This pops up every few years, and I bet once it gets in it never goes away. It seems asymmetric that one side only has to win once to win permanently while the other side has to win constantly. Is there any mechanism to stop this in the EU and make this kind of legislation explicitly barred?
This is the same problem in the US. Legislation (that protects the environment, minorities, the ability to compete in the market, etc) that took years, even decades to get signed into law, is getting repealed today by the current administration via executive order or simple majority vote. Because sabotage is much easier than building something.
Unfortunately the only answer that I know of is eternal vigilance, which is the price of liberty.
I decided to look up who that saying is attributed to, and apparently it's John Philpot Curran, not Thomas Jefferson. But I like Orwell's saying better, because it shows why all of you are just as ineffectual at steering government policy as I am:
I'm sure you just linked the first google result you found, and it's not like the internet wasn't full of crappy 'quote' websites in the halcyon days of 2021, but it's incredibly depressing to click that link and get drowned in paragraphs of worthless AI blathering.
After a quick search - and ignoring Google's helpful clanker who tries to point you to the _wrong_ Orwell text - it's not hard to find a clean source:
It's amazing how much is done by executive order these days. Which means it can be instantly undone when the other party comes into office. And I assume that once an executive order is made, then the party has no interest in trying to have congress vote in a bill locking in the same issue.
Vote for an opposition which promises mass deportations? Certainly, they will never go back on their word to create a surveillance state?!? Asking your politicians to lie to you is not a substitute for changing their incentives.
The key point to make is that once you're spying on your own people, you've created the single weakest point of entry for your geopolitical opponents spying on you and manipulating the population as well. It's such a dumb political move, it seems like it could only come from extreme fear, greed, or manipulation. Switch it around and make them afraid of the alternative.
Problem is that very few “normal” people are even aware of this. Very few people particularly interested about most policies on the EU level. So they pretty much have free reign to do anything with minimal repercussions.
For better or for worse the EU itself is about as much of a democracy as some of the European empires were back in the in early 1900s with their sham parliaments which had very little real power.
You still belive that vote solve anything? Divide and conquer is strong indeed. We should focus to abandoning giving our responsibility to unknown electorate.
I agree. But also: I've been doing that for a long time already. The problem is that these surveillance laws don't get enough attention by the general public until they come into effect. For example: The UK's online safety act.
Like when the Irish electorate rejected the Lisbon Treaty, and then was then harangued into accepting a reheated version. Opponents of the treaty reasonably asked if it could be best-of-three.
I'm failing to understand the problem here. The Irish rejected the proposed treaty, the took that rejection and the reasons, went back to rework it, and asked if the next version was suitable, and it was.
That sounds exactly like you'd expect it to work, and yet people seem outraged by it.
For me it is a sign the the EU construction does simply not work. It is an undemocratic technocracy that is easily lobbied by players pushing for this and I don't feel represented by a parliament where I don't know anyone.
They circumvent the accountability of nation states, it is a development catastrophe since people cannot have a reasonable influence on policies anymore.
Nation states are the ones asking for stuff like this. The EU commission focuses on objectives set by the heads of the nation states. The elected EU parliament then votes on the proposals.
The bad thing about the EU is that it opens up views like yours, trying to absolve your own nation of any culpability, when that is just not true.
If you don't like the direction of the EU, vote in a government and MEPs who will steer it in a different direction. If enough people do this, then the EU changes, as happens in every democracy.
What you're seeing is simply democracy in action. You think these things are going against the majority, but the reality is, the majority of citizens are ok for this to happen at the nation state level, and by extension at the EU level.
Stop blaming the EU. It is lazy and makes the problem worse. Look closer to home.
It's funny to me that in the cops vs robbers scenario, it is the bad guys that have to be perfect to avoid getting caught while the good guys only have to get lucky once to catch the bad guys.
Your use of this then would translate to the governments wanting to read all the mail to constantly stay informed would be the bad guys where the other actors only have to get lucky once by having a mission complete would be the good guys?
that analogy is drawing similarities when there is none. The "bad" guys in the cops vs robbers scenario is one where the bad guys have already done something worthy of needing to be caught.
No, it couldn't be done without amending the treaties. Currently each Commission has to govern with the same powers as their predecessors so there's no mechanism for them to bind the power of those who come after them.
Can someone explain how the same group of countries can simultaneously issue book-long regulations about how everyone needs to respect privacy to the nth degree, and run around the world trying to force others to do the same, yet also propose these kinds of things?
This is government 101. We tend to see governments as one big singular entity, this is rarely the case (and this especially true for a supra national organization like the EU with no real head of state). Instead you have different institutions with different goals that sometimes contradict each other. Then you have to account for multiple factions in those some institutions and you end up with what we currently have. The idea is that on the long run, if you average out the decisions/rules/regulation it is somewhat cohesive and leads to "good" governance.
Many politicians don't have a clue what the technical consequences will be. They just see that the law is meant to protect children and then they don't ask for clarification on the technical details.
Nah they just see it as good ratings and votes. Most democratic politicians are in a popularity contest, doing objectively good things doesn't matter in the slightest in a democracy.
I don't think anyone realistically believes that this helps save any children. That's just an excuse used to make it sound like there's some good intention behind it.
Probably something like: Privacy is valuable, so corporations shouldn't be freely able to trade your data for advertising purposes. But CSAM leads to unimaginable harms carried out on vulnerable people, and so is worth giving up some privacy to stop/reduce.
Sure. Most countries in the European Union have elections every 4-5 years. Thanks to these elections, the set of people composing the EU's main executive body, the European Commission, changed radically over 9 years.
The EC of yesteryear preferred issuing book-long regulations about how everyone needs to respect privacy.
The EC of today prefers burning those regulations [1] and writes legislation about how everybody should scan all private messages.
No more surprising than the In 1998 Conference of Anglican bishops rejecting any sort of homosexual practice as incompatible with Scripture, and the 2023 one approving the blessing of same-sex unions.
Simple. The former is economic warfare against the US, under pretense of the EU “parliament” giving a hoot about its constituents. The latter is plain old fascism.
Sometimes I feel community here can be a bit deliberately obtuse, but "I don't want Google and other companies reading my mail, but I'm ok with police scanning messages to catch child molesters." really isn't a rare position in the wild. Or a contradictory one.
The privacy laws you talk about all also have carveouts for governmental, intelligence and military work. No matter the hand wringing here, most EU governments (and even citizens) don't consider privacy legislation to require equivalent footing for governments and for private corporations. A lot of EU citizens are fine with laws like GDPR not holding for law enforcement and other similar institutions. Despite the risks and history.
You mean the same people running around the world wagging their fingers and lecturing about yoomun wightz and libwal demokwafee while sending arms, money, and diplomatic support to east european reject childbutchers in west asia?
If not, how are EU politicians so disconnected from their citizens? How did this state of affairs come to be? Is it reversible?
In the US, our politicians don’t diverge quite as much, but when they do, the reason is money, and when it gets bad, we throw the bums out and elect populists. It’s not pretty and it’s messy but it self corrects with the next election if it doesn’t work out how people wanted.
Most of the people I know - and I live in eu - are not knowledgeable about these topics. Furthermore, I've never heard about this in one of the main news channels, so I guess that most people don't even know about it
There's this "I have nothing to hide" sentiment followed by blind trusts into officials, their intentions and their alleged protection. I.e. people are scares of terrorism and would like it to stop, so they hope the terrorists will be found by spying.
At least in countries where the terrorism emerged recently, I'd say...
EU citizens have way too much trust in their government and elected officials. A lot of people here just assume officials act in the interest of the population and most people don't really check or care to understand in detail those type of proposals.
And unlike the US, very few people are going to push back based on "freedom" and "my rights" which is unfortunate in my opinion. This lack of pushback is why those types of proposal even come to be.
That's not true. The issue with EU is that it's not really representative, and this is being critised for a long time and I hope should change in the near future. The EU parliament (the only directly elected body of the EU) does currently not have enough power.
The US government has almost completely diverged from the will of the people at this point.
Most actions taken by this administration have > 65% disapproval ratings, and according to historical norms, if the size of current protests double,
the people will overthrow the government.
The last time I checked, the ongoing ICE raids against civilians were one of the more popular policies.
A notable amount of people vote for parties suggesting such ideas.
Demonstrations against are small.
Only few people write to their government and their MEPs.
This is probably sourced in not understanding it and not having enough information, but for as long as those three factors remain those are the results of democracy.
(Democracy in the EU is complex topic in itself, as EU isn't a state, but a union of independent states where states are primarily represented by their government and the directly elected parliament plays a smaller role ... but given the little protest that's the smaller issue in this case)
In short: fault of the nation states, not the EU. Most EU people won't even be aware of this, the same in other countries around the world. We here care, most people don't. Sadly.
There has not been a single article about this in my country which is "for" the proposal despite me writing to all major news outlets. My only conclusion is that they are complicit.
Simple. The EU is hardly a democracy. It’s run almost entirely by appointed bureaucrats with delusions of grandeur. The European parliament is there but it’s very weak relative to actual national parliaments and most people unfortunately don’t really care that much about politics on the EU level..
I'm going to reply in the same way I did elsewhere. Nation states are the ones pushing this agenda, onto the commission, and the elected parliament votes on it.
People continue to misrepresent what the EU is and how it operates, which is actually harmful if you care about stuff like this. You're basically trying to send the message to everyone that they're powerless "because EU". The reality is that nation states are pushing this. If you want to signal your disapproval, write to your politicians, vote for different ones, both national and MEPs.
Unfortunately, this is simply a reflection of democracy. Most people are just not informed enough about this topic to care. We think it is a big deal here on reddit, but most of the population just ignore it.
The USA elected a fascist and will be lucky to have fair voting ever again. So we're not really qualified to comment on any other country doing anything.
I assume this is just a police state overreach rather than genuine intent to stop crime. They must know that anyone actually engaging in criminal activity is going to not be caught by this because they use other forms of encrypted communication.
It'd be extremely easy to circumvent, too. Since the scanning runs client-side on images uploaded into the messenger, you just need an app to mangle and unmangle images. XOR the pixels in your payload with a picture of static, then do it again on the other side.
It does not need to be particularly secure—the messages are still E2E encrypted so long as nothing trips the client-side scanner.
I'm not saying that this is NOT police state overreach, but the assumption that all (or even most) criminals practice good operational security still seems laughable to me.
I think you are letting your ideological alignment (against surveillance state) push you into irrational standpoints ("more surveillance would not catch additional criminals").
I'm 100% with you on opposing legislation like this, but it is very important to not delude oneself about its likely effects, and to pick the right hills to die on, figuratively speaking.
They meant, I assume, that it's the same as gun control laws. You have to prove your permission, you have to show your id, you gave to have a gun that is registered, however unidentified gangsters are running right now with unregistered guns and shooting people.
We in infosec are often trained to imagine the ideal "adverse actor" who could do the most possible damage to our systems to test their vulnerability.
It's a good model for identifying and closing gaps (especially if one is not, oneself, prone to think like a criminal), but like all other human population groups, half of all criminals are below average.
I think the slightly more sophisticated position is that, regardless of the operational security that is currently employed, if you were to implement something like this, then criminals would quickly adapt to improve their operational security accordingly. Especially because "operational security" in this case is doing a lot of heavy lifting to obscure how easy it would be: just use a good E2E messenger.
This is not some wild hypothetical, the recent explosion in VPN use by every country that has implemented an age restriction law should be sufficient to display this effect in place. In a world without weird country restrictions (whether that be intellectual property restrictions or content restrictions), VPNs would be a niche technology for business. Instead unbelievably large amounts of the general population are now not only using it, but paying for it.
I think the assumption that criminals would not learn how to use one of the many free E2E encrypted messengers is the deluded and naive position.
Nowadays the biggest EU parties are ones that are effectively against the EU, so they're using the most effective way to kill it: make their citizens hate it by passing such laws. If you create a diagram of "pro-EU" and "pro-Chat scanning" EU parliament parties, 90% will be in the two quadrants: "pro-anti" and "anti-pro".
Yes, this proposal has been around since long before those parties got as big as they are now, but even back then the quadrants were roughly similar, and as such the level of support (including now looking to pass, unlike before) has also roughly been in step with the growth of those parties.
> Instead of weakening encryption, the plan seeks to implement client-side scanning, meaning software embedded in users’ devices that inspects content before it is encrypted.
That sounds worst to me.
That would make illegal any non official Signal client for example. Or worst does that mean it will be outside of the messaging app in the OS itself?
In the end, we need to take a step back and look at the situation:
- We know since at least Snowden the US listen to whatever they want
- China and Russia probably have advanced capabilities like this but maybe more limited geographically
- The EU is so incompetent they haven't figured it out. So now they are gonna force us to have some back channeling malware that is gonna slow and crash my phone every hour?
> Instead of weakening encryption, the plan seeks to implement client-side scanning, meaning software embedded in users’ devices that inspects content before it is encrypted.
And there's really no way to enforce this unless you mandate locked-down devices with attestation.
Then again, that's likely the long-term plan here.
You think this is some genius scheme? These politicians have no clue what encryption, client-side scanning, embedded software, and how these would all work together to scan messages means.
I think the appeal is much higher than we think. Apple tried to do the same thing with on-device child porn image recognition. The company that markets itself as the privacy advocate.
I pity whoever is going to be the first false positive guinea pig for this csam process. Functionally a guilty (as decided by algo) until proven innocent logic
> The man... took pictures of his son’s groin to send to a doctor after realizing it was inflamed. The doctor used that image to diagnose Mark’s son and prescribe antibiotics. When the photos were automatically uploaded to the cloud, Google’s system identified them as CSAM. Two days later, Mark’s Gmail and other Google accounts, including Google Fi, which provides his phone service, were disabled over “harmful content” that was “a severe violation of the company’s policies and might be illegal”... He later found out that Google had flagged another video he had on his phone and that the San Francisco police department opened an investigation into him.
> Mark was cleared of any criminal wrongdoing, but Google has said it will stand by its decision.
Less "guilty until" and more "guilty despite innocence."
Readit News
Unfortunately the only answer that I know of is eternal vigilance, which is the price of liberty.
I decided to look up who that saying is attributed to, and apparently it's John Philpot Curran, not Thomas Jefferson. But I like Orwell's saying better, because it shows why all of you are just as ineffectual at steering government policy as I am:
https://www.socratic-method.com/quote-meanings-and-interpret...
After a quick search - and ignoring Google's helpful clanker who tries to point you to the _wrong_ Orwell text - it's not hard to find a clean source:
https://www.telelib.com/authors/O/OrwellGeorge/prose/RoadToW...
If your Member of European Parliament supports chat control stop voting for their parties and politically support their opposition
The key point to make is that once you're spying on your own people, you've created the single weakest point of entry for your geopolitical opponents spying on you and manipulating the population as well. It's such a dumb political move, it seems like it could only come from extreme fear, greed, or manipulation. Switch it around and make them afraid of the alternative.
Maybe it is a result of sending the biggest idiots off to the EU when they failed in national politics, but the problem remains.
For better or for worse the EU itself is about as much of a democracy as some of the European empires were back in the in early 1900s with their sham parliaments which had very little real power.
Like when the Irish electorate rejected the Lisbon Treaty, and then was then harangued into accepting a reheated version. Opponents of the treaty reasonably asked if it could be best-of-three.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_Dutch_European_Constituti...
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_French_European_Constitut...
After receiving concessions.
That sounds exactly like you'd expect it to work, and yet people seem outraged by it.
Why?
They circumvent the accountability of nation states, it is a development catastrophe since people cannot have a reasonable influence on policies anymore.
The bad thing about the EU is that it opens up views like yours, trying to absolve your own nation of any culpability, when that is just not true.
If you don't like the direction of the EU, vote in a government and MEPs who will steer it in a different direction. If enough people do this, then the EU changes, as happens in every democracy.
What you're seeing is simply democracy in action. You think these things are going against the majority, but the reality is, the majority of citizens are ok for this to happen at the nation state level, and by extension at the EU level.
Stop blaming the EU. It is lazy and makes the problem worse. Look closer to home.
Your use of this then would translate to the governments wanting to read all the mail to constantly stay informed would be the bad guys where the other actors only have to get lucky once by having a mission complete would be the good guys?
Cops vs robbers? Christians vs lions in Rome?
Or, we're merely fish in a barrel and trying to convince ourselves we have any control over whether we get shot?
Rules for thee but not for me. You can bet the MPs private messages will not be included.
https://european-pirateparty.eu/chatcontrol-eu-ministers-wan...
The EC of yesteryear preferred issuing book-long regulations about how everyone needs to respect privacy.
The EC of today prefers burning those regulations [1] and writes legislation about how everybody should scan all private messages.
No more surprising than the In 1998 Conference of Anglican bishops rejecting any sort of homosexual practice as incompatible with Scripture, and the 2023 one approving the blessing of same-sex unions.
[1] https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-gdpr-privacy-law-europe-p...
The privacy laws you talk about all also have carveouts for governmental, intelligence and military work. No matter the hand wringing here, most EU governments (and even citizens) don't consider privacy legislation to require equivalent footing for governments and for private corporations. A lot of EU citizens are fine with laws like GDPR not holding for law enforcement and other similar institutions. Despite the risks and history.
yea, no idea ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
If not, how are EU politicians so disconnected from their citizens? How did this state of affairs come to be? Is it reversible?
In the US, our politicians don’t diverge quite as much, but when they do, the reason is money, and when it gets bad, we throw the bums out and elect populists. It’s not pretty and it’s messy but it self corrects with the next election if it doesn’t work out how people wanted.
At least in countries where the terrorism emerged recently, I'd say...
And unlike the US, very few people are going to push back based on "freedom" and "my rights" which is unfortunate in my opinion. This lack of pushback is why those types of proposal even come to be.
Most actions taken by this administration have > 65% disapproval ratings, and according to historical norms, if the size of current protests double, the people will overthrow the government.
The last time I checked, the ongoing ICE raids against civilians were one of the more popular policies.
Demonstrations against are small.
Only few people write to their government and their MEPs.
This is probably sourced in not understanding it and not having enough information, but for as long as those three factors remain those are the results of democracy.
(Democracy in the EU is complex topic in itself, as EU isn't a state, but a union of independent states where states are primarily represented by their government and the directly elected parliament plays a smaller role ... but given the little protest that's the smaller issue in this case)
The moderators of r/denmark are also currently blocking any submissions of this story to the subreddit.
Can you shed more light on situation in Denmark? Why is this happening?
In short: fault of the nation states, not the EU. Most EU people won't even be aware of this, the same in other countries around the world. We here care, most people don't. Sadly.
Deleted Comment
People continue to misrepresent what the EU is and how it operates, which is actually harmful if you care about stuff like this. You're basically trying to send the message to everyone that they're powerless "because EU". The reality is that nation states are pushing this. If you want to signal your disapproval, write to your politicians, vote for different ones, both national and MEPs.
Unfortunately, this is simply a reflection of democracy. Most people are just not informed enough about this topic to care. We think it is a big deal here on reddit, but most of the population just ignore it.
I suspect that most here will agree with you. However in the interests of encouraging a sober analysis: https://www.villagenews.com/story/2025/06/20/opinion/is-trum...
It does not need to be particularly secure—the messages are still E2E encrypted so long as nothing trips the client-side scanner.
I think you are letting your ideological alignment (against surveillance state) push you into irrational standpoints ("more surveillance would not catch additional criminals").
I'm 100% with you on opposing legislation like this, but it is very important to not delude oneself about its likely effects, and to pick the right hills to die on, figuratively speaking.
It's a good model for identifying and closing gaps (especially if one is not, oneself, prone to think like a criminal), but like all other human population groups, half of all criminals are below average.
This is not some wild hypothetical, the recent explosion in VPN use by every country that has implemented an age restriction law should be sufficient to display this effect in place. In a world without weird country restrictions (whether that be intellectual property restrictions or content restrictions), VPNs would be a niche technology for business. Instead unbelievably large amounts of the general population are now not only using it, but paying for it.
I think the assumption that criminals would not learn how to use one of the many free E2E encrypted messengers is the deluded and naive position.
Yes, this proposal has been around since long before those parties got as big as they are now, but even back then the quadrants were roughly similar, and as such the level of support (including now looking to pass, unlike before) has also roughly been in step with the growth of those parties.
I don’t think this is a fair explanation of what’s going on.
That sounds worst to me.
That would make illegal any non official Signal client for example. Or worst does that mean it will be outside of the messaging app in the OS itself?
In the end, we need to take a step back and look at the situation:
- We know since at least Snowden the US listen to whatever they want
- China and Russia probably have advanced capabilities like this but maybe more limited geographically
- The EU is so incompetent they haven't figured it out. So now they are gonna force us to have some back channeling malware that is gonna slow and crash my phone every hour?
How low can we go?
And there's really no way to enforce this unless you mandate locked-down devices with attestation.
Then again, that's likely the long-term plan here.
I pity whoever is going to be the first false positive guinea pig for this csam process. Functionally a guilty (as decided by algo) until proven innocent logic
> The man... took pictures of his son’s groin to send to a doctor after realizing it was inflamed. The doctor used that image to diagnose Mark’s son and prescribe antibiotics. When the photos were automatically uploaded to the cloud, Google’s system identified them as CSAM. Two days later, Mark’s Gmail and other Google accounts, including Google Fi, which provides his phone service, were disabled over “harmful content” that was “a severe violation of the company’s policies and might be illegal”... He later found out that Google had flagged another video he had on his phone and that the San Francisco police department opened an investigation into him.
> Mark was cleared of any criminal wrongdoing, but Google has said it will stand by its decision.
Less "guilty until" and more "guilty despite innocence."