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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

#31

Post by SiempreViernes »

piker wrote: post #6

Even living nearby in the UK it blows my mind how quickly the EU proposes, kills and then revives and passes controversial legislation in such a short timeframe.

Well, the impression of speed is mainly in the head of the headline writers.

What has actually happened is that after about three years of faffing about the Council finally decided on it negotiation position begore the Coreper 2 meeting last week, thought it seems they ran put of time at actual the meeting and had to have the formal approval this week.

The Council is only one of three parties that draft new laws, so now there's are still several rounds of negotiations left.

Nothing substantial has happened to the three texts since last week, it's just that "chat control is back" drives traffic and "Council preparatory body formally approves draft position that got consensus previously but didn't formally get passed because people were fighting over Ukraine stuff for too long" doesn't.

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

#32

Post by jeroenhd »

AndrewSwift wrote: post #3

It would be nice to have details: It rewards or penalizes online services depending on whether they agree to carry out “voluntary” scanning, effectively making intrusive monitoring a business expectation rather than a legal requirement.

This is the same way the law in many EU countries mandates ISPs to store communication logs for every internet subscriber for months or longer.

The legal mandate was shot down by the EU courts, but every country then figured out their own loophole and as a result data retention is effectively mandatory but not by clear and public law.

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

#33

Post by SiempreViernes »

margorczynski wrote: post #22

How they're packaging it now? Terrorism? Child porn? Russian agents? Either way politicians prefer to push unpopular stuff like this via the EU because the responsibility gets muddied - "we didn't want it, the EU regulation requires us to spy on you!".

It's important to know that the "new" in the title is entirely made up, it's the same draft as last week when they just ran out of time at the meeting, probably because they were fighting about Ukraine stuff.

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

#34

Post by dupedupedupe »

mrtksn wrote: post #7

[dupe] 135 comments : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46062777

Thank you ChrisArchitect. That story was mysteriously (downranked/downmodded/deranked/downweighted) from the front page.

Perhaps it met the criteria for a Major Ongoing Topic (MOT) or a MegaMOT, or the "flamewar detector" kicked in, or just that it wasn't convenient to discuss, but we'll never know since the precise moderation action applied to individual stories is opaque.

https://hnrankings.info/46062777/

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

#35

Post by udev4096 »

Why is this even surprising? Mass surveillance is not a new thing. It's been there since the inception of the internet. This only makes it "official" and is nothing more than a formality. We need to fight back by using decentralized and p2p software

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

#36

Post by paganel »

piker wrote: post #6

Even living nearby in the UK it blows my mind how quickly the EU proposes, kills and then revives and passes controversial legislation in such a short timeframe.

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

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

#37

Post by jeroenhd »

raverbashing wrote: post #19
AndrewSwift wrote: post #3

It would be nice to have details: It rewards or penalizes online services depending on whether they agree to carry out “voluntary” scanning, effectively making intrusive monitoring a business expectation rather than a legal requirement.

Exactly this But people like to sensationalize stuff This is less worse than the original proposal Oh and honestly game chat rooms should not be private. (of course personal 1:1 messages should)

This achieves every goal the original proposal achieved, except the wording is sneakier.

Services are obligated to do risk analysis and take appropriate safety precautions against high risk actions. High risk actions include "anonymous accounts", "uploading media", and of course "encrypted messages".

The moment they catch the next random pedo, every messenger app on their phone will be tasked with explaining why they didn't do enough to stop the pedo. They'd better get their business together next time, because otherwise they might be held liable!

There's no law that says you have to hand over arbitrary data to the police without a warrant but when Telegrams shady owner landed in france, he was locked up until his company pledged to "work together with police better".

Don't be fooled by pretty words, none of this optional stuff is optional for any messenger the government doesn't already have the ability to read along with.

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

#38

Post by Ylpertnodi »

cbeach wrote: post #17
iLoveOncall wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are a fool if you think the UK is better. I've moved from the EU to the UK and it is worse in every way when it comes to authoritarian measures. I'm not sure how you can have already forgotten the fact that we have to upload or face or ID to access websites.

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…

> 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 loud critics of government overreach.

A lot of politicians change when they get in power.

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

#39

Post by permo-w »

Macha wrote: post #15
permo-w wrote: post #11

why are specifically the Danish so obsessed with pushing this through? it always seems to come back to them

Partly it's because the Danish have the rotating EU presidency at the moment so they have the job of pushing things forward (which also means receiving the most lobbying). In the previous wave earlier in the year, it was the Polish for the same reason. Partly it's they don't have the same pro-privacy culture that say Germany and many of the eastern european countries have. People also think the current Danish PM was…

I wonder how aware they are of the damage to the EU's reputation that they're continually creating by repeatedly bringing this back

I think this theme of the EU, this lack of taboo against continually bringing unwanted laws until they pass by fatigue, it may well be the death of the institution as a whole. every time they try, every time people hear about it, more and more think worse of the EU, and unlike most western governments, the existence and function of the EU is actually severely vulnerable to what people think of it. no other major government takes as much reputational damage from laws that don't even pass, and the existence of no other major government is as vulnerable to reputational damage as the EU is right now. all it takes is another 1 or 2 major exits and the whole thing will slowly collapse, which is insanely sad

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

#40

Post by IlikeKitties »

snvzz wrote: post #16
AndrewSwift wrote: post #3

It would be nice to have details: It rewards or penalizes online services depending on whether they agree to carry out “voluntary” scanning, effectively making intrusive monitoring a business expectation rather than a legal requirement.

Business, eh. Maybe it's time to go open source and fully distributed peer-to-peer. Something like Tox[0] or SimpleX[1]. The (actual) solution should be to fix legislation to adequate protect privacy, because they'll attack this next. But meantime, a technical solution is better than nothing. 0. https://tox.chat/ 1. https://simplex.chat/

> Hi Mom, please install this peer to peer dark net chat to talk to me in the future, thanks Oh honey, why don't we just use iMessage instead. Thx bye.
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