argument you should take for granted), but even granting that- this chat control isnt it. You can't call everything you dislike or everything that is wrong nazi, stasi, or an act of violence.
- 1y ago
- shevy-java 1y agoPeople, as I reasoned on reddit - do not trust those who want to push for it. Several mega-corporations want it. See how lobbyists continue to fight for this. Watch them carefully. They will 100% try again. The enemy is the general public.
- api 1y agoBig corporations like expensive complicated regulations and onerous mandates because it’s a moat. They can afford to comply while indie companies, open source efforts, and startups cannot. The cost of regulatory compliance is nothing compared to the benefit of not having to compete. A heavily regulated market becomes an oligopoly of a few players with revolving door access to government and often interlocking directorates, patent cross licensing, and other ways of further colluding to keep out competition. This is why, for example, the big lavishly funded AI ventures are all about “safety” regulation. It would stop anyone from competing. So far that effort has also failed but expect them to keep trying.
- mouse-5346 1y agoIf these AI companies wanted to preserve privacy they would have done it immediately after it was apparent OpenAI scraped data it shouldn't have to train it's models. Any resistance and privacy concerns these businesses raise now is only to gatekeep training data out of the hands of.would be competitors and only accessible to themselves.
- echelon 1y ago> They will 100% try again. We only have to lose once. Erosion is a process. Every country should fight for constitutional protections for its citizens' rights to (internet) privacy. But that'll never have support from politicians, and laypeople don't have the ability to appreciate this highly technical and nuanced topic. It's only when opposition is mounted to each individual attempt that we can rally public support. Sadly, we can only muster this energy in the face of losing freedom. And it only has to falter once.
- 1y ago
- quantummagic 1y agoPeople should be ashamed to support such chat control proposals. It should become as socially taboo as racism or sexism, and people who transgress such social norms should be tarnished with the same social stigma.
- varispeed 1y agoThis was just another terrorist attack attempt by white collar autocrats. EU failed to recognise it as such. Groups proposing such mass assault at the public belong behind bars, not to be given consideration. If someone proposed legislation for compulsory mass rape, would European Commission take it through legislative process? Unlikely. So they have a massive blind spot, or are working together to move Overton window and eventually this will pass. Dangerous times.
- ewuhic 1y agoWill we get new cute domains for websites against the initiative when it is reintroduced once again?
- fguerraz 1y agoI really don’t think this has anything to do with pressure from the 10% of the public that can afford to care about this. Politicians, and more importantly influential people, also rely on the same tech as we do and they have infinitely more to lose if their communications leak.
- djcannabiz 1y agoThe politicians gave themselves an exemption from the scanning. This is just from the top search result but this is widely reported. “The scanning would apply to all EU citizens, except EU politicians. They might exempt themselves from the law under “professional secrecy” rules” https://nextcloud.com/blog/how-the-eu-chat-control-law-is-a-threat-to-democracy/ https://nextcloud.com/blog/how-the-eu-chat-control-law-is-a-...
- fguerraz 1y agoYes, but they would be immune from a legal point of view, they would still have to use the same backdoored software.
- jbuhbjlnjbn 1y agoIf you think about it this is truly absurd reasoning - they say they want to protect children by introducing this scanning, of course not spy on people, but then politicians are excempt? Why, what could possibly be the reason? They already openly reveal their true intentions by this excemption.
- latentsea 1y agoWell, statistically speaking like 1% to 2% of EU politicians will be pedos, so my guess is they don't want that to come to light and undermine trust in the government.
- petre 1y agoVon der Leyen's phone was convenintly erased before it could be used as evidence in a court case against her. So no. Maybe stuff will leak but this isn't South Korea with two presidents in jail and thd last one on his way to jail.
- wewewedxfgdf 1y agoWho wants this? Who is driving it? Who wants this so much that they have gone to the massive expense and effort? Whoever it is - they know thet defeat is only temporary, and if they keep bringing it back from the dead, eventually it will succeed.
- input_sh 1y agoAshton Kutcher, Demi Moore and a couple more Hollywood celebrities united under an "NGO" called Thorn(.org). That "NGO" also happens to sell a tool called Safer(.io) that allows website owners to check hashes against known CSAM material, which I'm sure is unrelated. They also happened to have shadily employed some former high-ranking Europol officials, which is again just a pure coincidence. Balkan Insight did wonderful investigative reporting on them a couple of years back: https://balkaninsight.com/2023/09/25/who-benefits-inside-the-eus-fight-over-scanning-for-child-sex-content/ https://balkaninsight.com/2023/09/25/who-benefits-inside-the...
- Tade0 1y agoI've heard those celebrities talk about this. What they (willfully?) ignore is that law enforcement is already too understaffed to handle every child abuse case with proper care, so giving them even more cases to work with won't achieve anything.
- squarefoot 1y agoThe problem isn't actual cases to work with but the ton of personal data swallowed by their AI that can be used at any time for different purposes than protecting kids, which has never been the #1 purpose of those laws. In the meantime, the number of children killed in Palestine and West Bank has surpassed 20 thousand in 2 years, and famine hit more than half a million children in Sudan. It's not like they were short of ways to show they really care about kids, but alas they don't at all. It's just an excuse to restrict personal liberties.
- Onavo 1y agoDidn't multiple HN comments trace that NGO back to the US State Department?
- gnarlouse 1y agoI don’t get how this debate keeps cropping up. Is there not some career disincentive/consequence where if you try to push Encryption back doors, you get demolished in your re-election
- mpalmer 1y agoGotta get the average voter to know/care more for that to happen.
- SiempreViernes 1y agoHaving taken a closer look, there's nothing really nefarious going on: what is mainly happening is that every step of the very long process of passing a EU regulation is getting lots of attention. Back in 2020 or so the commission first proposed the reform that contains the chat control provisions, then there was like a year or two of well published fighting in the European Parliament (EP) before they reached a position on the entire reform (notably excluding chat control). Meanwhile the council of minister (effectively the upper house of the EP) didn't get around to forming an opinion before the parliament, so they are doing that now, which means it the same fight over chat control all over again but with different people. After the council of ministers agrees on a position on the entire reform proposal from the commission we'll get even more rounds of bickering over what the final text should be: the trialogue. Those tend to be very closed, but with how much attention chat control is getting expect lots of leaks and constant news about who's being an ass during that step too. Note that it is explicitly expected that each of the thee bodies will come up with different positions on many aspects of a regulation proposal, so there is nothing strange with the commission or the council suggesting some the parliament has opposed.
- noir_lord 1y agoThey only have to get "lucky" once, we have to get lucky every time so it makes sense if you want this to keep pushing it - once the law is passed it's much harder to revoke it later. The people pushing it are ~bribed~ lobbied hard by groups who want this so they don't care about wasting their time or resources since they are getting paid for it. > Is there not some career disincentive/consequence where if you try to push Encryption back doors, you get demolished in your re-election In a somewhat ironic turn of events we don't know who was pushing it this time as they where protected by anonymity - one rule for them I guess and another for everyone else.
- r_lee 1y agoCan't wait for it to be reintroduced as "Protecting Children and Countering Terrorism Act" in 26/27
- YeahThisIsMe 1y agoI hate how accurate this is.
- stavros 1y agoIf our politicians knew anything about anything, they'd take a leaf out of the US' book and call it "Preventing Risks Online; Thwarting Exploitation of Children and Terrorism": the PROTECT act.
- throw-qqqqq 1y agoNo need to wait for that! The official name is not ChatControl, it is CSAR: Regulation to Prevent and Combat Child Sexual Abuse Denmark has the EU Presidency and is currently pushing ChatControl hard (objecting HEAVILY to the moniker/nickname). They try to sell it as “for the children” and “to fight terrorism” here already…
- hexbin010 1y agoIs it because they're focusing their efforts on the much worse ProtectEU? I can't keep up
- throwaway81523 1y agoThe first thing to check in new versions of the proposal is whether they include an exception for the government, as they always do. If the proposers think the scanning is so safe, why don't they want the government to use it too? As soon as it says the government is exempted, you know that the rest can be tossed in the trash without much further examination.
- polski-g 1y agoUnited States should revoke visas for individuals and their family members who engage in talks of such proposals, and remove maritime protection for ships registered in countries doing likewise.
- tjpnz 1y agoAll the politicians who supported this should be named so people know to choose better next time.
- spwa4 1y agoIf you're going to do this, I wish people would go the other way. Don't work to prevent the worst from happening. Write a law that end-users have an unlimited right to execute their own programs on their own devices, on par with the producers of said devices, just any code they want. A device doesn't support that? No selling in the EU for you ... Such a right would make chat control impossible and unworkable as well, for the same reason that open source encryption can't be hacked. It will be impossible to prevent secure messengers to be installed.
- Caius-Cosades 1y agoThe question is not whether or not it will pass, but when. There are no limits to the times something can be proposed or voted on, and it is only required to pass that voting/proposal loop once. And this brute-force method has been proven to work in Europe and in the EU.