EU Council has withdrawn the vote on Chat Control

[Sammi]

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.

[Nasrudith]

Really if we want to break this cycle we need one important thing: a punishment for daring to propose it. Harsh but I can see no other way.

[vorticalbox]

are there any studies that show banning encryption would actually result in more criminals being caught?

[Ambroos]

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It's unlikely we'll see any admission on why exactly the vote was withdrawn, but it's probable that the situation became untenable for the political parties involved, one of which lost massively in the Belgian elections about two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

[barrenko]

As mentioned, the shittiest part of the EU is that we don't ever get any insight. I wish we could launch some civil legal probe into EU institutions themselves, but that would probably end up being like staring at floating points of a tensor.

[rmbyrro]

Proposals should have an exponential backoff algorithm. Otherwise they'll keep proposing over and over until it passes.

[elric]

Verlinden's remarks are pretty galling. She wanted to push it through because it would have made her (and Belgium) look good. What an absolutely insane reason to nibble away at people's freedoms.

Her tenure as minister had been pretty underwhelming, notable only for her ineptitude.

[morsch]

> It's unlikely we'll see any admission on why exactly the vote was withdrawn

There may be more than one reason, but yesterday Germany said they'd vote against the proposal so it was DOA.

[Vinnl]

> 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.

Even if it does succeed, that would mean the Commission and the Council are in favour, but they'll still have to reach an agreement with Parliament as well. Parliament has already come out strongly against the proposal, but we just voted in a new, more conservative, Parliament, so I'm a bit anxious to see whether it'll stick to that stance.

[ginko]

It's always the Council (i.e. the national governments) with the worst proposals and then the EU has to take the blame.

[Bluestein]

Thanks for that very thorough look into this ...

> Still, there's no time to rest, the proposal isn't dead.

I wanted to say. It will return.-

> There is a lot of "but think of the children", and zero technical expertise.

This is one of the things that irks me the most: The abusive, emotional "mislabeling". Children have nothing to do with this, and it is an abuse of public good faith to mislabel these sort of initiatives using "children" as leverage, preying upon a tech-lliterate public.-

In fact, that is also an issue here: The public needs to be brought up to speed (technically) and/or we should at least demand technical expertise from our politicians, when legislating or acting upon mainly technological issues.-

[qznc]

Germany publicly announced they will vote No. I don’t know about others. Maybe it just became clear that it wouldn’t pass?

It was a sneaky try anyways, right after the election.

[kabes]

I found it very frustrating that in the recent Belgian elections, because the EU and local elections were combined, there was very little debate on this subject and EU programs in general. Luckily it was finally brought up in the media (although way overdue IMO)

[Krasnol]

Thank you for the background information.

[nexoft]

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…

[PurpleRamen]

People are never beyond evil. Just the justification for why they strife for evil will change. And to be fair, with the justification, the impact can also change.

[sandworm101]

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.

[lawn]

Politicians themselves tend to use Signal too...

[zero0529]

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

[SkyMarshal]

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...

[thomasdeleeuw]

Ahh, we are against violence, except when it is applied to people we don't agree with. We are against surveillance, it is only to be applied to people not in our group. We are for freedom of speech, but only if you agree with us. The list goes on.

[jack_pp]

I think we as people should move to have the opposite of this, if you're a public official you should have all your comms public, what are they afraid of? If they do nothing wrong then this shouldn't be a problem lol

[0rzech]

This information has definitely been available before [1], though some media might have reported it just yesterday.

[1] https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/leak-eu-interior-ministers-...

[daemin]

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.

[kstrauser]

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.

[nemo44x]

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

[dinglestepup]

Off-topic, but the current trend to label anything the government disagrees with or feels threatened by as "far right" is very worrisome.

[Hamuko]

Did you miss the election? The parliament is more conservative than before. Why would they be happier with that packaging?

[quitit]

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/

[Havoc]

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

[m3kw9]

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

[jmull]

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.

[wait_a_minute]

Why are EU citizens electing these types of politicians?

[constantcrying]

>since practically everyone can agree on how horrible it is.

I certainly do, but the German government does not. They recently lowered the sentences for it, is now roughly on par with theft.

Which makes this whole thing even more disingenuous. Either it is so bad that half a billion people need surveillance or it is a crime where you can get a couple of months in prison. The third option is, of course, that it is just a cynical argument.

[marginalia_nu]

Yeah, it's kind of ridiculous given that parts of the EU has a living memory of living in a system like this. This isn't some imagined hypothetical scenario. The east bloc had this exact type of arbitrary mass surveillance 40 years ago. It wasn't great.

[JumpCrisscross]

> our "free democracies" can't rush fast enough to put the boot to everyone's neck all the time

You're saying this in respect of a bill that has repeatedly failed. Yes, the authoritarian pressure is real. But it only wins if this attitude takes root.

[miroljub]

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.

[sva_]

> 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.

[PaulKeeble]

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.

[interactivecode]

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.

[sharpshadow]

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

[johnisgood]

> 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?

[renegat0x0]

Until next time...

We must win every time...

[sackfield]

Is there any reason this couldn't be made into a right to prevent the constant legislative onslaught? Is it a lack of organisation/will or is it something intrinsic to the way the system is setup?

[ta1243]

It's called democracy. It's better than the alternative.