EU Council has withdrawn the vote on Chat Control

skilledtothegills@lemmy.world to Technology@lemmy.world – 802 points – EU Council has withdrawn the vote on Chat Control - Stack Diary
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Moritz Körner, Member of the European Parliament, disclosed the decision on Twitter. Swedish publisher SVG said, “The question was removed at the last moment from Thursday’s ambassadorial meeting in Brussels”.

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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

Measured on a different axis.

You can have authoritarian left Stalin's Russia) and authoritarian right (Nazi Germany). You can have liberal (i.e. non-authoritarian) left and right too.

It's clichéd, but the political compass explains the concept, but it's still only one extra dimension. It's still far better than just left Vs right.

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.

The problem with political compass arises when you understand that political and economic freedoms are in conflict with each other under capitalism.

? The compass takes economic systems into account. Left vs right is socialism vs free market capitalism, and top vs bottom is authoritarianism vs libertarianism.

So if you think capitalism causes issues, you'd nudge those ideologies further up the authoritarian spectrum.

Not exactly orthogonal, left right could be viewed as an Principal Component Analysis reduced to only one axis. So there are correlations between stances but so much dimensions lost that it's nearly useless

Two dimensions is 100% better than one.

That's not true at all, mathematically. That's why we have a measurement for co-variance or correlation. If two dimensions are 100 correlation, they can most definitely be reduced to one.

...but they're not in 100 percent correlation in this case, and you're naive if you think they are .

Left or right is an economic stance, and is orthogonal to beliefs surrounding government rights Vs population rights.

Left or right is political stance. The closest you can get it to economy is by saying "left prioritizes political freedoms, while right economic".

That's USA only. Visit the rest of the world at some point, maybe.

I know about USA only what I can find on the internet. I mean, statement "Russia is American colony" isn't that far from truth, but it isn't USA itself.

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 reappears as an attachment to a fishing quota law or a law defining sizes for underwear

Sounds very Putin.

Actually, this is a common occurance in the US and EU. One of the previous, court-captured laws actually was riding with fishing quota regulations.

Yeah, Putin doesn't have to hide anything because nobody is allowed to object to any crazy laws he invents.

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.

Hungary will take the EU presidency, they just name it "child protection" and will smear everyone as a pedophile who objects it.

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.

Considering that the extreme right just won big

Someone won big yachts from Putin.

Actually it was the Left wing that mainly voted yes for this. Just saying.

Source? In Germany at least that's not the case, it's mainly the conservatives who push for it. In the original vote, only the greens clearly opposed it. Later on, SPD (center-left) and FDP (liberal) changed course to also oppose it. Couldn't find results for other countries though, so I'm genuinely curious.

The labels get confusing especially between countries, but left and right are normally viewed as being economic policy classifications, but you can have authoritarians on right and left and all need to be fought.

I don't think that's accurate, there's a social axis from left to right too.

I think of authoritarian as being up and down, and social and economic views as left and right. Check out the political compass if you haven't. It would be nice if it was 3D with economic and social policy being separated though.

I've seen the compass, but in real life conversation when people say left or right they don't exclusively mean economic views. For example, access to abortion or LGBT rights are generally seen as supported by the left and opposed by the right.

You're right it's reductive, and really there are many dimensions to political thought.

Exactly, and I try to point people to things like this to try to break that left vs right thought. I hope it helps someone.

I'm left on some issues, right on some, and disagree with both on others, and I think that's pretty common for most people. However, we only get two realistic options, and they split up issues and "force" you to pick which basket you prefer. I'm worried people will slowly adopt views from the basket they pick since the alternative is needing to pick the other basket.

Anyway, rant over. :)

Doesn't change who's in charge now

I believe all parties in EU are not really understanding technology in general. So I think it's a very bad decision to give these people power over these kinds of rules. They just have no idea what they are doing frankly.

Yep, no disagreement there. This sort of mass surveillance is a fucking terrible idea no matter who's behind the wheel

exactly, they these people are constantly trying to come up mass surveillance, over and over and over again. Never ending story.

I believe all parties in EU are not really understanding technology in general.

There are pirates. Well, after last elections it seems to be the pirate. Only one.

Yes. Technically, a similar vote could repeal the law just as easily but there is a history of governments not giving their power away easily; implementing it also sets a precedent and creates technical enforcement options for other governments willing to go through with something similar in the future, or for hackers to exploit because gov-rooted devices will remain in operation for years after the potential repeal.

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.

Or law that forbids any mass surveilance. By any entity.

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).

Better define some basic human rights as a core tenet and fire repeat offenders, because they are a danger to the population.

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.

All the more reason to find the friendly neighbourhood blackhat gang

more reason to find the friendly neighbourhood blackhat gang

Hah. Now imagine someone calling China to hack their phones.

*wink wink

Winking would be more appropriate if it was Russiя.

What would the Chinese like then?

Hahahaha. Dunno. +50 social rating, bowl of rice and catgirl?

I thought that was more Korean, but I suppose that'll work for them too

Korean? Maybe this meme is popular only in Russia. This meme is about China.

"Party is proud of you!!! Party give one catwife."

"Party is proud of you! +150 social credit"

First of all it was in the council, so not really individual politicians but the governments/ministers of member countries, and second they didn't vote, it was withdrawn.

We got lucky this time. Won't be the case next time.

Also, even if it's entire governments voting, there must be a way to find politicians who are pro and against this, yes? Pretty sure governments had an internal vote and they came up with their decision based on said vote

I'd assume people already know who their government is and who of them favours policies like this.

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

Hungary will have the presidency, not the total control. They propose discussions but the vote in the Council is still majority based.

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.

In Russia one of biggest proponent of anti-privacy laws is Milonov, which looks like pedophile ans rumored to be gay.

It's quite possible that they are simply doing all their stuff the old-fashioned way - talking in person with electronics off, exchanging paper notes and burning them, something like that.

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.

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"

Yeah. They've been trying about every year since... I don't know, two decades? They DEFINITELY will keep at it. They never give up.

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.

USSA - totalitarian total surveilance since 2007 or earlier.

China - totalitarian total surveilance since the beginning.

Russia - totalitarian total surveilance since 2016.

You know, even Russia doesn't look that bad. Also, fuck Putin, Yarovaya, Milonov and fuck FSB/NSA/other spying organizations.

Moritz Körner, Member of the European Parliament, disclosed the decision on Twitter. Swedish publisher SVG said, “The question was removed at the last moment from Thursday’s ambassadorial meeting in Brussels”.

Who are SVG? I have never heard of them before and I can't find anything online.

It looks like they might have meant SVT (Swedish public television). This article has similar wording.

I was thinking they might have meant SvD (Svenska Dagbladet), who are a news organisation, though I didn't see any corresponding articles.