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EU to legislate about Chat Control behind closed doors

patrick-breyer.de

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Re: EU to legislate about Chat Control behind closed doors

#281

Post by vrganj »

atmosx wrote: post #279
vrganj wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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? Peace in Europe. You have to remember that the EU is fundamentally the world's most successful peace project, founded after the horrors of WW2 to make war in Europe not just unthinkable, but materially impossible. Before the EU, we had centuries of consta…

> You have to remember that the EU is fundamentally the world's most successful peace project, founded after the horrors of WW2 to make war in Europe not just unthinkable, but materially impossible. You're confusing the EU with NATO. Germany is already planning on re-arming[^1] because NATO is dead. The EU is by all means an unfinished project and if I had to bet, I would bet that it won't survive the next two decade…

> You're confusing the EU with NATO

I am not. See the Schuman Declaration [0] for context on why the EU came to be.

> It proposes that Franco-German production of coal and steel as a whole be placed under a common High Authority, within the framework of an organization open to the participation of the other countries of Europe. The pooling of coal and steel production should immediately provide for the setting up of common foundations for economic development as a first step in the federation of Europe, and will change the destinies of those regions which have long been devoted to the manufacture of munitions of war, of which they have been the most constant victims.

> The solidarity in production thus established will make it plain that any war between France and Germany becomes not merely unthinkable, but materially impossible. The setting up of this powerful productive unit, open to all countries willing to take part and bound ultimately to provide all the member countries with the basic elements of industrial production on the same terms, will lay a true foundation for their economic unification.

> There's no pro-EU majority in any European country right now. Not one.

That couldn't be further from the truth.

* Pew Research, May 2026: Majorities in eight of the 10 countries (surveyed) currently have a positive opinion of the EU. [1]

* Gallup, March 2025: No country approves of their own leadership, or that of U.S., over the EU [2]

[0] https://european-union.europa.eu/principles-countries-histor...

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/05/28/in-severa...

[2] https://news.gallup.com/poll/657860/member-states-show-stron...

Re: EU to legislate about Chat Control behind closed doors

#282

Post by vouwfietsman »

grayhatter wrote: post #96
basisword wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tec…

So you like the law, but don't like how it didn't actually solve the problem it was trying to solve? I assume you're pretty well read up on matters of privacy, right? So you have a better awareness and understanding. But do you believe the average person does? Or would you assume that the average person has either been trained to ignore the banner, automatically consent to more invasive tracking, or is generally more…

> So you like the law, but don't like how it didn't actually solve the problem it was trying to solve?

(Not the person you replied to)

I'm not sure where all of this is coming from, the law is actually extremely obvious and useful: you want to track people, they have to be informed, and have to consent. The law says nothing about how, and the way it was implemented was entirely up to the corporations discretion, which of course opted for the most malicious terrible way to do it, but they did it.

The purpose of the law was that people should be informed about cookies being installed and consent to that happening.

Do you feel like people are now aware that cookies are being installed, more so than before the banner? Do people understand that they are consenting to this?

That is the law at work.

Everything above and beyond that is nice to have, and I'm sure the world would be better for it, but without the EU, people probably wouldn't even know what cookies were, let alone understand (or have control over) how they are being tracked.

If that's not a net positive in a world where net-negatives happen every week, I don't know.

Re: EU to legislate about Chat Control behind closed doors

#283

Post by augment_me »

Lucasoato wrote: post #13

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 central…

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.

Re: EU to legislate about Chat Control behind closed doors

#284

Post by megous »

topranks wrote: post #266
moniosi wrote: post #189

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 creat…

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.

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.

Re: EU to legislate about Chat Control behind closed doors

#285

Post by subscribed »

zkmon wrote: post #192

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 d…

Respectfuly, that's an impressive load of bullshit.

Two cases in point:

- UK's Farage recently causing riots, destruction of property, arson and bringing harm to non-whites, intentionally, previously being openly supported and amplified by Musk.

- USA's lame duck president Trump causing January 6, 2021 riots ending up in destruction of property and killings of five people (including Capitol police officer)

The perpetrators causing the shit are very well known, their followers do not try to hide themselves, and no amount of mandatory ID when accessing the Internet would stop it.

Oh, and if you think being anonymous makes people nasty, you should stop by some Facebook or Nextdoor forum :)

Re: EU to legislate about Chat Control behind closed doors

#286

Post by wqaatwt »

Hikikomori wrote: post #254
wqaatwt wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> simply amended as soon as such a standard emerges That statement just makes no sense. How can a new standard emerge when legally there is no option to validate its actually superior in the market? > figures out something better That’s not how it works. Most innovation does not occur in committees but through trial and error.

Same as before? A group like Intel, Microsoft and a few more create a new standard and can get the eu to adopt it. Which popular cabling standard wasn't designed by one of the big ones?

Well you are ignoring what I or the other comment replied almost entirely.

There were many competing standards and it took quite a while for the market to converge on usb-c and only then when it was already the most popular connector by far did EU determine it was the “best” standard.

Firewire, Thunderbolt 1, all kinds of different usb type ports where designed by various groups of companies it was not self evident that they will fail in the market at that point.

No industry group let alone an EU committee can know what will fail or succeed in advance its just an absurd assumption that it could ever be otherwise.

Re: EU to legislate about Chat Control behind closed doors

#287

Post by Hizonner »

megous wrote: post #284
topranks wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Re: EU to legislate about Chat Control behind closed doors

#288

Post by wqaatwt »

mantas wrote: post #154
wqaatwt wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ar they, though? The established longterm consensus is pretty reasonable in the EU, it’s not self evident that things have been going in the right direction on the whole in recent years.

Is it? The green deal stuff seems to be pretty bad. Manufacturing seems to have a hard time. The next tier economy, e.g. AI, is not seen on the horizon. Over-the-top regulations for agriculture and then opening up the market from goods where such regulations don't exist does not seem smart either. And there're lots and lots of small things like those.

Yeah, I meant mostly the 80s and 90s (i.e. the period when the Western European countries were able to keep up with the US or ever narrow the gap). Since then they have just been coasting on top of that.

Re: EU to legislate about Chat Control behind closed doors

#290

Post by zkmon »

benjiro29 wrote: post #267
zkmon wrote: post #192

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 d…

1. They are criminals. Criminals are not bound by laws. 2. Trying to reduce anonymity to go after criminals, simply means giving up anonymity for all but the criminals. See point 1 ... Criminals do not care and will find ways to not get caught. 3. I find the idea of this blanked statement that protesters are criminals insane dangerous and smells of authoritarianism. Peaceful protesters are just that, peaceful. Those…

> No, everybody needs to give up their privacy "for the greater good"

You can bargain (via voting) about how much of the stuff you need to forgo. But you can't have 100% privacy, if the nation has to function.

You don't need to give up any privacy at all, if you don't expect anything from government. But the concept of a nation is hinged upon it's citizens foregoing a bit of privacy, a bit of their income, a bit of their freedom. The nation imposes rules that you need to follow (loss of freedom), asks you to pay up taxes and makes your identity linked to the citizen services.

The nation comes into existences precisely from the things that you forego.

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