The CDU/CSU is doing something good. That didn't happened for a long time? I appreciate it.
Ausgerechnet Spahn. Manchmal glaubt man seinen Augen und Ohren nicht.
Wir müssen Wachsam bleiben. Mit dem Argument das es böse Menschen gibt, wurde schon viel böses getan. Massenüberwachung zerstört jede Gesellschaft. Deutschland hat mehrfach darunter gelitten. Und die Versuche Massenüberwachung einzuführen wiederholen sich.
The reaction is very weak, though. Chat Control is an act of terrorism and it should have triggered criminal investigation why this has gone this far.
Before you downvote:
If terrorism is defined as using violence or threats to intimidate a population for political or ideological ends, then “Chat Control” qualifies in substance.
Violence doesn’t have to leave blood. Psychological and coercive violence is recognised in domestic law (see coercive control offences) and by the WHO. It causes measurable harm to bodies and minds.
The aim is intimidation. The whole purpose is to make people too scared to speak freely. That is intimidation of a population, by design.
It is ideological. The ideology is mass control - keeping people compliant by stripping them of private spaces to think, talk, and dissent.
The only reason it’s not “terrorism” on paper is because states write definitions that exempt themselves. But in plain terms, the act is indistinguishable in effect from terrorism: deliberate fear, coercion, and the destruction of free will.
You can argue legality if you like, but the substance matches the textbook definition.
I actually upvoted this. It's a well-argued comment, but I'm not convinced.
My sticking point is the word "terrorism" itself. Words are defined by how we collectively use and understand them, and the common understanding of terrorism involves bombs and bullets, not software and surveillance.
I get your logic, however. You're breaking down the definition into intimidation for political ends, and you're not wrong that coercive control is a form of violence. But the leap to calling it "terrorism" just doesn't work for me. It feels like you've reverse-engineered a justification for a word that, on its face, is hyperbolic in this context. It's an authoritarian nightmare, for sure, but it isn't terrorism.
Sorry, but that's talk like that that cheapen the meaning of terrorism. Once you expand it to "targeting civilian or civilian infrastructure", already it's cheapened.
I agree with the expansion of meaning, but that mean nazi resistance was terrorism. Ukraine counterstrike on the crimea bridge/russian raffineries is terrorism. I do think it is, but now i do need to qualify terrorism before using the word.
If we expand to all kind of violence, not only physical, well any new policing laws is terrorism. Laws that increase poverty are terrorism, as poverty is an economic violence exerced by the society on its most frail. Taxation is violence too. I will need to add qualifiers each time i use terrorism, and that cheapen the meaning.
[edit] my la setnence cheapened my argument and could start a new side debate that doesn't interest me, i'm removing it.
Mr. Spahn is the minister in the video. He's a little controversial, because during COVID, he was minister of health and had to order a lot of FFP-2 masks. This order went to "friends" of him, which were clearly logistically not in the spot to handle such a volume. Furthermore, he spent A LOT of money to source way too many masks.
> Maybe they've learned something from history and they're not doing the AfD a service before they grab onto more power?
The lesson from history is to keep the autocrats from grabbing power. Trying to contrain them with laws ex ante hasn't worked since like Cicero. I'm not sure Berlin opposing Chat Control fits into their domestic anti-authoritarian arc.
This is strange, because not long ago it was Germany (!!) that pushed heavily for mass-sniffing of people. I don't trust this. People should watch very, very carefully what Germany is actually doing next. I would not be surprised if the mass-sniffing comes in a few months when nobody is looking.
There is considerable opposition in Germany against these things. It’s true that some political circles keep pushing for it, but there is also a strong constitutional and civil basis against it. It’s exceedingly unlikely to happen that “nobody is looking”. The biggest risk is the far right coming into power.
> I would not be surprised if the mass-sniffing comes in a few months when nobody is looking.
That's the problem with these proposed laws.
We (privacy advocates) have to constantly fight and win over and over again. The nations that want this mass spying only have to win once.
We need a way to permanently stop these proposals once defeated the first time so that they cannot just continue to try over and over again until it passes.
No you don't, that's not how laws work, if you want society to look the way you want you need to actively work for it, you can't delegate that process to a law. It's not how participation in a free society works
Permanently stopping those proposals wouldn't necessarily eliminate illegal, back-door mass government surveillance, nor would it eliminate private sector mass surveillance (think social media) which then gets accessed by the government (whether legally or not).
Fighting corruption only works when enough people fight it at enough levels, and continue to fight it. There is no getting around the fact that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
> We (privacy advocates) have to constantly fight and win over and over again.
We do have a way to reinforce our position, though!
We can design and consume technology that makes this hard.
We can stop working for companies that build centralized platforms for messaging.
We can teach our neighbors how important rights to privacy and speech are in language that they understand.
There can be enough friction that this becomes harder for politicians. Remember the Reddit Sopa and Pipa protests? - that was pretty epic! I don't think Reddit will help us in its current state, but we can absolutely mount those defenses on Wikipedia, Mastodon, Bluesky, and others.
And we should continue to move off of platforms that don't align with our freedoms. And build our platforms in a way that encourages "normies" to join.
I can't remember where I read it, but I read that Signal's popularity was high (highest?) in Germany. Assuming I'm not misremembering or that the situation hasn't changed, it seems that Germans care enough about the issue to stake out a position.
They'll do nothing now, people don't want it, people complain, it's a bad thing politically. They'll wait for a year, people will forget, a new proposal for "Clean Chat" will appear, with effectively the same measures, they'll try to pass it quietly, maybe no one will notice, maybe there will be a terrorist attack or something similar by then, and more people will want it, and if it fails again, rinse and repeat a year after.
They only need to succeed once, we (the ones opposing the law) have to succeed every time.
Never trust the CDU. They were the ones pushing for the illegal data retention (Vorratsdatenspeicherung) and von der Leyen from the CDU is big on censorship and mass surveillance. They are just against it now because the country has bigger problems and the CDU has the worst approval ratings in history.
Germany will not abandon chat control just like the data perseveration they're so keen on. Europe is preparing for war so they need ways to make opposition more difficult. They're just waiting for the opportune moment where the opposition to these acts won't be as organized or is distracted with something else.
What war, against who? I don't know what kind of narrative you are tying to push here but know that any attempt would immediately meet strong opposition (I've seen the graves of Verdun and I for one would do anything to actively undermine and sabotage any kind of active war effort)
Jens Spahn, the speaker in the video OP shared, is not a member of the government but a leading member of the parliament and of one of the ruling parties. A tiny but important difference.
I think ‘a leading member’ is underselling it a little. He is the “Fraktionsvorsitzender”, which is comparable to the majority leader in the US Senate.
> which is comparable to the majority leader in the US Senate.
Not really. First of all, Jens Spahn doesn't lead a majority, he merely leads his party's parliamentary group, which has 208 of 630 seats. Second, he has already proven this year that he doesn't have the members of his own parliamentary group under control, so his stance on a matter should not be taken for more than it is.
Every thread on this I have to post the same thing, which I hope will make people inform themselves, because we need our attention to be directed at the correct people.
> The EU tries something like this every few years.
This is NOT the EU trying it (I'm not even sure you know what you mean when you say "The EU"). This is certain groups of politicians from certain EU member states raising it again and again.
Please keep yourselves informed, don't spread an incorrect message, because this is an important issue to fight and needs accurate information.
This IS eu trying it since late 2021. The original proposal was adopted by the lead european commissioner Ylva Johansson in May 2022 and the commission has been trying to find support for it in the council ever since.
2. maladministration: Decision on how the EU Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation (Europol) dealt with the moves of two former staff members to positions related to combatting online child sexual abuse (case 2091/2023/AML) (https://www.ombudsman.europa.eu/en/decision/en/200017)
Please keep yourselves informed, don't spread an incorrect message, because this is an important issue to fight and needs accurate information.
Just like breathing, sleeping, and eating, you will always have to oppose tyranny. People who seek control will always try to get more. As long as ordinary people sustain strong opposition in word and deed it is sustainable, just like breathing.
Yep. And that's exactly why the EU has the structure it does.
Unfortunately the only country that ever left proceeded to shoot itself in both knees, light itself on fire and jump in a pool of gasoline. For NO reason.
It's not going to get reversed once they're able to analyze all comms automatically for wrong think and stop 'extremist groups' because something 'Nazi'. The Stati letter steamers could only dream of such a system.
Online control is like a squatter waiting for years in the bushes on your yard and it only takes one time that you forget to lock your door and he sneaks in and claims he lives in your home, and uses all possible legal loopholes to prevent any imminent relocation.
A pedigree of chatcontrols has already been turned down several times in the past but there's nothing stopping it from being raised from the dead a couple of years later over and over until it finally passes. And then it's very much impossible to unpass.
What’s your point? That you should just give up and invite the squatter in? Serve him a cup of tea while you’re at it, and give him the house?
That brand of defeatism has been spewed every step of the way every time. If everyone thought like you, the first version of Chat Control would have passed. But it didn’t. And even if it eventually does, later is better than sooner. Later is worth fighting for.
Look, it’s fine if you yourself want to personally give up, this is tiring. But please don’t rub your despondency on the people who are trying to fight for something which benefits you. You’re not helping. On the contrary, you’re making it worse for everyone, including yourself.
Every time you make that sort of comment, you’re helping those who want to oppress you. Either join the fight or move aside.
"Mit der CDU/CSU wird es keine anlasslose Chatkontrolle geben, wie sie von einigen Staaten in der EU gefordert wird."
Anlass is cause/reason here, so keine anlasslose literally translated means: not without cause/reason.
What about "reasonable causes", and the infrastructure enabling those? Be it legal/bureaucratic/technical? IMO it's already in place, mostly, and got abused many times, already.
This is just "weasel wording", changing nothing for so called "lawful interception".
If you got flagged by some algorithm somewhere, or got reported by someone behind your back, there will be Anlass!
Automagically...
Because neither the algorithms, nor the organizations handling the flagging, enabling the reporting are transparent.
They are unaccountable (to the public/affected) black boxes by design, be it for economic, organizational, or political reasons.
That's the main crux with the current EU proposition: that they want to surveil all chat, regardless of whether the citizen involved is suspected of a crime.
Wiretapping a chat if the citizen is suspected of a crime AND after a judge has reviewed the evidence and green-lit such surveillance is - imho - more acceptable. We do that with phones, why would we not do it with chats?
> Wiretapping a chat if the citizen is suspected of a crime AND after a judge
> has reviewed the evidence and green-lit such surveillance is - imho - more
> acceptable. We do that with phones, why would we not do it with chats?
The problem is that it's not technologically possible. Many major messaging apps - including WhatsApp, which is the market leader by far in Europe - provide end-to-end encryption, and have done so for years. After a judge has ruled that an individual's WhatsApp chats are to be surveilled, how would you achieve this? In the current situation, there's just nothing you can do. You might try to wiretap the phone, but there's really not that many zero-days left: both iOS and Android are quite secure these days, so this isn't even an alternative.
The only way to make court-mandated surveillance possible is to ensure that nobody's chat is encrypted to begin with, such that after a court order has come in, the data can be easily read. So to outlaw end-to-end encryption entirely is what this proposal is really about: break privacy guarantees for everybody to enable surveillance in a few outlier cases.
Of course, once encryption has been broken, three-letter agencies the world over will be reading your chats whether they have a warrant or not.
There is no way to have private communication for good people only. Either you have freedom for all, or freedom for none.
Freedom will not ever be finally settled in this life. Laws can be changed, constitutions amended, and of course the law is only as good as willingness to enforce it. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, as nice as it would be if that wasn't so.
I expect it to become settled, just not in the way we want it.
Sure, there is the rollercoaster, ups and downs, small wins and losses going on all the time. But look at the general trends - these freedoms that we enjoyed are by and large being chipped away, it's all trending down, worldwide. It's two steps back, one step forward. Maybe CC doesn't get put in place this particular time, but they will ram it through eventually, at some point the right angle will be found to make the right people vote for it. Then the battleground will move onto something even more egregious, and so on. I'm not seeing why there would be a sudden reversal of this trend in the coming decades.
From a non-EU perspective, it seems like the EU tries to push something akin to this every couple of years. So I guess it’s settled for at least a few years…?
Just imagine some other people will carry the burden and mentally distance yourself from it to relax from it wearing you out. You can take up the burden again later once you've recovered and others are worn out
Readit News
Ausgerechnet Spahn. Manchmal glaubt man seinen Augen und Ohren nicht. Wir müssen Wachsam bleiben. Mit dem Argument das es böse Menschen gibt, wurde schon viel böses getan. Massenüberwachung zerstört jede Gesellschaft. Deutschland hat mehrfach darunter gelitten. Und die Versuche Massenüberwachung einzuführen wiederholen sich.
But I guess you can’t guard against something you either do not have the capacity to or do not wish to see.
Before you downvote:
If terrorism is defined as using violence or threats to intimidate a population for political or ideological ends, then “Chat Control” qualifies in substance. Violence doesn’t have to leave blood. Psychological and coercive violence is recognised in domestic law (see coercive control offences) and by the WHO. It causes measurable harm to bodies and minds.
The aim is intimidation. The whole purpose is to make people too scared to speak freely. That is intimidation of a population, by design.
It is ideological. The ideology is mass control - keeping people compliant by stripping them of private spaces to think, talk, and dissent.
The only reason it’s not “terrorism” on paper is because states write definitions that exempt themselves. But in plain terms, the act is indistinguishable in effect from terrorism: deliberate fear, coercion, and the destruction of free will.
You can argue legality if you like, but the substance matches the textbook definition.
These people should be arrested.
My sticking point is the word "terrorism" itself. Words are defined by how we collectively use and understand them, and the common understanding of terrorism involves bombs and bullets, not software and surveillance.
I get your logic, however. You're breaking down the definition into intimidation for political ends, and you're not wrong that coercive control is a form of violence. But the leap to calling it "terrorism" just doesn't work for me. It feels like you've reverse-engineered a justification for a word that, on its face, is hyperbolic in this context. It's an authoritarian nightmare, for sure, but it isn't terrorism.
I agree with the expansion of meaning, but that mean nazi resistance was terrorism. Ukraine counterstrike on the crimea bridge/russian raffineries is terrorism. I do think it is, but now i do need to qualify terrorism before using the word.
If we expand to all kind of violence, not only physical, well any new policing laws is terrorism. Laws that increase poverty are terrorism, as poverty is an economic violence exerced by the society on its most frail. Taxation is violence too. I will need to add qualifiers each time i use terrorism, and that cheapen the meaning.
[edit] my la setnence cheapened my argument and could start a new side debate that doesn't interest me, i'm removing it.
Dead Comment
But we must stop somewhere, else we end up like the people arguing that the most democratic country in the middle east is somehow the apartheid one.
It only works if one looks away from the fact that there are so many more things that need to be declared terrorism first.
And it directly misleads people.
Here's a short teaser and links to more info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jens_Spahn#Controversies
So, what the parent poster is saying that the controversial Spahn did the right thing for once, which comes a bit as a surprise.
Or maybe this course of action is just more convenient at this time?
Probably the latter.
The lesson from history is to keep the autocrats from grabbing power. Trying to contrain them with laws ex ante hasn't worked since like Cicero. I'm not sure Berlin opposing Chat Control fits into their domestic anti-authoritarian arc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_Germany
https://www.lto.de/recht/hintergruende/h/russia-today-verbot...
That's the problem with these proposed laws.
We (privacy advocates) have to constantly fight and win over and over again. The nations that want this mass spying only have to win once.
We need a way to permanently stop these proposals once defeated the first time so that they cannot just continue to try over and over again until it passes.
Fighting corruption only works when enough people fight it at enough levels, and continue to fight it. There is no getting around the fact that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
We do have a way to reinforce our position, though!
We can design and consume technology that makes this hard.
We can stop working for companies that build centralized platforms for messaging.
We can teach our neighbors how important rights to privacy and speech are in language that they understand.
There can be enough friction that this becomes harder for politicians. Remember the Reddit Sopa and Pipa protests? - that was pretty epic! I don't think Reddit will help us in its current state, but we can absolutely mount those defenses on Wikipedia, Mastodon, Bluesky, and others.
And we should continue to move off of platforms that don't align with our freedoms. And build our platforms in a way that encourages "normies" to join.
They only need to succeed once, we (the ones opposing the law) have to succeed every time.
I'm borderline not joking that there should be warning labels like those on cigarettes on the ballot when voting.
Jens Spahn, the speaker in the video OP shared, is not a member of the government but a leading member of the parliament and of one of the ruling parties. A tiny but important difference.
I think ‘a leading member’ is underselling it a little. He is the “Fraktionsvorsitzender”, which is comparable to the majority leader in the US Senate.
Not really. First of all, Jens Spahn doesn't lead a majority, he merely leads his party's parliamentary group, which has 208 of 630 seats. Second, he has already proven this year that he doesn't have the members of his own parliamentary group under control, so his stance on a matter should not be taken for more than it is.
It's an unsustainable situation.
> The EU tries something like this every few years.
This is NOT the EU trying it (I'm not even sure you know what you mean when you say "The EU"). This is certain groups of politicians from certain EU member states raising it again and again.
Please keep yourselves informed, don't spread an incorrect message, because this is an important issue to fight and needs accurate information.
‘Who Benefits?’ Inside the EU’s Fight over Scanning for Child Sex Content (https://balkaninsight.com/2023/09/25/who-benefits-inside-the...)
Undermining Democracy: The European Commission’s Controversial Push for Digital Surveillance (https://dannymekic.com/202310/undermining-democracy-the-euro...)
1. maladministration: Ombudsman regrets Commission approach to access to documents request concerning EU legislation on combatting child sexual abuse (https://www.ombudsman.europa.eu/en/news-document/en/189565)
2. maladministration: Decision on how the EU Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation (Europol) dealt with the moves of two former staff members to positions related to combatting online child sexual abuse (case 2091/2023/AML) (https://www.ombudsman.europa.eu/en/decision/en/200017)
Please keep yourselves informed, don't spread an incorrect message, because this is an important issue to fight and needs accurate information.
Unfortunately the only country that ever left proceeded to shoot itself in both knees, light itself on fire and jump in a pool of gasoline. For NO reason.
A pedigree of chatcontrols has already been turned down several times in the past but there's nothing stopping it from being raised from the dead a couple of years later over and over until it finally passes. And then it's very much impossible to unpass.
That brand of defeatism has been spewed every step of the way every time. If everyone thought like you, the first version of Chat Control would have passed. But it didn’t. And even if it eventually does, later is better than sooner. Later is worth fighting for.
Look, it’s fine if you yourself want to personally give up, this is tiring. But please don’t rub your despondency on the people who are trying to fight for something which benefits you. You’re not helping. On the contrary, you’re making it worse for everyone, including yourself.
Every time you make that sort of comment, you’re helping those who want to oppress you. Either join the fight or move aside.
Dead Comment
"Mit der CDU/CSU wird es keine anlasslose Chatkontrolle geben, wie sie von einigen Staaten in der EU gefordert wird."
Anlass is cause/reason here, so keine anlasslose literally translated means: not without cause/reason.
What about "reasonable causes", and the infrastructure enabling those? Be it legal/bureaucratic/technical? IMO it's already in place, mostly, and got abused many times, already.
This is just "weasel wording", changing nothing for so called "lawful interception".
If you got flagged by some algorithm somewhere, or got reported by someone behind your back, there will be Anlass!
Automagically...
Because neither the algorithms, nor the organizations handling the flagging, enabling the reporting are transparent.
They are unaccountable (to the public/affected) black boxes by design, be it for economic, organizational, or political reasons.
Inevitably leading to kafkaesque absurdities like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trial
Wiretapping a chat if the citizen is suspected of a crime AND after a judge has reviewed the evidence and green-lit such surveillance is - imho - more acceptable. We do that with phones, why would we not do it with chats?
The only way to make court-mandated surveillance possible is to ensure that nobody's chat is encrypted to begin with, such that after a court order has come in, the data can be easily read. So to outlaw end-to-end encryption entirely is what this proposal is really about: break privacy guarantees for everybody to enable surveillance in a few outlier cases.
Of course, once encryption has been broken, three-letter agencies the world over will be reading your chats whether they have a warrant or not.
There is no way to have private communication for good people only. Either you have freedom for all, or freedom for none.
Article in German: https://netzpolitik.org/2025/eu-ueberwachungsplaene-unionsfr...
Sure, there is the rollercoaster, ups and downs, small wins and losses going on all the time. But look at the general trends - these freedoms that we enjoyed are by and large being chipped away, it's all trending down, worldwide. It's two steps back, one step forward. Maybe CC doesn't get put in place this particular time, but they will ram it through eventually, at some point the right angle will be found to make the right people vote for it. Then the battleground will move onto something even more egregious, and so on. I'm not seeing why there would be a sudden reversal of this trend in the coming decades.
In fact, if ChatControl does fail, they have already planned to include this in ProtectEU - a larger package coming soon...