Fight Chat Control
188 comments
·August 10, 2025throwaway89201
MrDrMcCoy
Maximum of at least one year? Is there some kind of award for how nonsensical a law can be?
throwaway89201
Member states will implement this into national law. So in the case they will need to implement a maximum of one year or more (but not less). The final law as applied by a judge will just read "punishable by a maximum of [i.e.] fourteen months".
ryankrage77
> maximum of one year or more
If the max is one year, it can't be more?
demiters
That's not only asinine but also poorly worded. How is this getting approved?
dragonwriter
Its properly worded, as it is an EU law declaring atandards for national laws and the implementing national law must specify a penalty range where the maximum is at least one year (but can be more).
It seems worded poorly if you think of it as if the phrase was from a criminal law and not a law mandating and setting parameters for criminal laws.
demiters
Ah, that makes sense.
BiteCode_dev
[flagged]
lucideer
A little context here since this website is highly misleading:
- EU Council holds more power in Europe than EU Parliament
- EU Council is pushing this regulation
- this website misrepresents the positions of most members of EU Parliament - it shows "Supports" despite most of them being "Unknown"
Overall, while people should be encouraged to contact their MEPs, I suspect many are already very informed on this & strongly opposed. Whether Parliament will end up having enough power to stop it is a different question.
x775
Ultimately, both the EU Council and the European Parliament must agree on legislation for it to pass. The Parliament acts as a co-legislator with equal legislative power in this process, effectively representing the citizens while the Council represents the member states governments. Both have to agree. In the case of Chat Control, Denmark, as the current EU Council Presidency, revived the proposal (after it previously failed to reach agreement during both the Belgian and Polish Presidency). In order for this to pass at the Council level, at least 15/27 member states must support it. If this were to happen, it would then reach the European Parliament and would have to be approved there as well. However, as support at the Council level seems greater than in previous renditions (supported further by Denmark's insistence on an expedited vote scheduled for October 14), it seems prudent to target beyond merely the Council-level.
lucideer
To be clear, I wasn't saying Parliament wouldn't have a say - mainly pointing out that the website's information about MEP's current position on the regulation is incorrect.
beberlei
Came here to say the same thing, confused how a website like this can be made, the people behind it must have not understood how the EU works.
If Germany is listed as "Undecided" then this is in the Council. The 96 MPs are from a wide spectrum of parties and most of them will already be either for, or against this.
joks
The whole site has that vibe-coded-website look. I wonder if a lot of the information on the site was essentially hallucinated too.
Disposal8433
I'm French and every idiot supports it, even the so-called left. There is nothing I can do except donate money every month to GrapheneOS (https://grapheneos.org/donate). Democracy is dead for me.
lucideer
Unfortunately this seems to be a bug in the website.
For any representatives that have no position / position unknown, rather than the website showing them as "Unknown" as you'd expect, it just assumes their position is the position of their government's EU Council representative supports this.
Many national representatives are aligned with opposition parties within their own country, and as such it's highly likely their position will deviate from that of their government, so this is a pretty bad misrepresentation. Highly misleading.
f_devd
If you're just looking at the website, do note that most (if not all) people are unconfirmed but show "supports" due to the leaked country position (hover over the pill/flag).
Vinnl
That sounds like contacting your MEPs could at least be worth it. Usually when it comes to things like this, the parties that I'd consider voting for already vote the way I'd like them to do.
(In this case it's even better - my country opposes, even though the governing parties are not mine.)
JumpCrisscross
The original sin are ad-based social media.
Everyone (except China) failed to regulate that. So now we see overcorrection.
The solution is to regulate Meta and TikTok and YouTube. Until that is on the table we’ll get performative stupidity from both sides.
tatjam
Looking at the supporting members, this appears to be supported by "both parties" across many many countries, what a sad thing to unite over...
thaumasiotes
Note that chat control has been a top concern of governments since there were governments.
The Roman Empire banned private clubs, seeing them as a source of revolution.
medlazik
Not sure what you call the "so-called left", but the actual left (LFI) certainly doesn't support Chat Control
thrance
Yes, this makes no sense. No way they got 100% of every MPs to agree on this. They never agree on anything. I think the website took the fact that the country supports it and applied that position to each of its MPs.
OldfieldFund
probably they call "so-called left" the liberals
BlueTemplar
Nobody would call them "left", especially not during Macron's 2nd term, the Walkers (or whatever is their new moniker) have firmly solidified as liberals in the right-wing sense (rather than in the bottom-wing sense).
wazoox
Actually no, every MEP doesn't support it, the government's position is attributed to all MEP from the country, which is silly.
dabber21
what are the arguments?
realusername
France is just very regressive when it comes to the internet, any laws which can make the situation worse is usually voted by all parties (see neighbouring rights or any anti-piracy laws), I don't think there's any real reasoning.
KennyBlanken
The country is predominantly Catholic. So both prudish views on sexual content, but also wanting to pretend sexual abuse by priests in their religion, and their religion protecting those priests, isn't the problem - nope, it's the interwebs creating child abusers. That is coupled with racist fear of terrorist attacks being committed by the African and middle eastern immigrant populations.
Sure are a lot of white elephants in the room with you...
josh2600
This is actually one of the major fights of our generation.
If signal/whatsapp/e2ee are desecrated, only criminals will have encryption for a short period of time until we all come to our senses and realize that some semblance of personal privacy is a human right.
IMHO, we should fight for the maximum amount of privacy possible within the context of a civil society.
In every generation there is a battle, sometimes quiet, other times a dull roar, and occasionally a bombastic. This battle is who can oversee who.
Surveillance should be the last resort of a free society.
Centigonal
In the US, we have government programs like PRISM and unchecked oligopolies that surveil us and use that information to identify dissent, sell us ads, and alter our behavior. In the EU, there are these initiatives to surveil us in the name of safety.
Is there any regime out there who's not trying to mass-surveil their citizens for one reason or another?
ragmodel226
This is a defeatist and damaging attitude. It detracts from the core issue at hand, which is EU government forcing code being run in private messaging apps over data before it is encrypted. It defeats the security model of end to end encrypted messaging, and leads to a society that cannot trust its communications against government interference ever again.
One can criticize analysis of mass surveillance of metadata and encrypted channels, but this is something else.
JumpCrisscross
> Is there any regime out there who's not trying to mass-surveil their citizens for one reason or another?
The one where citizens don’t regress into comfortably lazy nihilism as a first response.
nosioptar
I'm unaware of Sealand[0] engaging in surveillance against its citizen.
thaumasiotes
With only one citizen, it would seem that the government of Sealand must necessarily be watching everything he does at all waking hours.
ncr100
The Catholic Church is not for surveillance, afaik.
Join Vatican City!
dachris
Power wants to stay in power.
In a healthy society, citizens should always be wary of those in power and keep them on their toes, because power corrupts (and attracts already problematic characters).
Not driveling when they get thrown some crumbs or empty phrases ("child safety", "terrorism").
r33b33
yeah, Japan
isaacremuant
> Is there any regime out there who's not trying to mass-surveil their citizens for one reason or another?
Covid authoritarian policies were hugely successful and supported by mainstream people by and large. Not enough protests. Not enough dissent.
Now politicians know they can turn the power knob as high as they want and nothing will happen. Less and less dissent will be allowed, just like during covid.
If you fail to learn that and denounce those and reclaim the freedoms for all, you're going to just whine into a smaller and smaller room.
JumpCrisscross
> Covid authoritarian policies were hugely successful and supported by mainstream people by and large. Not enough protests. Not enough dissent
America has been trashed not by Covid but by the precedence being set that partisan violence can and will be pardoned.
101008
I was very pissed at this, and when I read this part I couldn't continue, it boiled my blood.
> *EU politicians exempt themselves from this surveillance under "professional secrecy" rules. They get privacy. You and your family do not. Demand fairness.
einarfd
That they exempt politicians is basically admitting that the security problems that detractors bring up is true, and is something that should be used against them.
After all exempting some police, that work on investigating child molesting, from the scanning, that is understandable.
Exempting prime minster Mette Frederiksen, on the other hand. Means either that they understand that it undermines security, or that she or some other top politicians are child molester. So which is it?
amarcheschi
If it hasn't been changed, not only politicians but law enforcement officers too would be exempt
This is one of the many abuses by Leo(s), part why I don't love and trust police in italy: https://it.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatti_del_G8_di_Genova#p-lan...
I thought there was an English Wikipedia page but there isn't, translate it
zwnow
What a surprise, they are also paid a handsome pension after having worked in EU parliament for a few years, 4 I think. Most of us have to work for 40+ years and dont even get good retirement money
jaharios
A lot of actual pedophiles will be exposed if it was used on politicians, we don't want that.
echelon
While we're talking about corrupt politicians, why is this all happening all at once?
America, Great Britain, and the EU are all creating tracking, monitoring, and censorship regulations. All at the same time.
We're turning the internet into the 1984 inevitability it was predicted to become.
We need a Bill of Rights against this. But the public is too lay to push for this. Bolstering or eroding privacy rights will never happen in the direction we want, only the one we don't. It's so frustrating.
vaylian
There's lobby organisations that try to influence politicians in different countries: https://balkaninsight.com/2023/09/25/who-benefits-inside-the...
Aerroon
I think the UK (and EU) have been at this for a while. The UK pushed for the Data Retention Directive in the EU in the mid 2000s that required ISPs to save all the websites you visit. This was eventually ruled to be illegal, but it was still in force for several years.
These guys have been at it for a while.
hungmung
Security is worth half a shit these days and Five Eyes can't remotely access everybody's phone without it getting noticed by people. So they need to keep transport insecure.
moffkalast
I would not be surprised if it's the US pressuring everyone else. Thiel is probably salivating to get a deal for Palantir to implement it.
That said, the UK doesn't need much convincing in this regard I suppose, they've always had their fair share of extreme laws along these lines and Leyen has personally dreamt of this for ages.
api
For over a decade now there’s been a huge global shift toward authoritarianism, and to some extent it’s grassroots. My speculation is that this is a time of unprecedented change and that scares people. We also have aging populations due to lower birth rates and older people tend (on average) toward nostalgic reactionary politics.
r33b33
They are gearing for WW3 and population control.
This is obvious.
Get out of EU.
Now.
Teever
Authoritarians will always try and pull this kind of shit. It's just what they do. The bigger question you should be asking is where's the coordinated pushback?
Where are the celebrities and public figures taking a stand against this?
Where are the grassroots organizations organizing protests and promoting sousveillance programs against the authoritarians who want to take away our rights and privacy?
The reason why this is all happening at once is because there's no resistance to it.
Until there's meaningful resistance you're just gonna see authoritarian policies keep snowballing.
cloudhead
This.
lordnacho
Can't make this shit up.
The Danish government (currently holding the rotating chair) also raised the pension age for everyone. Other than themselves.
But also, how does this get implemented? What's stopping me from using, say, Signal, which being OSS would likely have a single line I could comment out and compile for myself?
How would I get busted for that? Or I could get clever and have AI generate some random chat text to send to the government while I send the actual text to my friends?
whatevaa
You would get labeled a "potential criminal". See some comment from police labelling Graphene OS users as criminals.
Steganography exists and is undefeatable, though very low bandwith.
shark1
It's like any other crime. They cannot stop you from stealing, for example. By doing it, you will not be a lawful citizen.
AlecSchueler
You mean "an illegal?"
amarcheschi
It doesn't say how AFAIK, although it's been a few months from when I read the original proposal. If I'm not wrong it would delegate that to service providers - the organizations managing the apps, telegram, meta, whatever the name of the foundation for the signal app is ecc
dachris
Hopefully it doesn't get implemented, but obviously they could force OS providers to implement this in Android and iOS.
rdm_blackhole
This is only the first step in the process. First they will force all messaging/email providers to implement the scanning. Those who refuse or decide to leave the EU as Signal said they would do, would end up being unlisted from Google Play or the Apple (EU) app store.
Then the second phase is coming by 2030. Read about the ProtectEU (what a fucking ridiculous name) proposal which will mandate the scanning on device and basically record everything you do on your device.
This will be forced on Apple and other manufacturers directly.
pakitan
> Read about the ProtectEU (what a fucking ridiculous name) proposal which will mandate the scanning on device and basically record everything you do on your device.
Where can we read about that? The official documents are quite vague and I don't see anything as specific as mandatory device scanning.
cbeach
ProtectEU sounds incredibly dark. Do you have a source for the information regarding on-device scanning? I had a look but only found the bureaucrat-speak overview and they didn’t discuss details.
ncr100
So stop them.
rdm_blackhole
Even if you compile your own version of Signal, will your friends do it too? Will your grandma/grandpa do it as well? It only takes one person in the chain to be compromised by using the "real" app and then all your efforts would be defeated because now your messages have been exposed by this other person unknowingly.
bqmjjx0kac
Do phones have trusted execution environments? I suppose you could require the recipient provide attestation that it's running the expected binary. Of course, this is pointless if the hardware manufacturer shares their root keys with the government.
JoshTriplett
> the "real" app
The backdoored app will hopefully not be called Signal, since Signal themselves would never do this. I hope they own a trademark on it and could enforce it against anyone who would try to upload a backdoored version under their name.
CM30
Yeah this really annoys me, because it appears to show that any pretense that the law applies to everyone equally is disappearing fast.* If it at least affected politicians you could write it off as "idiotic idea that wasn't thought through in the slightest", but here it's clear that they have some idea how stupid and dangerous the law is, and see themselves as worth exempting from it instead.
hagbard_c
Quod licet Iovi non licet bovi.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quod_licet_Iovi,_non_licet_bov...
rossant
Sometimes, very bad things are done in the name of "child protection". https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37650402
kratom_sandwich
Who are the organizations fighting chat control which one could support with a donation?
lostmsu
Pick any decentralized IM project
isoprophlex
God fucking damn it not again
This is, what, the fifth time in ten years they try to pass shit like this?
9dev
They only need to succeed one time. People are generally preoccupied with a lot of other things right now, so maybe this is their lucky shot…
impossiblefork
They actually did succeed once, with the data retention directive. That got annulled by the CoJEU.
zubspace
It's a shitty system, if one side just needs to succeed one time while the other side needs to succeed over and over again.
What really should be done is to disallow proposals, which are kinda the same. Once a mass surveillance proposal like this is defeated, it shouldn't be allowed to be constantly rebranded and reintroduced. We need a firewall in our legislative process that automatically rejects any future attempts at scanning private communications.
CM30
I wonder if it'd be possible to fix a lot of these issues by having a constitution with damn near impossibly strict standards for changing it that rely on the entire population agreeing (or close to it)?
So there might be a right to privacy or freedom of speech enshrined in law, and the only way to change it would be for 90+% of the population to agree to change it. That way, it'd only take a minority disagreeing with a bad law to make it impossible to pass said law. Reactionaries and extremists would basically be defanged entirely, since they'd have to get most of their opponents to agree with any changes they propose, not just their own followers.
pessimizer
> What really should be done is to disallow proposals, which are kinda the same.
This very much exists in a lot of parliamentary rules authorities, but it's usually limited to once per "session." They just need to make rules that span sessions that raise the bar for introducing substantially similar legislation.
It can easily be argued that passing something that failed to pass before, multiple times, should require supermajorities. Or at least to create a type of vote where you can move that something "should not" be passed without a supermajority in the future.
It is difficult in most systems to make negative motions. At the least it would have to be tailored as an explicit prohibition on passing anything substantially similar to the motion in future sessions (without suspending the rules with a supermajority.)
I don't know as much about the French Parlement's procedure as I would like to, though.
null
KennyBlanken
cough Patriot Act cough
...which Republicans swore up and down was temporary and yet, oddly, kept getting renewed wirth no evidence whatsoever it was necessary to stop a planned terrorist attack or that it would have stopped the WTC attacks themselves.
I bet 90% of the population or more has no idea that the Patriot Act was dumped and replaced with the nearly identical FREEDOM Act. Which took multiple tries to pass because they knew if they just kept hammering away, they'd eventually get it passed.
Yeah, they called a wildly invasive domestic spying bill the "freedom" act....
dlcarrier
It's not even a partisan issue; spying on the constituency is one of few issues that has broad bipartisan support.
You could vote for a libertarian, but good luck.
ath3nd
They generally don't and won't stop until there are real repercussions for that, like losing your political career/being canceled in society over voting for it.
ncr100
Yup.
Having empathy for your neighbor, and working with those whom you disagree, are precursors. This gives power.
Then using power to enact consequences for businesses and governments (the people therein), fixes the problem.
mantas
The problem is people behind the curtains will just pick another figure head. And we can’t even get the names who want to get rid of privacy. Since names of people pushing it were redacted for their privacy :D
morkalork
When the people orchestrating something like this can hide behind a veil of anonymity as well as bestow exemptions from monitoring upon the political class, it looks deeply wrong and conspiracy worthy. :D indeed.
swayvil
The arrival of AI has made mass surveillance pass a certain threshold. Now we're just a step away from aristocrat heaven.
ncr100
Yup super easy to moderate, monitor, and manipulate.
Watchlist? Easy.
Mislead? Easy.
We need to isolate this bad behavior ASAP.
idiotsecant
The fascist, autocratic impulse is a big in the human firmware and will never go away. We exist constantly balanced on the razor edge precipice because we are capable of little else. Self-governing humans are not a stable system.
swayvil
Serfs and lords is pretty stable. But ya I get yr point.
mantas
As Juncker, ex president of European Commision said, you keep trying till it passes at some point. Good luck revoking it later…
uncircle
Ah, the marvels of modern democracy. No serious way to enact change, politicians still do whatever the hell they want, and we still believe that voting for someone else will change things.
It’ll soon be like the UK, that if you campaign against this kinda stuff, the party in power publicly calls you a paedophile. Because only people with something to hide want privacy.
Privacy is a losing proposition. Governments have the perfect trojan horse (child safety) so it’s only a matter of time before massive surveillance is the norm.
calvinmorrison
it effects lots of organizations. the left contingent of the PCUSA basically did the same for a decade to change rules. When they finally got the language passed it caused a large rift.
The difference is that one is not obligated to be part of a presbytery and can leave. The presbytery doesn't have guns.
croes
People don’t want change.
If really someone gets the power who wants to change things they fight them too.
People want that everything stays the same. Problem is climate change and other problems make change inevitable.
charcircuit
You can keep trying to revoke it until it passes too.
mantas
Yeah, right. I wonder if revokers would have same privacy as those who try to pass it…
mustaphah
The EU: proudly defending human rights… unless you're trying to send a private message.
andrewinardeer
Can someone explain how they could read my e2e Signal chat messages to my wife about what I'm cooking for dinner?
Can someone explain how they could read my e2e Sessions chat message sent via TOR to my wife about what I'm cooking for dinner?
Genuinely curious. Can those that are in power break this encryption?
ymir_e
Definitely wouldn’t break the encryption itself.
I think the way it could work is to send a letter to each of the messaging apps saying that they are now legally required to use the EU’s encryption keys and make the messages available to the EU.
Then they would make it so that the apps that don’t comply are not available in the app stores by pressuring google and apple respectively.
I think this is the reason why for example telegram is not end to end encrypted by default - as some regions require them to be able to access users info.
Software you’re using on your own wouldn’t be effected, but wouldn’t necessarily be legal either.
People who are technically savvy could get around it, but the vast majority of people just assume that their private messages are private.
danielheath
They can fine apple and google for offering signal in their app stores, until nobody has it installed.
That doesn’t break your comms today - but later, you replace your phone, can you get a current copy of the app?
ivanjermakov
Making it illegal to use "non-compliant" e2ee services and prosecuting those who does. Realistically, they couldn't, but could ban such apps in EU stores, making them less popular.
They can break encryption by stealing keys from your device, or by pwning your device, or by introducing backdoor into the chat client for every user.
zbentley
No, but many political figures have proposed banning the distribution/possession/operation of tools (e.g. Signal, Tor) which can be used to circumvent surveillance.
rkomorn
The idea isn't to break encryption, it's to have apps implement client-side scanning "pre-encryption".
mettamage
So as a Dutchie that opposes this, is there still something for me to do? The Netherlands opposes this, so... should I sway them to oppose it even more? Not really sure what my role should be.
layer8
See https://www.chatcontrol.eu/#WhatYouCanDo under “Is your government opposing?”.
Please also fight mandatory age verification with prison sentences. The European Parliament has already voted in favor of a law that mandates age verification for pornography with a one year prison sentence. It was included as a last minute amendment into this bill [1]. See "Amendment 186". It has been completely missed by news organizations and even interest groups.
The full accepted article reads: "Disseminating pornographic content online without putting in place robust and effective age verification tools to effectively prevent children from accessing pornographic content online shall be punishable by a maximum term of imprisonment of at least 1 year."
It's not law yet, as the first reading is now sent back to the Council of the European Union, but I don't think it's very likely it will get a second reading.
[1] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/TA-10-2025-011...