Thank you for sharing. It is unfortunately, once again, needed.
The recent events have been rather dumbfounding. On March 11, the Parliament surprisingly voted to replace blanket mass surveillance with targeted monitoring of suspects following judicial involvement [0]. As Council refused to compromise, the trilogue negotiations were set to fail, thus allowing the Commission's current indiscriminate "Chat Control 1.0" to lapse [1]. This would have been the ideal outcome.
In an unprecedented move, the EPP is attempting to force a repeat vote tomorrow, seeking to overturn the otherwise principled March 11 decision and instead favouring indiscriminate mass surveillance [1, 2]. In an attempt to avoid this, the Greens earlier today tried to remove the repeat vote from the agenda tomorrow, but this was voted down [3].
As such, tomorrow, the Parliament will once again vote on Chat Control. And unlike March 11, multiple groups are split on the vote, including S&D and Renew. The EPP remains unified in its support for Chat Control. If you are a European citizen, I urge you to contact your MEPs by e-mail and, if you have time, by calling. We really are in the final stretch here and every action counts. I have just updated the website to reflect the votes today, allowing a more targeted approach.
Happy to answer any questions.
[0] https://mepwatch.eu/10/vote.html?v=188578
[1] https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/the-battle-over-chat-contro...
[2] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/OJQ-10-2026-03...
[3] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/PV-10-2026-03-...
It's really surprising to me that this issue keeps coming up time and time again, until I realised that it's non-voted in parties actually trying to pass this stuff!
I didn't realise that the EU parliament simply says yes or no to bills and doesn't actually propose new laws, whilst the EU Commission are appointed and decide on what bills to push through.
In fact what is described as "Parliament surprisingly voted to replace blanket mass surveillance with targeted monitoring of suspects following judicial involvement" is exactly the EP voting to amend the Commission proposal on an extension of existing itermim rules with text that explicitly limits the scope.
Why? Why has your approach not been toward passing active legislation that protects these rights going forward? Genuinely curious. I understand that finding and pressing the “don’t ask again” button is always harder, but I don’t understand why “we punted on this decision!” is a celebratory moment.
Maybe a movement could match a lobbyist in terms of money. I hope so.
Maybe because the Commission holds the true power and the commissioners aren't directly elected by the people so you don't have any leverage against the commissioners. You can't just say "behave nicely or we won't support you at the next elections".
That's not something the "legislators" in the EU parliament can do. It's effectively a consultative body which can either approve or send back the legislation provided to them so the council and commision can find sufficient workarounds...
What would actually help is if a government of a country where this type of Stasi/KGB style surveillance is constitutionally illegal like Germany to speak out and tell the EU (and Denmark which keeps pushing this) that they can go fuck themselves and that they will prosecute any company which is trying to comply with these regulations. (which would be perfectly legal since constitution/basic laws still supersede any type of EU treaty obligations in most countries.
The story is tragically illustrative of the maxim that you can oppose terrible legislation a hundred times but they only have to pass it once.
>rejected
>let's vote on it again!
Is it still a democracy if you just keep redoing the vote until you get the outcome you want? The politicians involved in this should be ashamed of themselves.
I think the website is missing a dark pattern here, spray-and-pray, which is throwing as many reincarnations of the same thing as possible, hoping one eventually sticks.
But they are first-class in acting like a victim
It's the same thing as with your republicans.
Chat Controls fulfil the definition of terrorism wholly.
We keep seeing the establishment resurfacing and imposing this blanket surveillance globally. What's happening in Brazil, the UK, EU, and has already happened in the US with no legislation or via the 5-eyes is scary.
Who are these people pressuring elected politicians and unelected bureaucrats to legislate against their constituents? Who are these lobbyists?
I get that there is a large constituency that wants to control dissidents and the narrative in the name of child abuse - see what's happening in the UK where people get arrested in the thousands for posting comments online.
Abolishing privacy is not the way to protect children. Police work and prosecution is. For reference see the grooming gangs in the UK, the infamous Eps*% case for which everyone is still walking free, and other cases in various EU countries. This is not whataboutism, it's proof that we have not taken the required steps as a western society to combat this. You don't press the nuclear option as your first action.
If it's bot farm meddling that is the true target, then ban bots and get technology to work properly. Creating ID honeypots on poorly protected website operator servers is not the solution.
Call your politicians, call your EU MEPs, call everyone you can. This matters because it's about our future.
Maybe reach out to Signal to implement some kind of one-way channel so you can reach people easily?
We need to put actual pressure on those fascists. Next time they even mention it, we flood the council website with an identical search query, say "Does no mean yes after all?" and if they persist, we strike for couple days.
Don't get me wrong: my blood boils reading those legislations, but rationally I don't see a path to victory here.
Is it just that there's no "privacy lobby" interested in getting even one lawyer around to sit down and write it up?
Or is there at least one such bill floating around, but no EU member state has been willing to table it for discussion?
"Article 7
Respect for private and family life
Everyone has the right to respect for his or her private and family life, home and communications.
Article 8
Protection of personal data
1. Everyone has the right to the protection of personal data concerning him or her.
2. Such data must be processed fairly for specified purposes and on the basis of the consent of the person concerned or some other legitimate basis laid down by law. Everyone has the right of access to data which has been collected concerning him or her, and the right to have it rectified.
3. Compliance with these rules shall be subject to control by an independent authority."
Article 7 codifies "respect for [one's] private life" and "respect for [one's] private communications". Well, "respect" is a vague notion. This does not clearly imply that the government is not allowed to read your communications, or otherwise spy on you, if it believes it has good reason. It will do so "respectfully", or supposedly minimize the intrusion etc.
As for article 8: Here it is "protection of personal data" and "fair processing". It does not say "protection from government access"; and "processing" is when the government or some other party already has your data. In fact, as others point out, even this wording has an explicit legitimization of violation of privacy and 'protection' whenever there is a law which defines something as "legitimate basis" for invading your privacy.
You would have liked to see wording like:
* "Privacy in one's home, personal life, communications and digital interactions is a fundamental right."
* "The EU, its members, its bodies, its officers and whoever acts on its behalf shall not invade individuals' privacy."
and probably something about a non-absolute right to anonymity. Codified exceptions should be limited and not open-ended.
The reality is that they'll just keep pushing it from different angles, they only have to get lucky once, we (or EU citizens, we left and have our own issues) need to be lucky every time - much like an adverserial relationship where you are on the defending side from a cyberattack...funny that really.
Because the people voting it down are the elected MEPs, whilst the people putting it up to parliament are the European Commission. The EC are appointed, rather than elected. Which means the powers that be just appoint people who are going to push through laws like this, that they want. The MEPs can't put up bills to be voted on.
Article 7, EU Charter of Fundamental Rights: Respect for private and family life (and probably a couple other sections in there as well).
The problem is national security exceptions. Chat control and other similar bills are trying to carve out exceptions to privacy laws under the excuse of national security.
Also its politically cheap to introduce surveillance or to expand state power, it's comparatively extremely difficult to pass laws that specifically restrict state power.
Privacy laws are well and good, but they exist. The problem is we need to stop allowing "public safety" or "national security" to be a trump card that allows exceptions to said laws, and good luck getting any government to ever agree that privacy is more important than national security.
- The GDPR
- The ePrivacy directive, which is explicitly derogated (sabotaged) by chat control 1.0
Combined with the right to communicate across borders, you can get quite a bit of privacy: a server in both sides of a geopolitical conflict and they've got to collaborate to track you.
And yet metadata collection is both unavoidable (if you don't collect it, your geopolitical opponents will) and should be enough. We don't need chat control in a world where I get precision-targeted ads -- it's not even about freedom of speech or privacy, it's about freedom of thought.
How is that supposed to work with e2e encrypted chats?
It is the Conservatives attempt. The EU parliament is the entity that shot it down last time.
Second. Who gave you the right to define antieuropean union propaganda as a sin.
Some people may hate it, some people may love it, other want to change it.
It was created by vote, surely it can be whatever the fuck the way the people want by vote.
So, in my view this is not really a "left" or "right" thing, but something that is pushed by people you could call "the establishment".
The site is conflating mandatory scanning with voluntary scanning (status quo). The upcoming vote is about continuing the voluntary scanning (which would otherwise expire).
> The Conservatives (EPP) are attempting to force a new vote on Thursday (26th), seeking to reverse Parliament's NO on indiscriminate scanning.
The vote itself is being forced by the EPP. This article by an MEP has more info: https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/the-battle-over-chat-contro...
For various, and unclear, reasons, there is substantial backing to change this.
It takes only one win to remove our rights but once they’re gone you’ll never get them back.
Either way those elected to supposedly serve are the only ones winning.
while not pass:
try to pass something stupid, malevolent or that hurts people and democracies“We decide something, then put it out there and wait for a while to see what happens.
If there is then no great outcry and no uprisings, because most people do not even understand what has been decided, then we continue—step by step, until there is no turning back.”
— Jean-Claude Juncker
https://digitalcourage.social/@echo_pbreyer/1162053712243153...
And I’d still take this clusterfuck over the alternative current state of the US. At least this situation we can (and have been) striking down, despite all the naysayers on HN. Here’s to hoping we’re able to do so again!
But if you are a US citizen, I would refrain talking about increased control of life outside of your own turf. Your education system is controlled either government or religious groups. Your streets are patrolled by uneducated police troops without control and they are detaining even US citizens without due process. Now your government says they will block all foreign made routers. And did you forget NSA Prism program? Your voting system is controlled via gerrymandered maps which are changing constantly depending who's in the control. Lots of your citizens are living paycheck to paycheck and one health issue can bankrupt them and only way to survive is to ask money from strangers via gofundme. All because of healthcare and insurance companies greed and politicians lack of interests of their constituents.
Yeah, the EU legislation about privacy and chat control is problematic but saying that US is doing so much better for it's citizens is a stretch.
Yes, but who isn't? Not the other side of the pond for sure.
We've shot it down before, and we'll shoot it down again, regardless of how relentless Palantir lobbying gets.
This is not true. No part of the Patriot Act required all people all private messages and photos to be scanned or have a backdoor to encryption. You're saying this to minimize what's about to happen to Europe, which is not helpful. The NSA made deals with private companies to tap lines, and used its influence and US intelligence's secret ownership of a Swiss encryption company to encourage us to use broken algorithms.
> We've shot it down before, and we'll shoot it down again, regardless of how relentless Palantir lobbying gets.
I wish you luck. But there's nothing keeping the EU from doing, and having always done, what the NSA has also done. What you're trying to stop is the requirement to serve your communications to your rulers on a silver platter.
I realise the EU is our only hope to defend ourselves against big players like China and the US and smaller bullies like Russia.
But at the same time I realise the EU we have in this timeline is one of the worst possible: a criminal venture, a safe heaven for the corrupt elite + their lobbyists and an organisation that‘s hell bent on harming and controlling its citizens.
Majorities for sane parties are not possible. Democracy is too slow, too indirect. Hell, this is barely a democracy at all, just like on the national level. As EU citizens we as powerless as every other citizen in the world.
But the price of freedom is indeed eternal vigilance.
I once wrote a paper about Witold pilecki for my english project for who I consider to be the most influential person or something similar.
I picked Witold pilecki because I had read a book which talked about him and it captured so much of my mind.
For those who don't know, Witold Pilecki is a polish person who was the first and perhaps only person who willingly entered holocaust/auschwitz and then he was the first person to realize all the horrors happening inside, He then used washing machine parts (iirc) to send the signal to the allies, who COULDN'T believe what Pilecki said was happening. The amounts of Atrocities they thought wasn't possible.
When he found out that help wasn't coming, He decided to free himself and He accomplished doing that by taking a job at something bread related who then ends up leaving.
He then married an Polish teacher (iirc) and had kids but after Russia had won over Polish, he was fake trialed and he was falsely accused of treason.
His last words were, "I've been trying to live my life so that in the hour of my death I would rather feel joy, than fear."
On a personal level, when I was writing that project and this line, I genuinely believe that this might be one of the most influential lines to me that I have ever heard which has genuinely influenced me.
It was during this project that I found Sabaton from trying to research about Witold pilecki and found so many gems that Sabaton is quite part of my music taste now :-)
Sabaton- Inmate 4859: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pc1oSYXlUQ (This song is about Witold Pilecki)
Sabaton Uprising: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzeNBRbWXpI (Another Polish warsaw related song that I found after I had discovered Sabaton from the Inmate 4859 song)
I hope that you are proud of your heritage/nation. I am sure that Poland might have flaws too but I do believe that its history is quite rich and something to be quite proud of.
I am surprised not more people know about Witold Pilecki but I hope I am doing my part raising awareness about that hero.
Within my country, some of the revolutionaries which feel influential on such level to me feel most importantly Bhagat Singh, Subash Chandra Bose, Chandrashekhar Azad. These are also people who have influenced me.
There is also the story of how an Indian ruler hosted Polish WWII refugees[0] and helped them within his kingdom, which I am not sure if many Polish know.
While I was writing this comment, I discovered a good song about Indian revolutionaries as well which I feel like sharing too: Krantiveer (Revolutionary): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uXZG0pTxME [Turn the subtitles (on)]
I think my point can be summarized by a quote from Subash chandra bose, that freedom is not given, it is taken.
[0]: https://indianexpress.com/article/research/the-good-maharaja...
Hence, everything their government does is the opposite of what a typical European Union member would approve of.
23 Member States Supporting
0 Member States Undecided
God I love politics
I wonder if they would support that every of paper mail would be opened and checked. I strongly doubt that.
So they feel they must turn to the state for protection.
That's the key question!
There's a small group of very powerful people that keep pushing this agenda.
Who are those people?
Find out.
Publicize their names. Make their corruption visible and linked to their identity.
In case anyone has an issue with this: Remember! This is what they want! For you! Not for them. Only the plebs.
The first goal of every bureaucracy is to guarantee its survival and power, all other goals are downstream this first goal.
How would this be enforced in practice? In other words, what would prevent E.U. users from using encrypted services outside of the jurisdiction of the E.U., to "illegally" encrypt their hard drives or to run their own private encrypted comms servers?
There is a long chain of actions that ends with you having e2e on your phone (or what not). At the starts of it there is your physical body living in jurisdiction and transacting with (mostly) other people being somewhat present in the same jurisdiction using government-captured money. There are multiply choke points, controlling which will not result in 100% enforcement, but will make whatever you want to do a huge pain in the ass, so most people will not bother (case in point -- jailbraking). Whoever is left self-selects themselves for selective enforcement.
Don’t put your shit in the cloud and use proper E2E secure messaging.
For me the entire idea of the cloud is dead due to exposure like this.
[0]: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/sedcms/documents/PRIORITY_INF...
Note that the amendment was already amended on 11th March to set expiry to Aug 2027 and to also exclude E2E communications.
While it's still worth fighting, it is less worrying
The question of course is, why something is allowed multiple votes (and the basic answer is - if it presented some changed - but I don't know if it's the case)
"Save the kids", is just a ploy to run scams.
oh no, they had to resign from their government jobs and in a year will work in the private sector as consultants for double the salary, those poor souls :'(
prison, fines, mental asylum, whatever would be an actual consequence.
a bit hyperbolic and reactionary from my side, maybe. but you get the gist.
>2. This Regulation does not apply to the processing of personal data:
>by competent authorities for the purposes of the prevention, investigation, detection or prosecution of criminal offences or the execution of criminal penalties, including the safeguarding against and the prevention of threats to public security.
- added targeted scanning requirement
- scanning must be “targeted, specified and limited… where there are reasonable grounds of suspicion… identified by a judicial authority”
[1] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/TA-10-2026-007...
As a normal citizen you have no real possibility to hold MEPs accountable other then writing an angry E-Mail.
In an actually democratic system politicians would be in their position only by mercy of the people and can be voted down from their position anytime if enough people petition for it. (and not just maybe be called back when elections at home plummet)
Politicians should be afraid of the people and not the other way round.
The longer I live I think US citizens just have the highest standards for both morals and life expectations.
Meanwhile Europe is happy to get anything.
There’d be bunch of fat fucks who will write screeds on the internet but won’t get off their fat ass to do anything about it?
Trump Derangement Syndrome is widespread in Europe. Quality of life has gotten so bad and continuous to decline except for mainly Poland and Hungary.
And what do systems cling to especially in situations like these? Surveillance.
Another massive not so funny joke once again hit Germany the week ago - a smear campaign and hit piece to justify even more censorship.
Germany is going down the drain - and the elite is trying to silence freedom of speech massively while ignoring doing what’s important and what’s right.
Have fun migrating your app to the EU. No one is coming to save you especially not your shitty infrastructure. Energy crisis, and devs think it is a good idea to go for 2% uptime in the near future.
It is so ridiculous.
Let's all take this person extremely seriously, as they are advocating for free speech.
Find a representative you think is at least somewhat likely to change their mind, and call their phone nr listed on the site. I tried one rep and couldn't get through, tried another (their Brussels phone) and I got someone on the line. The site helpfully suggests a call script, which you can take hints from.
I got a staffer on the line, who didn't want to share what my rep was planning to vote and generally wasn't very excited about calling with me, but I imagine that if lots of people call lots of these staffers, things actually do get through to these MEPs.
Please help.
To properly assess something, you need to be bodied in reality, being related to the other human in the same human reality. All the datacenters of the world combined will fail the stated objectives, let alone a stupid phone chip. We should not allow computers to take on the role of policing actors in our human reality, because they even can't perform that role faithfully.
Either include everyone, or accept it’s an awful idea for security and exempt everyone.
Hypocrisy par supreme
The dark forces behind all this set to gain a lot of profits once it passes :(
You can find how present MEPs voted
There are 10 votings (not only one), some adopted and some rejected, I am not sure what that means, maybe someone can elaborate.
keep voting until you get the right answer
at least EU are voting I suppose. some governments just go ahead and mass-surveil illegally
Gym teachers are also the largest group of people convicted for pedophilia. So you can be sure they are keeping their priorities straight. States, and the monopoly telco's are also protected from paying even the tiniest amount of money for companies to do these scans, all costs are entirely offloaded to app developers.
So the priorities are clear:
1) protecting the state from even the tiniest amount of responsibility, even at the cost of children getting abused
2) keeping some 50 foreign states from the same
3) keeping a whole list of organizations safe from inspections
4) keeping the state safe from actually spending any amount of money on these scans
...
n) protecting children
I realize I am just recapitulating the modus operandi of Five Eyes here...
Y'all are bunch of hypocrites
(not shown on the chat control website as far as I can tell)
A shame the EU is just simulation of democracy.
Best case in point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qatar_corruption_scandal_at_th...