They are just edging this bill till nobody pays attention. Democracy at work!
Indeed, until the next time, where it doesn't have enough news coverage. China 2.0 here we come.
I’m still fucking mad the Left voted yes for this. Campaigning on a no and then turning their coats immediately after the elections. Disgraceful, and I hope whichever party members are responsible get booted.
Don't make the mistake of thinking that left mean anti-authoritarian. Left or right is an economic stance, and is orthogonal to beliefs surrounding government rights Vs population rights.
When I say Left, I mean Vänsterpartiet, not some nebulous coalition. See their stance here.
Chat control was a proposal on an EU level which meant that applications and social media platforms would be forced to scan all of their users messages. The proposal has been put forth by the EU comission as a part of a larger package with the purpose of protecting children against exploitation on the internet. The Left Party considers that the part specifically about chat control wouldn't contribute to the end goals. There are more effective measures that need to be taken in order to protect children.
After significant criticism from us and many others the EU parliament has significantly improved the proposal. They have among other things removed all parts regarding automatic scanning. This has meant that all parties now are in support of the EU-parliament position. The proposal is now on hold among the member states and instead another, temporary law has been extended to counter sexual abuse of children on the internet.
Overall the Left (Vänsterpartiet) campaigns on a position of being against surveillance and the like. The Social Democrats (part of the Left coalition) however is in favour of it, because of course they fucking are. My issue here is obviously that they're lying to our faces.
On a much greater scale I have a lot of issues. For the most part I align mostly with V and MP, but we're talking on a level of like 60-70%, so they don't actually represent my views particularly well. In the grand scheme of things that's also not something I'd expect; I'm rather extreme but I also realise that there's only so much we can do when operating within the system we currently have. Thus I align with the parties that align the closest with the core beliefs I have, V and MP.
One of my biggest icks when it comes to politics is hiding behind children. It infuriates me because it's never genuine. It's never about the fucking children, they're just a convenient excuse because the moment someone criticises a suggestion, you can turn around and say "Oh so you hate children? Are you a paedophile? Why do you support children being harmed?"
Left or right is an economic stance
What about the social stance?
Also that. But I'd say that wewbull's point stands that there are more and less authoritarian flavours of that too
Check out the political compass, which is an interesting way to conceptualize political leanings. I don't think the test is particularly good (I have issues with a few of the questions), but the answer I get is pretty close to where I think I should be placed, so maybe there's some merit to it.
I'm consistently in the bottom half near the center line, and the two major parties in my country are in the top right. I guess that just demonstrates why I fail to see much difference in what I care about in the two major parties, since moving toward either direction is a move away from me.
Anyway, I hope this is a decent demonstration of how the left/right divide doesn't tell the whole story.
They are just delaying the vote for another time... Hoping that next time it will fly under the radar and there won't be a huge backlash of discontent.
If the vote fail, they just wait a year, rename it, and try again.
Same thing happens in the US. Law proposed that people hate, people organize, start a campaign that fights for news airtime, bringing awareness of the dickery about to happen, and then succeed after a hard battle and many many volunteer hours spent.
In 6 months Congress just renames it the "I love kittens" act and sticks it on a must pass bill.
Fighting bullshit laws is exhausting....
Don't be surprise if it reappears as an attachment to a fishing quota law or a law defining sizes for underwear...
It happens in the US yes, but does it happen in the EU?
Idk about the EU(there have been cases that were exactly this, an example would be Article 13), but I can say to you, that this devinetively happens in Germany. Our conservatives party wants to pass a law, that would track and save all your online activity(Vorratsdatenspeicherung/ data preservation) to fight "paedophiles and terrorists" they bring it up once in a while, even tho, our federal court already said, that its illegal.
Wasn't this rejected once already? Perhaps if they wanted to do something useful, they should pass something that says that if something is majority disliked twice or something, then it should be withdrawn and not proposed again for at least 100 years.
They will keep trying again and again and again. The assault on privacy has been going on for decades and it will never stop.
You've gotta defend for an infinite amount of time, but they've only gotta succeed once.
Yep, and as I pointed out in another comment in this thread, Chat Control isn't the only piece of legislation like this that's in the works.
Considering that the extreme right just won big, I have no doubt that one of these fascist surveillance packages will go through. Yeah, at first it may be used for catching criminals, until it isn't
Nono, it will always only be used to catch criminals, that won't change...it's what makes someone a criminal that changes.
And "Chat Control" isn't even the only thing like this in the pipeline. There's the so-called "security by design" bullshit (which does the opposite of what then name implies) that's actually even worse than Chat Control and has also been worked on in secret, and which'd include mass scale surveillance of not just photos but pretty much everything, and is much more likely to pass than Chat Control.
Such a rule is basically un-enforceable. Because it is nearly never exactly the same text. So it is always the first time voted on.
What they could do is create a law that protects the integrity of E2EE. At least in this case.
But I guess that will never happen... Well, a girl can dream.
It was protected by the ECHR in a recent ruling. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/03/european-court-human-rights-confirms-undermining-encryption-violates-fundamental
However, Chat Control 2.0 argues that since the spying is done before the content is encrypted, it's somehow ok. 🙄
Either way they can just give it a new name and change some details to propose it again. Like how they made it "voluntary" this time (but you can only send text if you don't agree).
Find the politicians by name who voted yes for this, and display them in public.
Let the capable open source community then take over going through their phones, since they must be OK with their phones being scanned, right?
At least some of them were discussion giving themselves an exception from it. So no.
Note the vote was withdrawn, not actually voted against. They're pushing this for a later date because there was no majority.
“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, (...)
Belgium’s draft law, (...) was instead postponed indefinitely. (...) Belgium cannot currently present a proposal that would gain a majority. 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.
Absolutely fuck all is going to get done while orban has control of the council so at least theres that
Can we please identify the guys always pushing encryption-breaking ideas?
And hack their phones so we can see why they want to spy on everyone else's phones
I have zero doubt that many core proponents of anti-privacy laws are pedophiles — that's why they always add measures to ensure it's illegal to invade their own privacy.
I hate dishonest titles and URLs. In reality, this shit has nothing to do with "child sex content."
So I assume that since it was withdrawn, this doesn't set a precedent and it's only a matter of time untill they try to sneak it thru with a different name.
Now put in a law saying you can't do that
Nice. I guess they didn't expect to get a majority to support it anymore. Definitely a win for now, but I'm sure they'll try again.
I guess that realisation came after Germany said they will vote "No"
Damn.. this was almost China 2.0 in EU. This was a close call people... this is not good.
Lets gooooo🔥
(It has happened in the past, it will probably happen again in a few months, but still, its a win!)
Thank the heavens. Now keep it that way!
Great choice, now do not say the same thing next year!
I am suspicious they realized that they weren’t going to be able to make a loophole for themselves - I’ve seen several articles in the last week on how they were trying to do that.
From what I understand it was withdrawn as a vote „in favor of the goals of the commission“ was not guaranteed. In part because Germany announced its decision to withdraw support yesterday. Seems to be standard behavior.
Crazy to think they were even considering it. Hopefully this is the end of it.
Until next try in a few months.
What i read here sometime without source, that secret services since Snowden push for breaking of encryption, seems more and more plausible.
glad it got stopped. hopefully it never passes
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
