Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

EU Parliament greenlights Chat Control 1.0

patrick-breyer.de

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

681–690 of 947 posts

Re: EU Parliament greenlights Chat Control 1.0

#681

Post by Nursie »

mike_hearn wrote: post #664
maxloh wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that means those MEPs are not doing their jobs. They are the representatives of their people, but somehow they left for vacation before the last day of the session. They failed in the most important part of their duty.

Around ten years ago I watched some MEPs on YouTube talk about their jobs. A lot of them were scathing. The EP isn't a real parliament and the people in it don't have any real power, so it fills up with cheerleaders and hecklers. Attendance isn't just low before the summer break, it's low all the time. MEPs miss votes for reasons as trivial as there being a football game on, because why not? It's not like their votes…

As much as Brexit was a footgun, this has always seemed to me a very valid criticism of the EU that the remain side of that debate never really tackled. There is a huge democratic deficit in the organisation.

The Council, made up of heads of state, set the direction.

The Commission, made up of whoever is nominated by those heads of state, usually some mate of theirs with no democratic accountability or mandate of their own (see: Peter Mandelson), is the body that decides on and creates legislation.

The Parliament, made up of the actually elected members, seems to exist just to rubber-stamp the output of the other bodies. Or occasionally not, but look what happened here, they were asked again until they did * .

Don't get me wrong, I think there's a lot that's good about the EU too, but it's in need of serious reform before it can claim to be a truly democratic set of bodies.

(* Which is incidentally another criticism of the EU, mostly centred around the time of the Lisbon treaty, which was first put forward as the new EU constitution but, after rejection in some popular referenda in some countries, was renamed the Lisbon Treaty and pushed through again. In the UK this caused waves because the populace was not asked at all about the treaty and Gordon Brown was reported to have snuck-off and signed it into law on the quiet)

Re: EU Parliament greenlights Chat Control 1.0

#682

Post by rowyourboat »

logicchains wrote: post #450
bko wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why you have a constitution with rights that are not up for vote. Even relying on people to vote no is not enough.

Some European countries like Germany do, but the EU somehow can override those national constitutions.

No, it can't. It's going to be an interesting legal challenge.

Also, the European Court of Justice has, to the best of my knowledge, not ruled on this yet, either. The fact fight isn't over.

Re: EU Parliament greenlights Chat Control 1.0

#683

Post by nickpp »

Ruphin wrote: post #261
budududuroiu wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Internet Watch Foundation, the group, funded almost entirely by big tech, who pushed for this vote to be held under emergency procedure, is already at work lobbying for the end of E2EE [1]. In a couple years time, Chat Control 2.0 will come about, and the same tyrants will use the EU admission [2] that there is no evidence that suspicionless scanning of private communications has led to an increase in criminal co…

Why would big tech be in favor of having to scan message content? It puts more regulatory requirements in place on their activities. Would they not be in favor of _less_ regulation so they can provide services to their users with fewer legal considerations? If big tech _wanted_ to they could already backdoor their encryption and scan the message content, they don't need regulation to do that. The only thing that chan…

Because regulation (even well meaning regulation) always favors incumbents and hinders startups.

Re: EU Parliament greenlights Chat Control 1.0

#684

Post by greatgib »

gorwell wrote: post #527
greatgib wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to be clear, here you see the EU, but behind this there are a few corrupt national government officials that are pushing hard for this.

But hundreds voted? 314 against, 276 in favor, 17 abstentions

Let's be honest, like for national assemblies, lots of members of the parliament are quite dumb.

I think most of them will not even look at the biggest part of the laws they are supposed to vote. They will vote for whatever they are told to vote for by the party or carefully crafted lobbying.

For something like chat control, you don't see it but there are probably a dozen lobbyist that went to see them in turn, feeding lies and propaganda that they will not challenge because they have other "important" political subjects they are busy looking at.

The commission is leading the game with lots of tricks like what was done here to get what they want in the end.

Just look at the fact that very very few of member even realized or complained to have been played fool by the last vote.

And I mean that it is wonderful already that some many members did the right choice (and I hope because they understood the issue and not because they were told to vote this), but it is crazy that so many still voted in favor.

And who knows, maybe a lot of them didn't even understand the question and were thinking that the "no" was "no to chat control", but here it goes back to my initial point that they are dumb enough to be easily manipulated by the commission members.

Re: EU Parliament greenlights Chat Control 1.0

#685

Post by HeartStrings »

nick486 wrote: post #82
budududuroiu wrote: post #6

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…

I'm really surprised at the hurry. The EU, and many EU governments, have been ramming through deeply unpopular legislation at a breakneck pace for no apparent reason, lately. It feels like the last turn in a board game where everyone is busy taking points with no regard for the impact of the decisions on the theoretical next turn - because there is no next turn. Its really weird. > blame-laundering mechanism Also, I'…

The reason they do this is preparation for war. Also, foreign influence bots and hostile active measures.

Re: EU Parliament greenlights Chat Control 1.0

#686

Post by LtWorf »

tenthirtyam wrote: post #240
budududuroiu wrote: post #6

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…

I think I'm one of those to whom you refer (except that I'm already "awake", or at least I like to think so). I'm normally pro-EU but this chat control is anathema to me. I'll be voting anti-EU in future I think.

> I'll be voting anti-EU in future I think.

You mean the far right that talks about EU all the time and loves when EU does things like this?

Re: EU Parliament greenlights Chat Control 1.0

#687

Post by LtWorf »

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #621
LtWorf wrote: post #600

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It cannot. EU laws are completely useless and must be implemented by every government as a local law, which won't be more powerful than the constitution. The problem is that constitutional courts should then say the law was against the constitution and cancel it, but will that happen?

In theory, it can't. But in reality, it does in important cases. Germany has implemented EU sanctions against a German journalist, which deprive him and his family of the ability to conduct basically any economic activity in Germany or even to leave the country. He is not allowed to work. No one is allowed to pay him money. He has to petition the government every time he wants to access even a small amount of the mon…

That's what I'm saying. It's completely illegal but nobody cares.

Re: EU Parliament greenlights Chat Control 1.0

#688

Post by miohtama »

mrtksn wrote: post #14

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 h…

Guess what's coming next:

> Overview

> End-to-end encryption is a term used to describe blocking or preventing any third-party recipient from viewing, reading or becoming aware of information that one individual has sent to another. In response to growing concerns about online data security, many technology companies are adopting this strategy with potentially dire circumstances.

> The use of end-to-end encryption would prevent the companies or any third-party from detecting illegal activity occurring on their platforms, including the activity of people who use the internet to perpetuate online demand for graphic sexual abuse material of children.

> We believe personal security is extremely important and support efforts to improve online privacy. But, if this solution is implemented with no exceptions for detecting child sexual exploitation, millions of incidents of abuse will remain hidden, leaving these young victims without any help or protection from these horrific crimes.

https://ncmec.org/theissues/end-to-end-encryption

Re: EU Parliament greenlights Chat Control 1.0

#689

Post by jvidalv »

parineum wrote: post #364
bradley13 wrote: post #128

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 wel…

> It is shocking that 276 members of parliament would vote to support this. Are so many so naive? Or being paid off? There are a lot of countries in the EU that aren't shining beacons of democracy. The EU makes sense as an economic block but some of the countries in it are politically unaligned with what people think of when they think of the EU.

You will be surprised to discover that the most open pro-democracy and “leftist” are also the most fascist and speech controlling ones.

At least in Spain this is exactly the case, and is really scary how much people falls for it.

Re: EU Parliament greenlights Chat Control 1.0

#690

Post by master-lincoln »

sebastianconcpt wrote: post #479
teekert wrote: post #38

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…

Adding the reminder that these votes and majority rejecting are of unelected bureaucrats, so the way that it was framed was approved from above while making practically impossible to reject but still theoretically possible so people are forced to swallow it. Soviet Union 2.0

The members of parliament are elected every 5 years by the citizens of the european union. What do you mean with unelected bureaucrats?
Post reply on HN