Great news. Now maybe we can go on the offense for once. Work to enable constitutional protections against this sort of thing, and develop systems that can work around it if and when this comes back again.
There are places in the world today where only sneakernet communication has any semblance of privacy, so we need non-specialist tools that can provide privacy and secrecy regardless of local conditions. (I’d love to see more communication tools that don’t assume an always-on connection, or low latency, or other first world conditions.)
What we have at the moment is the protect given by the European Convention on Human Rights. The general problem however is that it gives exceptions to law enforcement to infringe on such right, as long the law is "done for a good reason – like national security or public safety." (https://www.coe.int/en/web/impact-convention-human-rights/ri...)
It is fairly well universally claimed by technology experts and legal experts that Chat Control is not effective for its stated purpose. It does not make it easier to find and stop abuse of children, nor does it have any meaningful reduction to the spread of CSAM. This makes the law unnecessary, thus illegal. However it hinges on that interpretation. Law enforcement officials and lobbyists for firms selling technology solutions claims the opposite, and politicians that want to show a strong hand against child exploitation will use/abuse those alternative views in order to push it.
Removing the "done for a good reason" exception will likely be a massive undertaking. Rather than constitutional protections, I think the more likely successful path would be a stronger IT security, cybersecurity regulations and data protection, so that governments and companies carry a larger risk by accessing private data. A scanner that carry a high rate of false positives should be a liability nightmare, not an opportunity for firms to sell a false promise to politicians. Cybersecurity regulations should also dictate that new legislation must not increase risk to citizens. One would assume that to be obvious, but history has sadly shown the opposite with government producing malware and the hording of software vulnerabilities. If there must be exception to privacy, "for good reason", it must not be done at the cost of public safety.
> Rather than constitutional protections, I think the more likely successful path would be a stronger IT security, cybersecurity regulations and data protection, so that governments and companies carry a larger risk by accessing private data. A scanner that carry a high rate of false positives should be a liability nightmare, not an opportunity for firms to sell a false promise to politicians.
Technological means are forever vulnerable to social means. Governments can compel what technology prohibits. Technology won't stop politicians from passing legislation to ban privacy.
Many countries have such protections, for instance Germany. They could actually issue arrest warrant for all involved as Chat Control amounts to attempt at terrorism (act of indiscriminate violence for ideological gain) against German people and that is illegal. Problem is that there is widespread apathy and lack of will to act.
All: if you can't respond in a non-violent way, please don't post until you can.
By non-violent I mean not celebrating violence nor excusing it, but also more than that: I mean metabolizing the violence you feel in yourself, until you no longer need to express it aggressively.
I never felt irritated nor angry about Charlie’s public execution. Perplexed, definitely not surprised. But this statement from Dan had irritated me.
Words aren’t violence. Speech won’t shoot you in the neck in front of your wife and stream it live.
We have perfectly functioning terms for other concepts, we don’t need to Equality everything. When we do that nothing will mean anything, and we’ll soon find ourselves imprisoning or executing those we disagree with. Oops, too fucking late!
Dan is a moderator on a forum and his goal is to maintain a level of civil discourse rather than an aggressive style of communication. It's a very specific definition of "violence" for a specific context and perhaps there's room for clearer terminology.
If terrorism is defined as using violence or threats to intimidate a population for political or ideological ends, then “Chat Control” qualifies in substance. Violence doesn’t have to leave blood. Psychological and coercive violence is recognised in domestic law (see coercive control offences) and by the WHO. It causes measurable harm to bodies and minds.
The aim is intimidation. The whole purpose is to make people too scared to speak freely. That is intimidation of a population, by design.
It is ideological. The ideology is mass control - keeping people compliant by stripping them of private spaces to think, talk, and dissent.
The only reason it’s not “terrorism” on paper is because states write definitions that exempt themselves. But in plain terms, the act is indistinguishable in effect from terrorism: deliberate fear, coercion, and the destruction of free will.
Stop conflating violence with terms that have their own words, it’s not helpful.
No amount of coercive control will nail you to a cross, or shoot you in the neck in front of your wife and a park full of students, because it disagrees with what you say.
Intimidation by making or implying threats of violence isn’t violence.
The reader assuming aggression in blunt words isn’t violence. Not using someone’s preferred pronouns is not violence.
Violence is violence.
People who want to conflate violence with non-violence want to impose their will on others. It’s a personality trait that lends itself to tyranny. You can’t legislate undesirable behaviour out of existence, but you can lock up those you disagree with, and you will enjoy it. You will say things like “ah well, we got what he deserved”.
Punishing people for things like coercive control does nothing to prevent the harm occurring in the first place, and threats of legal consequences rarely do much, if anything, to deter the unwanted activity.
We’re going to have to be more skilful in our thinking if we want people to Be Good and Live Right. I’m sure I’ve read and listen to people who had something more intelligent to say about how we are to live, but we keep fucking nailing them to crosses or shooting them in the fucking neck.
That’s a lazy straw man. The difference is proportionality and target. Enforcing a law against individual wrongdoing isn’t the same as redesigning society around mass suspicion and fear. “Chat Control” doesn’t punish a crime - it manufactures a climate where everyone is treated as a potential criminal, and coerced into self-censorship. That’s systemic intimidation, not law enforcement.
You don’t have to enact laws like Chat Control (literally Speech Control, they’re not even pretending to try to hide it) to have tyrannical government.
To have tyrannical government we only have to have governments who want to propose such legislation.
Any reasonable sort of government would be highlighting the absurdity of such ideas and speak out against them.
No, that’s a misread. I’m not collapsing “intimidation” into “violence”. I’m pointing out that psychological and coercive violence are legally and medically recognised forms of harm. The distinction you’re making is rhetorical, not substantive. The state can’t redefine violence narrowly to exclude itself while criminal law already accepts non-physical violence as real. The argument is about consistency, not syllogisms.
Even then, i could see how the stasi police state was an act of violence against individual citizens (which i doubt is an argument you should take for granted), but even granting that- this chat control isnt it. You can't call everything you dislike or everything that is wrong nazi, stasi, or an act of violence.
Depends on how you look at it, if you think people have an innate right to privacy then something that stomps on their privacy is a form of violence, not all violence is physical violence.
Ok, so you define violence to include advocating for a law that tramples someone rights. The next person says that advocating for laws is its own inalienable right, so you trampled him. And the whole semantic redefinition snake just eats its own tail.
If we want constitutional to have any force, we have to push for a world where words mean something.
Words do mean something - which is exactly why “violence” already has recognised psychological and coercive forms in law and medicine. Pretending otherwise isn’t defending meaning, it’s narrowing it for comfort. People who’ve lived under regimes of fear understand that harm doesn’t need batons to leave marks. But sure, if the only kind of wound you acknowledge is one that bleeds, then the rest of us must be imagining things.
Most people just means physical violence when they say violence, if you use the word differently you will trick many people into thinking you say something you don't.
That would surprise every court that’s convicted someone of coercive control, stalking, or psychological abuse. None involved broken bones, yet all involved measurable harm and loss of agency.
"Psychological and coercive violence is recognised in domestic law (see coercive control offences) and by the WHO. It causes measurable harm to bodies and minds."
It absolutely is violence. If a partner in a relationship was constantly going through your phone, they'd end up in prison in most countries recognising domestic violence.
The problem is that EU laws is above national laws. Thus legally any law can be pushed at EU level, even if it breaks national laws. If such law passes, then it’s on member states to adjust their laws.
That's the EU law position, but national law may not agree. I believe both France and Germany, for instance, consider their national constitution to be above EU law (even if the EU Court of Justice disagrees) - Though in practice the constitution was amended when necessary to avoid any conflict.
By the EU’s own definitions of coercion and harm, an attempt to impose mass surveillance by force over national objections would itself meet the elements of coercive intimidation against a population. If we took those standards seriously, it would trigger the very mechanisms meant to prevent terrorism.
I mean, eventually if it had become a law it would, I guess, as an ultimate backstop be enforced by violence (like all laws, if you break them persistently and annoyingly enough). But, it wouldn’t be indiscriminate, right?
> hey, tell me what are some of the recent laws in Germany that make it a crime to call politicians out on social media
in Germany, calling a politician certain derogatory names or mocking them in a way that is considered a "public insult" (and reasonably likely to impair their ability to do their job) can lead to criminal liability under §188 StGB. The scope includes online social media posts. The trend of enforcement appears to be increasing.
Section 188 of the German Criminal Code "insulting public officials" - This section makes it a crime to insult ("Beleidigung"), defame ("Verleumdung" or slander ("Üble Nachrede" a person in public life (politicians at all levels) if the insult is "likely to significantly impair the ability of the person concerned to perform their public duties"
Network Enforcement Act (NetzDG) – social media platform liability; It obliges large social-media platforms operating in Germany to remove "clearly illegal" content quickly (within 24 h) and illegal content within 7 days, report transparency, store removed content for 10 weeks. This law creates an environment in which platform-moderation is under pressure. Content that may lead to criminal liability (such as insults under §188) may be more likely to be flagged/removed by platforms.
General "insult" (§185 StGB), "slander" (§186 StGB) and "defamation" (§187 StGB) apply to any person, not just public officials. Conditions and penalties are higher under §188 when public officials are involved. Also, laws on dissemination of personal data (doxing) (§126a StGB) were enacted in 2021. While not specific to insulting politicians, they add further online-speech liabilities
If our politicians knew anything about anything, they'd take a leaf out of the US' book and call it "Preventing Risks Online; Thwarting Exploitation of Children and Terrorism": the PROTECT act.
The first thing to check in new versions of the proposal is whether they include an exception for the government, as they always do. If the proposers think the scanning is so safe, why don't they want the government to use it too? As soon as it says the government is exempted, you know that the rest can be tossed in the trash without much further examination.
Ashton Kutcher, Demi Moore and a couple more Hollywood celebrities united under an "NGO" called Thorn(.org).
That "NGO" also happens to sell a tool called Safer(.io) that allows website owners to check hashes against known CSAM material, which I'm sure is unrelated.
They also happened to have shadily employed some former high-ranking Europol officials, which is again just a pure coincidence.
I've heard those celebrities talk about this. What they (willfully?) ignore is that law enforcement is already too understaffed to handle every child abuse case with proper care, so giving them even more cases to work with won't achieve anything.
The problem isn't actual cases to work with but the ton of personal data swallowed by their AI that can be used at any time for different purposes than protecting kids, which has never been the #1 purpose of those laws.
In the meantime, the number of children killed in Palestine and West Bank has surpassed 20 thousand in 2 years, and famine hit more than half a million children in Sudan. It's not like they were short of ways to show they really care about kids, but alas they don't at all. It's just an excuse to restrict personal liberties.
I posted an investigation done by a group of professional journalists, you posted an anonymous HN comment leading to another anonymous HN comment which says "it's NSA actually". Just to make it a full circle, the author of that original comment "proves it" in the replies with that same god damn investigation I posted right here, and that investigation claims no NSA connection (only Europol).
Your media literacy skills are truly non-existent.
Most of all this noise is just the product of the drawn out legislative process of the EU, the commission included chat control in a larger package suggested ca 2021 and it's been working itself through the system since then, generating headlines every few months.
By now it's just too late to take it back and start over without including chat control.
The ultimate goal is to make anonymous speech online seem shady and suspicious (only trust thoughts from certified citizen accounts) and to make people more cautious about what they write online. Politicians are really tired of being mocked by anonymous people immune to being shamed with the help of the fourth estate (press). This legislation is one piece of the puzzle.
The people pushing this come from the usual power centers in European politics, the (current) centrists. They feel motivated to protect their positions against encroachments from what they consider extremist positions (be it e.g. economic left or right, or a or b on some other scale.)
And what they will do, if they succeed, is provide tools of repression to the extremists which of course will win the elections once confidence in the centrisrs shall further erode.
I don’t get how this debate keeps cropping up. Is there not some career disincentive/consequence where if you try to push Encryption back doors, you get demolished in your re-election
At least in Sweden, almost all established parties support this legislation making it difficult for voters to vote against it without voting for fringe parties outside parliament (piratpartiet for example). Further, mainstream media hasn’t given it much attention so politicians has been able to be pro this legislation while in general being pro peoples integrity. Quite incoherent, but not challenged by anyone.
Having taken a closer look, there's nothing really nefarious going on: what is mainly happening is that every step of the very long process of passing a EU regulation is getting lots of attention.
Back in 2020 or so the commission first proposed the reform that contains the chat control provisions, then there was like a year or two of well published fighting in the European Parliament (EP) before they reached a position on the entire reform (notably excluding chat control).
Meanwhile the council of minister (effectively the upper house of the EP) didn't get around to forming an opinion before the parliament, so they are doing that now, which means it the same fight over chat control all over again but with different people.
After the council of ministers agrees on a position on the entire reform proposal from the commission we'll get even more rounds of bickering over what the final text should be: the trialogue. Those tend to be very closed, but with how much attention chat control is getting expect lots of leaks and constant news about who's being an ass during that step too.
Note that it is explicitly expected that each of the thee bodies will come up with different positions on many aspects of a regulation proposal, so there is nothing strange with the commission or the council suggesting some the parliament has opposed.
They only have to get "lucky" once, we have to get lucky every time so it makes sense if you want this to keep pushing it - once the law is passed it's much harder to revoke it later.
The people pushing it are ~bribed~ lobbied hard by groups who want this so they don't care about wasting their time or resources since they are getting paid for it.
> Is there not some career disincentive/consequence where if you try to push Encryption back doors, you get demolished in your re-election
In a somewhat ironic turn of events we don't know who was pushing it this time as they where protected by anonymity - one rule for them I guess and another for everyone else.
That's why they do it so stealthily, most of the time encryption isn't even mentioned. What they often do is talk about the need to "protect the children" at the responsibility of the service provider, who in order to comply would have to disable encryption on their own. It would technically remain legal, only banned de jure.
Also most average people don't know anything about encryption or backdoors, not even the meaning of those words. In their minds they have nothing to be concerned or mad about.
I really don’t think this has anything to do with pressure from the 10% of the public that can afford to care about this.
Politicians, and more importantly influential people, also rely on the same tech as we do and they have infinitely more to lose if their communications leak.
If you think about it this is truly absurd reasoning - they say they want to protect children by introducing this scanning, of course not spy on people, but then politicians are excempt? Why, what could possibly be the reason?
They already openly reveal their true intentions by this excemption.
Von der Leyen's phone was convenintly erased before it could be used as evidence in a court case against her. So no. Maybe stuff will leak but this isn't South Korea with two presidents in jail and thd last one on his way to jail.
Comparing electronic chats to former communication methods... Would people have objected to the government scanning all of their physical postal letters for keywords that might suggest something illegal? Don't they need some legal ground to do this in advance of the act?
They are not. For example, according to Italian Constitution [1], chat control is unconstitutional:
Art. 15
Freedom and confidentiality of correspondence and of every other form of
communication is inviolable.
Limitations may only be imposed by judicial decision stating the reasons and
in accordance with the guarantees provided by the law.
note the "EVERY" other form of communication. (Maybe somebody will be able to twist in a way that makes chat control constitutional, or somebody else will argue that since it is an EU law the constitution doesn't matter, but the spirit is clear)
Arbitrary interception of messages is a violation of the constitution in several European countries. The expectation of privacy in messaging is also codified in Article 8 of the ECHR, although with the usual nebulous exceptions.
This is an excerpt of Swedish Regeringsformen[1]:
> Everyone is also protected against body searches, house searches and similar intrusions, as well as against the examination of letters or other confidential mail and against the secret interception or recording of telephone conversations or other confidential messages.
If it is direct speech and they can monitor it. What's the next step? Turning on the microphone on your phone and logging everything in earshot for "security".
If you don't record every conversation that happens in a private home, you can't retroactively wiretap them "only sometimes". If you don't open and scan everyone's mail, you can't go back and read the ones they've already received "only sometimes".
Why is that a problem? Then you just don't do it at all. Society can survive two people being able to have a private conversation.
This is pretty problematic for the EU as an institution. It is actively undermining its already questionable legitimacy. The powers that be largely aren't democratically elected, and there really aren't any mechanisms with which European citizens can hold them accountable for their actions.
Every time they pull a stunt like this, this becomes a little bit more clear. If the EU wants to avoid the spread of euroskeptic populist parties, they should be working to patch the system and be building legitimacy and credibility, rather than be seen working to undermine it.
Chat Control is an initiative of the Council of the European Union, which is made up of ministers from each member state. Citizens can hold them accountable the same way they hold their ministers accountable normally.
This is correct, but in practice, this accountability is so diluted that they're free to do whatever they want as far as public accountability is concerned up to the point what they do is so unpopular that a majority of voters across the union decide that replacing the council is more important than selecting their national parliament.
Then there's the commission, which is even less accountable to the voters.
Commission is also nominated by national governments (like ministers are in those governments). So in the end it is still about people holding accountable ruling parties in member countries.
The commission are also nominated by national governments; they’re essentially a weird type of minister.
Now, I think there is a problem here; in many countries the public can barely bring themselves to care about the European Parliament elections, nevermind who their government nominates as commissioner. But ultimately it is as much in the public’s hands as a ministerial appointment.
To be fair it would be outright unconstitutional in a at least a few EU countries. Then there are the courts on the European level. One way to truly kill it might be to allow Chat Control to go to the end where it actually becomes a major issue on the national level in those countries.
Of course that would be a very, very risk approach...
Losing court cases rarely impresses politicians to abandon laws they have set their mind on. See, for example, the laws about forcing telecommunications providers to retain metadata of their customers. In Germany this got struck down by the constitutional court time and again. But that does not stop the major political parties to start yet another attempt.
People, as I reasoned on reddit - do not trust those who want
to push for it. Several mega-corporations want it. See how lobbyists
continue to fight for this.
Watch them carefully. They will 100% try again. The enemy is the general
public.
Big corporations like expensive complicated regulations and onerous mandates because it’s a moat. They can afford to comply while indie companies, open source efforts, and startups cannot. The cost of regulatory compliance is nothing compared to the benefit of not having to compete.
A heavily regulated market becomes an oligopoly of a few players with revolving door access to government and often interlocking directorates, patent cross licensing, and other ways of further colluding to keep out competition.
This is why, for example, the big lavishly funded AI ventures are all about “safety” regulation. It would stop anyone from competing. So far that effort has also failed but expect them to keep trying.
If these AI companies wanted to preserve privacy they would have done it immediately after it was apparent OpenAI scraped data it shouldn't have to train it's models. Any resistance and privacy concerns these businesses raise now is only to gatekeep training data out of the hands of.would be competitors and only accessible to themselves.
Every country should fight for constitutional protections for its citizens' rights to (internet) privacy. But that'll never have support from politicians, and laypeople don't have the ability to appreciate this highly technical and nuanced topic.
It's only when opposition is mounted to each individual attempt that we can rally public support. Sadly, we can only muster this energy in the face of losing freedom. And it only has to falter once.
In practice, this is likely both unconstitutional in many member states and at least pretty dodgy with respect to the EU’s can’t-believe-it’s-not-a-constitution.
People should be ashamed to support such chat control proposals. It should become as socially taboo as racism or sexism, and people who transgress such social norms should be tarnished with the same social stigma.
> the fundamental misunderstanding of encryption technology continues to plague policy discussions across Europe.
> Client-side scanning, the technical approach favored by Chat Control advocates, attempts to circumvent this limitation by analyzing messages on users’ devices before encryption or after decryption. While this might sound like a clever workaround, it fundamentally breaks the security model of encryption.
It's not a misunderstanding, it's deliberate circumvention. It doesn't do anyone any good to pretend that they just don't understand.
This was just another terrorist attack attempt by white collar autocrats. EU failed to recognise it as such. Groups proposing such mass assault at the public belong behind bars, not to be given consideration. If someone proposed legislation for compulsory mass rape, would European Commission take it through legislative process? Unlikely.
So they have a massive blind spot, or are working together to move Overton window and eventually this will pass.
Dangerous times.
United States should revoke visas for individuals and their family members who engage in talks of such proposals, and remove maritime protection for ships registered in countries doing likewise.
Great news. Now maybe we can go on the offense for once. Work to enable constitutional protections against this sort of thing, and develop systems that can work around it if and when this comes back again.
There are places in the world today where only sneakernet communication has any semblance of privacy, so we need non-specialist tools that can provide privacy and secrecy regardless of local conditions. (I’d love to see more communication tools that don’t assume an always-on connection, or low latency, or other first world conditions.)
What we have at the moment is the protect given by the European Convention on Human Rights. The general problem however is that it gives exceptions to law enforcement to infringe on such right, as long the law is "done for a good reason – like national security or public safety." (https://www.coe.int/en/web/impact-convention-human-rights/ri...)
It is fairly well universally claimed by technology experts and legal experts that Chat Control is not effective for its stated purpose. It does not make it easier to find and stop abuse of children, nor does it have any meaningful reduction to the spread of CSAM. This makes the law unnecessary, thus illegal. However it hinges on that interpretation. Law enforcement officials and lobbyists for firms selling technology solutions claims the opposite, and politicians that want to show a strong hand against child exploitation will use/abuse those alternative views in order to push it.
Removing the "done for a good reason" exception will likely be a massive undertaking. Rather than constitutional protections, I think the more likely successful path would be a stronger IT security, cybersecurity regulations and data protection, so that governments and companies carry a larger risk by accessing private data. A scanner that carry a high rate of false positives should be a liability nightmare, not an opportunity for firms to sell a false promise to politicians. Cybersecurity regulations should also dictate that new legislation must not increase risk to citizens. One would assume that to be obvious, but history has sadly shown the opposite with government producing malware and the hording of software vulnerabilities. If there must be exception to privacy, "for good reason", it must not be done at the cost of public safety.
> Rather than constitutional protections, I think the more likely successful path would be a stronger IT security, cybersecurity regulations and data protection, so that governments and companies carry a larger risk by accessing private data. A scanner that carry a high rate of false positives should be a liability nightmare, not an opportunity for firms to sell a false promise to politicians.
Technological means are forever vulnerable to social means. Governments can compel what technology prohibits. Technology won't stop politicians from passing legislation to ban privacy.
Many countries have such protections, for instance Germany. They could actually issue arrest warrant for all involved as Chat Control amounts to attempt at terrorism (act of indiscriminate violence for ideological gain) against German people and that is illegal. Problem is that there is widespread apathy and lack of will to act.
That’s a scary broad definition of “violence” you got there.
Laws are enforced by violence. If you disobey, and refuse to pay fines eventually someone will break your door down and drag you out in handcuffs
This implies you can call any law you don't like "violent". That's ridiculous.
This very forum is moderated by a person who openly conflates words and violence.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45203452
All: if you can't respond in a non-violent way, please don't post until you can.
By non-violent I mean not celebrating violence nor excusing it, but also more than that: I mean metabolizing the violence you feel in yourself, until you no longer need to express it aggressively.
I never felt irritated nor angry about Charlie’s public execution. Perplexed, definitely not surprised. But this statement from Dan had irritated me.
Words aren’t violence. Speech won’t shoot you in the neck in front of your wife and stream it live.
We have perfectly functioning terms for other concepts, we don’t need to Equality everything. When we do that nothing will mean anything, and we’ll soon find ourselves imprisoning or executing those we disagree with. Oops, too fucking late!
I read it as:
Dan is a moderator on a forum and his goal is to maintain a level of civil discourse rather than an aggressive style of communication. It's a very specific definition of "violence" for a specific context and perhaps there's room for clearer terminology.
This very forum is moderated by a person who openly conflates words and violence.
Wow, that explains so much insanity from this otherwise excellent forum. "Respond in a non-violent way" is insane!
Not really. A snippet I posted before:
If terrorism is defined as using violence or threats to intimidate a population for political or ideological ends, then “Chat Control” qualifies in substance. Violence doesn’t have to leave blood. Psychological and coercive violence is recognised in domestic law (see coercive control offences) and by the WHO. It causes measurable harm to bodies and minds.
The aim is intimidation. The whole purpose is to make people too scared to speak freely. That is intimidation of a population, by design.
It is ideological. The ideology is mass control - keeping people compliant by stripping them of private spaces to think, talk, and dissent.
The only reason it’s not “terrorism” on paper is because states write definitions that exempt themselves. But in plain terms, the act is indistinguishable in effect from terrorism: deliberate fear, coercion, and the destruction of free will.
Stop conflating violence with terms that have their own words, it’s not helpful.
No amount of coercive control will nail you to a cross, or shoot you in the neck in front of your wife and a park full of students, because it disagrees with what you say.
Intimidation by making or implying threats of violence isn’t violence.
The reader assuming aggression in blunt words isn’t violence. Not using someone’s preferred pronouns is not violence.
Violence is violence.
People who want to conflate violence with non-violence want to impose their will on others. It’s a personality trait that lends itself to tyranny. You can’t legislate undesirable behaviour out of existence, but you can lock up those you disagree with, and you will enjoy it. You will say things like “ah well, we got what he deserved”.
Punishing people for things like coercive control does nothing to prevent the harm occurring in the first place, and threats of legal consequences rarely do much, if anything, to deter the unwanted activity.
We’re going to have to be more skilful in our thinking if we want people to Be Good and Live Right. I’m sure I’ve read and listen to people who had something more intelligent to say about how we are to live, but we keep fucking nailing them to crosses or shooting them in the fucking neck.
By your own framing, literally any enforcement of a law is “terrorism”.
So your solution to this proposal of “terrorism” is to actually commit “terrorism”.
That’s a lazy straw man. The difference is proportionality and target. Enforcing a law against individual wrongdoing isn’t the same as redesigning society around mass suspicion and fear. “Chat Control” doesn’t punish a crime - it manufactures a climate where everyone is treated as a potential criminal, and coerced into self-censorship. That’s systemic intimidation, not law enforcement.
You don’t have to enact laws like Chat Control (literally Speech Control, they’re not even pretending to try to hide it) to have tyrannical government.
To have tyrannical government we only have to have governments who want to propose such legislation.
Any reasonable sort of government would be highlighting the absurdity of such ideas and speak out against them.
Is this not affirming the consequent?
Violence for A ends is Terrorism
Intimidation for A ends is terrorism
∴ Intimidation for A ends is violence. <--- does not follow
Does it serve a similar purpose? Sure. Is it a threat of violence? Sure, but words have meaning.
No, that’s a misread. I’m not collapsing “intimidation” into “violence”. I’m pointing out that psychological and coercive violence are legally and medically recognised forms of harm. The distinction you’re making is rhetorical, not substantive. The state can’t redefine violence narrowly to exclude itself while criminal law already accepts non-physical violence as real. The argument is about consistency, not syllogisms.
Get your own words, we’re already using these ones.
Violence is a category of harm.
Definitions matter.
If speech is violence then execution is a suitable punishment.
Yes and then again no - Given the Germans history (Nazi's then decades of the Stasi) you can understand why some of them feel that way.
Even then, i could see how the stasi police state was an act of violence against individual citizens (which i doubt is an argument you should take for granted), but even granting that- this chat control isnt it. You can't call everything you dislike or everything that is wrong nazi, stasi, or an act of violence.
Depends on how you look at it, if you think people have an innate right to privacy then something that stomps on their privacy is a form of violence, not all violence is physical violence.
Ok, so you define violence to include advocating for a law that tramples someone rights. The next person says that advocating for laws is its own inalienable right, so you trampled him. And the whole semantic redefinition snake just eats its own tail.
If we want constitutional to have any force, we have to push for a world where words mean something.
Words do mean something - which is exactly why “violence” already has recognised psychological and coercive forms in law and medicine. Pretending otherwise isn’t defending meaning, it’s narrowing it for comfort. People who’ve lived under regimes of fear understand that harm doesn’t need batons to leave marks. But sure, if the only kind of wound you acknowledge is one that bleeds, then the rest of us must be imagining things.
Most people just means physical violence when they say violence, if you use the word differently you will trick many people into thinking you say something you don't.
All violence is physical violence and any non-metaphorical attempt to define anything else as really violence is Orwellian.
That would surprise every court that’s convicted someone of coercive control, stalking, or psychological abuse. None involved broken bones, yet all involved measurable harm and loss of agency.
"Psychological and coercive violence is recognised in domestic law (see coercive control offences) and by the WHO. It causes measurable harm to bodies and minds."
It absolutely is violence. If a partner in a relationship was constantly going through your phone, they'd end up in prison in most countries recognising domestic violence.
>If a partner in a relationship was constantly going through your phone, they'd end up in prison in most countries recognising domestic violence.
that's disproportional
Wouldn't you expect the opposite? This law basically read like what the Nazi's would implement to "legitimately" silence opposition.
The problem is that EU laws is above national laws. Thus legally any law can be pushed at EU level, even if it breaks national laws. If such law passes, then it’s on member states to adjust their laws.
That's the EU law position, but national law may not agree. I believe both France and Germany, for instance, consider their national constitution to be above EU law (even if the EU Court of Justice disagrees) - Though in practice the constitution was amended when necessary to avoid any conflict.
By the EU’s own definitions of coercion and harm, an attempt to impose mass surveillance by force over national objections would itself meet the elements of coercive intimidation against a population. If we took those standards seriously, it would trigger the very mechanisms meant to prevent terrorism.
I mean, eventually if it had become a law it would, I guess, as an ultimate backstop be enforced by violence (like all laws, if you break them persistently and annoyingly enough). But, it wouldn’t be indiscriminate, right?
> hey, tell me what are some of the recent laws in Germany that make it a crime to call politicians out on social media
in Germany, calling a politician certain derogatory names or mocking them in a way that is considered a "public insult" (and reasonably likely to impair their ability to do their job) can lead to criminal liability under §188 StGB. The scope includes online social media posts. The trend of enforcement appears to be increasing.
Section 188 of the German Criminal Code "insulting public officials" - This section makes it a crime to insult ("Beleidigung"), defame ("Verleumdung" or slander ("Üble Nachrede" a person in public life (politicians at all levels) if the insult is "likely to significantly impair the ability of the person concerned to perform their public duties"
Network Enforcement Act (NetzDG) – social media platform liability; It obliges large social-media platforms operating in Germany to remove "clearly illegal" content quickly (within 24 h) and illegal content within 7 days, report transparency, store removed content for 10 weeks. This law creates an environment in which platform-moderation is under pressure. Content that may lead to criminal liability (such as insults under §188) may be more likely to be flagged/removed by platforms.
General "insult" (§185 StGB), "slander" (§186 StGB) and "defamation" (§187 StGB) apply to any person, not just public officials. Conditions and penalties are higher under §188 when public officials are involved. Also, laws on dissemination of personal data (doxing) (§126a StGB) were enacted in 2021. While not specific to insulting politicians, they add further online-speech liabilities
Can't wait for it to be reintroduced as "Protecting Children and Countering Terrorism Act" in 26/27
If our politicians knew anything about anything, they'd take a leaf out of the US' book and call it "Preventing Risks Online; Thwarting Exploitation of Children and Terrorism": the PROTECT act.
I hate how accurate this is.
The first thing to check in new versions of the proposal is whether they include an exception for the government, as they always do. If the proposers think the scanning is so safe, why don't they want the government to use it too? As soon as it says the government is exempted, you know that the rest can be tossed in the trash without much further examination.
Who wants this?
Who is driving it?
Who wants this so much that they have gone to the massive expense and effort?
Whoever it is - they know thet defeat is only temporary, and if they keep bringing it back from the dead, eventually it will succeed.
Ashton Kutcher, Demi Moore and a couple more Hollywood celebrities united under an "NGO" called Thorn(.org).
That "NGO" also happens to sell a tool called Safer(.io) that allows website owners to check hashes against known CSAM material, which I'm sure is unrelated.
They also happened to have shadily employed some former high-ranking Europol officials, which is again just a pure coincidence.
Balkan Insight did wonderful investigative reporting on them a couple of years back: https://balkaninsight.com/2023/09/25/who-benefits-inside-the...
I've heard those celebrities talk about this. What they (willfully?) ignore is that law enforcement is already too understaffed to handle every child abuse case with proper care, so giving them even more cases to work with won't achieve anything.
The problem isn't actual cases to work with but the ton of personal data swallowed by their AI that can be used at any time for different purposes than protecting kids, which has never been the #1 purpose of those laws.
In the meantime, the number of children killed in Palestine and West Bank has surpassed 20 thousand in 2 years, and famine hit more than half a million children in Sudan. It's not like they were short of ways to show they really care about kids, but alas they don't at all. It's just an excuse to restrict personal liberties.
Didn't multiple HN comments trace that NGO back to the US State Department?
Could it be any more obvious that it links back to the US gov?
See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45209711
Maybe learn to use a search engine, I heard it's a dying skill.
I posted an investigation done by a group of professional journalists, you posted an anonymous HN comment leading to another anonymous HN comment which says "it's NSA actually". Just to make it a full circle, the author of that original comment "proves it" in the replies with that same god damn investigation I posted right here, and that investigation claims no NSA connection (only Europol).
Your media literacy skills are truly non-existent.
There appears to be no real evidence about this linked in those comments?
(sorry it's meant for the sibling comment)
Well if you say that HN comments you haven't cited say so... am I supposed to immediately believe it?
There is a nascent AI industry trying to sell their surveillance tech to governments.
Most of all this noise is just the product of the drawn out legislative process of the EU, the commission included chat control in a larger package suggested ca 2021 and it's been working itself through the system since then, generating headlines every few months.
By now it's just too late to take it back and start over without including chat control.
The ultimate goal is to make anonymous speech online seem shady and suspicious (only trust thoughts from certified citizen accounts) and to make people more cautious about what they write online. Politicians are really tired of being mocked by anonymous people immune to being shamed with the help of the fourth estate (press). This legislation is one piece of the puzzle.
The people pushing this come from the usual power centers in European politics, the (current) centrists. They feel motivated to protect their positions against encroachments from what they consider extremist positions (be it e.g. economic left or right, or a or b on some other scale.)
And what they will do, if they succeed, is provide tools of repression to the extremists which of course will win the elections once confidence in the centrisrs shall further erode.
Of course.
I don’t get how this debate keeps cropping up. Is there not some career disincentive/consequence where if you try to push Encryption back doors, you get demolished in your re-election
At least in Sweden, almost all established parties support this legislation making it difficult for voters to vote against it without voting for fringe parties outside parliament (piratpartiet for example). Further, mainstream media hasn’t given it much attention so politicians has been able to be pro this legislation while in general being pro peoples integrity. Quite incoherent, but not challenged by anyone.
Yeah, a sad state of affairs.
Having taken a closer look, there's nothing really nefarious going on: what is mainly happening is that every step of the very long process of passing a EU regulation is getting lots of attention.
Back in 2020 or so the commission first proposed the reform that contains the chat control provisions, then there was like a year or two of well published fighting in the European Parliament (EP) before they reached a position on the entire reform (notably excluding chat control).
Meanwhile the council of minister (effectively the upper house of the EP) didn't get around to forming an opinion before the parliament, so they are doing that now, which means it the same fight over chat control all over again but with different people.
After the council of ministers agrees on a position on the entire reform proposal from the commission we'll get even more rounds of bickering over what the final text should be: the trialogue. Those tend to be very closed, but with how much attention chat control is getting expect lots of leaks and constant news about who's being an ass during that step too.
Note that it is explicitly expected that each of the thee bodies will come up with different positions on many aspects of a regulation proposal, so there is nothing strange with the commission or the council suggesting some the parliament has opposed.
Gotta get the average voter to know/care more for that to happen.
They only have to get "lucky" once, we have to get lucky every time so it makes sense if you want this to keep pushing it - once the law is passed it's much harder to revoke it later.
The people pushing it are ~bribed~ lobbied hard by groups who want this so they don't care about wasting their time or resources since they are getting paid for it.
> Is there not some career disincentive/consequence where if you try to push Encryption back doors, you get demolished in your re-election
In a somewhat ironic turn of events we don't know who was pushing it this time as they where protected by anonymity - one rule for them I guess and another for everyone else.
That's why they do it so stealthily, most of the time encryption isn't even mentioned. What they often do is talk about the need to "protect the children" at the responsibility of the service provider, who in order to comply would have to disable encryption on their own. It would technically remain legal, only banned de jure.
Also most average people don't know anything about encryption or backdoors, not even the meaning of those words. In their minds they have nothing to be concerned or mad about.
I really don’t think this has anything to do with pressure from the 10% of the public that can afford to care about this.
Politicians, and more importantly influential people, also rely on the same tech as we do and they have infinitely more to lose if their communications leak.
The politicians gave themselves an exemption from the scanning. This is just from the top search result but this is widely reported.
“The scanning would apply to all EU citizens, except EU politicians. They might exempt themselves from the law under “professional secrecy” rules” https://nextcloud.com/blog/how-the-eu-chat-control-law-is-a-...
If you think about it this is truly absurd reasoning - they say they want to protect children by introducing this scanning, of course not spy on people, but then politicians are excempt? Why, what could possibly be the reason?
They already openly reveal their true intentions by this excemption.
Yes, but they would be immune from a legal point of view, they would still have to use the same backdoored software.
Von der Leyen's phone was convenintly erased before it could be used as evidence in a court case against her. So no. Maybe stuff will leak but this isn't South Korea with two presidents in jail and thd last one on his way to jail.
They won't have the same phones we do. Elites don't follow rules. They push them into others.
Comparing electronic chats to former communication methods... Would people have objected to the government scanning all of their physical postal letters for keywords that might suggest something illegal? Don't they need some legal ground to do this in advance of the act?
Why are chats different?
They are not. For example, according to Italian Constitution [1], chat control is unconstitutional:
note the "EVERY" other form of communication. (Maybe somebody will be able to twist in a way that makes chat control constitutional, or somebody else will argue that since it is an EU law the constitution doesn't matter, but the spirit is clear)[1] https://www.senato.it/documenti/repository/istituzione/costi...
Arbitrary interception of messages is a violation of the constitution in several European countries. The expectation of privacy in messaging is also codified in Article 8 of the ECHR, although with the usual nebulous exceptions.
This is an excerpt of Swedish Regeringsformen[1]:
> Everyone is also protected against body searches, house searches and similar intrusions, as well as against the examination of letters or other confidential mail and against the secret interception or recording of telephone conversations or other confidential messages.
[1] https://lagen.nu/1974:152#K2P6
The speed of communication has changed a little bit, but still, a hard "no" to the government reading everything I say.
Digital communication is more direct speech, including maybe whispering, than it is writing a letter.
If it is direct speech and they can monitor it. What's the next step? Turning on the microphone on your phone and logging everything in earshot for "security".
Definitely a hard no!
Sounds like you have something to hide! /s
You can't break encryption "only sometimes"
If you don't record every conversation that happens in a private home, you can't retroactively wiretap them "only sometimes". If you don't open and scan everyone's mail, you can't go back and read the ones they've already received "only sometimes".
Why is that a problem? Then you just don't do it at all. Society can survive two people being able to have a private conversation.
You mean to the indiscriminate reading of ALL the letters without the court order?
Ummmmm....yeah? You don't? It's enough the metadata is collected already.
the real question is: when and in what form will it be re-proposed next?
As often as possible. They only have to win once. The people need to win every single time.
This is pretty problematic for the EU as an institution. It is actively undermining its already questionable legitimacy. The powers that be largely aren't democratically elected, and there really aren't any mechanisms with which European citizens can hold them accountable for their actions.
Every time they pull a stunt like this, this becomes a little bit more clear. If the EU wants to avoid the spread of euroskeptic populist parties, they should be working to patch the system and be building legitimacy and credibility, rather than be seen working to undermine it.
Chat Control is an initiative of the Council of the European Union, which is made up of ministers from each member state. Citizens can hold them accountable the same way they hold their ministers accountable normally.
This is correct, but in practice, this accountability is so diluted that they're free to do whatever they want as far as public accountability is concerned up to the point what they do is so unpopular that a majority of voters across the union decide that replacing the council is more important than selecting their national parliament.
Then there's the commission, which is even less accountable to the voters.
Commission is also nominated by national governments (like ministers are in those governments). So in the end it is still about people holding accountable ruling parties in member countries.
Not really, chat control comes from the comission, the current news is about the councils struggle to formally reach a position on that proposal.
The commission are also nominated by national governments; they’re essentially a weird type of minister.
Now, I think there is a problem here; in many countries the public can barely bring themselves to care about the European Parliament elections, nevermind who their government nominates as commissioner. But ultimately it is as much in the public’s hands as a ministerial appointment.
Ah, you're right, thanks for the correction.
Perhaps we should start throwing politicians in the garbage bin like the Ukrainians used to? Maybe then they'll get a hint?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8q-Zx8gIbg
To be fair it would be outright unconstitutional in a at least a few EU countries. Then there are the courts on the European level. One way to truly kill it might be to allow Chat Control to go to the end where it actually becomes a major issue on the national level in those countries.
Of course that would be a very, very risk approach...
Losing court cases rarely impresses politicians to abandon laws they have set their mind on. See, for example, the laws about forcing telecommunications providers to retain metadata of their customers. In Germany this got struck down by the constitutional court time and again. But that does not stop the major political parties to start yet another attempt.
Probably combined with a bunch of unrelated laws, in an unrelated legislative committee, all to try to keep it out of public attention.
Or done quietly outside of the public's attention, assuming it's not already being done.
25th time's the charm
While True: ProposeChatControl() and return
Will we get new cute domains for websites against the initiative when it is reintroduced once again?
People, as I reasoned on reddit - do not trust those who want to push for it. Several mega-corporations want it. See how lobbyists continue to fight for this.
Watch them carefully. They will 100% try again. The enemy is the general public.
Big corporations like expensive complicated regulations and onerous mandates because it’s a moat. They can afford to comply while indie companies, open source efforts, and startups cannot. The cost of regulatory compliance is nothing compared to the benefit of not having to compete.
A heavily regulated market becomes an oligopoly of a few players with revolving door access to government and often interlocking directorates, patent cross licensing, and other ways of further colluding to keep out competition.
This is why, for example, the big lavishly funded AI ventures are all about “safety” regulation. It would stop anyone from competing. So far that effort has also failed but expect them to keep trying.
If these AI companies wanted to preserve privacy they would have done it immediately after it was apparent OpenAI scraped data it shouldn't have to train it's models. Any resistance and privacy concerns these businesses raise now is only to gatekeep training data out of the hands of.would be competitors and only accessible to themselves.
> They will 100% try again.
We only have to lose once. Erosion is a process.
Every country should fight for constitutional protections for its citizens' rights to (internet) privacy. But that'll never have support from politicians, and laypeople don't have the ability to appreciate this highly technical and nuanced topic.
It's only when opposition is mounted to each individual attempt that we can rally public support. Sadly, we can only muster this energy in the face of losing freedom. And it only has to falter once.
In practice, this is likely both unconstitutional in many member states and at least pretty dodgy with respect to the EU’s can’t-believe-it’s-not-a-constitution.
People should be ashamed to support such chat control proposals. It should become as socially taboo as racism or sexism, and people who transgress such social norms should be tarnished with the same social stigma.
Is it because they're focusing their efforts on the much worse ProtectEU? I can't keep up
Article is just AI generated slop. Don't bother clicking.
victory... until we meet again.
> the fundamental misunderstanding of encryption technology continues to plague policy discussions across Europe.
> Client-side scanning, the technical approach favored by Chat Control advocates, attempts to circumvent this limitation by analyzing messages on users’ devices before encryption or after decryption. While this might sound like a clever workaround, it fundamentally breaks the security model of encryption.
It's not a misunderstanding, it's deliberate circumvention. It doesn't do anyone any good to pretend that they just don't understand.
This was just another terrorist attack attempt by white collar autocrats. EU failed to recognise it as such. Groups proposing such mass assault at the public belong behind bars, not to be given consideration. If someone proposed legislation for compulsory mass rape, would European Commission take it through legislative process? Unlikely. So they have a massive blind spot, or are working together to move Overton window and eventually this will pass. Dangerous times.
sorry, but why is this plastered with ads?
Someone bribed the website operator to put them there. It happens more than you think.
You have to use an adblocker on mobile these days. On iOS it’s tricky with Chrome. Use e.g. Brave or Vivaldi instead. It’s built-in.
I love the irony of the site showing a MASSIVE banner with a huge green "Download Extension for Mac (Free)" button.
This thing is 280px tall! I clicked it for shits and giggles and upon returning it showed a popup XD
https://files.catbox.moe/sv7hb7.png
> Only 2 Steps (thx)
> Click "Download"
> Add Privacy Guard for Chrome™
Don't worry why I'm not using ad block
+1
https://files.catbox.moe/dbbh71.jpg
yeah, hard pass
Why does a static blog need to store user information?
United States should revoke visas for individuals and their family members who engage in talks of such proposals, and remove maritime protection for ships registered in countries doing likewise.