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EU Council Approves New "Chat Control" Mandate Pushing Mass Surveillance

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Re: EU Council Approves New "Chat Control" Mandate Pushing Mass Surveillance

#231

Post by cbeach »

71bw wrote: post #165
cbeach wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The far-right Reform party[1]? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reform_UK

I wonder if your statement was ironic, as the article you posted does not describe Reform as far-right?

From the article:

> In March 2024, the BBC called the party far-right but soon retracted its statement and apologised to Reform UK, writing that describing the party as far-right "fell short of our usual editorial standards".[219] Commenting on the incident, the professor of politics Tim Bale wrote that labelling Reform UK as far-right is unhelpful, and that it "causes too visceral a reaction and at the same time is too broad to be meaningful". Bale noted the importance of distinguishing between the "extreme right" and "populist radical right", and stated that parties described as far right should instead be "more precisely labelled".[220] Reform UK itself rejects the descriptor, and has threatened legal action against media using it.[221] In May 2025, Ross Clark, writing in The Spectator, argued Reform is "now a left-wing party", by attracting disillusioned Labour voters with stances on restoring welfare benefits, nationalising the steel industry with 50% of utilities and increasing government spending (including the NHS).[222]

Re: EU Council Approves New "Chat Control" Mandate Pushing Mass Surveillance

#232

Post by sillyfluke »

petcat wrote: post #230
sillyfluke wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So? The US prior to 1776, those specific colonies that became the US, were British colonies, are you claiming before that those colonies weren't considered British?

Britain lost their claim to those colonies when they lost a war to the Americans. The Inuit had no capacity to fight a war with Denmark. So it's the same situation except now Denmark is on the short-end of the power imbalance, and they're upset about it.

I find it a pointless rabbit hole to go down given the timeframe. I guess we disagree. We're not talking about the independence of the indigenous people at this current point in time, we're talking about Denmark relinquishing it by default because they colonized and annexed it imorrally.

Re: EU Council Approves New "Chat Control" Mandate Pushing Mass Surveillance

#233

Post by paganel »

oblio wrote: post #107
paganel wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because that's what autocracies in anything but name usually do. Who's going to stop them?

The EU Parliament, that has to vote to pass the law. Let's be better at commenting than Libertatea, circa 2010 (or The Daily Mail, for international readers).

The EU Parliament is a lame-duck thing, we both know that, let’s not pretend that this won’t pass at some point. It’s also not a parliament by definition, as it cannot propose any legislative measure, it can only propose “resolutions”, this is as lame-duck as it gets.

Re: EU Council Approves New "Chat Control" Mandate Pushing Mass Surveillance

#234

Post by andriamanitra »

andrepd wrote: post #66
arlort wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it doesn't, people are just embarrassingly ignorant of how the EU legislative process works so when a vote to give first approval to a text is cancelled before it takes place journalists and reddit all over pull out the mission accomplished banners and when a negotiating position is approved everyone has a surprised pikachu face The "proposal" was made something like 3 years ago, the killing never happened an…

> Because it doesn't, people are just embarrassingly ignorant of how the EU legislative process works Hmm, now whose fault is it that the EU institutions are so complicated and opaque? The citizens? The journalists? Or maybe...?

Complicated, sure, but opaque? EU is incredibly transparent – the amount of information on the European Council website [1] is daunting. There are vote results, meeting schedules, agendas, background briefs, lists of participants, reports, recordings of public council sessions, and so on and so on. All publicly available in each of the 24 EU official languages for whoever cares enough to look. And it's not just the council! The EU Treaties and Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU gives any EU citizen the right to access documents possessed by EU institutions, bodies, offices and agencies (with a few exceptions for eg. public security and military matters) [2].

The problem is mostly the sheer amount of things going on, you couldn't possibly keep up with it all.

[1] https://www.consilium.europa.eu/

[2] https://www.ombudsman.europa.eu/en/document/en/163352

Re: EU Council Approves New "Chat Control" Mandate Pushing Mass Surveillance

#235

Post by jjgreen »

cbeach wrote: post #102
exasperaited wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Net migration in the UK is falling, and fast. It grew under a party that is ideologically closer to Reform than the government currently in power.

Net migration is only falling because of record high numbers of British and European people emigrating, against a backdrop of huge (800K+) levels of gross immigration.

Sick of living with Nazis more like

Re: EU Council Approves New "Chat Control" Mandate Pushing Mass Surveillance

#236

Post by bluescrn »

jacquesm wrote: post #65
cbeach wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the UK we've had an authoritarian Conservative government for 14 years, followed by an even more authoritarian Labour government, which we'll have until 2029. In 2029 it's likely we'll have a more libertarian government: https://www.politico.eu/europe-poll-of-polls/united-kingdom/... Reform will repeal some of the awful legislation that's been passed over the last few years (e.g. Online Safety Act). They've been l…

It is a massive assumption that reform will win the elections.

Yelling 'racist' at Farage for over a decade hasn't got rid of him. Maybe 4 more years of doing the same thing will do the job?

Can't see the Tories bouncing back in a few mere years. Labour are heading rapidly into the same unelectable territory.

Which leaves us with Reform vs a Green-LibDem coalition?

But the Greens have chosen to embrace their own form of populist lunacy. And some will never forgive the Lib Dems for their last coalition.

Re: EU Council Approves New "Chat Control" Mandate Pushing Mass Surveillance

#237

Post by sneak »

pessimizer wrote: post #203
xyzal wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What alternative do you propose?

I've always advocated a proliferation of overlapping "states." Let them keep each other in check. Instead of having a tree with a king at the top and your local police station at the bottom, be a part of the governance for the river that you live near, for the city that surrounds you, for the grocery store in your neighborhood, for your local fire department, and let all of them have codified relationships with each…

So, the problem with all of these proposed replacement systems (such as IRV, for example) is that "democracy" is a meme. People, en masse, believe in these systems-as-written (for better or worse) - critically - even if that isn't how things actually work on the ground in the real world.

So many people believe that, for example, the stuff written on the paper currency of the United States is legally binding. (It's irrelevant whether it is or not - people believe it, because they hear, believe, repeat, and teach the meme.)

Representative government is the same way. There are much better systems, and anyone can easily think up a few of them. The problem is going from A to B, also known as "the tyranny of the installed base".

No proposed new form of government or representation is worth the paper it's printed on unless it comes with a viable migration path from the status quo.

Re: EU Council Approves New "Chat Control" Mandate Pushing Mass Surveillance

#238

Post by stackedinserter »

pfdietz wrote: post #187

Europe is no longer a place that should be considered ideologically compatible with the United States. At best neutral. The US should abandon NATO and downgrade relations with the continent.

There's no one solid "Europe", there is a bunch of countries that are farther from each other than states in US.

E.g. what do Spain and Poland have in common?

Re: EU Council Approves New "Chat Control" Mandate Pushing Mass Surveillance

#239

Post by ben_w »

DangitBobby wrote: post #221
ben_w wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> including just continuing to use illegal encryption. First, this can be made a crime by itself, and detected automatically because the mandatory back-doors fail. Second, what gets talked about in public (the only thing any of us knows for sure, but also definitely not the whole picture) includes foreign governments recruiting locals via normal messenger apps. More of a problem is that the back-doors can be exploite…

> First, this can be made a crime by itself, and detected automatically because the mandatory back-doors fail. You're assuming they continue to use monitored channels to carry it out.

I am assuming that the entire (EU in this case) internet is monitored for un-decryptable messages, and that they use the internet.

Can you square the circle, even in principle, without questions of cost?

Re: EU Council Approves New "Chat Control" Mandate Pushing Mass Surveillance

#240

Post by moi2388 »

oblio wrote: post #109
glemmaPaul wrote: post #72

And all this was done in a highly democratic manner, thanks EU!

Did you read the article? Edit: Based on the downvotes, you obviously didn't. This is a PROPOSAL, not a LAW. It needs to be voted by the EU Parliament (you know, one of the 3 components of democracy as in "separation of powers").

Democracy means that the people decide.

Voting once every 5 years for groups which are organised cross-country, but not letting citizens vote cross-country, and this being the only democratic organ and the one with the least power, with no consequences for any of them breaking election promises, is imho not “letting the people decide”, but “oligarchy with the illusion of choice”

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