14 ms·

EU to legislate about Chat Control behind closed doors

741 points by NeutralForest 3mo ago

blfr 3mo ago
First, why does the EU leadership refuse to learn from falling behind the US economically and technologically, most starkly with AI recently, and their failures in regulating the Internet, most annoyingly the cookie law? And why aren't you, the EU citizen, more annoyed by it? I see a lot of pro-EU content on this site when they're terrible on both tech and entrepreneurship. Second, what's up with Denmmark pushing for it here? They're usually very reasonable.
- enedil 3mo ago
  > most annoying the cookie law Also, the least consequential even ignoring often stated fact that cookie banners are malicious compliance. I care much less about cookie banners than about the ads, and for both of I have uBlock origin filters. So, what to be angry about exactly?
  - olejorgenb 3mo ago
    And either 80% of banners are not respecting the law, or the law managed to omit mandating making it as easy to reject as accept... Rejecting usually require you to enter into settings and sometimes click "reject" for every individual partner(!)
    - vikaveri 3mo ago
      That was the case in the beginning, for a while. Now I rarely see even ones where I have to click Settings and Reject all, usually it's just Accept all and Accept only essential. No dark patterns just two equally visible buttons. Often also just "We use only essential cookies" and OK button because they don't have 1138 partners they want to sell your data to
      - GTP 3mo ago
        And in the latter case, they could even not put any banner at all and still be compliant. The GDPR requires consent only for tracking.
      - olejorgenb 3mo ago
        I also see more of these, but I'd say still around half require more click for "reject non-essential"
    - retired 3mo ago
      The largest Dutch tech website doesn’t adhere to the cookie law. They ever reported about websites not adhering to the law while not adhering to the law themselves.
  - EdiX 3mo ago
    "Cookie banners are malicious compliance" is starting to wear thin as an excuse. GDPR went into law in 2018, almost ten years ago and for almost as long websites have been "maliciously complying". If you don't don anything about it at some point it's not malicious anymore, it's just how the law is meant to be interpreted. I have a different hypothesis for why the GDPR exists: it is to create a market for EU based compliance companies.
- graemep 3mo ago
  Denmark have been pushing for chat control for a long time. The American view of the EU is very much a grass is greener one. They see the things that are better than in the US but not the things that are worse.
  - blfr 3mo ago
    Yes, I know they've been pushing for this when they're pretty reasonable and independent on other issues. How come?
    - sph 3mo ago
      I don't want to enter into conspiracy territory, but it seems that there's a big insistence from whomever is behind pushing for this to pass at any cost. First it was Denmark, now the EU parliament president, a Maltese. What's for certain is that those that stand to benefit massively are governments and politicians themselves. And no, it's certainly not that bullshit astroturfed story that has been going around, of Meta behind this concerted effort across the Western world because they're too lazy to validate one's age.
      - microtonal 3mo ago
        How would members of the EP benefit from Chat Control?
        freehorse 3mo ago
        Not sure what OP meant, but they talked about goverments and "politicians" rather than EP specifically. I think several EU governments want chat control paving the way for domestic surveillance. Though I don't consider that conspiracy theory really. Last years, there have been big scandal cases with use of pegasus, predator and similar spy software from several EU governments for domestic surveillance (eg Greece, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Spain). The issue is that legal surveillance, the regular phone tapping kind, is inefficient due to people using E2EE chat apps rather than regular phone calls and SMS. There is no legal basis for the more advanced spyware afaik, so these surveillance cases were illegal and kinda "off the books", even though rather widespread. A legal way to surveil the people would be welcome to those who did that and those who want to do the same.
- basisword 3mo ago
  European here. I like the cookie law. It's made it clear to people how much we're being tracked and I can choose to opt out. The implementation could of course be better but the real issue is the scummy web devs choosing to make it as annoying as possible instead of taking the more sensible decision to not have 150 trackers on every page. >> I see a lot of pro-EU content on this site when they're terrible on both tech and entrepreneurship. Life is bigger than tech or entrepreneurship. In the 00's I dreamed of moving to the US. That's changed, especially over the last decade. If I was offered a huge salary tomorrow to work in the US I would turn it down.
  - microgpt 3mo ago
    Website operators hate these cookies popups because they make their website more annoying and make me more likely to press the back button and click on a different website. As it should be. This incentivizes them to stop tracking me.
    - dminik 3mo ago
      Why then do they make the most annoying, user-hostile dark pattern cookie banners they can come up with? No, website operators hate that they have to either stop spamming thousands of tracker scripts or put up a banner. They found out that they can offload blame on the EU instead and so have chosen to make the web as annoying as possible.
      - dgellow 3mo ago
        Most of them don’t care and just integrate whatever is the most common cookie banner widget because their legal team asked them to
      - anonzzzies 3mo ago
        Yeah, that's more the point; in discussions with clients I very often get asked how far we can go without any consent. Most companies want all the privacy ignoring stuff and they don't want to tell their users about it.
- dgellow 3mo ago
  The population doesn’t support chat control. The European Parliament rejected the chat control proposal earlier this year. Now it seems that the European Parliament president is trying to bypass that
  - monssooon 3mo ago
    Well put
- bluecalm 3mo ago
  It's not like we can do anything. We don't have democracy - we can't vote on issues and we (in most countries) can't even vote on people. We just vote on 2-3 non-fringe parties and they choose people and policies. You may formally put an X next to some name but it's just a chosen party official. They need to walk party line and be in good standings with the leadership to even get on the list. There is just nothing you can do really in that system other than pursue career in politics which is a no-go for most people for obvious reasons.
  - basisword 3mo ago
    >> We don't have democracy - we can't vote on issues This is how democracy works pretty much everywhere. You vote for parties or people based on their policies.
    - bluecalm 3mo ago
      There are too many levels of indirection. At least in some countries you can vote on a person representing your town/area. This is one level of indirection less and allows people who aren't just chosen party members to win and then they have incentives to help the region. In "standard" party democracy there is just nothing that can be done. Calling it democracy as in rule of the people is a disgrace.
    - Argonaut998 3mo ago
      The problem with the EU is that there are many levels of abstraction, and the more links in a chain the more susceptible to corruption it is. This becomes immediately obvious when you vote for a party who fails to fulfill, or even go against their policies. Then for the EU there’s an additional level of abstraction for the commission. At this level, the voter is far removed from their initial vote and are completely powerless.
  - blfr 3mo ago
    Yeah, we can: I am from Poland and precisely through this mechanism our MEPs/delegates/nominates know that supporting this would be a disaster for their political group right here back home regardless of direct voting.
- ezst 3mo ago
  > falling behind the US economically and technologically Are you even human? Do you really believe what you say? Doesn't it come across as absurd, from everything that happened to the US since the Snowden revelations, the Patriot Act, spiraling into fascism, a first time attacking science and democracy, a second time to install oligarchs, traitors, corrupt and incompetents to run the state, with the result of tanking your real economy (on every metric that's not related to AI), burning down your soft power, burning bridges with every ally, losing the war against Iran, and causing a generational talent exodus out of the US? Oh yeah, by no means am I blindly defending "the EU leadership", but some reality check is much needed.
  - nxm 3mo ago
    [flagged]
    - tokioyoyo 3mo ago
      This gets brought up a lot, and I’m not sure how to explain it. But inconsequential complete free speech is not the top issue for some people. People have different priorities.
    - tokai 3mo ago
      Right now people in the US are being designated as terrorist for being against the government.
      - dgellow 3mo ago
        And people are literally arrested for touching a pool
    - pbkompasz 3mo ago
      And at least people are not shot in the streets by the police for protesting...
      - vjjsejj 3mo ago
- gib444 3mo ago
  Why does any country or bloc need to learn lessons about "falling behind" the US? Why is that the yard stick? I certainly don't spend all day dreaming of F150s, McMansions, the psychopaths leading silicon valley, 9 lane highways, US style PE, and world-class fascist politicians such as Trump Dear lord
  - nxm 3mo ago
    [flagged]
    - deleted 3mo ago
      [deleted]
    - rockinghigh 3mo ago
      The US is also falling behind Chinese manufacturing. They had to ban Chinese cars because legacy American automakers couldn't compete.
      - Chu4eeno 3mo ago
        China just recently had to ban their own companies from selling cars below cost. It's not a clear win for China, their car companies are struggling.
    - yownie 3mo ago
      [flagged]
  - spacebanana7 3mo ago
    A couple of decades ago both France and Britain had higher per capita GDP than the US. Now they are significantly behind. Similarly top European companies used to rival American companies in profitability, power and valuation. There’s not really an equivalent of FAANG/ NVIDIA in Europe, just ASML and LVMH.
    - thrance 3mo ago
- iamnothere 3mo ago
  Denmark’s recent reasonableness is somewhat of a historical aberration if you look at their history. The migrant crisis (and the failure of governments to address it) has stirred up some ugly things there.
  - tokai 3mo ago
    What do you mean the migrant crisis stirred up things? The anti immigration position in danish politics has been a winning position since the mid 00's.
    - iamnothere 3mo ago
      As the crisis has worsened across Europe, Denmark started unbelievably intrusive AI-enabled mass surveillance of welfare recipients (almost 15% of the population), dangerous infrastructure which could be applied to the population as a whole. And I’d argue that fears over migrant-driven crime are what allowed Denmark’s politicians to push for Chat Control in the first place.
      - tokai 3mo ago
        Yeah no I don't buy that, and have never heard that angle before. Surveillance in Denmark is much older than that. Since the personal ID number was rolled out in 1968 its been one long process of integrating public systems with each other to surveil and control. Surveillance of welfare recipients started getting serious in the 00's too. The migrant crisis drove polices like the confiscations of jewelry from foreigners, and public funded commercials in the middle east telling people to stay away. Internally chat control and migration are never talked about together. Chat control has no leverage on migration in Denmark. Its not a factor that would change anything. It's all about international treaties making it impossible to send people out of the country forcefully. That's the policy the migrant crisis really ignited.
        tough 3mo ago
        I'd say the AI powered aspects of it is whats troubling. We know how trustable ai outputs are, and now govts' are ready to let the AI's control their people? https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/11/denmark-ai-powered-welfare-system-fuels-mass-surveillance-and-risks-discriminating-against-marginalized-groups-report/ https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/11/denmark-ai-po...
- m4nu3l 3mo ago
  The education system has failed in the EU, but in a different way than it has in the US. I realised this when people thought mandating the USB-C connections was a good idea because "it is the best standard". I didn't think the mandated connector was a huge deal per se, but it made it clear to me that there is a flawed thought process behind EU regulations. And this is a big deal. Many things are not really understood in the EU. The majority don't seem to understand free speech. The EU has an article about free speech that clearly states there is no free speech, but people point to it when they claim there is.
  - 9dev 3mo ago
    Of all things to criticise, you pick out the one ruling that eventually lead to a consolidation of chargers? Really? I haven't ever met a single person who wasn't grateful of being able to have one cable for all their devices.
    - m4nu3l 3mo ago
      This is exactly what I'm talking about. A short-term view of the world, progress and technology. All my devices supported USB-C before the EU regulation. But if I wanted to buy a device with a new type of connector, I should have been able to. This is how the USB-C came to be and how any new standard in hardware happens. New technologies are made and just sold, and if they are proven to be superior to others in the market, they often become standards. The USB-C standard is not the best standard that can exist from now to the end of the universe, but if this discovery process is blocked, we will be stuck with it forever, which, of course, will also constrain the design and engineering of devices in other ways. It's the same fundamental flawed thought process that has made the EU reliant on the US for a lot of services.
      - 9dev 3mo ago
        > All my devices supported USB-C before the EU regulation. I don't have this particular problem so it doesn't exist! It did exist for huge amounts of people. At the time, many manufacturers had proprietary plugs and would still have them if it weren't for this decision. > The USB-C standard is not the best standard that can exist from now to the end of the universe Which is why the law can be simply amended as soon as such a standard emerges. If the industry figures out something better than USB-C, pressure will build on the council to do so. This is nothing but a straw man.
- tmtvl 3mo ago
  > And why aren't you, the EU citizen, more annoyed by it? Because the USA tends to privilege corporations over people whereas in the EU it's more balanced (still pretty biased towards corps, though), and I am a people, not a corporations. Take, for example, the 'cookie law': I much prefer being annoyed by the cookie pop-up over websites shoving a ton of unnecessary and unwanted cookies onto my computer without permission. ...speaking of which: > and their failures in regulating the Internet Which political entity would you say has done the best job in regulating the Internet? Where are citizens most protected from being inundated with advertising, unwanted cookies, unnecessary JavaScript, false news, scams, and all the other garbage one is normally subjected to when not putting in some amount of effort in combating that shit?
  - wqaatwt 3mo ago
    And because you are grateful for the cookie policies you don’t mind rewarding them with unlimited access all your private communication? I don’t really follow this argument.. > would you say has done the best job in regulating the Internet So again.. how do these basic/superficial (or even if they are extremely effective and useful, that doesn’t really change anything) regulations justify mass surveillance? > false news For what its worth in no way has the EU been effective in doing anything about this (I’m not sure they even tried doing anything that directly addressed it?)
    - tmtvl 3mo ago
      > And because you are grateful for the cookie policies you don’t mind rewarding them with unlimited access all your private communication? No. Where do you even come up with this stuff? > So again.. how do these basic/superficial (or even if they are extremely effective and useful, that doesn’t really change anything) regulations justify mass surveillance? Answering a question with a question only works if the question used as answer is a simpler way of getting the answer to the original question. > For what its worth in no way has the EU been effective in doing anything about [fake news] Okay, so which country/state/union/whatever has been effective in doing anything about it? Because according to the post I responded to there is someone way better at regulating the Internet than the EU is, so I'm wondering who it is.
- GTP 3mo ago
  While the EU is not perfect and surely needs improvement in many areas, it is still better than not having it. This is why you see a lot of pro-EU content: many people here (myself included) are of the opinion that the EU needs to be improved, not dismantled.
  - logicchains 3mo ago
    >While the EU is not perfect and surely needs improvement in many areas, it is still better than not having it. Would you still believe this if Chat Control got though? What good did the EU bring that's good enough to make up for the badness of everyone in Europe having all their private digital communications constantly scanned?
    - GTP 3mo ago
      Yes, definitely. Just as an example, my country wouldn't have a lot of consumer protection laws we now have thanks to the EU. As a concrete example, there used to be a single phone service provider acting as a monopolist and we had the highest phone bills in the EU. When this started to change, it still wasn't possible to keep the same phone number when switching providers, which is a huge thing for businesses and freelancers. The EU forced our government to change this. And I'm not even talking about all the financial help that we got from the EU. Which, admittedly, was used poorly by my politicians. But this isn't the EU's fault, it's their fault.
      - joe_mamba 3mo ago
        Which country are you referring to?
    - Krssst 3mo ago
      If Chat Control gets through, it means the Parliament approved it, which means the EU people voted for politicians that supported the idea. If the EU got dismantled, the same politicians would be elected (they won once why not twice) and do it again at the local level. (though, maybe not in every country)
- pteraspidomorph 3mo ago
  Remember it's also coming for you: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/06/kids-act-would-require-age-checks-get-online https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/06/kids-act-would-require... > The KIDS Act Regulates Private Messages, Too
- monssooon 3mo ago
  I think Denmark is one of the most surveiled countries. And with the most compliant population. They call it trust... Denmark is not the fairytale they try to market them selves as. This is closer to their true color in my opinion. You could also try to look up the cases with former and current politicians in dk who actually have gotten caught perpetrating the very thing chat control is said to stop. I'm to afraid of the f'ing EU to mention specific names here... But maybe some braver souls will
  - joe_mamba 3mo ago
    Denmark would also sterilize indigenous Greenland population and immigrants back in the 1950s-1960s. THey have a dark side few people know about.
- yesco 3mo ago
  [flagged]
- palata 3mo ago
  > refuse to learn from falling behind the US economically The EU economy has been slowing down since 2007, the peak production of conventional oil. The US is still producing oil, which is why the US economy is better. People love to think that they are richer or more successful because they are smarter. The fact is that the economy goes up when there is an abundance of energy, period. So there is nothing to learn from falling behind the US economically, other than "the EU needs to adapt to the reality of its economy measurably slowing down". And following the US and their lack of regulations and tendency towards a fascist economy (with BigTech working together with the ruling class) is not the right direction, IMO. > I see a lot of pro-EU content on this site when they're terrible on both tech and entrepreneurship. Tech and entrepreneurs usually want to become rich by producing more. The best places to do that are where the is money, which is where the economy grows, which is where there is an abundance of cheap fossil fuels. Entrepreneurs usually say "remove the regulations and our economy will grow again", but what they mean, really, is "remove the regulations and I will get rich, because I am on the side of those who would benefit from it".
elric 3mo ago
This is going to further increase anti-EU sentiment. This is unacceptable behaviour, but no politician is ever going to experience any negative consequences over this because they're so very far removed from the democratic process.
- microtonal 3mo ago
  Still, this is mostly pushed by particular countries (e.g. Denmark), the commission and aggressively pursued by lobbyist. The most democratic body in the EU (the EP) has so far always rejected Chat Control. Without the EU, this would have been introduced in some member countries much earlier (see also UK).
  - elric 3mo ago
    Yes, EP has rejected it, and now the president of the EP is ignoring that outcome.
  - ajsnigrutin 3mo ago
    It only has to pass once, and we have to scream about it every goddamn time try try. And they'll try and try again and again.
  - logicchains 3mo ago
    >Without the EU, this would have been introduced in some member countries much earlier (see also UK). And without the EU there'd be some states in which it would never be introduced. Decentralization is what made Europe so successful historically compared to large centralized empires like China and the Ottomans, and the EU is destroying that.
    - dgellow 3mo ago
      What you call decentralization and „so successful“ resulted in constant wars and conflicts. Europe would be in a way worse place right now without some form of union like the EU
Lucasoato 3mo ago
This is so wrong, but here’s another reason: a centralized totalitarian approach could look like a very pragmatic way to exercise control and governance on the population. This is true though only if your technical capabilities are at a similar or higher level of your competitors. In the European case we have neither the technology advancement of the US, or the supply chain control of China. This means that a centralized approach is only going to create a larger vulnerability surface for an external attacker. A decentralized, privacy and security first approach isn’t only right for moral/ethical reasons. It’s the only way we have to defend ourselves, even if we had a fascist government.
- augment_me 3mo ago
  You could also view it from the perspective of that if every other major superpower has their mass surveillance and you don't, it becomes an assymetrical informational situation where foreign governments can influence your citizens, but you cannot influence the foreign citizens since they are surveilled and their informational diet is restricted. In some sense Chat Control is a geopolitical necessity for the EU, there is no choice to not do it.
peterspath 3mo ago
Just 4 countries are against: Czech Republic, Italy, Netherlands, and Poland. https://fightchatcontrol.eu/ https://fightchatcontrol.eu/
- sph 3mo ago
  There's a lot of flip-flopping. I'm surprised Italy changed their mind when they were very in favour until recently.
  - baliex 3mo ago
    I guess that’s how it eventually goes through. When, at random, enough flippers flop or floppers flip that it tips the balance. And once it’s done it’s done. The relentlessness does not continue into, “are you sure?”, it’ll be over. For the record, I’m in the EU and do not want this to pass.
- blain 3mo ago
  Does governments have any say in this? If not then most MEPs of mentioned countries are too in favor of Chat Control. This is what it says when you click on one of the 4 countries.
  - somewhereoutth 3mo ago
    The EU is predicated on the pooled sovereignty of its constituent countries, as exercised thought the EU Council. Apart from a limited number of certain matters, any EU country can veto any decision made by the EU Commission, or indeed the EU Parliament.
  - bluebarbet 3mo ago
    EU law 101: (1) EU Commission (i.e. the executive) proposes a law; (2) EU Parliament signs off on it; (3) EU Council (i.e. the equivalent of a senate, comprising national governments) puts the final stamp on it. The complicating factor being that a given law may or may not require unanimity at the final EU Council stage. In general, the governments have the final word.
roer 3mo ago
Might make sense to message the MEP's that oppose chat control moreso the ones that support it. Maybe they can use some of their internal influence to sway some people. I'm pessimistic about the amount of weight these representatives are giving to emails from citizens
r721 3mo ago
Related recent discussion: >European Commission's Metsola Overrides MEPs to Force Through Chat Control https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48657675 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48657675 (45 comments)
7373848484 3mo ago
[flagged]
aquir 3mo ago
What's to point of all this? Everyone will use Signal or some other E2E encrypted messenger, this is just bone tossing. Useless politicans spending time on useless things.
- sharperguy 3mo ago
  They are talking about mandatory on-device scanning. E2E doesn't solve this.
- afh1 3mo ago
  Chat control takes screenshots of your phone. E2EE is useless. It's government mandated spyware.
- varispeed 3mo ago
  In every authoritarian regime people spent considerable amount of time on workarounds. Underground press, parallel education etc. this is just another iteration of Stasi like regime, just with a nicer suit and better PR. In reality this should have been rejected wholesale and people proposing this barred from any public sector jobs, or even arrested for terrorist attack attempt (Chat Control fulfils definition of terrorism).
- wqaatwt 3mo ago
  So the EU will just tell Apple and Google to remove Signal from their app stores and 95-99% of the population won’t bother figuring out it exists..
  - trallnag 3mo ago
    Maybe the EU can work together with Russia on the Max messenger
  - torginus 3mo ago
    And as always, the only people who will bother will be the few% who are involved in some sort of illegal activity.
hoppp 3mo ago
They just can't let it go. Is it democracy if they keep pushing agendas even if they are voted down?
- Gingersnap123 3mo ago
  [dead]
- ttoinou 3mo ago
  It's an open secret the european union has nothing to do with the will of the people
  - hhh 3mo ago
    plenty of people desire something like this, and 'saving the children' is their genuine intent and desire. Humanity is willing to shoot itself in the foot again and again, there's no need for it to be some shadowy cabal.
    - constantius 3mo ago
      Plenty of people do want more surveillance, but that's not why EU politicians are doing this. Seeking to implement surveillance across an entire continent cannot be explained by "the will of the people". Danes might want surveillance for their children, but I can't imagine them lobbying their EU representatives to also protect the children in France as well.
  - surgical_fire 3mo ago
    This is bullshit. The EU parliament is the organ that shot it down so far. Read the article. It is the national governments pushing this shit. They try to launder if through the EU because passing those legislations locally would likely be very unpopular.
    - remolueoend 3mo ago
      That might be true, but does not contradict the parent: if the design of the EU overall allows this to happen, it is indeed very undemocratic. How does the fact that the EP rejected it (multiple times), help the population of the EU states, that never pushed for this? Even worse: your argument implies, that the EU is enabling national politicians to push through unpopolar decisions, that likely would have no chance on a purely national stage.
Havoc 3mo ago
The global push to kill privacy makes me sad. Feels like I grew up in a golden age and subsequent generations won't care because they never knew a different world
- cyanydeez 3mo ago
  alright, but the important query is: this isn't happening in a vacuum, there's a lot of various forces. Lets say the primary force we need to prevent is russian influence campaigns that back and push far right nationalists who will destabilize democracy. Is that a sufficient reason for controls? It's always curious what people think about the actual content that's typically pushing these things.
  - cyanydeez 3mo ago
    seems like a lot of people either know way to much about the paradox of tolerance and how to wield it against people's best interest; or know nothing about it.
  - egorfine 3mo ago
    > Is that a sufficient reason for controls? no.
  - tjoff 3mo ago
    Is eroding privacy the only way to combat that?
  - budududuroiu 3mo ago
    to argue that the success of the far right nationalists is solely off the back of Russian disinformation campaigns ignores the material reality experienced by far right party voters
    - encom 3mo ago
      Are you suggesting that the right (excuse me, FAR right) have valid and meaningful criticisms of the current state of their nations? Sounds like russian bot speak to me. Please report for mandatory re-education.
sandworm101 3mo ago
So are they going to ban encrypted email? I am rather sure i could cobble together a chat UI whose backend was just email protocol. It would be needlessly complex, but all that ISPs would see is yet more encrypted email going back and forth.
- treyd 3mo ago
  Delta Chat does that but it's a bit janky.
- giuscri 3mo ago
  The recent times showed us that technical solutions are bananas. Guardrails must be put at the constitution level, or any tech bypass can be just declared illegal.
  - throwaway32980 3mo ago
    [dead]
- throw_await 3mo ago
  https://delta.chat/en/ https://delta.chat/en/
- Argonaut998 3mo ago
  They’ll just criminalise private encryption for communication afterwards.
  - monssooon 3mo ago
    Yeah I agree they will put people to prison for trying to get around chat control
kachurovskiy 3mo ago
Instead of the usual knee-jerk it would be nice to see some level-header analysis on mechanics of these things - who pays for the time of the people that decide to push this particular piece of legislation, how they manage to get into the door, who personally makes the proposal, how they gather support for it.
- Chu4eeno 3mo ago
  Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore (no joke).
  - cluckindan 3mo ago
    In other words, CIA.
  - merpkz 3mo ago
    What's in there for these people to push for chat control of all things?
- fwn 3mo ago
  Law enforcement at all levels traditionally has a strong lobbying presence. Their public affairs departments are well-funded and do not cease operations just because some initiatives are delayed due to temporary push back. Transparency legislation often does not apply to their efforts either.
  - AnthonyMouse 3mo ago
    Wait, law enforcement is part of the government. Why is there not a push to zero out their funding for lobbying?
    - miohtama 3mo ago
      Europol lobbies this with tax euros: Overcoming the complex challenges outlined above requires multifaceted policy considerations that focus on both societal resilience and enabling effective law enforcement within the EU’s robust legal framework. Key actions should include: Establishing lawful access by design to E2EE communication channels in cooperation with service providers and regulators. https://www.europol.europa.eu/media-press/newsroom/news/steal-deal-repeat-cybercriminals-cash-in-your-data https://www.europol.europa.eu/media-press/newsroom/news/stea...
AAAAaccountAAAA 3mo ago
I am getting somewhat confused about this. That website seems to be equating (semi-?)-reasonable measures with monstrosities such as banning or effectively banning e2ee.
- raverbashing 3mo ago
  Welcome to discussions on privacy on the internet :)
- latexr 3mo ago
  It’s important to understand this is not just a rando on the internet. This is a former Member of the European Parliament who has been criticising and sharing developments on Chat Control for years. The post isn’t made in a vacuum, but made with the knowledge of everything which has happened up to now, including the “Chat Control 2.0”, which is different from what’s happening now. Every concern you see there has been discussed at length on other posts on the same website.
varispeed 3mo ago
[dead]
yownie 3mo ago
why have we not heard more of a pushback from business and legal entities regarding privileged communication / protection of trade secrets?
ChrisArchitect 3mo ago
Related: European Commission's Metsola Overrides MEPs to Force Through Chat Control https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48657675 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48657675
shevy-java 3mo ago
We see here how lobbyists undermine democracies. Amazing how the EU commission does so unashamedly. It's basically the copy/paste system of the USA here. Big money wants laws. They have no shame in buying these laws.
moniosi 3mo ago
The common fallacy people have regarding chat control (and should be clarified) is that it's not like internet is made of a few select providers, anyone can open an encrypted tcp connection from an ip to another, and the global traffic is too massive to be scrutinized, also the most widely available apps already comply to the single police request to access conversations from suspects. This means that this will create further privacy for criminals such as pedophiles and mass espionage for the common man. It's also curious to notice that at every proposal stage, politicians are always conveniently exempt from the regulation, which is hilarious coming after the Files.
- topranks 3mo ago
  Yeah but messaging apps are really only useful if there are lots of people on them to message. So in the real world a relatively small number of providers, WhatsApp, Signal etc, are in a position where all your friends are going to be on them. And those are the ones likely to be named and told they need to implement image scanning/review.
  - megous 3mo ago
    Messaging protocols are useful even if everyone is not on the same app. In the past I was chatting with my google using friend via some third party jabber server where I had an account. It was useful and didn't require us to be "in the same app". We both were using both different apps and different server providers.
    - Hizonner 3mo ago
      But actual protocols are so last century. You might have to think ahead for fifteen minutes because the design has to be staaaa-a-ble. It's haa-a-ard! And you can't sell out to somebody who'll change it and have an exit event.
    - mort96 3mo ago
      > In the past Exactly. That time is mostly over.
zkmon 3mo ago
A blanket control affecting privacy would be bad. However we need controls that can prevent criminals from hiding behind anonymity and being able to organize massive activities just with a few online posts. These days it is trivial to organize and radicalize the youth into wrong paths overnight using social channels. You just need to say something that aligns with their problems, and most people get consumed by the divisive speech easily. The effect is already seen how the ability of rioters far exceeds that of the authorities during recent incidents in UK and other places. Something need to be done for this.
- trallnag 3mo ago
  This is just outright wrong. Europe in general has gotten less and less violent over the last decade. Despite evils like the internet, smartphones, and tiktok. I'd argue it has become more difficult to rile up people than it was 40 years ago
  - zkmon 3mo ago
    You are free to 'argue', but you need to read about how the modern riots are being organized on a massive scale, so that you can correct your argument.
    - amszmidt 3mo ago
      Would love to see some statistics on that.
    - ForceBru 3mo ago
      Petition to force everyone saying "you need to read about XYZ" to provide at least 2 sources where one can actually read about XYZ. - If you can't provide any sources, it's safe to assume you don't actually know what you're talking about. - If you can, but choose not to, why? This simply weakens your argument. - When you say "you need to read about XYZ", you probably WANT people to read about this, right? So why not point them at least to Wikipedia?
    - jagaerglad 3mo ago
kristjank 3mo ago
I have two observations to make here. 1. It seems that most of the evil here is concentrated among the liberal right and liberal left. Both far right AfD types and the left are against this. 2. A lot of positions, when clarified, just want to keep the (bad) status quo of CC1.0, while opposing 2.0, which was the much more totalitarian one. This also includes the crucial shadow rapporteurs. This is still not good, but unless I've understood something very wrongly here, this isn't the same as just pushing the worst version of chat control 2.0 through.
Argonaut998 3mo ago
There is nothing redeemable about this union anymore.
AJ007 3mo ago
RIP all of the open source European software initiatives.
Zufriedenheit 3mo ago
[dead]
trallnag 3mo ago
China, Russia, and friends will provide digital escape hatches for Western cititizens and vice versa it seems
junto 3mo ago
I think the EU politicians who continue to push this agenda should be investigated as to where the lobbying money is coming from. Looking across the Atlantic…
- petcat 3mo ago
  Yes everything stupid that the EU does to themselves is because of big bad USA... They are perfectly capable of doing idiotic stuff like this entirely on their own.
  - lionkor 3mo ago
    Yes, however there is history with this: - EU-US Passenger Name Record Agreement: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/EN/legal-content/summary/eu-us-agreement-on-airline-passenger-name-record-data.html https://eur-lex.europa.eu/EN/legal-content/summary/eu-us-agr... - EU PNR Directive 2016/681: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/2016/681/oj/eng https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/2016/681/oj/eng - EU-US SWIFT / Terrorist Finance Tracking Program Agreement: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:22010A0113%2801%29 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELE... - EU Data Retention Directive 2006/24/EC: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex:62012CJ0293 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex:62...
monssooon 3mo ago
Chat control is about controlling peoples life's and minds. The really scary part is how many actually wants this and mindlessly buy into the narrative the EU put forth about why it is needed. Also worth noting is that this was voted down earlier this year and if im not mistaken also a couple of years ago. But the legislators then just started a new slightly different bill and started nodging their population even harder, and tried again. And again. The people said no to this.. But apparently that does not matter?! Is this still a democracy? And are we criticizing totalitarian regimes for surveiling their people and not allowing free speech... And doing this to our own population? It seems so Bizar to me. Personally I don't know what to do. I have come to the conclusion that fighting again this is impossible because, in my opinion, no one listens even after a democratic vote as I said already... I'm disgusted by what we have become...
monssooon 3mo ago
I think the EU thinks that opposition to the EU must be from foreign actors. This is why citizens has to be surveiled so that the EU can catch the foreign actors or some goofy crap like that. My point being that the opposition to the EU comes from EU citizens of the EU... Because the EU make stuff like chat control... Or it could be we have fully crossed over into stasi territory already and they are having a great cozy party while they make life more and more unbearable for the population?!
asxndu 3mo ago
In cybernetics, there is a saying that; "The purpose of a system is what it does". By observation, the purpose governments is to run scams. After all, it makes no sense to attribute their purpose to things they consistently fail to do. Relevant music vide featuring Stafford Beer, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqBBNjkAlXM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqBBNjkAlXM
0x_rs 3mo ago
People are getting real EU fatigue from both sides of the spectrum. The attacks on privacy are the most concerning, the members of the high level group pushing for ChatControl and other surveillance state measures are still anonymous, while the Commissioner's Pfizer chats are still nowhere to be found--not that they would be subjected to the same surveillance as the little people. The needs of those bureaucrats sitting in their glass windowed buildings--with AC still running on their tallest floors where the commission staff works, while shut down on the lower ones--clearly do not match what the average person wants or expects. How much can they push it further? They're only adding fuel to the fire that will replace them with something just as bad, if not worse. It's hard not to be skeptical considering the exceptional level of lobbying steering regulations. The latest is the utterly idiotic, anti-consumer de minimis threshold changes, with an incomprehensible "per category" fee on every purchase outside the EU, lobbied for by EuroCommerce, killing entire hobbyist fields (e.g. anything to do with electronics) in the continent.
- miohtama 3mo ago
  And people are surprised of the rise of far right, especially anti EU one
  - izacus 3mo ago
    The right is a massive supporter for all of these authoritarian pushes, so what exactly are you trying to say?
    - wizzwizz4 3mo ago
      Creating a problem, positioning yourself as the solution, and using any power you are given to exacerbate the problem, is an unfortunately-viable strategy. In theory, journalism can let the air out of the strategy, but someone's been going 'round killing or suborning the journalism organisations, so that's a bit tricky at the moment.
tdrz 3mo ago
I have to admit that I don't understand how they can push for this so often! Wasn't this rejected not so long ago?
- sunshine-o 3mo ago
  Last time was in march, now it is about every 3 months.
- mike_hearn 3mo ago
  This "keep asking until they say yes" strategy is by design and has been a common tactic used by the EU power centers in the past. See the way the Treaty of Lisbon was rejected in referendums, and then people were just made to vote again. Or the way the British pro-EU faction proclaimed in 2016 that Leave/Remain was a once in a generation vote to settle the issue for all time, then immediately started agitating for an aptly named People's Vote that would rerun the referendum again. The EU is not a democratic system. It's specifically designed to undermine and eventually end the post-WW2 democracies through a mix of deception and bureaucratic manipulation. The never ending Chat Control story is a totally standard example. That's not a conspiracy theory either, there are lots of quotes from senior EU figures where they say all this stuff directly: > If it's a 'Yes,' we will say "On we go!" and if it's a 'No' we will say "We continue!" (Junker, talking about the votes on the Lisbon Treaty) > We decide on something, leave it lying around and wait and see what happens. If no one kicks up a fuss, because most people don't understand what has been decided we continue step by step until there is no turning back. (Junker again, on the general EU methodology) > When people ask politicians today “What will become of Europe?” or “Where is European integration heading?”, we usually give an evasive answer. “We don’t want a super state” that is generally the first thing we say. I must admit that I have in the past often resorted to this kind of thing myself. (Viviane Reading, former vice president) > We know that nine out of 10 people will not have read the Constitution and will vote on the basis of what politicians and journalists say. More than that, if the answer is No, the vote will probably have to be done again, because it absolutely has to be Yes. (Jean-Luc Dehaene, Former Belgian Prime Minister and Vice-President of the EU Convention) > I have never understood why public opinion about European ideas should be taken into account. (Raymond Barre, former French Prime Minister) There are endless quotes like these. You get a sense of the ideology found in the EU institutions by reading them. It's an ideology that never takes no for an answer, believes in its own manifest destiny and views the act of centralizing power as the central moral mission of their generation. So of course Chat Control is an unkillable zombie.
r_lee 3mo ago
I love the Freedom loving Free and democratic European Union!!!!!
p0w3n3d 3mo ago
Most people in EU I have nothing to hide Also those people I couldn't call you mom because the Facebook was down. What? What is a phone number?
Nidhug 3mo ago
There should be some mechanism to block these repeated attempts.
- 472936721 3mo ago
  [dead]
- rdwrrr 3mo ago
  The machine is working exactly as intended.
ed_voc 3mo ago
For Americans, this process is called a trilogue. It is analogous to the White House a group of House and Senate members meeting in private to negotiate a bill, with most related documents being heavily redacted. MEPs can pass the resulting deal or try to amend it. But amendments often mean the bill is pulled back into another trilogue rather than properly debated and rewritten in public. The bill never gets debated, and the bill never gets rejected, so the commission can keep trying until it gets passed
HackerThemAll 3mo ago
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741 points by NeutralForest 3mo ago

blfr 3mo ago

First, why does the EU leadership refuse to learn from falling behind the US economically and technologically, most starkly with AI recently, and their failures in regulating the Internet, most annoyingly the cookie law? And why aren't you, the EU citizen, more annoyed by it? I see a lot of pro-EU content on this site when they're terrible on both tech and entrepreneurship. Second, what's up with Denmmark pushing for it here? They're usually very reasonable.

enedil 3mo ago
> most annoying the cookie law Also, the least consequential even ignoring often stated fact that cookie banners are malicious compliance. I care much less about cookie banners than about the ads, and for both of I have uBlock origin filters. So, what to be angry about exactly?
- olejorgenb 3mo ago
  And either 80% of banners are not respecting the law, or the law managed to omit mandating making it as easy to reject as accept... Rejecting usually require you to enter into settings and sometimes click "reject" for every individual partner(!)
  - vikaveri 3mo ago
    That was the case in the beginning, for a while. Now I rarely see even ones where I have to click Settings and Reject all, usually it's just Accept all and Accept only essential. No dark patterns just two equally visible buttons. Often also just "We use only essential cookies" and OK button because they don't have 1138 partners they want to sell your data to
    - GTP 3mo ago
      And in the latter case, they could even not put any banner at all and still be compliant. The GDPR requires consent only for tracking.
    - olejorgenb 3mo ago
      I also see more of these, but I'd say still around half require more click for "reject non-essential"
  - retired 3mo ago
    The largest Dutch tech website doesn’t adhere to the cookie law. They ever reported about websites not adhering to the law while not adhering to the law themselves.
- EdiX 3mo ago
  "Cookie banners are malicious compliance" is starting to wear thin as an excuse. GDPR went into law in 2018, almost ten years ago and for almost as long websites have been "maliciously complying". If you don't don anything about it at some point it's not malicious anymore, it's just how the law is meant to be interpreted. I have a different hypothesis for why the GDPR exists: it is to create a market for EU based compliance companies.
graemep 3mo ago
Denmark have been pushing for chat control for a long time. The American view of the EU is very much a grass is greener one. They see the things that are better than in the US but not the things that are worse.
- blfr 3mo ago
  Yes, I know they've been pushing for this when they're pretty reasonable and independent on other issues. How come?
  - sph 3mo ago
    I don't want to enter into conspiracy territory, but it seems that there's a big insistence from whomever is behind pushing for this to pass at any cost. First it was Denmark, now the EU parliament president, a Maltese. What's for certain is that those that stand to benefit massively are governments and politicians themselves. And no, it's certainly not that bullshit astroturfed story that has been going around, of Meta behind this concerted effort across the Western world because they're too lazy to validate one's age.
    - microtonal 3mo ago
      How would members of the EP benefit from Chat Control?
      - freehorse 3mo ago
        Not sure what OP meant, but they talked about goverments and "politicians" rather than EP specifically. I think several EU governments want chat control paving the way for domestic surveillance. Though I don't consider that conspiracy theory really. Last years, there have been big scandal cases with use of pegasus, predator and similar spy software from several EU governments for domestic surveillance (eg Greece, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Spain). The issue is that legal surveillance, the regular phone tapping kind, is inefficient due to people using E2EE chat apps rather than regular phone calls and SMS. There is no legal basis for the more advanced spyware afaik, so these surveillance cases were illegal and kinda "off the books", even though rather widespread. A legal way to surveil the people would be welcome to those who did that and those who want to do the same.
basisword 3mo ago
European here. I like the cookie law. It's made it clear to people how much we're being tracked and I can choose to opt out. The implementation could of course be better but the real issue is the scummy web devs choosing to make it as annoying as possible instead of taking the more sensible decision to not have 150 trackers on every page. >> I see a lot of pro-EU content on this site when they're terrible on both tech and entrepreneurship. Life is bigger than tech or entrepreneurship. In the 00's I dreamed of moving to the US. That's changed, especially over the last decade. If I was offered a huge salary tomorrow to work in the US I would turn it down.
- microgpt 3mo ago
  Website operators hate these cookies popups because they make their website more annoying and make me more likely to press the back button and click on a different website. As it should be. This incentivizes them to stop tracking me.
  - dminik 3mo ago
    Why then do they make the most annoying, user-hostile dark pattern cookie banners they can come up with? No, website operators hate that they have to either stop spamming thousands of tracker scripts or put up a banner. They found out that they can offload blame on the EU instead and so have chosen to make the web as annoying as possible.
    - dgellow 3mo ago
      Most of them don’t care and just integrate whatever is the most common cookie banner widget because their legal team asked them to
    - anonzzzies 3mo ago
      Yeah, that's more the point; in discussions with clients I very often get asked how far we can go without any consent. Most companies want all the privacy ignoring stuff and they don't want to tell their users about it.
dgellow 3mo ago
The population doesn’t support chat control. The European Parliament rejected the chat control proposal earlier this year. Now it seems that the European Parliament president is trying to bypass that
- monssooon 3mo ago
  Well put
bluecalm 3mo ago
It's not like we can do anything. We don't have democracy - we can't vote on issues and we (in most countries) can't even vote on people. We just vote on 2-3 non-fringe parties and they choose people and policies. You may formally put an X next to some name but it's just a chosen party official. They need to walk party line and be in good standings with the leadership to even get on the list. There is just nothing you can do really in that system other than pursue career in politics which is a no-go for most people for obvious reasons.
- basisword 3mo ago
  >> We don't have democracy - we can't vote on issues This is how democracy works pretty much everywhere. You vote for parties or people based on their policies.
  - bluecalm 3mo ago
    There are too many levels of indirection. At least in some countries you can vote on a person representing your town/area. This is one level of indirection less and allows people who aren't just chosen party members to win and then they have incentives to help the region. In "standard" party democracy there is just nothing that can be done. Calling it democracy as in rule of the people is a disgrace.
  - Argonaut998 3mo ago
    The problem with the EU is that there are many levels of abstraction, and the more links in a chain the more susceptible to corruption it is. This becomes immediately obvious when you vote for a party who fails to fulfill, or even go against their policies. Then for the EU there’s an additional level of abstraction for the commission. At this level, the voter is far removed from their initial vote and are completely powerless.
- blfr 3mo ago
  Yeah, we can: I am from Poland and precisely through this mechanism our MEPs/delegates/nominates know that supporting this would be a disaster for their political group right here back home regardless of direct voting.
ezst 3mo ago
> falling behind the US economically and technologically Are you even human? Do you really believe what you say? Doesn't it come across as absurd, from everything that happened to the US since the Snowden revelations, the Patriot Act, spiraling into fascism, a first time attacking science and democracy, a second time to install oligarchs, traitors, corrupt and incompetents to run the state, with the result of tanking your real economy (on every metric that's not related to AI), burning down your soft power, burning bridges with every ally, losing the war against Iran, and causing a generational talent exodus out of the US? Oh yeah, by no means am I blindly defending "the EU leadership", but some reality check is much needed.
- nxm 3mo ago
  [flagged]
  - tokioyoyo 3mo ago
    This gets brought up a lot, and I’m not sure how to explain it. But inconsequential complete free speech is not the top issue for some people. People have different priorities.
  - tokai 3mo ago
    Right now people in the US are being designated as terrorist for being against the government.
    - dgellow 3mo ago
      And people are literally arrested for touching a pool
  - pbkompasz 3mo ago
    And at least people are not shot in the streets by the police for protesting...
    - vjjsejj 3mo ago
gib444 3mo ago
Why does any country or bloc need to learn lessons about "falling behind" the US? Why is that the yard stick? I certainly don't spend all day dreaming of F150s, McMansions, the psychopaths leading silicon valley, 9 lane highways, US style PE, and world-class fascist politicians such as Trump Dear lord
- nxm 3mo ago
  [flagged]
  - deleted 3mo ago
    [deleted]
  - rockinghigh 3mo ago
    The US is also falling behind Chinese manufacturing. They had to ban Chinese cars because legacy American automakers couldn't compete.
    - Chu4eeno 3mo ago
      China just recently had to ban their own companies from selling cars below cost. It's not a clear win for China, their car companies are struggling.
  - yownie 3mo ago
    [flagged]
- spacebanana7 3mo ago
  A couple of decades ago both France and Britain had higher per capita GDP than the US. Now they are significantly behind. Similarly top European companies used to rival American companies in profitability, power and valuation. There’s not really an equivalent of FAANG/ NVIDIA in Europe, just ASML and LVMH.
  - thrance 3mo ago
iamnothere 3mo ago
Denmark’s recent reasonableness is somewhat of a historical aberration if you look at their history. The migrant crisis (and the failure of governments to address it) has stirred up some ugly things there.
- tokai 3mo ago
  What do you mean the migrant crisis stirred up things? The anti immigration position in danish politics has been a winning position since the mid 00's.
  - iamnothere 3mo ago
    As the crisis has worsened across Europe, Denmark started unbelievably intrusive AI-enabled mass surveillance of welfare recipients (almost 15% of the population), dangerous infrastructure which could be applied to the population as a whole. And I’d argue that fears over migrant-driven crime are what allowed Denmark’s politicians to push for Chat Control in the first place.
    - tokai 3mo ago
      Yeah no I don't buy that, and have never heard that angle before. Surveillance in Denmark is much older than that. Since the personal ID number was rolled out in 1968 its been one long process of integrating public systems with each other to surveil and control. Surveillance of welfare recipients started getting serious in the 00's too. The migrant crisis drove polices like the confiscations of jewelry from foreigners, and public funded commercials in the middle east telling people to stay away. Internally chat control and migration are never talked about together. Chat control has no leverage on migration in Denmark. Its not a factor that would change anything. It's all about international treaties making it impossible to send people out of the country forcefully. That's the policy the migrant crisis really ignited.
      - tough 3mo ago
        I'd say the AI powered aspects of it is whats troubling. We know how trustable ai outputs are, and now govts' are ready to let the AI's control their people? https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/11/denmark-ai-powered-welfare-system-fuels-mass-surveillance-and-risks-discriminating-against-marginalized-groups-report/ https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/11/denmark-ai-po...
m4nu3l 3mo ago
The education system has failed in the EU, but in a different way than it has in the US. I realised this when people thought mandating the USB-C connections was a good idea because "it is the best standard". I didn't think the mandated connector was a huge deal per se, but it made it clear to me that there is a flawed thought process behind EU regulations. And this is a big deal. Many things are not really understood in the EU. The majority don't seem to understand free speech. The EU has an article about free speech that clearly states there is no free speech, but people point to it when they claim there is.
- 9dev 3mo ago
  Of all things to criticise, you pick out the one ruling that eventually lead to a consolidation of chargers? Really? I haven't ever met a single person who wasn't grateful of being able to have one cable for all their devices.
  - m4nu3l 3mo ago
    This is exactly what I'm talking about. A short-term view of the world, progress and technology. All my devices supported USB-C before the EU regulation. But if I wanted to buy a device with a new type of connector, I should have been able to. This is how the USB-C came to be and how any new standard in hardware happens. New technologies are made and just sold, and if they are proven to be superior to others in the market, they often become standards. The USB-C standard is not the best standard that can exist from now to the end of the universe, but if this discovery process is blocked, we will be stuck with it forever, which, of course, will also constrain the design and engineering of devices in other ways. It's the same fundamental flawed thought process that has made the EU reliant on the US for a lot of services.
    - 9dev 3mo ago
      > All my devices supported USB-C before the EU regulation. I don't have this particular problem so it doesn't exist! It did exist for huge amounts of people. At the time, many manufacturers had proprietary plugs and would still have them if it weren't for this decision. > The USB-C standard is not the best standard that can exist from now to the end of the universe Which is why the law can be simply amended as soon as such a standard emerges. If the industry figures out something better than USB-C, pressure will build on the council to do so. This is nothing but a straw man.
tmtvl 3mo ago
> And why aren't you, the EU citizen, more annoyed by it? Because the USA tends to privilege corporations over people whereas in the EU it's more balanced (still pretty biased towards corps, though), and I am a people, not a corporations. Take, for example, the 'cookie law': I much prefer being annoyed by the cookie pop-up over websites shoving a ton of unnecessary and unwanted cookies onto my computer without permission. ...speaking of which: > and their failures in regulating the Internet Which political entity would you say has done the best job in regulating the Internet? Where are citizens most protected from being inundated with advertising, unwanted cookies, unnecessary JavaScript, false news, scams, and all the other garbage one is normally subjected to when not putting in some amount of effort in combating that shit?
- wqaatwt 3mo ago
  And because you are grateful for the cookie policies you don’t mind rewarding them with unlimited access all your private communication? I don’t really follow this argument.. > would you say has done the best job in regulating the Internet So again.. how do these basic/superficial (or even if they are extremely effective and useful, that doesn’t really change anything) regulations justify mass surveillance? > false news For what its worth in no way has the EU been effective in doing anything about this (I’m not sure they even tried doing anything that directly addressed it?)
  - tmtvl 3mo ago
    > And because you are grateful for the cookie policies you don’t mind rewarding them with unlimited access all your private communication? No. Where do you even come up with this stuff? > So again.. how do these basic/superficial (or even if they are extremely effective and useful, that doesn’t really change anything) regulations justify mass surveillance? Answering a question with a question only works if the question used as answer is a simpler way of getting the answer to the original question. > For what its worth in no way has the EU been effective in doing anything about [fake news] Okay, so which country/state/union/whatever has been effective in doing anything about it? Because according to the post I responded to there is someone way better at regulating the Internet than the EU is, so I'm wondering who it is.
GTP 3mo ago
While the EU is not perfect and surely needs improvement in many areas, it is still better than not having it. This is why you see a lot of pro-EU content: many people here (myself included) are of the opinion that the EU needs to be improved, not dismantled.
- logicchains 3mo ago
  >While the EU is not perfect and surely needs improvement in many areas, it is still better than not having it. Would you still believe this if Chat Control got though? What good did the EU bring that's good enough to make up for the badness of everyone in Europe having all their private digital communications constantly scanned?
  - GTP 3mo ago
    Yes, definitely. Just as an example, my country wouldn't have a lot of consumer protection laws we now have thanks to the EU. As a concrete example, there used to be a single phone service provider acting as a monopolist and we had the highest phone bills in the EU. When this started to change, it still wasn't possible to keep the same phone number when switching providers, which is a huge thing for businesses and freelancers. The EU forced our government to change this. And I'm not even talking about all the financial help that we got from the EU. Which, admittedly, was used poorly by my politicians. But this isn't the EU's fault, it's their fault.
    - joe_mamba 3mo ago
      Which country are you referring to?
  - Krssst 3mo ago
    If Chat Control gets through, it means the Parliament approved it, which means the EU people voted for politicians that supported the idea. If the EU got dismantled, the same politicians would be elected (they won once why not twice) and do it again at the local level. (though, maybe not in every country)
pteraspidomorph 3mo ago
Remember it's also coming for you: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/06/kids-act-would-require-age-checks-get-online https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/06/kids-act-would-require... > The KIDS Act Regulates Private Messages, Too
monssooon 3mo ago
I think Denmark is one of the most surveiled countries. And with the most compliant population. They call it trust... Denmark is not the fairytale they try to market them selves as. This is closer to their true color in my opinion. You could also try to look up the cases with former and current politicians in dk who actually have gotten caught perpetrating the very thing chat control is said to stop. I'm to afraid of the f'ing EU to mention specific names here... But maybe some braver souls will
- joe_mamba 3mo ago
  Denmark would also sterilize indigenous Greenland population and immigrants back in the 1950s-1960s. THey have a dark side few people know about.
yesco 3mo ago
[flagged]
palata 3mo ago
> refuse to learn from falling behind the US economically The EU economy has been slowing down since 2007, the peak production of conventional oil. The US is still producing oil, which is why the US economy is better. People love to think that they are richer or more successful because they are smarter. The fact is that the economy goes up when there is an abundance of energy, period. So there is nothing to learn from falling behind the US economically, other than "the EU needs to adapt to the reality of its economy measurably slowing down". And following the US and their lack of regulations and tendency towards a fascist economy (with BigTech working together with the ruling class) is not the right direction, IMO. > I see a lot of pro-EU content on this site when they're terrible on both tech and entrepreneurship. Tech and entrepreneurs usually want to become rich by producing more. The best places to do that are where the is money, which is where the economy grows, which is where there is an abundance of cheap fossil fuels. Entrepreneurs usually say "remove the regulations and our economy will grow again", but what they mean, really, is "remove the regulations and I will get rich, because I am on the side of those who would benefit from it".

elric 3mo ago

This is going to further increase anti-EU sentiment. This is unacceptable behaviour, but no politician is ever going to experience any negative consequences over this because they're so very far removed from the democratic process.

microtonal 3mo ago
Still, this is mostly pushed by particular countries (e.g. Denmark), the commission and aggressively pursued by lobbyist. The most democratic body in the EU (the EP) has so far always rejected Chat Control. Without the EU, this would have been introduced in some member countries much earlier (see also UK).
- elric 3mo ago
  Yes, EP has rejected it, and now the president of the EP is ignoring that outcome.
- ajsnigrutin 3mo ago
  It only has to pass once, and we have to scream about it every goddamn time try try. And they'll try and try again and again.
- logicchains 3mo ago
  >Without the EU, this would have been introduced in some member countries much earlier (see also UK). And without the EU there'd be some states in which it would never be introduced. Decentralization is what made Europe so successful historically compared to large centralized empires like China and the Ottomans, and the EU is destroying that.
  - dgellow 3mo ago
    What you call decentralization and „so successful“ resulted in constant wars and conflicts. Europe would be in a way worse place right now without some form of union like the EU

Lucasoato 3mo ago

This is so wrong, but here’s another reason: a centralized totalitarian approach could look like a very pragmatic way to exercise control and governance on the population. This is true though only if your technical capabilities are at a similar or higher level of your competitors. In the European case we have neither the technology advancement of the US, or the supply chain control of China. This means that a centralized approach is only going to create a larger vulnerability surface for an external attacker. A decentralized, privacy and security first approach isn’t only right for moral/ethical reasons. It’s the only way we have to defend ourselves, even if we had a fascist government.

augment_me 3mo ago
You could also view it from the perspective of that if every other major superpower has their mass surveillance and you don't, it becomes an assymetrical informational situation where foreign governments can influence your citizens, but you cannot influence the foreign citizens since they are surveilled and their informational diet is restricted. In some sense Chat Control is a geopolitical necessity for the EU, there is no choice to not do it.

peterspath 3mo ago

Just 4 countries are against: Czech Republic, Italy, Netherlands, and Poland. https://fightchatcontrol.eu/ https://fightchatcontrol.eu/

sph 3mo ago
There's a lot of flip-flopping. I'm surprised Italy changed their mind when they were very in favour until recently.
- baliex 3mo ago
  I guess that’s how it eventually goes through. When, at random, enough flippers flop or floppers flip that it tips the balance. And once it’s done it’s done. The relentlessness does not continue into, “are you sure?”, it’ll be over. For the record, I’m in the EU and do not want this to pass.
blain 3mo ago
Does governments have any say in this? If not then most MEPs of mentioned countries are too in favor of Chat Control. This is what it says when you click on one of the 4 countries.
- somewhereoutth 3mo ago
  The EU is predicated on the pooled sovereignty of its constituent countries, as exercised thought the EU Council. Apart from a limited number of certain matters, any EU country can veto any decision made by the EU Commission, or indeed the EU Parliament.
- bluebarbet 3mo ago
  EU law 101: (1) EU Commission (i.e. the executive) proposes a law; (2) EU Parliament signs off on it; (3) EU Council (i.e. the equivalent of a senate, comprising national governments) puts the final stamp on it. The complicating factor being that a given law may or may not require unanimity at the final EU Council stage. In general, the governments have the final word.

roer 3mo ago

Might make sense to message the MEP's that oppose chat control moreso the ones that support it. Maybe they can use some of their internal influence to sway some people. I'm pessimistic about the amount of weight these representatives are giving to emails from citizens

r721 3mo ago

Related recent discussion: >European Commission's Metsola Overrides MEPs to Force Through Chat Control https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48657675 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48657675 (45 comments)

7373848484 3mo ago

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aquir 3mo ago

What's to point of all this? Everyone will use Signal or some other E2E encrypted messenger, this is just bone tossing. Useless politicans spending time on useless things.

sharperguy 3mo ago
They are talking about mandatory on-device scanning. E2E doesn't solve this.
afh1 3mo ago
Chat control takes screenshots of your phone. E2EE is useless. It's government mandated spyware.
varispeed 3mo ago
In every authoritarian regime people spent considerable amount of time on workarounds. Underground press, parallel education etc. this is just another iteration of Stasi like regime, just with a nicer suit and better PR. In reality this should have been rejected wholesale and people proposing this barred from any public sector jobs, or even arrested for terrorist attack attempt (Chat Control fulfils definition of terrorism).
wqaatwt 3mo ago
So the EU will just tell Apple and Google to remove Signal from their app stores and 95-99% of the population won’t bother figuring out it exists..
- trallnag 3mo ago
  Maybe the EU can work together with Russia on the Max messenger
- torginus 3mo ago
  And as always, the only people who will bother will be the few% who are involved in some sort of illegal activity.

hoppp 3mo ago

They just can't let it go. Is it democracy if they keep pushing agendas even if they are voted down?

Gingersnap123 3mo ago
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ttoinou 3mo ago
It's an open secret the european union has nothing to do with the will of the people
- hhh 3mo ago
  plenty of people desire something like this, and 'saving the children' is their genuine intent and desire. Humanity is willing to shoot itself in the foot again and again, there's no need for it to be some shadowy cabal.
  - constantius 3mo ago
    Plenty of people do want more surveillance, but that's not why EU politicians are doing this. Seeking to implement surveillance across an entire continent cannot be explained by "the will of the people". Danes might want surveillance for their children, but I can't imagine them lobbying their EU representatives to also protect the children in France as well.
- surgical_fire 3mo ago
  This is bullshit. The EU parliament is the organ that shot it down so far. Read the article. It is the national governments pushing this shit. They try to launder if through the EU because passing those legislations locally would likely be very unpopular.
  - remolueoend 3mo ago
    That might be true, but does not contradict the parent: if the design of the EU overall allows this to happen, it is indeed very undemocratic. How does the fact that the EP rejected it (multiple times), help the population of the EU states, that never pushed for this? Even worse: your argument implies, that the EU is enabling national politicians to push through unpopolar decisions, that likely would have no chance on a purely national stage.

Havoc 3mo ago

The global push to kill privacy makes me sad. Feels like I grew up in a golden age and subsequent generations won't care because they never knew a different world

cyanydeez 3mo ago
alright, but the important query is: this isn't happening in a vacuum, there's a lot of various forces. Lets say the primary force we need to prevent is russian influence campaigns that back and push far right nationalists who will destabilize democracy. Is that a sufficient reason for controls? It's always curious what people think about the actual content that's typically pushing these things.
- cyanydeez 3mo ago
  seems like a lot of people either know way to much about the paradox of tolerance and how to wield it against people's best interest; or know nothing about it.
- egorfine 3mo ago
  > Is that a sufficient reason for controls? no.
- tjoff 3mo ago
  Is eroding privacy the only way to combat that?
- budududuroiu 3mo ago
  to argue that the success of the far right nationalists is solely off the back of Russian disinformation campaigns ignores the material reality experienced by far right party voters
  - encom 3mo ago
    Are you suggesting that the right (excuse me, FAR right) have valid and meaningful criticisms of the current state of their nations? Sounds like russian bot speak to me. Please report for mandatory re-education.

sandworm101 3mo ago

So are they going to ban encrypted email? I am rather sure i could cobble together a chat UI whose backend was just email protocol. It would be needlessly complex, but all that ISPs would see is yet more encrypted email going back and forth.

treyd 3mo ago
Delta Chat does that but it's a bit janky.
giuscri 3mo ago
The recent times showed us that technical solutions are bananas. Guardrails must be put at the constitution level, or any tech bypass can be just declared illegal.
- throwaway32980 3mo ago
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throw_await 3mo ago
https://delta.chat/en/ https://delta.chat/en/
Argonaut998 3mo ago
They’ll just criminalise private encryption for communication afterwards.
- monssooon 3mo ago
  Yeah I agree they will put people to prison for trying to get around chat control

kachurovskiy 3mo ago

Instead of the usual knee-jerk it would be nice to see some level-header analysis on mechanics of these things - who pays for the time of the people that decide to push this particular piece of legislation, how they manage to get into the door, who personally makes the proposal, how they gather support for it.

Chu4eeno 3mo ago
Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore (no joke).
- cluckindan 3mo ago
  In other words, CIA.
- merpkz 3mo ago
  What's in there for these people to push for chat control of all things?
fwn 3mo ago
Law enforcement at all levels traditionally has a strong lobbying presence. Their public affairs departments are well-funded and do not cease operations just because some initiatives are delayed due to temporary push back. Transparency legislation often does not apply to their efforts either.
- AnthonyMouse 3mo ago
  Wait, law enforcement is part of the government. Why is there not a push to zero out their funding for lobbying?
  - miohtama 3mo ago
    Europol lobbies this with tax euros: Overcoming the complex challenges outlined above requires multifaceted policy considerations that focus on both societal resilience and enabling effective law enforcement within the EU’s robust legal framework. Key actions should include: Establishing lawful access by design to E2EE communication channels in cooperation with service providers and regulators. https://www.europol.europa.eu/media-press/newsroom/news/steal-deal-repeat-cybercriminals-cash-in-your-data https://www.europol.europa.eu/media-press/newsroom/news/stea...

AAAAaccountAAAA 3mo ago

I am getting somewhat confused about this. That website seems to be equating (semi-?)-reasonable measures with monstrosities such as banning or effectively banning e2ee.

raverbashing 3mo ago
Welcome to discussions on privacy on the internet :)
latexr 3mo ago
It’s important to understand this is not just a rando on the internet. This is a former Member of the European Parliament who has been criticising and sharing developments on Chat Control for years. The post isn’t made in a vacuum, but made with the knowledge of everything which has happened up to now, including the “Chat Control 2.0”, which is different from what’s happening now. Every concern you see there has been discussed at length on other posts on the same website.

varispeed 3mo ago

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yownie 3mo ago

why have we not heard more of a pushback from business and legal entities regarding privileged communication / protection of trade secrets?

ChrisArchitect 3mo ago

Related: European Commission's Metsola Overrides MEPs to Force Through Chat Control https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48657675 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48657675

shevy-java 3mo ago

We see here how lobbyists undermine democracies. Amazing how the EU commission does so unashamedly. It's basically the copy/paste system of the USA here. Big money wants laws. They have no shame in buying these laws.

moniosi 3mo ago

The common fallacy people have regarding chat control (and should be clarified) is that it's not like internet is made of a few select providers, anyone can open an encrypted tcp connection from an ip to another, and the global traffic is too massive to be scrutinized, also the most widely available apps already comply to the single police request to access conversations from suspects. This means that this will create further privacy for criminals such as pedophiles and mass espionage for the common man. It's also curious to notice that at every proposal stage, politicians are always conveniently exempt from the regulation, which is hilarious coming after the Files.

topranks 3mo ago
Yeah but messaging apps are really only useful if there are lots of people on them to message. So in the real world a relatively small number of providers, WhatsApp, Signal etc, are in a position where all your friends are going to be on them. And those are the ones likely to be named and told they need to implement image scanning/review.
- megous 3mo ago
  Messaging protocols are useful even if everyone is not on the same app. In the past I was chatting with my google using friend via some third party jabber server where I had an account. It was useful and didn't require us to be "in the same app". We both were using both different apps and different server providers.
  - Hizonner 3mo ago
    But actual protocols are so last century. You might have to think ahead for fifteen minutes because the design has to be staaaa-a-ble. It's haa-a-ard! And you can't sell out to somebody who'll change it and have an exit event.
  - mort96 3mo ago
    > In the past Exactly. That time is mostly over.

zkmon 3mo ago

A blanket control affecting privacy would be bad. However we need controls that can prevent criminals from hiding behind anonymity and being able to organize massive activities just with a few online posts. These days it is trivial to organize and radicalize the youth into wrong paths overnight using social channels. You just need to say something that aligns with their problems, and most people get consumed by the divisive speech easily. The effect is already seen how the ability of rioters far exceeds that of the authorities during recent incidents in UK and other places. Something need to be done for this.

trallnag 3mo ago
This is just outright wrong. Europe in general has gotten less and less violent over the last decade. Despite evils like the internet, smartphones, and tiktok. I'd argue it has become more difficult to rile up people than it was 40 years ago
- zkmon 3mo ago
  You are free to 'argue', but you need to read about how the modern riots are being organized on a massive scale, so that you can correct your argument.
  - amszmidt 3mo ago
    Would love to see some statistics on that.
  - ForceBru 3mo ago
    Petition to force everyone saying "you need to read about XYZ" to provide at least 2 sources where one can actually read about XYZ. - If you can't provide any sources, it's safe to assume you don't actually know what you're talking about. - If you can, but choose not to, why? This simply weakens your argument. - When you say "you need to read about XYZ", you probably WANT people to read about this, right? So why not point them at least to Wikipedia?
  - jagaerglad 3mo ago

kristjank 3mo ago

I have two observations to make here. 1. It seems that most of the evil here is concentrated among the liberal right and liberal left. Both far right AfD types and the left are against this. 2. A lot of positions, when clarified, just want to keep the (bad) status quo of CC1.0, while opposing 2.0, which was the much more totalitarian one. This also includes the crucial shadow rapporteurs. This is still not good, but unless I've understood something very wrongly here, this isn't the same as just pushing the worst version of chat control 2.0 through.

Argonaut998 3mo ago

There is nothing redeemable about this union anymore.

AJ007 3mo ago

RIP all of the open source European software initiatives.

Zufriedenheit 3mo ago

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trallnag 3mo ago

China, Russia, and friends will provide digital escape hatches for Western cititizens and vice versa it seems

junto 3mo ago

I think the EU politicians who continue to push this agenda should be investigated as to where the lobbying money is coming from. Looking across the Atlantic…

petcat 3mo ago
Yes everything stupid that the EU does to themselves is because of big bad USA... They are perfectly capable of doing idiotic stuff like this entirely on their own.
- lionkor 3mo ago
  Yes, however there is history with this: - EU-US Passenger Name Record Agreement: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/EN/legal-content/summary/eu-us-agreement-on-airline-passenger-name-record-data.html https://eur-lex.europa.eu/EN/legal-content/summary/eu-us-agr... - EU PNR Directive 2016/681: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/2016/681/oj/eng https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/2016/681/oj/eng - EU-US SWIFT / Terrorist Finance Tracking Program Agreement: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:22010A0113%2801%29 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELE... - EU Data Retention Directive 2006/24/EC: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex:62012CJ0293 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex:62...

monssooon 3mo ago

Chat control is about controlling peoples life's and minds. The really scary part is how many actually wants this and mindlessly buy into the narrative the EU put forth about why it is needed. Also worth noting is that this was voted down earlier this year and if im not mistaken also a couple of years ago. But the legislators then just started a new slightly different bill and started nodging their population even harder, and tried again. And again. The people said no to this.. But apparently that does not matter?! Is this still a democracy? And are we criticizing totalitarian regimes for surveiling their people and not allowing free speech... And doing this to our own population? It seems so Bizar to me. Personally I don't know what to do. I have come to the conclusion that fighting again this is impossible because, in my opinion, no one listens even after a democratic vote as I said already... I'm disgusted by what we have become...

monssooon 3mo ago

I think the EU thinks that opposition to the EU must be from foreign actors. This is why citizens has to be surveiled so that the EU can catch the foreign actors or some goofy crap like that. My point being that the opposition to the EU comes from EU citizens of the EU... Because the EU make stuff like chat control... Or it could be we have fully crossed over into stasi territory already and they are having a great cozy party while they make life more and more unbearable for the population?!

asxndu 3mo ago

In cybernetics, there is a saying that; "The purpose of a system is what it does". By observation, the purpose governments is to run scams. After all, it makes no sense to attribute their purpose to things they consistently fail to do. Relevant music vide featuring Stafford Beer, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqBBNjkAlXM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqBBNjkAlXM

0x_rs 3mo ago

People are getting real EU fatigue from both sides of the spectrum. The attacks on privacy are the most concerning, the members of the high level group pushing for ChatControl and other surveillance state measures are still anonymous, while the Commissioner's Pfizer chats are still nowhere to be found--not that they would be subjected to the same surveillance as the little people. The needs of those bureaucrats sitting in their glass windowed buildings--with AC still running on their tallest floors where the commission staff works, while shut down on the lower ones--clearly do not match what the average person wants or expects. How much can they push it further? They're only adding fuel to the fire that will replace them with something just as bad, if not worse. It's hard not to be skeptical considering the exceptional level of lobbying steering regulations. The latest is the utterly idiotic, anti-consumer de minimis threshold changes, with an incomprehensible "per category" fee on every purchase outside the EU, lobbied for by EuroCommerce, killing entire hobbyist fields (e.g. anything to do with electronics) in the continent.

miohtama 3mo ago
And people are surprised of the rise of far right, especially anti EU one
- izacus 3mo ago
  The right is a massive supporter for all of these authoritarian pushes, so what exactly are you trying to say?
  - wizzwizz4 3mo ago
    Creating a problem, positioning yourself as the solution, and using any power you are given to exacerbate the problem, is an unfortunately-viable strategy. In theory, journalism can let the air out of the strategy, but someone's been going 'round killing or suborning the journalism organisations, so that's a bit tricky at the moment.

tdrz 3mo ago

I have to admit that I don't understand how they can push for this so often! Wasn't this rejected not so long ago?

sunshine-o 3mo ago
Last time was in march, now it is about every 3 months.
mike_hearn 3mo ago
This "keep asking until they say yes" strategy is by design and has been a common tactic used by the EU power centers in the past. See the way the Treaty of Lisbon was rejected in referendums, and then people were just made to vote again. Or the way the British pro-EU faction proclaimed in 2016 that Leave/Remain was a once in a generation vote to settle the issue for all time, then immediately started agitating for an aptly named People's Vote that would rerun the referendum again. The EU is not a democratic system. It's specifically designed to undermine and eventually end the post-WW2 democracies through a mix of deception and bureaucratic manipulation. The never ending Chat Control story is a totally standard example. That's not a conspiracy theory either, there are lots of quotes from senior EU figures where they say all this stuff directly: > If it's a 'Yes,' we will say "On we go!" and if it's a 'No' we will say "We continue!" (Junker, talking about the votes on the Lisbon Treaty) > We decide on something, leave it lying around and wait and see what happens. If no one kicks up a fuss, because most people don't understand what has been decided we continue step by step until there is no turning back. (Junker again, on the general EU methodology) > When people ask politicians today “What will become of Europe?” or “Where is European integration heading?”, we usually give an evasive answer. “We don’t want a super state” that is generally the first thing we say. I must admit that I have in the past often resorted to this kind of thing myself. (Viviane Reading, former vice president) > We know that nine out of 10 people will not have read the Constitution and will vote on the basis of what politicians and journalists say. More than that, if the answer is No, the vote will probably have to be done again, because it absolutely has to be Yes. (Jean-Luc Dehaene, Former Belgian Prime Minister and Vice-President of the EU Convention) > I have never understood why public opinion about European ideas should be taken into account. (Raymond Barre, former French Prime Minister) There are endless quotes like these. You get a sense of the ideology found in the EU institutions by reading them. It's an ideology that never takes no for an answer, believes in its own manifest destiny and views the act of centralizing power as the central moral mission of their generation. So of course Chat Control is an unkillable zombie.

r_lee 3mo ago

I love the Freedom loving Free and democratic European Union!!!!!

p0w3n3d 3mo ago

Most people in EU I have nothing to hide Also those people I couldn't call you mom because the Facebook was down. What? What is a phone number?

Nidhug 3mo ago

There should be some mechanism to block these repeated attempts.

472936721 3mo ago
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rdwrrr 3mo ago
The machine is working exactly as intended.

ed_voc 3mo ago

For Americans, this process is called a trilogue. It is analogous to the White House a group of House and Senate members meeting in private to negotiate a bill, with most related documents being heavily redacted. MEPs can pass the resulting deal or try to amend it. But amendments often mean the bill is pulled back into another trilogue rather than properly debated and rewritten in public. The bill never gets debated, and the bill never gets rejected, so the commission can keep trying until it gets passed

HackerThemAll 3mo ago

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