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Posted by xyzal 2 days ago

Germany is not supporting ChatControl – blocking minority secured(digitalcourage.social)
1090 points | 348 commentspage 2
egorfine 2 days ago|
Excellent win!

See you next time.

teekert 2 days ago|
Next time, when the proposal is worse, when less people care, and the methods to stop it no longer exist.
latexr 1 day ago|||
“Next time” is preferable to now. Giving up and bringing others down is not the answer. If you want to give up, that’s your prerogative, but please don’t drag others down with you, you’re working against your own best interests. The thing you said right now is exactly what the bad actors want, don’t play into their hands. Thankfully not everyone has that defeatist attitude, or the law would have passed the first time.

And the proposal has not been worse, it’s more crippled with every attempt. Maybe we can’t stop the problem indefinitely, but we can mitigate the harm. Or maybe we can stop it long enough that the people making these proposals are replaced and we eventually win.

Don’t give up. You don’t have to fight along every one else, but if you’re not actively helping, I humbly ask that you also don’t actively make it worse.

portaouflop 2 days ago|||
The struggle never stops, that is part of the human condition - you should embrace this endless cycle with confidence instead of cynical defeatism
antonvs 2 days ago||
Dormammu, I've come to bargain
munksbeer 1 day ago||
What should actually happen is that adversaries of this policy should challenge those backing chat control to a test. Those backing it get to attempt to make it work for a year in a control environment, and if at the end of that year, they still can't read every message that actors within that control environment send to each-other (which they won't), we abandon the whole thing for good.

"Bad guys" will always find a way around any attempt to stop them communicating privately. And the rest of the population will be left with governments spying on all of our interactions. The fact that this is even getting this far is absurd.

GardenLetter27 1 day ago||
This is good, but we do need some sort of progress somehow. As that case with the fake drug dealer "privacy-focussed" mobile phone company was crazy, when they had all the messages from Swedish death squads, etc. - https://www.404media.co/watch-inside-the-fbis-secret-phone-c...

Obviously monitoring everyone's messages is making things way too easy for authoritarian dictatorships later on, but there does need to be some progress so these groups can't keep acting with complete impunity.

listic 1 day ago||
How is the blocking minority counted?

8/27=0.296 (29.6%), and I thought it has to be 35% (65% supporters to pass)

caeruleus 1 day ago|
A qualified majority needs

(1) 55% of countries [15 atm] (2) representing 65% of EU population.

If one of the above is not met, a blocking minority (usually) needs >=4 countries to vote against a proposal. Germany voting against CSAR would mean (2) is not met in this case.

Source: https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/council-eu/voting-system/...

sensanaty 1 day ago||
I'd support this if and only if we ran a trial where all public officials had all their messages and emails publicly readable by citizens. Surely the good people adamant on spying on their constituents en-masse has nothing to hide, right?
whiterock 1 day ago||
Austria opposing, meanwhile planning their own version of it nationally lol.
cenamus 1 day ago|
Wish I knew wtf they are cooking up for us
Ylpertnodi 1 day ago||
Whatever it is, history is not on your side.
another_twist 1 day ago||
I dont get it, what problem are they trying to solve ? This kind of regulation stirs up a lot of shit and just wastes everyones time.
mutkach 2 days ago||
Why would you really need something like that in a non-totalitarian state? Basically, it follows the russian playbook (essentially the same 'language' - safety concerns), but instead of the FSB, who is the beneficiary actor in this case?
pembrook 2 days ago|
Many people working in government wish they were administering a totalitarian state, and would be the beneficiary actors.

Government is a job that self-selects for people who either want safety (non elected jobs) or power (elected jobs) more than anything else, given it pays far less than the private sector. Both the safety people and the power people want to reduce public freedom and the ability to do things.

The only way we keep these people from this is the threat of voting them out of their jobs. But they are more motivated than we are, so they usually win over time.

ktosobcy 2 days ago||
Maybe an ECI (european citizens' initiative) that would burry the thing for good? :)
arlort 1 day ago|
That's not how laws work. New laws always override old laws so an ECI (or any law) won't ever replace active participation in the res publica
ktosobcy 1 day ago||
That's true, but that would be a huge signal of a rejection. What's more - changing such law would be slightly more complex than just introducing the backdor IMHO.
arlort 1 day ago||
> would be slightly more complex than just introducing the backdor

Not really, both things need to be done by a law. So it's the same signal and complexity as just rejecting the law when it's proposed

And the second option at least does away with the pretension of permanence people like to use as an excuse to wash their hands of interest in politics

liendolucas 2 days ago|
Apparently Italy will support it. This is absolutely infuriating and it will fail miserably. Encryption can't he stopped no matter what law gets out there and any politician voting in favor shows how ignorants they are.

Instead of discussing WHY "owned" mobile phones have a short lifespan and we can't truly do whatever we want with them (be at the hardware/software level) and forced to choose between the apple and google duopoly, we get into these lousy law debates about privacy.

Why doesn't the EU put effort in paving the way for a more open and free tech world when we rely 100% on propietary technology that comes from the other side of the Atlantic?

guappa 2 days ago||
Because USA sends their ambassadors to threaten you if think the free market is free and decide to no longer buy from them.

https://lwn.net/Articles/1013776/

arlort 1 day ago|||
> Instead of discussing WHY "owned" mobile phones have a short lifespan and we can't truly do whatever we want with them (be at the hardware/software level) and forced to choose between the apple and google duopoly, we get into these lousy law debates about privacy.

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20240419IP...

https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/priorities-...

AlgebraFox 1 day ago||
Encryption cannot be stopped. But Android and iOS can be backdoored. These evil companies lock down our devices, does not allow apps to run without their approval, and selectively push updates from their servers to our devices.

This is a wet dream for governments.

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