EU Council forces Chat Control via fast-track

This means the council has systematically overridden the will of both EU parliaments and states' objections in pushing this legislation. TLDR: there are, roughly and not 100% accurately speaking, 4 ways to make legislation at the EU level

1) commission + parliament (meaning the EU commission has initiative (veto rights over any law, like the US president), and parliament can only "propose amendments", which pass with 50% of votes, or deny). This is what normally happens.

Parliament denied the law. Twice.

Member states vetoed the legislation at least 3 times (it doesn't technically work like this but member states can force the commission to veto legislation, and Belgium, Hungary and Denmark have done so) (technically member states can force the EU commission not to introduce legislation and because nobody else can do so either, this is normally effectively a veto)

2) council + parliament. This is where we are. If the executives of the member states (NOT parliaments) want to push through a vote, they can use this path. The difference is that only 2/3 majority of parliament can stop the law from passing or put in amendments.

Technically, this is meant for bypassing the EU commission. But of course, in reality it is for getting past the Danish and potential Belgian and Hungarian and other's vetoes. The commission really wants this.

3) council + commission. This completely overrides any legislative involvement in ... well, legislation. They have already threatened to do this.

4) the council can just force legislation through without anyone's approval

Normally "democracy" in the EU means that legislation requires BOTH a majority of Europeans to agree (Parliament) AND no executive government. Both have already been bypassed.

This refers to "Chat Control 1.0", allowing facebook and other messaging providers to scan chats for harmful content (which they had been temporarily allowed to do by a recently expired law). It means current scanning is illegal.

Just so we're clear, this basically means that all messengers (not any specific one) will have to intercept everyone's messages, scan for specific words, and if found report the whole chat history to the police.

Of course, it already turned out "BTW carrousel" (an illegal tax avoidance strategy) is one of the sentences they scan for to "protect the children".

The article itself also contains evidence against the idea that this protects children (that child protection investigations keep increasing despite the scanning not taking place anymore)

Also, another key fact to bring up here once again:

The institution that forced this through is the EU Council, the body that represents national governments and is composed of heads of government.

The reason they have to force it through and couldn't do 2.0 is because the EU Parliament stopped them.

In other words, it's the nation states that want this and the EU institutions that are blocking it, not the other way around as often framed online.

If not for the EU, a much worse version of this would already be law in the nation states.

You can see this play out in real-time in the UK, which has gone real dystopian ever since Brexit.

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Ok, theres defo a lot of idiots on HN and in USA who disagree with you.

Still, kinda weird to complain about bureaucracy and regulations in this context cus its the only solution to these problems of egality and corruption which humanity has been struggling with ever since the dawn of civilisation.

Tho, It's kind of a solved problem too. We should all just try to be like Denmark, they at the top or near the top of practially every metric. Happiness, corruption index, Gini, Quality of life, healthcare, education, carbon. They have a massive powerful bureaucracy, lots of strong regulation, extremely high taxes, low corruption.

The solution to any eco-geo-political issue is just "be more like Denmark". Once everyone gets to that level we can think about further improvement.

They form these groups to network and do favors for each other and provide cover for each other. After a while you are asked to do increasingly compromising things to yourself to do deeper into/stay part of the club such as blood rituals. Bohemian Grove high priest Henry Kissinger led simulated animal sacrifice rituals attended by many others in the "inner circles" of the top strata of decision makers and wallet holders. They do this because engaging in a common taboo unites the group extremely strongly, and these behaviors are the ultimate taboo.