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budududuroiu 12 hours ago [-]
The Internet Watch Foundation, an organisation funded by almost all of big tech, is already at work pushing for client side scanning next [1], for the children, of course.
Interesting. It would be easy to detect hate speech client-side too I’d imagine. My phone already listens for certain words.
anonym29 11 hours ago [-]
Why stop there? This system can easily be used to target welfare recipients, immigrants, LGBT+ people, black/brown/indigenous people, pretty much any disfavored group of choice!
You're just one election away from "that was during the previous term of office"
Funny, that Mullvad link, given their CEO has funded the Swedish Örbreo party. They've said all sorts of stuff including the very sanitized term "remigration".
Good comic, but they're no longer credible.
ianm218 9 hours ago [-]
Your comment doesn’t make it clear why supporting this party would interfere with making a point on mass surveillance. If there is a link could you describe it?
xienze 11 hours ago [-]
> for the children, of course.
Kind of surprised they don't just pitch it as a way to root out Russian propaganda and right-wing extremism. Public opinion would shift overnight. They'd practically demand it!
bee_rider 10 hours ago [-]
Actually, what are the partisan leanings of the parties actually actively pushing this, since you’ve brought it up?
Despite being fairly left-leaning I wouldn’t automatically blame the right for this particular type of invasive nonsense… is this a centrist spawned nuisance, or something?
drdaeman 9 hours ago [-]
Aren’t stupidity, shortsightedness, and corruption universal human “values”, well-spread all across the political spectrum?
paisawalla 8 hours ago [-]
> an organisation funded by almost all of big tech
Agreed, and this sucks, but what should be done about this? Some NGO called "We Stop Bad Guys" approaches your company with its hand out. You have two choices:
1. kick down some money, get great headlines
2. don't, and then have it known that you don't support stopping Bad Guys -- then maybe write ten thousand never-to-be-read words about how your position is actually quite principled
I hate it, but the first is obviously rational?
slg 11 hours ago [-]
I feel like if people wanted to counter this push, the more effective route would be addressing the "for the children" motivations seriously rather than fully dismissing them. You could cut the legs out of this effort by capturing the part of the population that does have an honest desire to protect children by offering an alternative that actually protects children. Instead, that concern is treated as 100% disingenuous which pushes many normal people to the side of wanting to enact these controls. This is a political problem, you need to solve it with politics.
matthewdgreen 11 hours ago [-]
I know a number of people who have gone down this route, including Senators. For example, here's Senator Wyden's proposal to add $5 billion in mandatory funding to investigate and target sexual abusers [1]. The problem with these efforts is that they're expensive: fighting child exploitation requires enormous amounts of funding.
Guess what doesn't require billions of dollars? Mandatory scanning paid for by tech companies, followed by dumping the billions of hits they produce [2] on overworked police and clearinghouses that mostly ignore them.
Then fund the initiative by taxing those same tech companies. "This problem is hard or expensive to address" does not assuage the desire to fix the problem.
There are countless reasons to be against these chat controls, but it's easy for a layperson to understand how they would address their specific concerns. The only way to effectively counter that is providing an alternative that does a better job.
Eddy_Viscosity2 9 hours ago [-]
> Then fund the initiative by taxing those same tech companies.
The politicians needed to change tax laws are owned by the tech companies. This is why its a hard problem. The tech companies set the rules now. Getting politicians elected that aren't owned by tech companies is also hard because tech companies effectively control all the information.
slg 8 hours ago [-]
If this is your belief, the only reasonable conclusion is that time spent on fighting these chat control initiatives is wasted because it's all downstream of the power of the tech oligarchy. That's the battle you should be fighting rather than trying to play whack-a-mole on individual proposals like this.
AnthonyMouse 6 hours ago [-]
> You could cut the legs out of this effort by capturing the part of the population that does have an honest desire to protect children by offering an alternative that actually protects children.
There are many, many things we can do that actually protect children -- and we generally already do them. That's the nature of the problem. After you do all of the things that are reasonable and cost effective, it solves 90% of the problem, 95% of the problem, 99% of the problem, but never 100% of the problem.
So you can't give them something that does that. The thing they're proposing doesn't even do that. Nothing does. And then disingenuous opportunists keep proposing the thing that should never be done because they know it lets them paint you as the bad guy for having to tell them no again and again.
What you need instead is to identify and strip power and resources from the people who keep proposing it.
slg 4 hours ago [-]
>There are many, many things we can do that actually protect children -- and we generally already do them. That's the nature of the problem. After you do all of the things that are reasonable and cost effective, it solves 90% of the problem, 95% of the problem, 99% of the problem, but never 100% of the problem.
Genuinely, how do you expect someone concerned about child sex trafficking to receive this? "Oh, good point, I guess we can't do anything more to protect children because it isn't 'cost-effective'." Do you think that will be a common response?
>And then disingenuous opportunists keep proposing the thing that should never be done because they know it lets them paint you as the bad guy for having to tell them no again and again.
I'm not even disagreeing with this point, I'm simply saying your response can't just be "no, they are the bad guy". That is not a winning political message. That's why the democratic socialist faction of the Democratic Party in the US is growing in popularity. You can't just call your opponent bad especially when your opponent is promising to address people's concerns, you need to actually engage with people about their concerns and offer solutions.
AnthonyMouse 3 hours ago [-]
> Genuinely, how do you expect someone concerned about child sex trafficking to receive this? "Oh, good point, I guess we can't do anything more to protect children because it isn't 'cost-effective'." Do you think that will be a common response?
I'm taking it as a given that we shouldn't do things that aren't cost effective, because that's what "cost effective" means. There are things we could do that would cost six trillion dollars in order to save one life, and we're not going to do those things, because it would be patently unreasonable and cost dramatically more lives than that as a result of what those resources would have to be allocated from.
It's possible that there are cost effective things we could do that we're not currently doing, but those things tend to be uncontroversial, so when someone uncovers one it generally does actually get enacted and becomes the status quo. That's the issue: Name any given thing you suppose we should do instead of Chat Control. Enact it, as many of them already have been. Tomorrow they propose Chat Control again, so what now? Offering and even enacting an alternative hasn't satisfied them, they keep trying to pass it anyway.
> You can't just call your opponent bad especially when your opponent is promising to address people's concerns, you need to actually engage with people about their concerns and offer solutions.
What are you supposed to do when you've not only offered solutions but enacted and implemented them already and your opponent is a fear monger who will never be satisfied because they have an ulterior motive for their dangerous and ineffective proposal?
4 hours ago [-]
InvertedRhodium 9 hours ago [-]
I don't think I agree - "think of the children" is not primarily a rational argument, it's more an emotional and political lever that is used to frame anyone in opposition as being opposed to more child safety, which is very obviously a bad thing.
It creates a moral asymmetry where one group is "defending children" and another group is "defending an abstract concept", but group A wins out primarily due to millions of years of human evolution. It has very little (IMO) to do with the actual underlying concepts being debated.
slg 8 hours ago [-]
>It creates a moral asymmetry where one group is "defending children" and another group is "defending an abstract concept", but group A wins out primarily due to millions of years of human evolution. It has very little (IMO) to do with the actual underlying concepts being debated.
You aren't actually engaging with why group A wins. Those "millions of years of human evolution" actually instilled in people a desire to protect children.
InvertedRhodium 6 hours ago [-]
I am engaging with why group A wins: they win because the emotional prior is doing most of the work, not because the underlying argument necessarily has merit.
msm_ 7 hours ago [-]
Of course, just like it instilled a desire to consume a lot of calorie-dense food. "Desire to protect the children" in this case is a knee-jerk reaction, or a thought terminating cliche.
For example, how many children will this actually protect? How many children will this harm? How many adults will be harmed by inevitable side-effects that arise? Those questions are not discussed or even considered.
slg 6 hours ago [-]
Because those questions are meaningless to many people if you aren't offering any solution of your own to address their concerns. For the people who genuinely care about this issue, an obvious response you will get is "how many children are you willing to allow to be sex trafficked to preserve your privacy?"
You can't win a debate by claiming your concerns invalidate their concerns. You need to actually engage with them on the issue they care about.
inigyou 13 hours ago [-]
The Chat Control 1.0 rule is simply that organisations like Meta are allowed to scan messages if they want to. In other words your Facebook messages are not private from Facebook. Surely we already knew and expected that.
Chat Control 2.0 is the worrying one because it mandates scanning and bans E2EE.
These two things should not have both been given the same branding.
john_strinlai 13 hours ago [-]
>These two things should not have both been given the same branding.
the confusion is purposeful, because it is easier to convince people that 1.0 is okay, which makes 2.0 appear like a version bump of the same thing.
layer8 13 hours ago [-]
“Chat Control”, along with the version numbers, is a naming invented by the opponents, not by the proponents.
john_strinlai 12 hours ago [-]
huh, i stand corrected. what a massive blunder in that case.
inigyou 13 hours ago [-]
and they should not have done that
QuantumNomad_ 11 hours ago [-]
I guess calling it Chat Stasi would be too on the nose :/
I think it's the contrary. People don't want Zuckerberg reading their private messages, and everyone in Eutope uses WhatsApp, which is advertised as E2E encrypted.
Therefore it makes Chat Control 2 a harder sell.
To be fair I think "<anything> Control" makes it pretty clesr it's nefarious. They missed the opportunity to call it "Chat Safety".
Cider9986 13 hours ago [-]
The name "Chat Control" is great because it implies a lockdown on free speech and the exact consequences that are going to happen to everyone.
inigyou 13 hours ago [-]
That's suitable for Chat Control 2.0. Applying the same name to v1 just muddies the waters, probably intentionally..
Cider9986 13 hours ago [-]
Agreed.
AshamedCaptain 13 hours ago [-]
I think the name is meaningless to the average layman, therefore useless. Something like "(private) chat police" would probably transmit what this is about but is not as catchy.
SpicyLemonZest 12 hours ago [-]
I think that framing would be much more vulnerable to companies saying "no no, there's no human reading your chats, we just want to apply these fixed filters".
chronogamous 11 hours ago [-]
Not everyone. Politicians and all their communication are to be excluded, for they have decided it is obvious that we can trust them. It's just the rest of the world that is considered untrustworthy. This also absolves them from having to go through a trial period of having the software tested on themselves, so they will never have to know about any ridiculous false positives. Or worse: all the stuff they communicate which they never considered to be problematic - it would have been so nice if they had at least had such a trial run, for say, about one or two years, with anything that is being flagged open for anyone who wishes to see.
The problem with this software is at the very core of why any sane person should reject it; a company like Thorn has no incentive whatsoever to actually come up with something that would work properly, especially since the target demographic that is to be monitored, is European. No worries if some firmware update bricks a massive amount of devices. Good for business. And I bet the US Government would also prefer if they prioritized having the backdoors work properly for listening in, over having the software scan properly (taking all the cultural and linguistic differences across the continent into account) just so that it will be capable of actually flagging what it is (for now) meant to flag.
Having your entire infrastructure of digital devices augmented with surveillance software is a bad idea in itself, but it's sheer madness if you're having this done for the whole of Europe, by using an American software endlosung/solution that was pushed by a Hollywood-actor who was so genuine in his motivation to save the children... truly impressive show of tears for someone who had the chance to save a number of girls from his predatory co-star a long time ago, like, to save them for real, yet he chose not to intervene... Years later, he's with Thorn, but still what he knows best is acting, so instead of focussing on actual victims, he's acting as if he gives a toss about present day children, knowing full well he is selling a dodgy technology using horror-scenarios they actually invented themselves for this very purpose.
In subsequent years this has led to an actual increase in number and variety of perpetrators in the field of sexual abuse and/or trafficking of minors - where it was quite a niche field in crime before - niche and overall way more predictable, making it possible to prevent quite a bit of it, too. Thanks to the fearmongering and constant need for succesfull detection of victims (as it is the metric they've used for years to keep the people providing them with money and power excited about the project) it has become much more problematic. The efforts of groups like Thorn have so effectively spread these horrorstories by pushing them as 'news' using so many newsoutlets, that this in itself caused a whole new demographic of messed up people to act them out, making the horrors a reality.
All this should be enough for anyone to know that, if you're totally hellbent on having a thing like chat control implemented, doing so by choosing to stick with software sold by these people or anyone from their circles will be disastrous.
amarcheschi 11 hours ago [-]
As far as I remember, law enforcement officers or army people were to be exempted too
IshKebab 12 hours ago [-]
Yes but that's how all of these objectionable legislations are introduced - first it's voluntary, then they wait a bit and say "companies aren't doing it, we'll need to make it mandatory".
Easier to push through if the only thing they're changing is "may" to "must".
PowerElectronix 14 hours ago [-]
Tough week for euros. Cars that record your face while driving and now apps snooping on communications.
artisinal 14 hours ago [-]
Perhaps in the future cars will not only record your face but also listen in for hate speech. Most cars have SOS and GPS modules so calling the police if someone in the car shouts a slur is just connecting some code together.
yubblegum 13 hours ago [-]
Why do you think this is only going to be in Europe? This will be the global norm modulo some astroid hitting earth or civilizational crash.
The trajectory is crystal clear: access to information (AI), control over personal finance (CBDC), privacy of personal communications (handful of big tech MITM in everything), metered social interactions (today China, tomorrow the world over).
spwa4 13 hours ago [-]
Until the sun grows in a final blaze of glory and burns all Qurans at the same time for 100 million years?
logicchains 12 hours ago [-]
Fortunately the US has not only freedom of speech in the constitution but also tens of millions of armed civilians that place a hard limit on how much control the government can have over people's speech. The only reason the Chinese government can achieve such control over speech is because it can disappear anyone who speaks against it.
It doesn't even need guns; Nepalese youth managed to stop social media censorship there just by going to the political capital and threatening to beat the MPs to death.
rwyinuse 11 hours ago [-]
America may have tens of millions of armed civilians, but I'm not convinced that so many of them care about freedom of speech, particularly when it comes to people who they disagree with.
trinsic2 7 hours ago [-]
Yeah there is proof of that. I wonder if most of those Americans that believe in freedom probably are the ones that voted in Trump and now look at where we are at.
niels8472 11 hours ago [-]
From the Chinese constitution:
Article 35 Citizens of the People’s Republic of China shall enjoy freedom of speech, the press, assembly, association, procession and demonstration.
vondur 11 hours ago [-]
Hahah, that's also what the Constitution of the Soviet Union stated. Tell that to everyone that got sent to the Gulag's for speaking up.
fakedang 11 hours ago [-]
Has the armed civilian population done anything to protect constitutional rights? Last time a section of them mobilized, it was to overthrow a rightfully elected government.
xienze 11 hours ago [-]
They were unarmed and the government was and continues to be scared shitless of that "attempted overthrow" (with no weapons? Does anyone really believe that had any chance of succeeding?) to this very day.
Seems to me like that Second Amendment thing could be very effective with a sufficiently motivated population.
i am interested in hearing why you think it is not god awful
RIMR 13 hours ago [-]
I mean, I get that these things are typically matters of opinion, but if you value things like freedom and privacy, these things are objectively bad.
greenleafone7 12 hours ago [-]
I think this should go one step further. If you don't praise the magnificence of your local EU politicians then your car's breaks will stop working and an electric shot will be administered to everyone presently in the car. That will satisfy EU-rocrats.
The coming revolution will be well deserved I think.
vrganj 11 hours ago [-]
Man, the paranoid ramblings every time the EU gets mentioned here really are something else...
Z0rp 14 hours ago [-]
Car could also become judge and executioner. Swift justice is just one curve away
ThrowawayTestr 13 hours ago [-]
Drive you straight to prison
artisinal 13 hours ago [-]
It is cheaper for the government to just lock the car doors for the length of your sentence. Saves them space in prison. You are allowed to use the McDrive twice a day. The windows will drop 8 centimeters, enough for a Big Mac.
The car’s computer voice:
John Spartan you are fined one credit for a violation of the verbal morality code!
sam_lowry_ 12 hours ago [-]
This is called eCall, a fairly intrusive system built into even some motorcycles.
specproc 12 hours ago [-]
Danger, danger. Cannabis detected in the vehicle.
shevy-java 14 hours ago [-]
Well, it is some kind of social control. People who conform, have more rights than those who reject fascism.
ndriscoll 12 hours ago [-]
Didn't Biden's big infrastructure bill already mandate that NHTSA develop regulations to require driver monitoring sensors starting next year? Or was that provision cut or reverted?
warkdarrior 11 hours ago [-]
That provision did get removed, but only for ICE cars.
Cars sold for the past years already record and transmit all your movements and telemetry, I'm sad to say.
mito88 14 hours ago [-]
the children...
:)
Cider9986 14 hours ago [-]
It's not particularly effective with school shootings in the USA.
joshuat 13 hours ago [-]
what about...
remashedspood 12 hours ago [-]
More guns?
varispeed 13 hours ago [-]
I wait for mandated methane sensor in everyone's anus.
honeycrispy 13 hours ago [-]
Maybe they should pause on being such snobs towards American politics to take a long hard look at themselves.
mito88 14 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
xienze 11 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
sscaryterry 13 hours ago [-]
Honestly, it is mostly a reaction to how society has evolved, for the worse. Rock and hard place.
The worst thing I have to hide is knowledge about my intentions, none of which are bad/illegal/immoral.
Scan away, I'd rather try to protect my children, other children from unscrupulous characters.
haywalk 13 hours ago [-]
> The worst thing I have to hide is knowledge about my intentions, none of which are bad/illegal/immoral.
Correction: None of which are bad/illegal/immoral _right now_. The "I have nothing to hide" crowd will surely change their tune the moment any of their data starts to be used against them.
sscaryterry 12 hours ago [-]
It is being used against me, but not my governments, by private enterprises :)
fragmede 10 hours ago [-]
That would have to happen, and by then it's too late. The best historical example is, not to Godwin the thread, but Dutch Jews who registered with the government and then when the Nazi's took over, that information was used against them. Political expression online is relatively safe under the current regime, but who knows if a future regime will also feel that way. If you posted something online about immigrants or criticizing a politician that became illegal to express, where would you be? Seems far-fetched, but in the history of the world, it isn't. People would rather not get persecuted for saying something they said 30 or more years ago because a lot can change in that kind of time. What once was acceptable becomes not in the different light of decades later. I'm sure if you go back to the very first comments I've made here, you'll find something embarrassing, though maybe not illegal. (An ernest plea that information wants to be free, probably.)
Communication wasn't digitally indexed and recorded forever, historically, and something intimate I whisper to a lover or very close friends doesn't ever need to see the light of day.
The guise that there's a predator out there, trying to cocerce 13 year old children to have sex with them is a good cover by the government to gain this control, because how do we refuse that? Won't somebody think of the children? So we have to acknowledge that yes, there are bad people out there, and no, I don't support Prince Andrew or the Epstein class, but at the same time, in the history of government and abuses of power, Chat control is going to be used against you and I, and not the Epstein class.
Even if defeated, this is Terminator legislation - it will never stop coming back until it wins.
Jensson 5 hours ago [-]
And then the anti terminator legislation where people will propose to end this over and over until its ended. EU isn't like USA, you have endless proposals in both directions.
cindyllm 4 hours ago [-]
[dead]
63stack 12 hours ago [-]
Can anyone explain something? Since there are so many open source chat applications, what keeps anyone from "just" exchanging a key with someone else out of band, and then modifying the client so that it uses that key to encrypt all communication? I understand that this does not scale to big groups, but surely whoever is pushing this crap must have thought about this? Or is the idea that we will have completely locked down PCs as well ala android and ios so you can't run anything unapproved?
peterlk 12 hours ago [-]
Nothing is stopping people from doing that. It’s just more inconvenient than other available options. If I were a politician trying to remove private communication, I would first pass something that allows scanning communications, then pass something that allows e2ee messages to be scanned, then make it illegal to use non-scannable e2ee messaging. People could still do it, but now they could be punished if they’re ever caught
red_admiral 12 hours ago [-]
This is about 1.0, which sounds ok - it basically allows providers a legitimate exception from data privacy laws to scan for CSAM in not E2EE communications. I reckon gmail, iCloud mail and the like already scan attachments for malware and emails for phishing scams, now they can also scan for child abuse.
cc 2.0 is a different beast.
budududuroiu 12 hours ago [-]
"We decide on something, leave it lying around, and wait and see what happens. If no one kicks up a fuss, because most people don't understand what has been decided, we continue step by step until there is no turning back." -- Jean-Claude Juncker
MaKey 11 hours ago [-]
It's still objectionable with a false positive rate of 50-80%.
red_admiral 12 hours ago [-]
What is the US legislation on this - I thought providers were already mandated to take action against distribution of CSAM, or is that only for public-facing posts?
kubb 13 hours ago [-]
When is it coming online? I have seen so many of these headlines that I feel it's always about to kick in, but I never get any closure.
ggirelli 12 hours ago [-]
Had expired in April. This is a tentative of bringing it back up even though it expired after a number of previous extensions.
watwut 13 hours ago [-]
This was online already. It is existing law that is being extended rather then expired.
SiempreViernes 13 hours ago [-]
Somewhat unsurprisingly too, since the negotiations about a more comprehensive CSAM legislation (the one that now doesn't contain chat control 2.0) isn't done yet.
spwa4 13 hours ago [-]
CSAM? You mean the system the Belgian state uses to identify children online?
Fantastic quotes for services the Belgian government offers:
"Make your life easier with CSAM"
"CSAM ensures that everyone follows the same rules"
"If you are interested in a service CSAM has to offer, please go straight to our Contact page"
kubb 13 hours ago [-]
Hmm, so… what happened while it was online? Any scandals?
spwa4 13 hours ago [-]
2 August 2021.
It already was in force, and EU states are presumably using it right now despite that being illegal. Only to protect the children, of course.
tangenter 10 hours ago [-]
Waiting to see what the Europeans do. They talked the talk. Let’s see what is the next move.
hagbard_c 8 hours ago [-]
Some of 'm have been doing things for decades now, moving to self-hosted services free from the government censors. The harder they squeeze, the more people will move to that server-under-the-stairs or hitch a ride on one hosted by a family member or friend.
mattrighetti 12 hours ago [-]
Give it time. I’ll see you in 5 years
shevy-java 14 hours ago [-]
Slaves also have no right to privacy. This EU variant is doomed to failure.
hagbard_c 8 hours ago [-]
They won't scan my messages since I run my own XMPP server and clients using only free software - prosody for the server, Conversations/dino/gajim/converse.js for the clients. OMEMO (the encryption scheme used by 'modern' XMPP systems) uses the same double-ratchet encryption as Signal without the dependency on a central Signal server.
Prosody can run on just about anything and is mostly maintenance-free, give it a try I'd say. You'll want to get a domain for it but that's easy and cheap.
pton_xd 13 hours ago [-]
I don't understand the EU's position on privacy. On the one hand, they enacted GDPR to give you control over access to your personal data.
On the other, they need access to all of your data.
joe463369 13 hours ago [-]
The unquestioned view in certain circles - including here - is that when the EU/UK does something that chips away at people's online privacy, there's un ulterior motive.
It's entirely possible that politicians just want to do something about CSAM and young people having their mind twisted by social media. The electorate do seem to be keen on some sort of action.
Other governments across the Channel also want to protect children online, while at the same time dismissing thousands of reports of grooming, for fear of being labelled "racist".
vlian2088 12 hours ago [-]
>It's entirely possible that politicians just want to do something about CSAM
except that honest-to-God child rapists get extremely lenient sentences in Western Europe and rarely (if ever) get deported afterwards.
5 hours ago [-]
munk-a 13 hours ago [-]
The EU's position on privacy seems pretty consistent to me - they're against your data being monetized by private entities but not against building governmental tools to monitor private entities.
In good faith this could be summarized as "Personal data should be used for public safety but not for profit" - but that philosophy is definitely a strong contrast with the basic American philosophy towards civil liberties.
watwut 13 hours ago [-]
> basic American philosophy towards civil liberties.
Errrr, america does not look like country that cares about that. It does care about liberties of rich companies tho.
inigyou 13 hours ago [-]
Exactly, that is the American philosophy being referenced.
nurumaik 6 hours ago [-]
Very clear position: they want absolute control over both companies and citizens
ggirelli 13 hours ago [-]
Not "access to ALL of your data". Also, as confusing as it might be, it is in the nature of EU (at least IMHO) to not have a clear position over multiple legislatures.
varispeed 12 hours ago [-]
This is a wedge.
inigyou 13 hours ago [-]
The one that passed doesn't give them access to anything. It is different from the scary one.
mhitza 13 hours ago [-]
Maybe big tech weren't good a lobbying bureaucrats against GDPR but got better at lobbying in the EU for this. There's also been a slight shift towards authoritarianism in the last decade, which naturally love the possibilities of stricter communication control.
Children protection and russian propaganda are the tried and tested covers at enforcing age verification, message scanning, and probably any future pan-european surveillance network.
arjie 12 hours ago [-]
It seems fairly consistent, doesn't it? CC 2.0 is that the government must be able to access things, and GDPR has a legal basis exemption that is defacto used every time by government entities. The general idea is that private parties cannot consent to things to each other but that residents of a place consent to being governed by the government. e.g. you can't consent to having someone jail you; but you also can't opt out of jail by the government.
Personally, the politics of Europe is really not for me, but I can see why others might find it attractive. In the end, history will show us which path is adaptive.
coldtea 13 hours ago [-]
There's no position on privacy. They make whatever laws the corporate laws and elites like, and that furthers their own bureucratic reach. GDPR is a good way to create a "compliance moat" against smaller players, and to give the EU bureucrats more power.
bossyTeacher 13 hours ago [-]
It is simple. GDPR is aimed at private entities misusing your data. Keyword private.
spwa4 13 hours ago [-]
Not even that. The government outsources a lot of their functions, so a LOT of organizations have access to extremely private data, where necessary.
For example, Palantir gets access to "large and diverse (government) databases with Dutch citizens’ data for analysis" (including mental health treatment data) under the GPDR to help police in the Netherlands do terror investigations (from 2012 to 2019). I'm sure you can appreciate the wisdom and privacy-enhancement in that just as much as me!
There are large lists of private organizations that get access to government data about citizens ... every country has multiple (public and secret ones).
Oh, they also "failed to mention" this to parliament, and this was only discovered after a journalist got a tipoff and requested financial data about the deal ... for about 5 years. Of course, there was never even the slightest investigation into this.
The thing is that according to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights privacy and the right to private communication is a basic human right. And GDPR was literally enacted to enforce this human right.
Now one basic principle of democracy is that supreme courts are superior to the people in power. Someone needs to watch the lawmakers so to say. Because it could actually be that the European commission enacts laws that are illegal. And Chat Control 2.0 could actually be illegal because it violates the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. However, somebody has to take them to The Court of Justice of the European Union to test it.
JoshTriplett 13 hours ago [-]
I think the position can best be approximated as "companies should not be able to do this, but you should trust your government to do this to you". (That's a bad position that needs to be defeated every time it arises, but it's a consistent position.)
sscaryterry 13 hours ago [-]
Given the choice of trust between, lets say Amazon/Meta/Google and the EU (or some European government), 9 times out of 10, the EU is the lesser evil.
Cider9986 13 hours ago [-]
You don't have to use Amazon/Meta/Google. You have to use the government.
Let's not forget that these are the people and laws that are supposed to represent and help you, not the other way around. While private companies have no such obligation.
sscaryterry 13 hours ago [-]
Amazon/Meta/Google is sometimes required, nobody in the real world can get away from that.
> supposed to represent and help you, not the other way around. While private companies have no such obligation.
Exactly my point.
vrganj 13 hours ago [-]
I've moved countries 5 times in my life. I still haven't been able to fully degoogle.
liveoneggs 13 hours ago [-]
For now none of Amazon, Meta, or Google can jail you or legally do violence on you, separate you from your family, etc. Your sense of threat is extremely miscalibrated.
sscaryterry 12 hours ago [-]
Not really. I know what you are playing at. The probability of the government being vindictive towards a single family, whilst not truly zero, is for almost all practical purposes zero.
The probability of a (my or your) child enduring harmful content, perpetuated and enabled by Meta/Google (in particular) is almost a certainty.
JoshTriplett 13 hours ago [-]
We are not required to pick amongst evils. We could, in fact, say private chats are private and end to end encryption is sacrosanct.
sscaryterry 13 hours ago [-]
If you are purist and you don't live in the real world with real evils. I don't want pedophiles to have privacy.
john_strinlai 13 hours ago [-]
>I don't want pedophiles to have privacy.
that is why police already have access to mechanisms to remove privacy from people suspected of being a pedophile.
sscaryterry 12 hours ago [-]
The existing mechanisms are inadequate or not fit for 2026. Hence this discussion.
You are agreeing with me :)
john_strinlai 12 hours ago [-]
>You are agreeing with me :)
i am absolutely not :)
you want to provide unfettered warrantless access to all of your communications. ive been fighting against that sort of thing for approaching 40 years now.
sscaryterry 12 hours ago [-]
> have access to mechanisms to remove privacy from people suspected of being a pedophile
I don't understand that part then. You can't break open E2EE by willing it open.
Right now, if I wanted a new account, I walk into any supermarket, spend a quid, and I've got a burner, with WhatsApp.
john_strinlai 12 hours ago [-]
>I don't understand that part then. You can't break open E2EE by willing it open.
the mechanism to remove privacy from suspects is typically called a warrant.
(end-to-end encryption does not matter if you possess one of the ends)
BoingBoomTschak 12 hours ago [-]
After Epstein, Hollywood and decades earlier Dutroux, you'd think people like you would have wizened.
what a crazy turning of the tides to see this comment in the gray.
i suppose the times have changed from when most people on the internet were cypherphunk. now it's common to see people say "i have nothing to hide, please scan all of my communications", unironically invoking "please think of the children".
I feel like this one should not be removed because people want to continue discussing and that's easier on a newer thread.
ChrisArchitect 13 hours ago [-]
Easier? You mean easier to duplicate? No need to split up the discussion. There's the link, welcome to continue discussing over there, instead of pushing the news back in front of the rest of those who may not have missed it.
sndgndgndgndy 12 hours ago [-]
Stop trying to shut down discussions that you don't like.
vaylian 14 hours ago [-]
Different news source. But same topic.
ChrisArchitect 14 hours ago [-]
Welcome to share the url over there. Duplicate discussion.
mctwo 13 hours ago [-]
Each passing day we are moving closer to a dystopian state and nobody is doing anything.
layer8 12 hours ago [-]
People are doing something (e.g. [0][1][2]). That’s why Chat Control 2.0 hasn’t passed and is unlikely to pass in the foreseeable future.
lol, say someone publishes an E2E distributed extension to an existing chat protocol.
Are you going to arrest someone for writing code? Are you going to arrest people who use private communications? Sounds like a legislator carve out hot and ready to happen.
I get the point, ban E2E, OK sure, but what if some software is designed in such a way that the company doesn't provide it, but it just happens to be compatible with the protocol extension? Are you going to arrest the authors if they don't explicitly ban it?
Yeah, right.
McDyver 11 hours ago [-]
It's all coming together:
Even if an open protocol was developed and published, and everyone would just use AI to create their own app in order to be private, Google is shutting down that path by preventing "unsanctioned" apps from being installed (not to mention Apple, which already does it).
People wouldn't be arrested for writing code, but as it happened in Spain, people with Pixels and GrapheneOS are already treated as drug dealers
ggirelli 2 hours ago [-]
Do you have any references to the Spain thing?
bellowsgulch 11 hours ago [-]
The government's worse nightmare: People who own Pixels talking to their family members.
[1] https://www.iwf.org.uk/policy-work/preventing-the-upload-of-...
You're just one election away from "that was during the previous term of office"
https://media.mullvad.net/web/chatcontrol2_en.jpg
Good comic, but they're no longer credible.
Kind of surprised they don't just pitch it as a way to root out Russian propaganda and right-wing extremism. Public opinion would shift overnight. They'd practically demand it!
Despite being fairly left-leaning I wouldn’t automatically blame the right for this particular type of invasive nonsense… is this a centrist spawned nuisance, or something?
Agreed, and this sucks, but what should be done about this? Some NGO called "We Stop Bad Guys" approaches your company with its hand out. You have two choices:
1. kick down some money, get great headlines
2. don't, and then have it known that you don't support stopping Bad Guys -- then maybe write ten thousand never-to-be-read words about how your position is actually quite principled
I hate it, but the first is obviously rational?
Guess what doesn't require billions of dollars? Mandatory scanning paid for by tech companies, followed by dumping the billions of hits they produce [2] on overworked police and clearinghouses that mostly ignore them.
[1] https://www.wyden.senate.gov/news/press-releases/wyden-eshoo... [2] https://www.hstoday.us/subject-matter-areas/cybersecurity/su...
There are countless reasons to be against these chat controls, but it's easy for a layperson to understand how they would address their specific concerns. The only way to effectively counter that is providing an alternative that does a better job.
The politicians needed to change tax laws are owned by the tech companies. This is why its a hard problem. The tech companies set the rules now. Getting politicians elected that aren't owned by tech companies is also hard because tech companies effectively control all the information.
There are many, many things we can do that actually protect children -- and we generally already do them. That's the nature of the problem. After you do all of the things that are reasonable and cost effective, it solves 90% of the problem, 95% of the problem, 99% of the problem, but never 100% of the problem.
So you can't give them something that does that. The thing they're proposing doesn't even do that. Nothing does. And then disingenuous opportunists keep proposing the thing that should never be done because they know it lets them paint you as the bad guy for having to tell them no again and again.
What you need instead is to identify and strip power and resources from the people who keep proposing it.
Genuinely, how do you expect someone concerned about child sex trafficking to receive this? "Oh, good point, I guess we can't do anything more to protect children because it isn't 'cost-effective'." Do you think that will be a common response?
>And then disingenuous opportunists keep proposing the thing that should never be done because they know it lets them paint you as the bad guy for having to tell them no again and again.
I'm not even disagreeing with this point, I'm simply saying your response can't just be "no, they are the bad guy". That is not a winning political message. That's why the democratic socialist faction of the Democratic Party in the US is growing in popularity. You can't just call your opponent bad especially when your opponent is promising to address people's concerns, you need to actually engage with people about their concerns and offer solutions.
I'm taking it as a given that we shouldn't do things that aren't cost effective, because that's what "cost effective" means. There are things we could do that would cost six trillion dollars in order to save one life, and we're not going to do those things, because it would be patently unreasonable and cost dramatically more lives than that as a result of what those resources would have to be allocated from.
It's possible that there are cost effective things we could do that we're not currently doing, but those things tend to be uncontroversial, so when someone uncovers one it generally does actually get enacted and becomes the status quo. That's the issue: Name any given thing you suppose we should do instead of Chat Control. Enact it, as many of them already have been. Tomorrow they propose Chat Control again, so what now? Offering and even enacting an alternative hasn't satisfied them, they keep trying to pass it anyway.
> You can't just call your opponent bad especially when your opponent is promising to address people's concerns, you need to actually engage with people about their concerns and offer solutions.
What are you supposed to do when you've not only offered solutions but enacted and implemented them already and your opponent is a fear monger who will never be satisfied because they have an ulterior motive for their dangerous and ineffective proposal?
It creates a moral asymmetry where one group is "defending children" and another group is "defending an abstract concept", but group A wins out primarily due to millions of years of human evolution. It has very little (IMO) to do with the actual underlying concepts being debated.
You aren't actually engaging with why group A wins. Those "millions of years of human evolution" actually instilled in people a desire to protect children.
For example, how many children will this actually protect? How many children will this harm? How many adults will be harmed by inevitable side-effects that arise? Those questions are not discussed or even considered.
You can't win a debate by claiming your concerns invalidate their concerns. You need to actually engage with them on the issue they care about.
Chat Control 2.0 is the worrying one because it mandates scanning and bans E2EE.
These two things should not have both been given the same branding.
the confusion is purposeful, because it is easier to convince people that 1.0 is okay, which makes 2.0 appear like a version bump of the same thing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi
Therefore it makes Chat Control 2 a harder sell.
To be fair I think "<anything> Control" makes it pretty clesr it's nefarious. They missed the opportunity to call it "Chat Safety".
The problem with this software is at the very core of why any sane person should reject it; a company like Thorn has no incentive whatsoever to actually come up with something that would work properly, especially since the target demographic that is to be monitored, is European. No worries if some firmware update bricks a massive amount of devices. Good for business. And I bet the US Government would also prefer if they prioritized having the backdoors work properly for listening in, over having the software scan properly (taking all the cultural and linguistic differences across the continent into account) just so that it will be capable of actually flagging what it is (for now) meant to flag.
Having your entire infrastructure of digital devices augmented with surveillance software is a bad idea in itself, but it's sheer madness if you're having this done for the whole of Europe, by using an American software endlosung/solution that was pushed by a Hollywood-actor who was so genuine in his motivation to save the children... truly impressive show of tears for someone who had the chance to save a number of girls from his predatory co-star a long time ago, like, to save them for real, yet he chose not to intervene... Years later, he's with Thorn, but still what he knows best is acting, so instead of focussing on actual victims, he's acting as if he gives a toss about present day children, knowing full well he is selling a dodgy technology using horror-scenarios they actually invented themselves for this very purpose.
In subsequent years this has led to an actual increase in number and variety of perpetrators in the field of sexual abuse and/or trafficking of minors - where it was quite a niche field in crime before - niche and overall way more predictable, making it possible to prevent quite a bit of it, too. Thanks to the fearmongering and constant need for succesfull detection of victims (as it is the metric they've used for years to keep the people providing them with money and power excited about the project) it has become much more problematic. The efforts of groups like Thorn have so effectively spread these horrorstories by pushing them as 'news' using so many newsoutlets, that this in itself caused a whole new demographic of messed up people to act them out, making the horrors a reality.
All this should be enough for anyone to know that, if you're totally hellbent on having a thing like chat control implemented, doing so by choosing to stick with software sold by these people or anyone from their circles will be disastrous.
Easier to push through if the only thing they're changing is "may" to "must".
The trajectory is crystal clear: access to information (AI), control over personal finance (CBDC), privacy of personal communications (handful of big tech MITM in everything), metered social interactions (today China, tomorrow the world over).
It doesn't even need guns; Nepalese youth managed to stop social media censorship there just by going to the political capital and threatening to beat the MPs to death.
Article 35 Citizens of the People’s Republic of China shall enjoy freedom of speech, the press, assembly, association, procession and demonstration.
Seems to me like that Second Amendment thing could be very effective with a sufficiently motivated population.
Exhibit A says: Bullshit.
[A] https://www.reuters.com/fact-check/us-capitol-attack-rioters...
The coming revolution will be well deserved I think.
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2026/07/two-teens-learn-the-har...
The worst thing I have to hide is knowledge about my intentions, none of which are bad/illegal/immoral.
Scan away, I'd rather try to protect my children, other children from unscrupulous characters.
Correction: None of which are bad/illegal/immoral _right now_. The "I have nothing to hide" crowd will surely change their tune the moment any of their data starts to be used against them.
Communication wasn't digitally indexed and recorded forever, historically, and something intimate I whisper to a lover or very close friends doesn't ever need to see the light of day.
The guise that there's a predator out there, trying to cocerce 13 year old children to have sex with them is a good cover by the government to gain this control, because how do we refuse that? Won't somebody think of the children? So we have to acknowledge that yes, there are bad people out there, and no, I don't support Prince Andrew or the Epstein class, but at the same time, in the history of government and abuses of power, Chat control is going to be used against you and I, and not the Epstein class.
cc 2.0 is a different beast.
(not even joking https://www.csam.be/en/index.html )
Fantastic quotes for services the Belgian government offers:
"Make your life easier with CSAM"
"CSAM ensures that everyone follows the same rules"
"If you are interested in a service CSAM has to offer, please go straight to our Contact page"
It already was in force, and EU states are presumably using it right now despite that being illegal. Only to protect the children, of course.
Prosody can run on just about anything and is mostly maintenance-free, give it a try I'd say. You'll want to get a domain for it but that's easy and cheap.
On the other, they need access to all of your data.
It's entirely possible that politicians just want to do something about CSAM and young people having their mind twisted by social media. The electorate do seem to be keen on some sort of action.
Many abuse survivors and youth advocates strongly oppose Chat Control; here is one voice detailing why: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-i-dont-support-privacy-in...
except that honest-to-God child rapists get extremely lenient sentences in Western Europe and rarely (if ever) get deported afterwards.
In good faith this could be summarized as "Personal data should be used for public safety but not for profit" - but that philosophy is definitely a strong contrast with the basic American philosophy towards civil liberties.
Errrr, america does not look like country that cares about that. It does care about liberties of rich companies tho.
Children protection and russian propaganda are the tried and tested covers at enforcing age verification, message scanning, and probably any future pan-european surveillance network.
Personally, the politics of Europe is really not for me, but I can see why others might find it attractive. In the end, history will show us which path is adaptive.
For example, Palantir gets access to "large and diverse (government) databases with Dutch citizens’ data for analysis" (including mental health treatment data) under the GPDR to help police in the Netherlands do terror investigations (from 2012 to 2019). I'm sure you can appreciate the wisdom and privacy-enhancement in that just as much as me!
There are large lists of private organizations that get access to government data about citizens ... every country has multiple (public and secret ones).
Oh, they also "failed to mention" this to parliament, and this was only discovered after a journalist got a tipoff and requested financial data about the deal ... for about 5 years. Of course, there was never even the slightest investigation into this.
https://nltimes.nl/2025/08/22/dutch-police-also-use-controve...
(paywalled) https://www.volkskrant.nl/tech/ook-nederlandse-politie-gebru...
Now one basic principle of democracy is that supreme courts are superior to the people in power. Someone needs to watch the lawmakers so to say. Because it could actually be that the European commission enacts laws that are illegal. And Chat Control 2.0 could actually be illegal because it violates the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. However, somebody has to take them to The Court of Justice of the European Union to test it.
Let's not forget that these are the people and laws that are supposed to represent and help you, not the other way around. While private companies have no such obligation.
> supposed to represent and help you, not the other way around. While private companies have no such obligation.
Exactly my point.
The probability of a (my or your) child enduring harmful content, perpetuated and enabled by Meta/Google (in particular) is almost a certainty.
that is why police already have access to mechanisms to remove privacy from people suspected of being a pedophile.
You are agreeing with me :)
i am absolutely not :)
you want to provide unfettered warrantless access to all of your communications. ive been fighting against that sort of thing for approaching 40 years now.
I don't understand that part then. You can't break open E2EE by willing it open.
Right now, if I wanted a new account, I walk into any supermarket, spend a quid, and I've got a burner, with WhatsApp.
the mechanism to remove privacy from suspects is typically called a warrant.
(end-to-end encryption does not matter if you possess one of the ends)
For fuck's sake, my country's entire media/intellectual class protected an avowed and even boasting pedophile during his entire life! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel_Matzneff
i suppose the times have changed from when most people on the internet were cypherphunk. now it's common to see people say "i have nothing to hide, please scan all of my communications", unironically invoking "please think of the children".
[0] https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/chat-control/
[1] https://edri.org/our-work/european-commission-must-uphold-pr...
[2] https://freiheitsrechte.org/en/themen/freiheit-im-digitalen-...
Are you going to arrest someone for writing code? Are you going to arrest people who use private communications? Sounds like a legislator carve out hot and ready to happen.
I get the point, ban E2E, OK sure, but what if some software is designed in such a way that the company doesn't provide it, but it just happens to be compatible with the protocol extension? Are you going to arrest the authors if they don't explicitly ban it?
Yeah, right.
People wouldn't be arrested for writing code, but as it happened in Spain, people with Pixels and GrapheneOS are already treated as drug dealers