This is still problematic, but the far more dangerous Chat Control 2.0 that would weaken end-to-end-encrypted messengers like Signal is not being discussed here.

Not to diminish the gravity of the new development, but the defeatist "no way to prevent this" narratives that are already popping up here are getting old -- when in fact it looks like 2.0 is off the table for good because protest against it has proven effective.

# Italy warns against Chat Control mass surveillance, but votes in favour of it (digitalcourage.social)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48783340

Do, because already there nuances (towards the better or worse) are revealed, which are not evident in journalism as we have it. The whole story needs more investigation than the stubs.

But the way they are managing it in the workflow does not seem too linear...

> The position adopted by the Council today paves the way for providers of Internet services to resume their efforts to detect and report material on child sexual abuse to the police.

- Jim O’Callaghan, Irish Minister of Justice, Interior and Migration

Except that many of those providers are not European. Good job handling all of your citizens' data to foreign entities, Jim. Way to go, champ.

I don't know how to put it nicely, but some members of the Council need to cease operations, or be ceased.

I know the EU cookie banners have basically ruined the internet, but this seems like a whole 'nother level of obnoxious.

"Present a document" // "No, certainly not to you" // "Do without then"

The straight will say "no", but their lives will be extremely complicated, possibly in the unawareness of those that just take compliance to the absurd for granted - as the weak call survival paramount and cannot see that their modus is subjective. That we won't have it is something that they cannot even conceive. Adults are noise to them.

Day in and day out, the EU proves Varoufakis right.

Thus, discontinuing the permit to use these techniques did have enforcement numbers of those crimes found drop significantly.

I'm wondering if they've given up real policing of these crimes completely?!

Spreading pedo content on Facebook, those people have to be the dumbest of the dumb? Everyone spending even a single critical thought on their crimes won't be caught by this.

And they say enforcement numbers drop significantly? Meaning they don't catch many other people? What the fuck are they even doing? Did they completely give up trying to find the real criminals, and instead fall back on sugar-coated figures to conceal that failure?

Just so the cycle is easily knowable.

I'm 100% sure that this is the case and about the good intentions of the proposers.

/s

1) commission + parliament (meaning the EU commission has initiative (veto rights over any law, like the US president), and parliament can only "propose amendments", which pass with 50% of votes, or deny). This is what normally happens.

Parliament denied the law. Twice.

Member states vetoed the legislation at least 3 times (it doesn't technically work like this but member states can force the commission to veto legislation, and Belgium, Hungary and Denmark have done so) (technically member states can force the EU commission not to introduce legislation and because nobody else can do so either, this is normally effectively a veto)

2) council + parliament. This is where we are. If the executives of the member states (NOT parliaments) want to push through a vote, they can use this path. The difference is that only 2/3 majority of parliament can stop the law from passing or put in amendments.

Technically, this is meant for bypassing the EU commission. But of course, in reality it is for getting past the Danish and potential Belgian and Hungarian and other's vetoes. The commission really wants this.

3) council + commission. This completely overrides any legislative involvement in ... well, legislation. They have already threatened to do this.

4) the council can just force legislation through without anyone's approval

Normally "democracy" in the EU means that legislation requires BOTH a majority of Europeans to agree (Parliament) AND no executive government. Both have already been bypassed.

This refers to "Chat Control 1.0", allowing facebook and other messaging providers to scan chats for harmful content (which they had been temporarily allowed to do by a recently expired law). It means current scanning is illegal.

Just so we're clear, this basically means that all messengers (not any specific one) will have to intercept everyone's messages, scan for specific words, and if found report the whole chat history to the police.

Of course, it already turned out "BTW carrousel" (an illegal tax avoidance strategy) is one of the sentences they scan for to "protect the children".

The article itself also contains evidence against the idea that this protects children (that child protection investigations keep increasing despite the scanning not taking place anymore)