Chat Control passed first round in EU Parliament

"The procedure now chosen gives the proponents of Chat Control a significant tactical advantage. Since the law is in its second reading, an absolute majority of 361 votes of all parliament members is required for amendments or a renewed rejection on Thursday. In contrast, a simple majority of the MEPs present is sufficient for the other side. As many parliamentarians have historically already departed by the last day before the summer break, the re-enactment of the regulation is considered almost unavoidable."

So, if I'm reading this correctly, Chat Control is bound to become law? and this is after I think 2/3 rejections, how democratic of the EU.

Oh, and parliamentarians starting their summer break whenever they want will never not be funny.

From a post on Mastodon:

> democracy is when you repeatedly push for unpopular laws until they pass, and the more times you do it the more democratic it is

It is unlikely that 60 additional “no” votes can be found by Thursday to stop this.

I was curious to see how the MEPs voted, you can check it here.

https://howtheyvote.eu/votes/195338

For once I'm pleasantly surprised that everyone I voted for was against.

“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.”

And

“If it's a Yes, we will say 'on we go', and if it's a No we will say 'we continue'.”

- Jean-Claude Juncker

Even if you are not in the EU, this will affect you. Some countries really like to copy such regulations from others. Once services starts complying, other governments will go like "if you did for them, you can do it for us, right? so it's not technically impossible", and things only get worse from there. Not all services will simply block the EU as well, which would be better to send a stronger message if approved.

I really fear where this is headed.

Why are we so passive to the promotion of such scams?

I keep telling people about such things and I am looked at as nerdy, geeky or boring.

But this stupid reaction finally explains to me why human life for ordinary people will always largely be a life of suffering.

First they tried to approve software patents during an agriculture and fisheries council session, now they are bending procedural rules to hack it in before summer vacations. Some weird form of democracy™.

Is anyone working on a "No chat control at all, ever law"? If these can be defeated, presumably one of those could become law.

All new laws should be given a trial period where the lawmakers are forced to live with them for 90 days before the public is subjected to them. At any time during that period lawmakers can change their vote.

The real joke is that these MEPs leave for summer break like they are school children and their attendance doesn't matter to the whole.

No one will do anything to stop it, nor ChatControl 2.0 in the future. No one will revolt, or seize the government in response to anything that happens.

The world that Liberal Democracy has built has escape valves (tv/streaming/videogames/entertainment, the illusion of democratic choice, mass media and information overload, public demonstrations) for the anger of the massed which despite in older times caused a government to fall or a revolution to start, today cause nothing and are comfortably absorbed or even assimilated for profit by the system itself.

Is this Chat Control 1.0 or Chat Control 2.0?

Part of me wants Chat Control to get passed so that there is more incentive for at least the tech literate to start using more decentralized messaging tools.

Reminder that EU institutions were designed from ground up to smother democracy:

- Members of EU Parliament cannot propose regulation, only the unelected Commission can, MEPs can only vote yes/no

- EU Parliament is the only parliament in the world where an absolute 50%+1 is needed to reject a bill, ignoring how many MEPs are present/voting. In every other parliament, a quorum requirement plus a majority vote is needed to pass a bill.

The Wikipedia entry on Chat Control doesn't go into enough detail on what exactly it does, only the history of its legislative process. Can someone update it?

Hopefully this could be the first good thing about Brexit...this might not get implemented in the UK or there will be a delay!

This is the anti-EU move but they simply don't understand that.

Authoritarian centralization efforts need to be fought Huang style - with an European twist - as we might be behind on a lot of axis but we "Didn't Wake Up a Loser".

China / US leadership must not be the carte-blanche to formalize whatever low bar in how we handle our own privacy; going straight for the "self own" I guess?

Sorry for prompt mode but I hope this is at least somewhat legible to fellow Europeans, if not please listen to antirez in original Italian or auto translated:

https://youtu.be/cmYiWsFn3GM

I hear quite a few tangents in there; the main one being: especially in EU we need to go "agentic". Don't wait for politics to do The Right Thing. They should play retrospective backup at best.

I'm thinking they might be actually thankful for having been provided vision / imagination.

Team up with the bureaucrats after the fact but don't listen to them too much - again - to Do The Right Thing. Especially when they are potentially infected by lobbyists...

FFS I hate this timeline; we really need to show up for real. Again and again and again and again...

Lobbyists running the show. It's kind of a copy/paste of the US system.

The cypherpunks were right. Rights to encryption are only a part of what we need.

The other part is steganography, or hiding real messages within a innocuous anodyne message stream. And encryption can be used in conjunction as part of hiding said messages.

It can be within pictures with the lowest bit values. It can be constructed punctuation and spaces. Lots of things.

But hidden and plausibly deniable messaging is the ONLY way to defeat a government(s) that want to invade every communication aspect for humans.

i'm so tired of this bs, these elected people act as tsars, even when said NO they try again and again while employing shady tactics and there is no way of punishing these a**holes. Elections exist, but when same 35% (number taken out of butt, but point is - it's low) of people vote we get same sh*t who elects same sh*t to EU. And i don't know about other countries, but my country sends complete degenerates to EU, like litteraly degenerates.

Effect of law enforcement not doing their jobs. Chat Control is illegal in many countries including Germany and that includes preparation for the roll out. Just need a prosecutor with a spine.

i'm so tired of this bs, these elected people act as tsars, even when said NO they try again and again while employing shady tactics and there is no way of punishing these a*holes. Elections exist, but when same 35% (number taken out of butt, but point is - it's low) of people vote we get same sht who elects same sht to EU. And i don't know about other countries, but my country sends complete degenerates to EU, like litteraly degenerates.

Talked to a fellow European coworker recently and they seem very supportive of chat control and that it was necessary to stop "far right nationalism" and then I pressed on for them describe what it is and they got angry and refused to clarify. I think this is a good snapshot of where Europe is right now that chat controls have become politically weaponized and people who are supportive of it seem clueless as to what it actually is proposing.

Future looks very dim for EU as a whole, I'm glad I left it for America

So now that this is done the first thing we need is a list of platform covered and potentially covered by Chat Control.

It is still unclear to me if Proton Mail, Tuta, SimpleX servers, Signal, etc. fall under this or might.

Do they even have to officially declare if they are complying?

Local governments are likely to block the initiative. We need a Polish based messenger that won't bend to chat control fascist initiatives.

[[comment deleted]]

Thanks for the warning. Comment deleted to avoid jail time.

I'm always astonished how democratic politicians willingly allow for tools which might be misused by a future undemocratic party.

I'm not a politician or some civil rights activist but I can see that. It's right there. We have a similar situation in Germany these days. We'll be giving more rights to the Federal Intelligence Service ( foreign intelligence) and the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (domestic intelligence). Basically allowing them to act more offensive (or offensive at all).

We're one or two elections away from having fascists in the government again.

Is it already a conspiracy theory if I suspect them of doing that deliberately because I can't imagine them being stupid?

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