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EU Parliament greenlights Chat Control 1.0

patrick-breyer.de

61–70 of 947 posts

Re: EU Parliament greenlights Chat Control 1.0

#61
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.

Re: EU Parliament greenlights Chat Control 1.0

#62
post #36

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.

It's not so much "support" as "not caring." Most "regular" people, when they hear about measures like this, say "oh no, the government can see my boring text messages to grandma, who cares", much they same way they shrug off the dangers of having a robot vacuum live-streaming the inside of their house to China ("there's nothing interesting in my house, who cares").

The thing is... It's not even reported on the news here (Lithuania).

Just now I scrolled through our most popular news sites. 0 mentions. Wasn't on TV either.

The vast majority of the population didn't even have a clue that the vote was happening.

I checked the top 5 most popular local news sites. There was one article about chat control in April and then 2 more from 2025. That's it.

Imagine an issue as big as this and it's not even reported. Yeah I don't feel confident about the future at all.

Re: EU Parliament greenlights Chat Control 1.0

#63
post #39

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 s…

To understand whether/to what extent this is brazen, I'd be interested to learn the reasoning why urgency procedures are possible, and in particular, why the apparent majority against shouldn't have been enough, and what is needed to classify something as urgent.

Afaik, EU rules provide for urgent procedure only for proposals at first reading, while here it was used to compress a second reading vote and skip committee, just perfectly timed for the last sitting before recess.

The absolute majority seems to be an anti-paralysis instrument, where the onus is on the Parliament to reject something put in motion by the Council. I think the the asymmetry is that a vote to trigger the urgency procedure only requires a simple majority, whereas a rejection of that same legislation requires absolute majority.

To my reading, this reinforces the idea that Parliament is designed to be more of a rubber stamp for the Council.

Re: EU Parliament greenlights Chat Control 1.0

#64
post #15
post #4

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

Multiple things can be true at the same time. There can exist strong consumer protections against misuse of their personal data by various entities. And there can simultaneously also exist governmental overreach against citizens private data. The world is complex, few things are truly binary.

In this case, the phrase “consumer protections” is almost insulting when the things it’s supposedly protecting us from are a triviality compared to the horror show being introduced.

Re: EU Parliament greenlights Chat Control 1.0

#65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this basically means the EU pushed a new censorship regulation using lawfare tricks without ever having a majority vote for the proposal. If it's not a dictatorship, a regime, a shithole, a kleptocracy, or whatever name they use for a government they don't like, I don't know what it is.

The regulation was rejected today with 314 votes against, 276 in favor, and 17 abstentions, but because of Metsola's lawfare that classified this regulation as under an "urgent procedure", an absolute majority was required to reject.

[deleted]

Re: EU Parliament greenlights Chat Control 1.0

#66
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It still remains true that Mark Zuckerberg will get arrested if he is caught using the data for anything other than child porn scans.

I am not sure if the absurdity of that statement is intentional, or a result of just how far the Overton window has drifted. First of all, private companies shouldn't be given that responsibility to begin with. Meta in particular, has a long history of unethical and immoral usage of personal data. I won't use the term "illegal", as the question of legality becomes moot when punishment can be factored in as a cost of…

>I won't use the term "illegal", as the question of legality becomes moot when punishment can be factored in as a cost of doing business.

Woah, that's such a good, on point statement. From Boing, FightClub (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0137523/quotes/?item=qt0479130) to Cambridge Analytica (Meta) and Pegasus as a small sample ;)

Re: EU Parliament greenlights Chat Control 1.0

#67

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.

EU politicians are exempt from this measure. They thought it all the way through.

(Edit: seems that the statement above applies to ChatControl 2.0, not the approved text. Apologies.)

Re: EU Parliament greenlights Chat Control 1.0

#68

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.

[deleted]

Re: EU Parliament greenlights Chat Control 1.0

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The regulation was rejected today with 314 votes against, 276 in favor, and 17 abstentions, but because of Metsola's lawfare that classified this regulation as under an "urgent procedure", an absolute majority was required to reject.

I wonder if the abstentions are counting "missing MEPs" or MEPs present but who did not vote

The EU parliament has 720 representatives (at the moment 719, one seat is vacant apparently), so 113 representatives didn't show up for the vote. The absolute majority would've been reached with 361 votes.
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