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Chat Control 1.0 and 2.0 Explained
- ChrisArchitect 3mo agoRelated today: Chat Control passed first round in EU Parliament https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48819008 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48819008
- olejorgenb 3mo agoChat control 1.0 "A temporary derogation from the ePrivacy Directive that allowed (but did not require) providers to scan private messages of unsuspected users for potential child sexual abuse material." Does that imply it's currently not allowed? EDIT: apparently not enforced at least: "Chat Control 1.0 expires The legal ground for voluntary, indiscriminate scanning ends. Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Snap state they will continue scanning private messages regardless. "
- closuregarden 3mo agoYes, the derogation expired on 4 April 2026.
- latexr 3mo agoThey just voted to reinstate it, and it passed by a narrow majority. https://howtheyvote.eu/votes/195338 https://howtheyvote.eu/votes/195338 They did id sneakily. https://www.politico.eu/article/president-vs-parliament-roberta-metsola-overrides-meps-bid-force-child-abuse-law/ https://www.politico.eu/article/president-vs-parliament-robe... As I understand it, there will still be another related vote on Thursday, so call your representatives!
- inigyou 3mo agoThis should not be put in the same category as Chat Control 2.0. Doing so severely dilutes the brand Chat Control.
- rsynnott 3mo ago> Does that imply it's currently not allowed? Not for the last few months, no; Chat Control 1 expired.
- rwq-askh 3mo agoEU politicians spend more time on chat control than on the reopening of Hormuz or EU energy security. It is a complete joke.
- embedding-shape 3mo ago> EU politicians spend more time on chat control than on the reopening of Hormuz I thought I'd heard it all here on HN, but expecting EU to clean up after the US shooting itself in the foot with a completely unnecessary war probably comes somewhere in top 5 easily.
- joe_mamba 3mo ago>but expecting EU to clean up after the US shooting itself in the foot Please don't pretend to misunderstand a point just to manufacture the opportunity to reply in bad faith. Nobody in EU is saying the EU should clean up others' mess around the world, people are just saying the EU should be busy building domestic capacity and capabilities to insulate itself from the issues caused by others around the world, such as securing domestic energy supplies so that the next time USrael blows up the middle east, the EU can just eat it no issue indead of being at the mercy of foreign oligarchs for overpriced energy. US is so monetary rich and energy rich that they can afford to blow up the middle east every 10 years with little domestic consequences for them, and still have enough gas to drive their Ford F-450s Super Duty to Walmart, heat their pools and AC their homes, without leading to national unrest, but EU is so energy starved that securing energy independence should have been a national security issue for the past 20 years already, not since 2022. And not just energy, EU is exposed in other areas as well (SW, AI, semiconductors, lithium batteries, agriculture, manufacturing, defense, etc), and again, it will only wake up in panic mode at the 11th hour when US or China twists their arm in some spontaneous international dispute. But politicians instead of focusing on preemptively securing these vulnerabilities BEFORE shit hits the fan, are too busy focusing on controlling people's privacy, which is what EU citizens and commenters here are criticizing.
- rpadovani 3mo ago
- cynicalsecurity 3mo agoTo everyone who wants to dismantle the EU: this is not the solution. Dismantling the EU is like burning down your own house just to get rid of flies. The UK left the EU and implemented its own version of chat control - Online Safety Act - without any transparency or real opposition. The right solution is the political fight. Europe is our home. We must keep it in good shape by getting rid of anything that makes it worse - like Chat Control.
- Insimwytim 3mo agoDismantling the EU is like burning down your own house I'm not an expert, but isn't "your own house" should rather be your country in this analogy? It ought to be still there without some bureaucratic institution on top of it.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- patcon 3mo agoJust think "neighborhood", no? This seems like splitting hairs... And to what end? to take a shot at EU supra-national structure? ("What, you don't ally to your country?" kinda shade.) -- Canadian
- hsuduebc2 3mo agoMaybe “your own city” would be a more precise metaphor than “your own house”. Your country is your house, but the EU is the city around it, with the roads, infrastructure, shared rules, market, security, and institutions that make the house function. The concept of a modern nation is also relatively new. It emerged as an identity for groups of people who were no longer defined mainly by the monarchs ruling over them. That identity replaced the king as the symbol of belonging. But now nationalism is often doing the opposite. Instead of freeing people from old power structures, it is holding Europe back. So yes, maybe it is not literally “your house”, but the point still stands. Burning down the city around your house is not exactly a smart move either.
- zoobab 3mo agoAge verification for 'appstores' (debian repos?) is inside ChatControl v2.
- pbkompasz 3mo ago> Supreme Court allows Texas to require age verification for mobile apps
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- terabytest 3mo agoAs a EU citizen I’m at a loss for what to do about this. I feel that they’re going against any average citizen’s interest. What can we do to make them stop?
- LaurensBER 3mo agoShort-term, follow the steps on the website and contact your political representative to explain to them why it's such a bad idea. Long-term, switch to another messenger app that's opensource and truly E2E encrypted. That also shows why this is such a foolish proposal. The truly scary people are not on the "consumer" chat apps anyway and most certainly will be the first ones to switch to another communication channel if this passes. If this will have any effect it'll be that some, "dumb" criminals will be caught.
- raverbashing 3mo agoThe irony is that those questions can only be legally questioned when they're approved (and sometimes have a defined implementation) Then there's the whole kerfuffle about how to actually implement this So the thing that comforts me is that it's a dumpster fire all the way down and I'm sure there will be plenty of legal complaints about it
- 73738384 3mo ago[flagged]
- drnick1 3mo agoVote for parties that oppose this nonsense. In the meantime, install Linux on your desktop/laptop, and a free Android variant on a compatible phone. Use Signal, and urge your family and friends to do the same.
- grg0 3mo agoUse the submission form on the site to email your representatives.
- Zufriedenheit 3mo agoThey claim to protect consumers and privacy and then push this creepy surveillance state.
- petcat 3mo agoAt this point I think it's obvious that EU is in turmoil. They're struggling to come to grips with the idea of a Russian invasion on their eastern borders, and simultaneously USA pivoting to Asia and not willing to front their defense after 40+ years of imploring them to do so themselves. They've outsourced nearly every critical component of a large sustainable society to the rest of the world: Russia, USA, China, India. But at the same time, their politicians can't do anything because the minute they suggest that they might have to start cutting pensions and public welfare, and all of these different things in order to start supporting national industry and defense, they lose support immediately.
- martimarkov 3mo ago[flagged]
- petcat 3mo agoWhy don't you tell me what you know about this topic
- bluebarbet 3mo agoThis comment adds zero value. Make a point if you have one.
- arjie 3mo agoI don't understand. How does it affect encrypted messages? It seems like either you need: 1. allow MITM decryption by a privileged authority 2. require all devices doing E2EE have a non-user-modifiable piece of functionality to scan on-device The second is the Apple style on-device CSAM scanner? I have to say that I do sometimes think about it while taking a photo of my baby playing in the bathtub - photos like my parents have of me which have been kind of nice to see later. It would be a pity if I had to have a separate analog camera just for baby photos because then I'd need to learn the whole developing film stuff.
- petcat 3mo ago> It would be a pity if I had to have a separate analog camera just for baby photos because then I'd need to learn the whole developing film stuff. Polaroid coming back in business! I would not complain at all if we started reverting some of our lifestyle behaviors back to analog.
- ExpertAdvisor01 3mo agoPlatforms will stop offering E2EE . Didn't Instagram abandon E2EE ?
- arjie 3mo agoThat is a much more simple prediction. I do use Telegram with our family claw-like and it does not do E2EE by default. You need to do a secret chat or whatever. I think you're probably right. We'll just lose E2EE.
- delichon 3mo ago[flagged]
- bcye 3mo ago> Political groups are factions of the Parliament, while parties are alliances of national parties at EU level, funded through the EU budget. Neither the group in the Parliament nor the lawmakers will face any consequence if ESN loses its status as a European party. It’s important to note the lawmakers stay in office even if the European party is banned. Europe is also not the US and from my knowledge it seems that this is the only party suspected of not complying with values. There are many many more parties that they are not trying to ban.
- pqtyw 3mo agoUnless they are doing something criminal their values are their and their voters business, regardless of how reprehensible they might be.
- inigyou 3mo agoIn Germany it is illegal to have Nazi-like values, such as wanting to expel all non-German people.
- bcye 3mo agoIs it illegal too to expel non-citizens? IIRC the issue is primarily wanting to expel certain citizens.
- bcye 3mo agoI don't know how the procedure for banning a europarty looks but in Germany the bar is very high. It must be against the core constitutional values (human dignity, freedom, democracy) and pose a threat to that (infamously NPD was not banned as it was found to small to pose a threat). The procedure here seems to be similar to Germany that the parliament can only request a review from an independent body (in Germany the constitutional court) if this is the case, the actual decision comes from that body after a lengthy process. Behind the europarty is (among others) the AfD for which the public has been debating for years now on wether to attempt to ban them because of their danger, so it doesn't seem very far fetched for their EU party really.
- mikaeluman 3mo agoMost everyone would love to see more work on stopping child sexual abuse. But this is the ultimate "grant me dictatorial powers so I can do good" play. Rather than narrow and specific - it's a broad based law that suddenly touches everyone even though offenders are a small percentage and should be able to be targeted more efficiently.
- cortesoft 3mo agoYep, and this is a perfect example of a base rate fallacy situation... even if the scanner is 99.99% accurate, because an even higher percentage of photos are innocent, most matches the scanner will find will be false positives.
- dtj1123 3mo agoI thought this was known as Bonferonni'a principle? Or am I getting mixed up?
- vaylian 3mo agoBonferonni correction is relevant when you calculate multiple p-values. Most statistical tests are used with a p-value threshold of 5% to reject the null-hypothesis. But because you are repeatedly testing, the probability for false positives increases and that is why you need to decrease the threshold and make it harder, to obtain a p-value below that threshold to declare a significant result. You typically use the Bonferroni correction when making general statements about a statistical relationship. You wouldn't use it for checking if a particular image shows illegal content. If you kept testing with your image classifier, your significance threshold would need to be continuously lowered and you would asymptotically reach zero. Relevant XKCD: 882
- dtj1123 3mo agoNo, I'm not referring to Bonferroni's correction, which obviously has nothing to do with what we're discussing. I'm sure I've heard this called Bonferroni's principle. Edit: Yes, in the section 'Statistical Limits of Data Mining' in the book Mining of mMssive Data Sets it's called Bonferroni's principle.
- grg0 3mo agoThis website is gold, thanks for all the work.
- shevy-java 3mo agoLobbyists control the EU. So much is clear to everyone now. I think there is no way to fix this system from the inside - it is designed to be abused like that. We need an alternative system.
- budududuroiu 3mo agoEven if there was no lobbying or corruption, the EU is structurally flawed: the Council, which is made up of 27 mandates that were given for local politics, is used by nations to launder their domestically unpopular laws through an EU indirection layer, the Commission has no electoral link (VDL was appointed, when afaik the Parliament should nominate a Commission President), the Parliament, the legislative body, has no legislative initiative, and despite rejecting laws drafted by the Commission, as we've seen, those laws can be forced through indefinitely until the Commission gets the rubber stamp it needs.
- tancop 3mo agoi think a good general rule is anyone with ultimate power over some area (president, lawmakers, supreme court judges) should be elected. thats anyone whos decisions cant be reversed by someone else above them. those who make final but reversible decisions (pm, ministers, heads of military and intelligence) should be directly appointed by someone who was elected. if you allow indirect appointments to important positions you get a corrupt undemocratic government.
- ggirelli 3mo agoSo, I blinked and forgot to check for updates on this and they voted a few hours ago to reinstate this... https://www.heise.de/en/news/Showdown-in-Strasbourg-The-unexpected-return-of-Chat-Control-1-0-11356680.html https://www.heise.de/en/news/Showdown-in-Strasbourg-The-unex...
- wazzup_im 3mo agoIt's funny they thing criminals are using those platforms for discussion
- bonoboTP 3mo agoFunny you think they think that. They just want control.
- smashah 3mo agoWhy do these Epsteinist Occupied Governments think they'll get away with this unscathed. These demons are addicted to destroying freedom.
- michaelmrose 3mo agoHow many child abusers are liable to be detected using platforms that are known to report you when you can google (or chatGPT) how to avoid detection?
- AuthAuth 3mo agoWhen it comes to online actions people ask for way more than reasonable. You dont get to be an invisible, impossible to track, unaccountable hacker man free to roam the internet on equal footing to the rest of the users.
- left-struck 3mo agoThis is a strawman argument. Almost no one who wants to preserve their right to free and open communication without government knowledge or interference, wants that so that they can hack. It’s not about catching hackers or child predators, it’s about government control.
- AuthAuth 3mo agoWhats wrong with government control? We let the government control most aspects of our lives.
- mattstir 3mo agoWho's arguing for that? And why is it not "reasonable" to ask for basic privacy?
- AuthAuth 3mo agoBasic privacy from the government?
- keraf 3mo agoThe same governments pushing for this type of regulation are also the ones that fail to condemn high profile individuals involved in the crimes that these regulation are supposed to help fight. Makes you really wonder if it's about protecting the children.
- matheusmoreira 3mo agoIt was never about children. They're just using children as political weapons to justify their 1984 panopticon dictatorships.
- wavemode 3mo agoYou make it sound as though this is a proposal for legislation in the US...
- keraf 3mo agoThere are plenty of friends of that one famous financier roaming the old continent, who probably won't ever see a courtroom or prison cell in their lifetime, despite a lot of incriminating evidence.
- nttylock 3mo ago[flagged]
- nlarion 3mo agoCharlatans and demagogues.
- BatFastard 3mo agoAnyone know how Signal is responding to this? They ARE E2EE.
- choo-t 3mo agoTheir stance is of non-compliance and leaving EU market if Chat Control 2 get into law. https://aboutsignal.com/news/the-end-of-private-conversations-signal-threatens-to-leave-the-eu-if-chat-control-becomes-mandatory/ https://aboutsignal.com/news/the-end-of-private-conversation...
- nnurmanov 3mo agoWake me up in 100 years and ask me what EU politicians are doing. My answer: regulating something:)
- emadb 3mo agoWhat european parties or people are pushing for chat controls?
- MrGilbert 3mo agoConservatives and right-wing. Gives them more control. It‘s a pattern that gets obvious once you see it. It’s so they can hide their own secrets better. In Germany, we have a law that grants you access to information, the "Informationsfreiheitsgesetz“. This was used in the past to uncover morally wrong or illegal behavior, mostly done by the conservative party. This party, as they are currently in charge, is now actively working to change the law, so it's in their benefit.
- left-struck 3mo agoI’m not familiar with the political landscape in Europe so it may well be mostly people on the right pushing this, but man I wish we could stop framing everything as left vs right. That framing is distracting us from the authoritarian vs civil liberties issues, which is a dangerous and immediate threat to our ability to have any significant political influence of any kind.
- k_g_b_ 3mo agoConservative politicians and leaders as they label themselves and practically act in today's political landscape are fundamentally on the authoritarian and anti-civil liberties side - there is no distraction. The right is only worse in the extent of authoritarianism and destruction of human rights they're willing to go to and the speed at which they want to achieve it. If a conservative wants to preserve some status quo, basically all policy they use (and have available as a tool) in a permanently changing and developing world (socially, technologically) is that of restrictions, especially on civil rights, and of authoritarian mechanisms like police power. For weird reasons, conservatives never* want to preserve status quo civil rights like workers rights, freedom of information rights and similar that are anti-authoritatian.
- simonask 3mo ago
- marcyb5st 3mo agoHow do they scan e2e encrypted messages? Will they force apps/OSes to have master keys/institutional backdoors to have access to the private keys?
- ranguna 3mo agoThey could make all e2ee chats, group chats. Where instead of a 1-1 chat between two people or many-many chat between a lot of people, they do 1-1+1 or many-many+1, where the +1 is the government. Technically the underlaying company or anyone else still won't have access to messages and e2ee won't be "broken", except for the fact that there's one more party in the key exchange. Or they scan at the edge on the user's device. Either way, both are very prone to false positives and and very much privacy invading.
- marcyb5st 3mo agoGood thinking. Didn't think of that approach. Gonna start sending huge walls of text to DOS them then if this thing lands
- worldsayshi 3mo ago> Or they scan at the edge on the user's device. So then the user can "just" install their own client.
- alkonaut 3mo agoI'd be willing to accept this: Scan on end user's devices, but never transmit the result of that. Only report it ON the device itself to the user. A false positive when you send a pic of your naked kid to your spouse might show a warning icon asking you if you are sure you want to send it. Also: for minors (Who is a minor not determined by some central age verification, but by me specifying in the Apple/Android family settings who my kids are) you could make sending certain things it blocking or subject to parent approval. E.g. if my daughter is tricked into sending nudes, it's something that's handled the same as if she wants to install an app or visit a specific web page. No encryption is ever backdoored. Anything beyond this, e.g. reporting any user actions, would be allowed only through a court, just like any wiretapping always was.
- worldsayshi 3mo ago> Is scanning mandatory? - No — voluntary. Voluntary for whom? The service provider? Can I opt out of getting scanned? > Does it touch encrypted messages? - No. End-to-end encrypted communications were never scanned but providers could deploy client-side scanning under this law. So it circumvents e2e encryption? --- How would these laws prevent me from just side loading my own open source client?
- cbg0 3mo ago> How would these laws prevent me from just side loading my own open source client? They do not.
- xiphias2 3mo agoYou need open hardware and open software at that point and you won't be able to use government identification as they depend on closed source parts of the Android ecosystem. Also you need identification for side loading apps at some point. Non of these laws stop you from opting out of surveillance, but altogether it gets so hard that at some point you get more suspicious and tracked if you do all this than if you don't do any of these.
- cbg0 3mo agoAssuming these concerns were real you could just turn the app into a website.
- kailpa1 3mo agoI don't understand how Bulgaria supports the idea while most of its representatives are allegedly against it. How does that work?
- schnapsidee 3mo agoThat's down to how the EU works. These kind of decisions are made in multiple governing bodies. There's the council, which is made up of representatives from member states governments and the parliament, which is made up of directly elected MEPs. The national government of Bulgaria's position isn't necessarily in line with Bulgarian MEPs.
- mbmbn 3mo agoWould these measures have prevented, for instance, the generalized Rape Gangs they had in the UK and that were hidden by the authorities to keep some weird idea of social peace?
- phtrivier 3mo agoSo, ChatControl 1.0 (the volontary, limited one that expired and is being revived) has been active for about 2 years now. Concretely, are there documented examples of abuses ? Are the checks & balance sufficient ? I understand ChatControl 2.0 goes way beyond, be it goes "beyond" enough that it does not get a majority in parlement, and can't move forward. But for CC1.0 we don't need to imagine anymore - we have 2 years of application. Is that enough to evaluate ?
- HenryVV 3mo agoProbably not enugh found to reason for its existance thus 2 more years are needed lol. I mean lets be honest here, if they actually would have real success with baseless things like this it would be public, unless it is not for what it is sold to the public obviously
- rixed 3mo agoSo many messages about child safety in the press and even here... Who cares about chat control when they already have mind control.
- kvgr 3mo agoWhat i found the most fascinating, is that they say its to protect children. But when you look at real child abuse cases, there are huge gaps in sentencing, policing and protecting kids in all countries. Where i live child abuser will get lower sentence than someone who sold weed. There is a lot of real police work that can be done, honey trap pedos on roblox, infiltrate public whatsapp groups to check and monitor for soliciting. Actually listening and responding to child abuse. Work with schools. But this just requires real work. They don't want to do real work. And at the end, it will get thrown out by some senile corrupted judge. They just want total control.
- Closi 3mo agoIt's 100% about control - it's the same in the UK. Last year it was about having to scan your face to verify your age to access porn (to protect the children). They said: It's not about control, it's about protecting children. Last month the same government announced they will use the same technology to prevent access to Youtube and Twitter without giving over your ID and confirming who you are... Still under the 'protecting the children' banner.
- luciana1u 3mo ago[flagged]
- TZubiri 3mo agohttps://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=COM:2022:209:FIN https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=COM:2022...
- iamyemeth 3mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_of_the_children https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_of_the_children
- testhest 3mo agoThings like this is why I no longer support the EU at all.
- HenryVV 3mo ago[dead]
- zyxzevn 3mo agoBecause of the excessive growing corruption in the EU, their politicians have decided to restrict all opposition. This corruption is hidden behind double-speak, demonization and censorship. Even putting people in prison who talk about the crimes that they endured. Instead of using the criticism to improve the system, the corrupt system starts to attack and forbid the criticism.
- pocksuppet 3mo agoThis just says Facebook is allowed to scan for child porn though?
- BeatrizPerez 3mo ago[dead]
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 3mo agoIf so-called "tech" companies are allowed to have control over internet users' communications ("chat control"), where control over communications lies _exclusively with the company, not the user_,^1 then it stands to reason that governments, among others, may influence how that control is exercised Unlike governments, generally, the companies may use control over communications for any purpose. For example, a surveillance-based advertising services is one purpose that we know about. The companies can collaborate with any party; it may be another another company, it may be a government. The company can utilise surveillance data collected and/or its ability to throttle and censor communications to further any purpose. The parties with whom the company collaborates may potentially use the data for any purpose Unfortunately for users, the company is not required to disclose with whom it collaborates nor the terms of such collaborations. Hence users have no way to verfiy. Users of these "free services", have few, if any, rights against the company This situation is preventable. What enables it to exist is user "consent" to ceding control over their private communications ("chat control") to so-called "tech" companies 1. This is accomplished through granting the company total control over the client software, e.g., "automatic updates'. The company effectvely (a) blocks chat participants from using their own client software and (b) forces chat participants to use client software controlled by the so-called 'tech" company. This software is provided for free and primarily serves the company, not the user, advancing the company's commercial interests, e.g., surveillance-based advertising services, at the expense of the user's privacy and security interests This fact was summarised in a submission that reached the HN front page yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48792203 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48792203
- coffeebeanHH 3mo agoOh its this time of the year again.... Fucking right and conservative folks. I really hope Uschi von der Ehrm Leyen doesn't have to make her chats public..
- coffeebeanHH 3mo agoExcuse me, you have to vote a majority against something that only a bunch if suckers want? If they want a new law they should have a majority to get it. Shitshow in brussels.
- kotberg 3mo ago[dead]
- HenryVV 3mo agoAs long as they can introduce mass surveillance lol as if anyone up there actually cared about any of the arguments they feed to the populus lol. Uh children makes ppl loose all reason lets use that as argument. Then we can take their freedom of speech since we already can restrict information access and soon everyone will dance around our whim. Meanwhile evil actors don't even care bc they prolly have their own networks and whatnot. This will just lead to the torture of innocents. But hey as if they'd cared. Not like they ever have or will admit any fault anyway.