4 ms·

European Commission's Metsola Overrides MEPs to Force Through Chat Control

86 points by miohtama 4mo ago

antiloper 4mo ago
With democracies like this, who needs dictators?
baal80spam 4mo ago
I am shocked, I tell you, SHOCKED!
vovavili 4mo ago
Slipping in censorship under the "think of the children" pretext is so cliché, I am not sure how EU thought this is going to convince anyone.
logicchains 4mo ago
The EU is destroying the decentralization that once made Europe the global apex of freedom, equality and prosperity, and turning Europe into a bloated, schlerotic and authoritarian bureaucracy like the Chinese and Ottoman empires that it once defeated.
IsTom 4mo ago
So if I get this right all she can force is conciliation, which needs the parliament to agree on it in third reading anyway?
miohtama 4mo ago
Guess who is funding and lobbying this? Robert Metsola met Ashton Kutcher (co-founder of Thorn, which develops message scanning tech) in March 2023 and posted a photo on Instagram. Kutcher lobbied MEPs hard in favour of strong detection measures.
- Schlagbohrer 4mo ago
  I never imagined Ashton Kutcher's pivot to evil tech titan back when he was being goofy on That 70s Show or Dude Where's My Car?.
  - miohtama 4mo ago
    Well it gets worse: Ashton Kutcher’s primary connection to Palantir Technologies is through Thorn, which uses Palantir’s AI and data-processing software to scan messages.
- deltoidmaximus 4mo ago
  Ashton Kutcher wrote a letter of support for Danny Masterson and his character when Masterson was convicted of multiple counts of rape. When this showed up in the media his defense was he thought this letter would be private even though it was sent to the judge in a criminal trial. Apparently, he and his friends should be able to use their fame/connections to quietly help their rapist friends get reduced sentences but everyone else should have their private communications scanned.
schmorptron 4mo ago
We're moving towards total surveillance slowly but surely. Age verification. Chat control. To an extent also the digital euro. It all seems hopeless, they're pushing this through despite what semblance of a democratic process we have clearly being against it. [that is not to speak of how undemocratic the european system is and how badly it needs reform. Von der leyen should never have been able to get the role she holds]
- iLoveOncall 4mo ago
  > We're moving towards total surveillance slowly but surely We're actually speedrunning towards total surveillance. I don't believe in democracy at all anymore.
  - microtonal 4mo ago
    Non-democracies speedrun towards surveillance even faster. Democracy is the best we have and this action is anti-democratic. The other part of the story is that as long as Europe continues to vote radical rights + conservatives, we are going to get more and more of this. Most greens and progressives fight this tooth and nail.
    - yorwba 4mo ago
      What is anti-democratic about trying to assemble a coalition to change lawmakers' minds and get them to vote differently? It is rather core to democracies that decisions aren't set in stone and if you disagree with the majority you can always try to renegotiate. While most greens and progressives may be against this particular law, I rather doubt that if they introduced a progressive green law for a vote and failed to get a majority, they would immediately give up and never try to get such a law passed ever again. And I think it's good that nobody has to give up on politics just because they lost once.
      - microtonal 4mo ago
        I get your point, but I think there are several issues: - Chat Control gets pushed by lobbyists, who have far more/better access to politicians than citizens. It is true that there are also some non-profits lobbying in this case, but the surveillance economy companies that are pushing this behind the scene have very deep pockets and very deep access. - Chat Control gets pushed over and over again by the EC, which is the least accountable/democratic between the Parliament, Council, and Commission. If you look outside the EU, there are enough examples of governments that are democratically elected, but are in practice not accountable to citizens because they are in the pockets of large companies that funded their campaigns, etc.
agarsev 4mo ago
Original title: President vs Parliament: Metsola overrides MEPs in bid to force through child abuse law Content from TFA: > Ambassadors on Friday will consider an “invitation of the President of the European Parliament [to] proceed with the Council’s first reading position” on the proposal to allow tech companies to choose to scan for CSAM > The European Commission proposed the temporary CSAM bill as a stopgap measure to allow companies to scan while legislators agreed on a more permanent solution. > Tech firms continued to scan, despite the legal limbo. > If capitals choose to adopt their position, the law does not automatically pass: The Parliament would need to either accept it or re-enter negotiations. “There is no certainty that [the Parliament] would adopt the legislative act in second reading in line with the Council’s first reading position,” Cyprus wrote in the note. > Gregorová rejected the suggestion that lawmakers would budge. “The Parliament mandate is clear: A majority voted it down, meaning that we reject the extension.”
ReptileMan 4mo ago
Her, Kaja Kallas and Ursula Von Der Leyen ... who is the fourth horsewoman of the stupidocalypse?
- nonamesleft 4mo ago
  Henna Virkkunen
khurs 4mo ago
This is one of the main reasons UK left EU. National politicians use the EU to bypass national democracy and then blame the EU publicly to deflect of their true involvement. Uk was a leading EU country via being one of the largest financial contributors, and UK was behind many of the decisions they later blamed on 'EU Bureaucrats'.
- ggm 4mo ago
  No, it wasn't. It was fundamentally about freedom of movement and little Englander racism, and lies about farming, the nhs and fishing. Very few people voted on ID issues or chat control.
  - khurs 4mo ago
    I said 'one of the' not the leading one. "unaccountable EU' and 'taking back control' were key slogans. And UK were behind the freedom of movement in question, namely the widening to eastern European countries.
    - ggm 4mo ago
      You think "take back control" was about chat control? I don't. The UK could have controls on social media before Europe does. Taking back control is sloganised anti europeanism as a principle. It has no specific qualities to any subject it's just a belief British laws should be supreme.
- danaris 4mo ago
  It would've been a good reason to leave the EU, but a) Chat Control was barely a concern in 2016, and b) no the fuck it wasn't, the main reasons the UK left the EU are racism and being lied to about being able to get sweetheart deals.
- account42 4mo ago
  Completely right, the UK left the EU because the EU wasn't moving fast enough to their desired dystopia. They have now managed to sprint quite a bit ahead on their own.
ChaosOp 4mo ago
To clarify for fellow readers, since this is a messy situation: This is about a new temporary measure to legally allow instant-messaging providers to scan their users' messages. Providers lost that legal right when the previous interim act (the Interim Derogation of the ePrivacy Directive, sometimes called "Chat Control 1.0") expired on 4 April 2026. Several large providers have said they'll keep scanning regardless. This is only one piece of a bigger effort. For years the Commission has been trying to put a more permanent regime in place (the CSA Regulation, or "Chat Control 2.0") without success. As both a lawyer and a software engineer, I don't understand why big tech and EC want to scan messages, if they actually want to combat online abuse. The research points the other way: - Most messages on these services are end-to-end encrypted, so they can't be scanned at all (assuming the E2EE is implemented correctly). The Commission itself says 70% of messages on popular chat platforms are E2EE [1]. - Instant messaging isn't the main distribution channel for CSAM in the first place, per data from the US National Center for Missing and Exploited Children [2]. So the evidence points to low overall efficacy for message scanning against its stated goal of combating online child sexual abuse. I don't think it'll pass this time. What worries me more is the spread of mandatory age-verification laws worldwide. That train is already going full steam ahead.. [1] https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/policies/internal-security/lawful-access-data/encryption_en https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/policies/internal-security... [2] Page 18, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:52025DC0740 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELE...
- eska 4mo ago
  As both a lawyer and a software engineer, I don't understand why big tech and EC want to scan messages, if they actually want to combat online abuse. They don’t want to combat child abuse, they want to improve their advertising fingerprints.
  - deltoidmaximus 4mo ago
    I'd say this is more about being able to identify and crush any nascent political movements that threaten the status quo in their infancy, but no reason not to let the implementers wet their beak to get buy in.
goobatrooba 4mo ago
The title is incorrect and editorialised, Metsola is the president of the parliament, not the commission. A conservative from a highly Catholic country (Malta), pushing conservative/far right values. Not surprising but still disappointing, that's what happens when the populace thinks voting far right is a "protest vote" and the election hands them 1/3 of the assembly.
Joyniness 4mo ago
It's just sad what happens in the world. It's awful. But most likely it's one of the "zombie" projects. That will never be removed until they are passed
onel 4mo ago
This is a push by one individual, or maybe a small group. I don't think we should generalize this to the whole European commission, or the whole EU. Hopefully and most likely it will be shut down if put up for a vote.
vrighter 4mo ago
As a Maltese person, I'm sorry. I feel embarrassed to be one right now

86 points by miohtama 4mo ago

antiloper 4mo ago

With democracies like this, who needs dictators?

baal80spam 4mo ago

I am shocked, I tell you, SHOCKED!

vovavili 4mo ago

Slipping in censorship under the "think of the children" pretext is so cliché, I am not sure how EU thought this is going to convince anyone.

logicchains 4mo ago

The EU is destroying the decentralization that once made Europe the global apex of freedom, equality and prosperity, and turning Europe into a bloated, schlerotic and authoritarian bureaucracy like the Chinese and Ottoman empires that it once defeated.

IsTom 4mo ago

So if I get this right all she can force is conciliation, which needs the parliament to agree on it in third reading anyway?

miohtama 4mo ago

Guess who is funding and lobbying this? Robert Metsola met Ashton Kutcher (co-founder of Thorn, which develops message scanning tech) in March 2023 and posted a photo on Instagram. Kutcher lobbied MEPs hard in favour of strong detection measures.

Schlagbohrer 4mo ago
I never imagined Ashton Kutcher's pivot to evil tech titan back when he was being goofy on That 70s Show or Dude Where's My Car?.
- miohtama 4mo ago
  Well it gets worse: Ashton Kutcher’s primary connection to Palantir Technologies is through Thorn, which uses Palantir’s AI and data-processing software to scan messages.
deltoidmaximus 4mo ago
Ashton Kutcher wrote a letter of support for Danny Masterson and his character when Masterson was convicted of multiple counts of rape. When this showed up in the media his defense was he thought this letter would be private even though it was sent to the judge in a criminal trial. Apparently, he and his friends should be able to use their fame/connections to quietly help their rapist friends get reduced sentences but everyone else should have their private communications scanned.

schmorptron 4mo ago

We're moving towards total surveillance slowly but surely. Age verification. Chat control. To an extent also the digital euro. It all seems hopeless, they're pushing this through despite what semblance of a democratic process we have clearly being against it. [that is not to speak of how undemocratic the european system is and how badly it needs reform. Von der leyen should never have been able to get the role she holds]

iLoveOncall 4mo ago
> We're moving towards total surveillance slowly but surely We're actually speedrunning towards total surveillance. I don't believe in democracy at all anymore.
- microtonal 4mo ago
  Non-democracies speedrun towards surveillance even faster. Democracy is the best we have and this action is anti-democratic. The other part of the story is that as long as Europe continues to vote radical rights + conservatives, we are going to get more and more of this. Most greens and progressives fight this tooth and nail.
  - yorwba 4mo ago
    What is anti-democratic about trying to assemble a coalition to change lawmakers' minds and get them to vote differently? It is rather core to democracies that decisions aren't set in stone and if you disagree with the majority you can always try to renegotiate. While most greens and progressives may be against this particular law, I rather doubt that if they introduced a progressive green law for a vote and failed to get a majority, they would immediately give up and never try to get such a law passed ever again. And I think it's good that nobody has to give up on politics just because they lost once.
    - microtonal 4mo ago
      I get your point, but I think there are several issues: - Chat Control gets pushed by lobbyists, who have far more/better access to politicians than citizens. It is true that there are also some non-profits lobbying in this case, but the surveillance economy companies that are pushing this behind the scene have very deep pockets and very deep access. - Chat Control gets pushed over and over again by the EC, which is the least accountable/democratic between the Parliament, Council, and Commission. If you look outside the EU, there are enough examples of governments that are democratically elected, but are in practice not accountable to citizens because they are in the pockets of large companies that funded their campaigns, etc.

agarsev 4mo ago

Original title: President vs Parliament: Metsola overrides MEPs in bid to force through child abuse law Content from TFA: > Ambassadors on Friday will consider an “invitation of the President of the European Parliament [to] proceed with the Council’s first reading position” on the proposal to allow tech companies to choose to scan for CSAM > The European Commission proposed the temporary CSAM bill as a stopgap measure to allow companies to scan while legislators agreed on a more permanent solution. > Tech firms continued to scan, despite the legal limbo. > If capitals choose to adopt their position, the law does not automatically pass: The Parliament would need to either accept it or re-enter negotiations. “There is no certainty that [the Parliament] would adopt the legislative act in second reading in line with the Council’s first reading position,” Cyprus wrote in the note. > Gregorová rejected the suggestion that lawmakers would budge. “The Parliament mandate is clear: A majority voted it down, meaning that we reject the extension.”

ReptileMan 4mo ago

Her, Kaja Kallas and Ursula Von Der Leyen ... who is the fourth horsewoman of the stupidocalypse?

nonamesleft 4mo ago
Henna Virkkunen

khurs 4mo ago

This is one of the main reasons UK left EU. National politicians use the EU to bypass national democracy and then blame the EU publicly to deflect of their true involvement. Uk was a leading EU country via being one of the largest financial contributors, and UK was behind many of the decisions they later blamed on 'EU Bureaucrats'.

ggm 4mo ago
No, it wasn't. It was fundamentally about freedom of movement and little Englander racism, and lies about farming, the nhs and fishing. Very few people voted on ID issues or chat control.
- khurs 4mo ago
  I said 'one of the' not the leading one. "unaccountable EU' and 'taking back control' were key slogans. And UK were behind the freedom of movement in question, namely the widening to eastern European countries.
  - ggm 4mo ago
    You think "take back control" was about chat control? I don't. The UK could have controls on social media before Europe does. Taking back control is sloganised anti europeanism as a principle. It has no specific qualities to any subject it's just a belief British laws should be supreme.
danaris 4mo ago
It would've been a good reason to leave the EU, but a) Chat Control was barely a concern in 2016, and b) no the fuck it wasn't, the main reasons the UK left the EU are racism and being lied to about being able to get sweetheart deals.
account42 4mo ago
Completely right, the UK left the EU because the EU wasn't moving fast enough to their desired dystopia. They have now managed to sprint quite a bit ahead on their own.

ChaosOp 4mo ago

To clarify for fellow readers, since this is a messy situation: This is about a new temporary measure to legally allow instant-messaging providers to scan their users' messages. Providers lost that legal right when the previous interim act (the Interim Derogation of the ePrivacy Directive, sometimes called "Chat Control 1.0") expired on 4 April 2026. Several large providers have said they'll keep scanning regardless. This is only one piece of a bigger effort. For years the Commission has been trying to put a more permanent regime in place (the CSA Regulation, or "Chat Control 2.0") without success. As both a lawyer and a software engineer, I don't understand why big tech and EC want to scan messages, if they actually want to combat online abuse. The research points the other way: - Most messages on these services are end-to-end encrypted, so they can't be scanned at all (assuming the E2EE is implemented correctly). The Commission itself says 70% of messages on popular chat platforms are E2EE [1]. - Instant messaging isn't the main distribution channel for CSAM in the first place, per data from the US National Center for Missing and Exploited Children [2]. So the evidence points to low overall efficacy for message scanning against its stated goal of combating online child sexual abuse. I don't think it'll pass this time. What worries me more is the spread of mandatory age-verification laws worldwide. That train is already going full steam ahead.. [1] https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/policies/internal-security/lawful-access-data/encryption_en https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/policies/internal-security... [2] Page 18, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:52025DC0740 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELE...

eska 4mo ago
As both a lawyer and a software engineer, I don't understand why big tech and EC want to scan messages, if they actually want to combat online abuse. They don’t want to combat child abuse, they want to improve their advertising fingerprints.
- deltoidmaximus 4mo ago
  I'd say this is more about being able to identify and crush any nascent political movements that threaten the status quo in their infancy, but no reason not to let the implementers wet their beak to get buy in.

goobatrooba 4mo ago

The title is incorrect and editorialised, Metsola is the president of the parliament, not the commission. A conservative from a highly Catholic country (Malta), pushing conservative/far right values. Not surprising but still disappointing, that's what happens when the populace thinks voting far right is a "protest vote" and the election hands them 1/3 of the assembly.

Joyniness 4mo ago

It's just sad what happens in the world. It's awful. But most likely it's one of the "zombie" projects. That will never be removed until they are passed

onel 4mo ago

This is a push by one individual, or maybe a small group. I don't think we should generalize this to the whole European commission, or the whole EU. Hopefully and most likely it will be shut down if put up for a vote.

vrighter 4mo ago

As a Maltese person, I'm sorry. I feel embarrassed to be one right now