Roberta Metsola's actions this week jeopardise the legitimacy of the EU project as a whole.

It's clear that member countries use the EU as a blame-laundering mechanism to pass domestically unpopular laws, but the forcing of this vote under the urgency procedure that requires absolute majority to reject, on the last EP session before summer break is so blatant that it might awaken people that might've overlooked the structural failures of the EU and finally radicalise them

EDIT: bad wording, it's not that the urgency procedure causes the voting to require absolute majority, it's that an absolute majority second-reading is forced through an emergency procedure which is designed for first readings of legislation that's the implied meaning above

FTA:

What changes with the return of Chat Control 1.0—and what stays the same:

*What is coming back:* US tech companies are once again allowed to scan private messages without a warrant or prior suspicion. This affects direct messages on platforms like Instagram, Discord, Snapchat, Skype, and Xbox, as well as emails via Google’s Gmail and Apple’s iCloud.

*What remains unchanged:* Public social media posts and files hosted in cloud storage could already be scanned without this law. Furthermore, private messages can always be reported by users, or monitored by authorities using targeted, court-ordered wiretapping.

*What is still NOT being scanned:* End-to-end encrypted chats, such as those on WhatsApp, have always been exempt from these scans. Additionally, European providers of messaging and email services have never implemented chat control measures.

So, E2E is unaffected?

Every day I grow less enamoured with the EU project. More and more, the laws and regulations imposed upon citizens are hostile.

Stupid parliamentary trick: Hold the vote on the day before the summer break - ensuring that many people have already returned to their home countries. Then use a sort of "reverse" parliamentary trick: the default is that this legislation is accepted. They needed an absolute majority - not of voting members, but of all members - to reject it.

Result: 314 against, 276 in favor, 17 abstentions, 113 absent

The EU is well on the way to becoming a totalitarian government.

ETA: It is shocking that 276 members of parliament would vote to support this. Are so many so naive? Or being paid off?

This is a nice piece of democracy right here:

"a measure it had rejected twice in March. Although a majority of voting Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) actually opposed the regulation (314 against, 276 in favor, 17 abstentions), the motion to reject it failed to secure the required absolute majority of 361 votes. As a result, mass scanning is now permitted again until 2028."

"Oh no we can't get a majority to pass the law!"

"Have you tried getting a majority to not pass the law?"

"Worth a shot!"

"It worked, should we also do this multiple times?"

"Of course not! Pass the law, quickly!"

One thing that should be noted is that, since the Parliament has been able to approve an amendment by absolute majority (which explicitly excludes E2E chats), the procedure is not over and the law is still not enacted, a third reading is still needed, after negotiations with the Council and the Commission, and in this case the Parliament will be able to reject the act by a simple majority

(Based on https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2026/07/07/eu-to-extend-t... and https://www.euractiv.com/news/how-the-epp-pushed-the-chat-sc... as well as the stuff in the link).

Here's a quote from the article itself, which works for both pro and con arguments:

  "What is still NOT being scanned: End-to-end encrypted chats, such as those on WhatsApp, have always been exempt from these scans. Additionally, European providers of messaging and email services have never implemented chat control measures."

My steelman in favour of the legislation:

The regulation closes a legal gap that would otherwise force platforms to stop using existing CSAM detection systems; it's a temporary framework that doesn't require universal mandatory scanning or ban E2EE, just keeps the legal basis for companies which choose to use detection/scanners while lawmakers continue negotiating a more comprehensive longterm solution.

My steelman against the legislation:

Scanning private communications, even allowing companies to "voluntary" do this, sets the precedent that the confidentiality of private correspondence is conditional rather than fundamental. Also, automated scanning inevitably has false positives. Also, has chilling effect on free speech, undermines trust in encrypted messaging.

Also, situationally, that it's "voluntary" means offenders can migrate to platforms which don't "voluntarily" do this.

I don't want to hear about the EU's "strong digital privacy" laws and protections ever again.

This article seems to make good points about how useless and invasive Chat Control 1.0 is, but then posits Chat Control 2.0 as the answer. Is the latter not also terrible for privacy, demanding backdoors in all encrypted chat tech?

There are at least two options to verify age without humiliating procedure of taking a selfie with a passport like a porn actor.

First, there are USB tokens that can hold a private key and sign messages. Such tokens could be sold at places accessible only to adults and verify that they are indeed adult. Obviously every token should hold the same private key.

Second, OS could implement "parent mode" which allows installing only white-listed, government approved apps (no Telegram or Whatsapp or other dangerous apps, but school apps are ok) and opening only white-listed government-approved websites. Put in jail the parents who did not set up a parent mode. Problem solved without passports and verifications.

If, however, the government insists on selfies, it means they just want to identify users and compile lists of "untrustworthy", "rebelious" and other persons of interest. In Russia, for example, every online account must be linked to a phone number or a passport, and all messages in social networks or messengers must be accessible in unencrypted form to the government. The access is automated and the government does not need to provide any documents (like court orders) for getting the data. Messengers that do not provide access, are illegal and are banned.

Also, employees who do verification, sometimes create internal chats where they post pictures of clients and mock their appearance. We had such case with Alfa-Bank in Russia, where the photo of a funny client with a passport and third-grader level comments leaked to Instagram account of employee's friend. The bank paid approximately $20 as a compensation.

> Although a majority of voting Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) actually opposed the regulation (314 against, 276 in favor, 17 abstentions), the motion to reject it failed to secure the required absolute majority of 361 votes.

This vote was urgently scheduled for today, the last day of parliament before the summer break. 113 MEPs were not present for this vote, likely having taken vacation days to extend their break. It's hard to believe choosing to do the vote today was done accidentally.

Is there an EICAR file equivalent for CSAM? it seems like I'm going to busy preparing a mass messaging/mailing campaign to EU law makers

If the EU just were to redirect the resources they're currently allocating to regulations like AI and Chat Control rather towards developing a genuinely competitive OpenAI or Anthropic alternative …

From Google: "The law seeks to require digital platforms and messaging services (like WhatsApp and Gmail) to automatically scan users' private messages, emails, and photos to detect and report illegal content"

-- EU policy makers are really honest people, hats off to them. There's no way politicians in my country allow their chats to be scanned, because they're very corrupt.

I want to like the EU. In many ways I do. They're making it really easy to not like them.

All for a safe and secure society.

List of votes per MEP: https://howtheyvote.eu/votes/195775

So much effort and emotions wasted. EU should have a mechanism that disallows repeatedly pushing for things until they are greenlit. Lack of this type of measure renders whole governance incapable of being taken seriously.

The defence against this is widespread truly peer to peer messaging services, where there is no company at the middle to tell you add backdoors.

Who is working on that? I suspect the main challenge is not technical, but human - persuading users to switch messenger apps is almost impossible.

> apps that are safe by design for children

How do we design such apps? Let's rule out age attestation (to allow only some age ranges) or scan of content because they are orthogonal to apps. What are the design patterns that prevent adults to meet kids? No messaging?

Rest assured, someone is already working on circumventing this. Necessity is the mother on invention.

Once you realise the age group that are in that bracket of european law making you realise it's gen X AKA the helicopter parent generation and it all becomes less shocking.

Related:

Chat Control 1.0 and 2.0 Explained

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48818311

Chat Control passed first round in EU Parliament

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48819008

To hell with children. Create a separate internet for them, no ICANN access unless they are parent-supervised until they hit 13 or so.

This might get this control out, but people's anti-EU stance will just be increased by this and long-term this is a terrible move.

Just fueling material for right wingers who will take advantage of this and push for secessionist stuff.

EU is in dire need to have VERY POPULAR measures among people, not idiotic stuff like this which is a step in a wrong direction.

I'm curious where I can go to see real regularpeople who support this, is there like a different side of reddit, comments section? I don't know anyone who is blatantly anti-privacy and I want to hear their reasoning. Otherwise this just seems to be the EU rolling into a weird distributed autocracy without anyone blinking an eye.

> In these talks, the EU Parliament is pushing for a paradigm shift in how we approach online child safety, demanding: [..] Strict security standards for messaging apps (“Security by Design”) to prevent cyber grooming.

It's dispiriting to see a supposedly pro-privacy politician launder backdoors as "strict security standards".

I do not believe solutions to these issues will be found with government regulators. I believe they can be enabled by new technology that is designed to balance interests on all sides and actually enforce the guarantees IN CODE AND PROTOCOLS.

Having said that, I don’t think the tech industry is what it once was, dominated by cypherpunks working to create a better world. It has been captured by greed and “moving fast and breaking things”, as well as infighting. Greed (both in the form of web3 numbers go up, and benefiting from the greater fool while delivering no utility) and moving fast (web2 facebook / VC / dump shares on the public / lock in / extract rents). So no wonder the government eventually steps in, when the industry spends a decade without adults steering the ship. We have giant platforms controlling everything, and the rest has devolved into zero sum games and memecoins. The tech industry hasn’t led or even organized enough to get behind technology that can liberate users. Instead it’s been captured by for-profit interests. Mozilla and Apache are rounding errors.

Here is what open source can do when it comes to mass surveillance, and this would also solve the Flock problem here in the States, too:

https://community.qbix.com/t/balancing-privacy-and-accountab...

More broadly, here is what needs to be done across the board:

https://www.laweekly.com/restoring-healthy-communities/

what are the actual consequences of that? they can read any Whatsapp encrypted chat? What changes?

I'm honestly confused about why this is on topic for HN.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.

Don't get me wrong, I feel a desire to engage with this as well, but there is nothing I can possibly say about this that is not political, because this is purely a political choice.

Brought to you - as always - by the Conservatives. Conservatism is just fascism with a slightly nicer image.

And so, step by step, in the name of child protection and similar excuses, we lose liberties and rights one by one.

Welcome to the Brave New 1984 We World. Big Brother loves us.

We are living through the time best described by Zamyatin, Orwell, and Huxley.