You're doing God's work mate.

It's really surprising to me that this issue keeps coming up time and time again, until I realised that it's non-voted in parties actually trying to pass this stuff!

I didn't realise that the EU parliament simply says yes or no to bills and doesn't actually propose new laws, whilst the EU Commission are appointed and decide on what bills to push through.

I am always curious when I see these kinds of movement. It seems abundantly clear that the options on any vote in any legislature for a proposed bill are always “yes” and “ask me later”. So when I see things like Fight Chat Control, it feels like the call is “we must tell our legislators to press the ask later button!”

Why? Why has your approach not been toward passing active legislation that protects these rights going forward? Genuinely curious. I understand that finding and pressing the “don’t ask again” button is always harder, but I don’t understand why “we punted on this decision!” is a celebratory moment.

Thank you for what you're doing, this is an important fight.

The story is tragically illustrative of the maxim that you can oppose terrible legislation a hundred times but they only have to pass it once.

Thanks for your work. Just how is it possible for non-EU lobby to make vote a law in EU, and push for it ?

>let's vote on this proposal

>rejected

>let's vote on it again!

Is it still a democracy if you just keep redoing the vote until you get the outcome you want? The politicians involved in this should be ashamed of themselves.

I swear to god if the UK gives the world yet MORE surveillance state...

You're a hero

How can people support your work?

Quoting from the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:12... :

"Article 7

Respect for private and family life

Everyone has the right to respect for his or her private and family life, home and communications.

Article 8

Protection of personal data

1. Everyone has the right to the protection of personal data concerning him or her.

2. Such data must be processed fairly for specified purposes and on the basis of the consent of the person concerned or some other legitimate basis laid down by law. Everyone has the right of access to data which has been collected concerning him or her, and the right to have it rectified.

3. Compliance with these rules shall be subject to control by an independent authority."

Chat control is already illegal according to EU law, and has previously been ruled as such by the ECHR when Romania was trying to implement a chat control law that did actually pass, in 2014. But documents are documents (even the Rome statute), and can be rewritten.

It already violates Articles 7 and 8 of the EU Charter which is supposed to prevent stuff like this.

The reality is that they'll just keep pushing it from different angles, they only have to get lucky once, we (or EU citizens, we left and have our own issues) need to be lucky every time - much like an adverserial relationship where you are on the defending side from a cyberattack...funny that really.

(I mentioned this in another comment)

Because the people voting it down are the elected MEPs, whilst the people putting it up to parliament are the European Commission. The EC are appointed, rather than elected. Which means the powers that be just appoint people who are going to push through laws like this, that they want. The MEPs can't put up bills to be voted on.

I think the greatest risk to the EU is the sheer volume of communications it allows to travel without end-to-end encryption. Financial, infrastructure, personal political sentiment.. What doesn't a foreign enemy get volumes of minable data on?

The right to private communication is already enshrined in the EU.

Article 7, EU Charter of Fundamental Rights: Respect for private and family life (and probably a couple other sections in there as well).

The problem is national security exceptions. Chat control and other similar bills are trying to carve out exceptions to privacy laws under the excuse of national security.

Also its politically cheap to introduce surveillance or to expand state power, it's comparatively extremely difficult to pass laws that specifically restrict state power.

Privacy laws are well and good, but they exist. The problem is we need to stop allowing "public safety" or "national security" to be a trump card that allows exceptions to said laws, and good luck getting any government to ever agree that privacy is more important than national security.

There’s no point. The only way you can fix this is to pretty heavily market the situation and publicise and shame the lobbyist scum pushing this. And their associated ties.

Past laws of this type are:

- The GDPR

- The ePrivacy directive, which is explicitly derogated (sabotaged) by chat control 1.0

I don't think that's a very sensical right (like most rights, frankly). Everyone has limits to the privacy they can expect. But we should have a social contract where we can expect privacy between mutually consenting parties intending to have private communication (eg not in a public square) without reasonable suspicion of a crime being committed.

You don’t care by writing new legislation, you care by forming boycotts against the corporations that are not fighting back against the scanning. The world is not controlled by democracy, it is controlled by money and the oligarchs.

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Here is the regulation that will be voted on: https://oeil.europarl.europa.eu/oeil/en/procedure-file?refer...

Note that the amendment was already amended on 11th March to set expiry to Aug 2027 and to also exclude E2E communications.

Yeah so this is about CC 1.0 (which already exists)

While it's still worth fighting, it is less worrying

The question of course is, why something is allowed multiple votes (and the basic answer is - if it presented some changed - but I don't know if it's the case)

I'm Polish and I was positivity shocked that we oppose it. I remember attending some protests against ACTA which as far as I remember was supposed to be something similar, back in my student days. It was -17°C and people still showed up. Apparently we have some culture of opposing censorship and invigilation by state. May come in handy if the democratic decline keeps progressing...

There a practical reason for this? like more alignment with lobbyists, for whatever financial reasons?

EU is not a government for all EU members. You should look into what EU is and how it works before attacking it. Claiming that it's "ultra national" would mean that all of EU is one nation which shares one ideological, cultural and political sphere. There are 27 EU members with 24 official languages, 20 of those countries are part of the Euro currency zone.

But if you are a US citizen, I would refrain talking about increased control of life outside of your own turf. Your education system is controlled either government or religious groups. Your streets are patrolled by uneducated police troops without control and they are detaining even US citizens without due process. Now your government says they will block all foreign made routers. And did you forget NSA Prism program? Your voting system is controlled via gerrymandered maps which are changing constantly depending who's in the control. Lots of your citizens are living paycheck to paycheck and one health issue can bankrupt them and only way to survive is to ask money from strangers via gofundme. All because of healthcare and insurance companies greed and politicians lack of interests of their constituents.

Yeah, the EU legislation about privacy and chat control is problematic but saying that US is doing so much better for it's citizens is a stretch.

As a EU citizen, it pisses me off that the US is (with others outside the EU) trying this hard to lobby to undermine our democracy and freedom of speech.

https://digitalcourage.social/@echo_pbreyer/1162053712243153...

And I’d still take this clusterfuck over the alternative current state of the US. At least this situation we can (and have been) striking down, despite all the naysayers on HN. Here’s to hoping we’re able to do so again!

>You are but a subject of an ultra-national government whose sole objective is ever increased control over your life and euros.

Yes, but who isn't? Not the other side of the pond for sure.

The EU has always been focused on harming its citizens. This is nothing new, very on brand actually. It's not like we have a choice lol.

As an EU citizen I have to remind you that as a (most likely) US citizen, you've had the Patiot act sanction the NSA to have free reign for this sort of thing for the past 25 years.

We've shot it down before, and we'll shoot it down again, regardless of how relentless Palantir lobbying gets.

As an EU citizen I hate this but I know it‘s a „when?“ not an „if“ topic.

I realise the EU is our only hope to defend ourselves against big players like China and the US and smaller bullies like Russia.

But at the same time I realise the EU we have in this timeline is one of the worst possible: a criminal venture, a safe heaven for the corrupt elite + their lobbyists and an organisation that‘s hell bent on harming and controlling its citizens.

Majorities for sane parties are not possible. Democracy is too slow, too indirect. Hell, this is barely a democracy at all, just like on the national level. As EU citizens we as powerless as every other citizen in the world.

Exactly what happened when Ireland rejected the Lisbon treaty, they were told to vote again until they voted the "right" way.

Heads I win, tails you loose. :(

It takes only one win to remove our rights but once they’re gone you’ll never get them back.

Modern democracy

    while not pass:
        try to pass something stupid, malevolent or that hurts people and democracies

Yes. The anchor chain got broken sometime ago. It's still there, but nobody want it anymore.

Or, as is also seen elsewhere, wildly popular ideas simply get curiously stuck.

Either way those elected to supposedly serve are the only ones winning.

They only have to win once. You have to win every time.

Of course. They literally spell their playbook out for you:

“We decide something, then put it out there and wait for a while to see what happens.

If there is then no great outcry and no uprisings, because most people do not even understand what has been decided, then we continue—step by step, until there is no turning back.”

— Jean-Claude Juncker

It's not now or never. It's now, or the next attempt or the next.

Who is "they"?

That's the key question!

There's a small group of very powerful people that keep pushing this agenda.

Who are those people?

Find out.

Publicize their names. Make their corruption visible and linked to their identity.

In case anyone has an issue with this: Remember! This is what they want! For you! Not for them. Only the plebs.

The same way you can't send money to the best Korea and watch porn on youtube.

There is a long chain of actions that ends with you having e2e on your phone (or what not). At the starts of it there is your physical body living in jurisdiction and transacting with (mostly) other people being somewhat present in the same jurisdiction using government-captured money. There are multiply choke points, controlling which will not result in 100% enforcement, but will make whatever you want to do a huge pain in the ass, so most people will not bother (case in point -- jailbraking). Whoever is left self-selects themselves for selective enforcement.

They won’t need to enforce this rigorously. They’ll just need to show some scary examples of people being arrested or having computers seized for using illegal forms of encryption. The mainstream media will go along with the EU, demonising these dangerous individuals, who must have been up to something nefarious if they were using technologies sanctioned by the EU

Which law are you talking about? Genuine question, because I know about EU laws that are "in the name of privacy" and about those that (arguably) "hinder innovation", but I don't know which one fits both

You are aware that EU is not a single country, right? I know American education is third-world levels these days, so unfortunately I have to ask this.

The EU isn’t a single mind. There are a multitude of factions trying to get through all kinds of things.

"for sure"

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Posted 9:30-11:30pm. Plenty of us awake

It won't all be non-Europeans if that's what you're implying

Yes well, they're running out of good arguments to show how bad the EU is, so they have to force some bad decisions through so that they may have something to cry about.

God I love politics

Not true. In the UK, the only party that would repeal the heinous “Online Safety Act” are Reform UK, which is headed by notorious Euroskeptic MP Nigel Farage.

To get around the "dupe" filter, it was trying to mark it as a dupe of a 7 month old post.

It's a web bug

Being able to make this policy choice in either direction is in fact an example of digital sovereignty. We just don't like what the sovereign has decided this time.

They aid the truth because the complete slogan was about EU's digital sovereignity. Not really your sovereignity nor mine.

Yes, yes, let's all rally around the free speech haven that is Hungary, which only five short years ago banned "the discussion of gender and sexual diversity in schools, the media, advertising, and other public places."

Let's all take this person extremely seriously, as they are advocating for free speech.

> Please, could the bootlickers of the European Union stop downvoting every single criticism of it?

Hey, let's call this "forum control" :)

I don't think criticisms of chat-control-like legislation attempts are downvoted here?

It’s a symptom of authoritarianism rising. It wouldn’t be rising if there wasn’t anyone who supports things like that.

Because social cohesion is also breaking down (which is also by design). People increasingly do not trust and can not rely on neighbors and their fellow citizens to share similar interests and look out for one another. And they have much less power to organize with other citizens to petition their government.

So they feel they must turn to the state for protection.

Because they fall for the "Its for protecting the Children" Bullshit

EU is not a synonym of Europe. EU propagandists don't get to define what Europe means.

Second. Who gave you the right to define antieuropean union propaganda as a sin.

Some people may hate it, some people may love it, other want to change it.

It was created by vote, surely it can be whatever the fuck the way the people want by vote.

I don't follow EU politics that much, but I know that one of the strongest proponents for it has been from the Swedish Social Democratic party, which has dominated Swedish politics.

So, in my view this is not really a "left" or "right" thing, but something that is pushed by people you could call "the establishment".

European Commission is basically as close to being EU's government as it can be, it is fair to say these are the people that represent EU now. Much like it's fair to say that US is bombing Iran even if not all of the US is doing that.

Exactly. EU legislation is currently far more respecting of privacy than is legislation in the UK or the US.

For various, and unclear, reasons, there is substantial backing to change this.

Can you clarify what you mean? The linked website makes it seem that the majority MEPs of the supporting countries are on board. Are all of the (listed as) supporting countries currently under conservative governments?

This is how political messaging has worked since I was born.

The last version of chat control was pushed by Denmark, which presided the european council until december, and with a social democratic prime minister (coalition government with social democrats the majority). The "conservatives push for chat control" is not really accurate, a bit part of social democrats are also supporting it.

Fight Chat Control is a website maintained by a European. It is no more anti-European than I, an American, speaking about the latest antics of our conservative-led government and saying, "The US government is attempting to ____".

Yeah, it's like saying "USA wants to poison children still!" when a Republican files another deranged bill in their state.

It seems like it is bipartisan to me. Do you have the statistics to back up your claim?

This. There's a very specific group of twisted people that drive this, but equating that with the entire EU is flat out wrong.

People on HN but also criminals will know how circumvent this. But the average person will be completely lost in this surveillance apparatus. It's going to affect the wrong people.

It's client side scanning.

That's one of the tricks. The other trick is to vote in universal right for encrypted communication once and for all.

>GDPR Article 2 Material scope

>2. This Regulation does not apply to the processing of personal data:

>by competent authorities for the purposes of the prevention, investigation, detection or prosecution of criminal offences or the execution of criminal penalties, including the safeguarding against and the prevention of threats to public security.

Maybe...in a world where lawmakers didn't put huge exemptions into GDPR for governments and law enforcement etc. Which they did.