EU Council has withdrawn the vote on Chat Control

These kinds of laws to ban encryption will continue to be pushed by those that want to prosecute more criminals. The drive will always be there.

And it will always crash against the financial interests that want online commerce and banking to work. And so it will always fail in the end, because we can't kill our economy in order to catch more criminals.

We will keep repeating this cycle. Around and around the merry go round we go.

Yesterday and early this morning there has luckily been a massive push from Belgian media. The proposal this time around came from the Belgian presidency, so it was up to them to withdraw the vote.

It's unlikely we'll see any admission on why exactly the vote was withdrawn, but it's probable that the situation became untenable for the political parties involved, one of which lost massively in the Belgian elections about two weeks ago.

In an short interview in De Tijd [1] with one of the Belgian MEPs pushing this (Hilde Vautmans, OpenVLD, liberal, lost big), and another short line in De Morgen [2] from outgoing Belgian Minister of the Interior who was part of the talks for this new version (Annelies Verlinden, CD&V, Christian democrats), both of them made it appear like they mostly just care about getting it done (because nobody else has succeeded yet). There is a lot of "but think of the children", and zero technical expertise.

This morning, after the press attention, high rank party officials across the spectrum (and from the parties mentioned above) publicly called the proposal dangerous, so it's likely the pressure worked this time.

Next time this can come up for the vote will likely be from Hungary. They are taking over the EU presidency in a few weeks, and have already said this is on the agenda for them. Considering the current political climate there I would assume they are more likely to bring it to a vote, but hopefully that vote is less likely to succeed. Still, there's no time to rest, the proposal isn't dead.

[1] https://www.tijd.be/ondernemen/technologie/fel-privacyprotes...

[2] https://www.demorgen.be/snelnieuws/verlinden-buigt-voor-luid...

I thought we safe and beyond these kind of considerations, especially in the EU, since the wikileaks/snowden/shelsea manning era? Aren’t we? Well, I guess you should never take something for granted…

I'd bet good money that the bulk of European intelligence people use Signal, both personally and for non-classified work stuff. So the announcement that Signal would pull out of Europe was probably more influential than anyone will acknowledge.

Really important! However it seems that the battle will continue in July with Hungary instead..

Coincidentally, a "leak" was reported yesterday suggesting EU MP's intend to exempt "confidential" govt info, as well as police, intelligence, and military personnel from Chat Control:

https://www.eureporter.co/business/data/mass-surveillance-da...

This will never happen in reality, but one way to make sure a bill like this doesn't get through is to not allow for any exceptions to being surveiled. So politicians and security people will be treated just like the population at large and have their communications monitored. I mean, think of the children, how bad would it be if a trusted member of society ended up peddling the bad images. So in that respect they need to be surveiled as anyone else.

One enormous advantage of federated systems is that they can route around this idiocy. For example, I host a Mastodon server in California. There was zero chance I’d comply with EU’s law, any more than I would PRC’s. That’s their little policy, not mine.

They’ll probably just rejigger it in the name of fighting the “far right” and it will pass through with celebrity and pomp.

Considering European modern history and how the EU white-washes all their tech legislation as "pro consumer rights" (it's protectionism¹ ² ³). One would think that the EU would be the last place on earth to introduce such obvious surveillance legislation.⁴

Similar proposals haven't got this close to passing in any other first world countries.

I'm glad to see that many sane voices (particularly those affected worst by the Nazis) are leading a resistance against such obviously flawed legislation.

¹ https://itif.org/publications/2022/09/19/how-the-eu-is-using...

² https://www.ft.com/content/9edea4f5-5f34-4e17-89cd-f9b9ba698...

³ https://www.politico.eu/article/european-protectionism-trade...

⁴ https://sdw.space/europe-wants-to-end-encryption/

So I guess see you in three months for another round?

Yeah of course, now that they know all their chats can be scanned, they are balking

The wave of authoritarianism sweeping the world is pretty alarming.

This bill (only temporarily sidelined) would treat every single person as a suspect of child porn crimes. Previously, you'd need substantial cause to put someone under heavy surveillance.

People talked about how that was due to principles of civil liberty, human rights, and freedom. But apparently it was actually just because it wasn't feasible to watch everything everyone says and does all the time. Now that the technology is here to enable it, our "free democracies" can't rush fast enough to put the boot to everyone's neck all the time.

Pretty obviously this is just the first step. CP is a tactical choice of the first step since practically everyone can agree on how horrible it is. (Come to think of it, this is low key exploiting the vulnerability of children -- nice one, government!) Once everything you say or do is sent to the government for review, you can bet it won't be for just that one thing only.

BTW, I think the government policy makers blow past all the problems with false positives that will inevitably occur because, when your goal is control of the population not the prevention of child abuse, that's a feature not a bug. You want everyone nervous and afraid. You want the stories of the lives of innocent people ruined to circulate. That helps keeps everyone cowed.

Call me cynical, but I'm sure the globalist centralist fascist powers of the time will not rest until this law, in one form or another, is passed at EU level and made mandatory for all member states.

I hate this Nazification of the EU so much, that I would support my country leaving the EU the same moment this or similar legislation goes through.

Lucky Brits, at least they can vote out the dumbest and most corrupt politicians and let their laws be enacted by their parliament, and not some international body that claims it has supremacy over national legislation.

> In July, the Council Presidency will transfer from Belgium to Hungary, which has stated its intention to advance negotiations on chat control as part of its work program.

That does not make me very hopeful.

I am really fed up of governments constantly trying to pass stuff like this that is clearly a breach of the fundamental principles of human rights. Its also become almost impossible to get governments to adopt sensible positions that don't target certain sub groups to harm them.

What really gets me with these types of "safety" proposals is that we already have quite some ways to get someone's private information and communication if they are being investigated. Has everyone forgotten that? All that these wide reaching laws do is to allow for governments to investigate without substantiated reasons.

Reading the "...European Commission proposed monitoring all chat messages and other forms of digital communication..." astonishes me every time.

> The discussions will resume after the summer, once the new Parliament is seated and Hungary assumes the Council presidency from Belgium in July. Hungary has already committed to developing a comprehensive legislative framework to prevent and combat online child sexual abuse and revising the directive against the sexual exploitation of children.

Such as? Does it have anything to do with what "Chat Control" is about? What does Hungary have anything to do with it?

Until next time...

We must win every time...

This law is going to pass at some point. They started this crap 4 years ago with Chat Control 1.0 and they won't stop trying.

This is pure madness.

I have decided I am not going to wait around to be spied upon by the EU so I am going set up my own server and move to FOSS IOS/Android clients since these ones are currently exempted from the draft.

The hardest part will be to convince friends and family to move over though.

They will try again.

More people should know about this so there's even more push back when it comes to a vote

It feels like this has become an annual tradition...

The fight is not over yet, if you live in the EU, please vote these people out of office. They do not represent you, nor the general public.

Being a constructive part of a democracy is not just standing in the way of every change without budging. It's also about solving problems and finding solutions. Most social and technological issues will not just magically go away if you wait and ignore them to the best of your ability.

> The EU Council did not make a decision on chat control today, as the agenda item was removed due to the lack of a majority, confirmed by Council and member state spokespersons

Wait so does it mean they will only propose when they have chance to pass? Is it just me or here is something really wrong with this? It has no chance to be rejected and gone for good?

. . . for now.

"... The proposal will return to the drawing board, as the European Commission and the European Parliament continue to deliberate on the best way forward."

I am always fascinated by the hubris bureaucrats have.

Ah, so I won't just have all of private conversations monitored for no reason at birth, oh wait, but what about those 40 cameras that are on every residential street owned by Amazon and Google?

This will be very unpopular with the HN crowd, please please bear with me.

I really like e2e-encrypted communication. I also think that in the past decades, in general, most policies have erred too far on surveillance and too little on privacy

BUT

I also think that CSAM material on e2ee channels is a real problem.

If we, as the pro-privacy tech community don't come up with solutions, we'll lose the battle, eventually.

There'll come up a case of child exploitation or trafficing, somehow related to encrypted chats, and it'll be so horrific that the public will be swayed to action, and then what are the options? Is there any option besides client-side scanning or the end of e2ee?