"a measure it had rejected twice in March. Although a majority of voting Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) actually opposed the regulation (314 against, 276 in favor, 17 abstentions), the motion to reject it failed to secure the required absolute majority of 361 votes. As a result, mass scanning is now permitted again until 2028."

"Oh no we can't get a majority to pass the law!"

"Have you tried getting a majority to not pass the law?"

"Worth a shot!"

"It worked, should we also do this multiple times?"

"Of course not! Pass the law, quickly!"

What changes with the return of Chat Control 1.0—and what stays the same:

*What is coming back:* US tech companies are once again allowed to scan private messages without a warrant or prior suspicion. This affects direct messages on platforms like Instagram, Discord, Snapchat, Skype, and Xbox, as well as emails via Google’s Gmail and Apple’s iCloud.

*What remains unchanged:* Public social media posts and files hosted in cloud storage could already be scanned without this law. Furthermore, private messages can always be reported by users, or monitored by authorities using targeted, court-ordered wiretapping.

*What is still NOT being scanned:* End-to-end encrypted chats, such as those on WhatsApp, have always been exempt from these scans. Additionally, European providers of messaging and email services have never implemented chat control measures.

So, E2E is unaffected?

It's clear that member countries use the EU as a blame-laundering mechanism to pass domestically unpopular laws, but the forcing of this vote under the urgency procedure that requires absolute majority to reject, on the last EP session before summer break is so blatant that it might awaken people that might've overlooked the structural failures of the EU and finally radicalise them

EDIT: bad wording, it's not that the urgency procedure causes the voting to require absolute majority, it's that an absolute majority second-reading is forced through an emergency procedure which is designed for first readings of legislation that's the implied meaning above

Result: 314 against, 276 in favor, 17 abstentions, 113 absent

The EU is well on the way to becoming a totalitarian government.

ETA: It is shocking that 276 members of parliament would vote to support this. Are so many so naive? Or being paid off?

Here's a quote from the article itself, which works for both pro and con arguments:

  "What is still NOT being scanned: End-to-end encrypted chats, such as those on WhatsApp, have always been exempt from these scans. Additionally, European providers of messaging and email services have never implemented chat control measures."

My steelman in favour of the legislation:

The regulation closes a legal gap that would otherwise force platforms to stop using existing CSAM detection systems; it's a temporary framework that doesn't require universal mandatory scanning or ban E2EE, just keeps the legal basis for companies which choose to use detection/scanners while lawmakers continue negotiating a more comprehensive longterm solution.

My steelman against the legislation:

Scanning private communications, even allowing companies to "voluntary" do this, sets the precedent that the confidentiality of private correspondence is conditional rather than fundamental. Also, automated scanning inevitably has false positives. Also, has chilling effect on free speech, undermines trust in encrypted messaging.

Also, situationally, that it's "voluntary" means offenders can migrate to platforms which don't "voluntarily" do this.

This vote was urgently scheduled for today, the last day of parliament before the summer break. 113 MEPs were not present for this vote, likely having taken vacation days to extend their break. It's hard to believe choosing to do the vote today was done accidentally.

-- EU policy makers are really honest people, hats off to them. There's no way politicians in my country allow their chats to be scanned, because they're very corrupt.

You don't need a special app to do this, or maybe you just need a companion app that you type your message into and it gives you the thing you just paste into whatever messaging app / social media you use. The steganography makes it hard for the operator to determine that you're "abusing" the service by not transmitting your message in the clear so they can read it.

1) Alice uses steganography to embed her public key in an otherwise innocent or mundane looking image e.g their profile picture.

2) Bob uses the public key to encrypt a short message to send her.

3) Bob embeds the encrypted message in his own mundane looking image (could generate these from a pool of images or on the fly using stable diffusion)

4) Bob sends the image to Alice.

5) Alice recovers the encrypted message and decrypts using her private key.

(Could also use the process to do key encapsulation too, instead of using the raw key pair)

Who is working on that? I suspect the main challenge is not technical, but human - persuading users to switch messenger apps is almost impossible.

First, there are USB tokens that can hold a private key and sign messages. Such tokens could be sold at places accessible only to adults and verify that they are indeed adult. Obviously every token should hold the same private key.

Second, OS could implement "parent mode" which allows installing only white-listed, government approved apps (no Telegram or Whatsapp or other dangerous apps, but school apps are ok) and opening only white-listed government-approved websites. Put in jail the parents who did not set up a parent mode. Problem solved without passports and verifications.

If, however, the government insists on selfies, it means they just want to identify users and compile lists of "untrustworthy", "rebelious" and other persons of interest.

Also, employees who do verification, sometimes create internal chats where they post pictures of clients and mock their appearance. We had such case with Alfa-Bank in Russia, where the photo of a funny client with a passport and third-grader level comments leaked to Instagram account of employee's friend. The bank paid approximately $20 as a compensation.

I'm feeling these politicians was not doing it for the victims. Instead, it's almost like the victims are providing reasons to allow the politicians to expand their own power.

The Accelerationism (see note below) part of me think it's a good thing, because a heavily regulated country is often also a backward country. Doing things like this long enough, then you get out competed by everyone else, your population shrinks to zero and your land gets reused.

(Note: The word "Accelerationism" in the Chinese dissidents circle means that, if a bad future is certain and it trends to destroy itself eventually, we might as well just let it happen faster, so the pain maybe shorter. More: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerator-in-Chief)

Look, EU obviously have a few good regulations. But a regulation must be correctly designed and implemented, and it must not punish good people. Scanning private messages is a punishment to all.

If EU must scan something, I'd say scanning all messages/phone calls sent out by the politicians might do more good, consider how much trust people put on them (maybe they shouldn't).

All for a safe and secure society.

It's a joke. The system is hacked.

How do we design such apps? Let's rule out age attestation (to allow only some age ranges) or scan of content because they are orthogonal to apps. What are the design patterns that prevent adults to meet kids? No messaging?

Is there any sort of warrant needed for accessing this sort of information on devices?

314 against, 276 in favor, 17 abstentions

In case anyone wants to know: stopping it would have required 361 against.

Having said that, I don’t think the tech industry is what it once was, dominated by cypherpunks working to create a better world. It has been captured by greed and “moving fast and breaking things”, as well as infighting. Greed (both in the form of web3 numbers go up, and benefiting from the greater fool while delivering no utility) and moving fast (web2 facebook / VC / dump shares on the public / lock in / extract rents). So no wonder the government eventually steps in, when the industry spends a decade without adults steering the ship. We have giant platforms controlling everything, and the rest has devolved into zero sum games and memecoins. The tech industry hasn’t led or even organized enough to get behind technology that can liberate users. Instead it’s been captured by for-profit interests. Mozilla and Apache are rounding errors.

Here is what open source can do when it comes to mass surveillance, and this would also solve the Flock problem here in the States, too:

https://community.qbix.com/t/balancing-privacy-and-accountab...

More broadly, here is what needs to be done across the board:

https://www.laweekly.com/restoring-healthy-communities/

It's dispiriting to see a supposedly pro-privacy politician launder backdoors as "strict security standards".

Chat Control 1.0 and 2.0 Explained

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48818311

Chat Control passed first round in EU Parliament

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48819008

Just fueling material for right wingers who will take advantage of this and push for secessionist stuff.

EU is in dire need to have VERY POPULAR measures among people, not idiotic stuff like this which is a step in a wrong direction.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.

Don't get me wrong, I feel a desire to engage with this as well, but there is nothing I can possibly say about this that is not political, because this is purely a political choice.

Welcome to the Brave New 1984 We World. Big Brother loves us.

We are living through the time best described by Zamyatin, Orwell, and Huxley.