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End of "Chat Control": EU parliament stops mass surveillance

patrick-breyer.de

211–220 of 324 posts

Re: End of "Chat Control": EU parliament stops mass surveillance

#211
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 2016 the UK demonstrated that there is a way for the public to vote down the corpus of bad EU legislation. Of course our national govts have been pretty woeful ever since, but in 2029 we will have the opportunity to vote for genuine, dramatic change, with strong options on both the left and right side of politics. Regarding the creeping surveillance state, Reform UK have explicitly stated they will repeal the awfu…

The UK has shown that they can vote down bad EU legislation, and pass a lot of pretty awful legislation that's worse than anything the EU ever produced But I'm sure voting for Nigel Farage one more time will fix everything

Interesting you blame Farage for the bad legislation passed by the Tories and Labour? Why is that? I thought he was one of the most vocal contrarians to Tory and Labour policy?

Re: End of "Chat Control": EU parliament stops mass surveillance

#212

I’m confused by > This means on April 6, 2026, Gmail, LinkedIn, Microsoft and other Big Techs must stop scanning your private messages in the EU It had already passed and started?

> It had already passed and started? Facebook and others have been scanning your private messages for many years already. Then someone discovered that this practice is illegal in Europe. So they passed the temporary chat control 1.0 emergency law to make it legal. The plan was to draft a chat control 2.0 law that would then be the long-term solution. But negotiations took too long and the temporary law will expire on…

I take it facebook/meta paid no fines for doing it illegally in the first place?

Re: End of "Chat Control": EU parliament stops mass surveillance

#213

It seems like an almost never ending hamster wheel of chat control being introduced, voted down, then introduced again in the next session.

That's the problem with modern democracies (it happens in the USA too). They only have to win once and it's law. We have to win every time.

It's a problem when the parliament can't propose the laws it has to vote on and the commission isn't elected and continues to be presided by the most corrupt person in the EU. She is blatantly EPP and just keeps proposing the shit they want.

For Americans, imagine if only Republicans ever got to propose legislation and only Democrats could vote on it. That's more or less it.

Re: End of "Chat Control": EU parliament stops mass surveillance

#214
post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be antithetical to democracy. The people must be allowed to introduce any legislation they want, as often as they want. Otherwise it would be trivial for a government to intentionally fail to pass anything they disagree with, and thus act as a de facto dictatorship.

When have "the people" been last consulted on this? Do you really think Chat Control has high public support? Given how most "democracies" work in our world today (which is to say with no consultation of the people), i think limiting their ability to do further harm might be worth it.

The MEPs represent the people. They've just been consulted. They said no.

Looking at what each of my MEPs voted they seemed to pretty accurately represent their own party lines, the right and far right voted for, left and center left voted against. I'm shocked! Shocked! Well not that shocked.

Re: End of "Chat Control": EU parliament stops mass surveillance

#215
post #159

It seems like an almost never ending hamster wheel of chat control being introduced, voted down, then introduced again in the next session.

The US really, really wants it implemented, and several national police institutions in the EU does too. Plus the politicians that start to drool a little at the prospect.

Given the current US-EU relations I'm more surprised we're not telling them to go fuck themselves on this.

Re: End of "Chat Control": EU parliament stops mass surveillance

#216
post #207

> Recently, only 36% of suspicious activity reports from US companies originated from the surveillance of private messages anyway. I don't have many opinions on this but this sort of lazy logic would make me nervous. 36% is not a small number and that's before the folks doing this activity find out that private message is less patrolled.

Yeah, that number is actually really high. I’m wondering how noisy those reports are

Re: End of "Chat Control": EU parliament stops mass surveillance

#218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the problem with modern democracies (it happens in the USA too). They only have to win once and it's law. We have to win every time.

It's a problem when the parliament can't propose the laws it has to vote on and the commission isn't elected and continues to be presided by the most corrupt person in the EU. She is blatantly EPP and just keeps proposing the shit they want. For Americans, imagine if only Republicans ever got to propose legislation and only Democrats could vote on it. That's more or less it.

You are mostly right except vdl is very, very far from the most corrupt person. It can be much worse.

Re: End of "Chat Control": EU parliament stops mass surveillance

#219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the problem with modern democracies (it happens in the USA too). They only have to win once and it's law. We have to win every time.

It's a problem when the parliament can't propose the laws it has to vote on and the commission isn't elected and continues to be presided by the most corrupt person in the EU. She is blatantly EPP and just keeps proposing the shit they want. For Americans, imagine if only Republicans ever got to propose legislation and only Democrats could vote on it. That's more or less it.

At least the Commision can't conduct war for 100 days without Congress approval.

I thought Juncker was an idiot but VdL is corrupt to Hillary levels and worse than the disastruous Merker/Juncker duo in every way. I'd like to see her replaced with someone like Macron. That's the type of leadership that the EU needs right now.

Re: End of "Chat Control": EU parliament stops mass surveillance

#220

> Despite today’s victory, further procedural steps by EU governments cannot be completely ruled out. Most of all, the trilogue negotiations on a permanent child protection regulation (Chat Control 2.0) are continuing under severe time pressure. There, too, EU governments continue to insist on their demand for “voluntary” indiscriminate Chat Control. > Furthermore, the next massive threat to digital civil liberties i…

"> Furthermore, the next massive threat to digital civil liberties is already on the agenda: Next up in the ongoing trilogue, lawmakers will negotiate whether messenger and chat services, as well as app stores, will be legally obliged to implement age verification. This would require users to provide ID documents or submit to facial scans, effectively making anonymous communication impossible and severely endangering…

There's a fairly non-invasive way to do age verification: ID cards that connect to a smartphone app that only provide a boolean age verification to the requesting service. Requesting service can be anonymous to the ID app and the requesting service can only receive a bool.

That most implementation will try to collect far more data is the real concern.

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