ChatControl update: blocking minority held but Denmark is moving forward anyway
309 comments
·September 14, 2025jcarrano
jofla_net
Pretty neat how, out of the blue, two seemingly unrelated efforts manage to tighten together to create the perfect unavoidable storm.
I swear those Thursday bilderberg meetings are a thing.
glenstein
The thing that depresses me about offhand references to bilderberg group is it's a missed chance to name real names. I don't know who they are, but from chat gpt'ing it looks like there's some particular agencies regularly behind these. One is "DG Home," an EU department on security that drafts legislation.
Another is Europol, a security coordination body that can't legislate but frequently advocates for this kind of legislation.
And then there's LEWP, The law enforcement working party, a "working group" comprised of security officials from member EU states, also involved in EU policy making in some capacity.
Perhaps targeted reform of these bodies is in order so they don't keep producing this legislation over and over. The blocking minority shouldn't just oppose the legislation itself, but make sure that their representation at those bodies is stopping those recommendations from moving forward. The legislating infrastructure needs to be challenged as much as any particular bill.
varispeed
People have been talking about this for years. Corruption, authoritarianism and fascism is eating the EU from within and people who warned about it were called from tin foil hatters to just nutters.
bboygravity
Still are being called that now.
Any political party of any member state that even thinks about being critical of the EU will instantly be completely destroyed by "independent" national (state sponsored) media.
userbinator
There are plenty of devices running older versions of Android which are not under Big G's control and won't be subjected to this authoritarianism. Coincidentally they are also likely to be easily rootable, so you can still have full freedom.
Just don't "upgrade" and ignore all the propaganda telling you bad things about that. Keep building apps that work on older, less-hostile devices and spread the word to oppose this very deliberate planned obsolescence.
Hizonner
> Coincidentally they are also likely to be easily rootable, so you can still have full freedom.
Also easily remotely ownable, so you can be spied on without even having to install any software at all. And any that aren't now will be a couple of years after they fall out of support. Which, by the way, is very hard for the community to step in and do, since they're full of undocumented proprietary binary blobs.
> Just don't "upgrade" and ignore all the propaganda telling you bad things about that.
... and when your fully owned device finally breaks completely?
cherryteastain
Molly (signal fork) on GrapheneOS will still be there
whatshisface
Since the right people are here, can anyone explain to me why its so hard to "root" (in reality, obtain basic filesystem / networking etc. control) with that OS?
fifteen1506
Slow heating boils the frog.
Move now to alternatives. If you must use Android, GrapheneOS with Sandboxed Play Services.
asah
> If you must use Android
the reasonable alternative being... ?
fifteen1506
You got me. None.
I do wish ubports + waydroid would be a reasonable alternative -- but it's wishful thinking.
fsflover
GNU/Linux phones.
wewewedxfgdf
Who, exactly, is so strongly motivated to make such legislation?
Who proposes it and drives it and lobbies for it? It doesn't come from nowhere.
dariosalvi78
Swedes and Danes are at the forefront.
The truth is that Scandinavian societies are much more authoritarian and illiberal than they want people to believe.
bn-l
They’ve had to become like that due to their bizarre choices. They really got the worst of all worlds. Net tax beneficiaries, fear, crime and now judicial over reach. How do you do this to yourself?
tokioyoyo
Very small sample group, but from my talks with Danes, they actually enjoy their lives quite a bit. I disagree with the chat control, but who are we to say what they want or need, if they have been enjoying their lives with the government of their choosing?
userbinator
Not surprising that it's from the same place that told us we should be happy with owning nothing.
gjsman-1000
Sweden has also had an explosion of organized gang violence; carried out by tech savvy teenagers using encrypted chats.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/30/how-gang-viole...
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/teen-girls-hitwomen-sweden-orga...
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/agenda/briefing/2025-...
rstuart4133
Thank you.
For others this is the last para of the first link:
> The Swedish government has proposed new legislation that would allow police to wiretap children under the age of 15 in an attempt to curb the violence, according to the BBC.
So, Chat Control is an attempt by a few politicians to give police some tools to prevent teenagers from shooting each other in gang wars. It's a real problem, it needs a real solution, this looks to be an honest attempt to come up with one - from someone who doesn't know what they are doing.
Interestingly, we've had an uptick in youth violence here in Australia too. It feels eerily similar. It's happening in the same demographic, it's happening while crime overall is dropping, and the authorities here too are struggling to control it. It's so serious it lead to a change of government at the last election. A right wing mob got in by beating the law and order drum with the slogan "Adult Crime, Adult Time". https://statements.qld.gov.au/statements/102316 If anything, that's less effective at stopping crime than Chat Control. Sigh.
LtWorf
I live in sweden. Police here is extremely incompetent and unwilling to do their jobs.
They will not seriously investigate any white collar crime, so corruption is completely unpunished.
They focus on gangs and so on, or so they say. What they actually do is aggressively target non violent people who smoke weed and occasionally some small fish dealer. Remember that owning any amount (even trace amounts only detectable by a chemist) of THC is a crime. Yes they do spend resources to go after people who occasionally smoke weed.
Meanwhile if you're a 2nd generation immigrant you will be forever subject to daily discrimination, and getting a job that is not hemtjänst or cleaning is going to be very rare.
nickslaughter02
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miohtama
[flagged]
tomhow
Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents.
Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.
lm28469
> the government decides what is allowed and what is not.
Hm, you mean the government makes the laws? Shocking, revolting even
atmosx
[flagged]
henearkr
[flagged]
nickslaughter02
Follow the money. AI surveillance companies like Thorn are shaking in excitement.
https://balkaninsight.com/2023/09/25/who-benefits-inside-the...
cm2187
What is extraordinary is that the idea that there shouldn't be a word exchanged between two individuals that the state cannot listen to was a Stasi wet dream. It is just shocking that western democracies that have held totalitarian regimes at bay for so long at great expense, are now going full big brother.
pessimizer
> western democracies that have held totalitarian regimes at bay for so long
Western democracies have consistently installed and protected totalitarian regimes.
potato3732842
The state itself.
Any shred of rights or privacy has reduces it's ability and/or increases the cost of it doing what it deems worth doing.
spit2wind
This is a meme I see and don't fully understand. It seems to assume that the state isn't a democracy, yet the statement is usually applied to democracies like the US. Such statements don't make sense to me when it's the people who are the state, not some "other".
sunshowers
This is a classic principal-agent problem. The people are not the state in electoral/representative democracies, they merely elect agents that have their own beliefs and motivations.
pessimizer
The public have no effect on public policy in the US: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592714001595
hungmung
The state is a lecher.
null
fmbb
Lobbyists from surveillance product companies.
And law enforcement agencies.
nicce
For some reason names are sensored because of the ”privacy and security requirements.”
macmac
Our "minister of Justices" is a scared little boy, deeply traumatised by a childhood characterised by the lack of a basic sense of safety. This trauma has never been addressed and with age he has unfortunately become a politician and earned a law degree. His rational faculties and academic degree are of course a faint echo compared to his childhood trauma, so he has no reservations destroying any personal liberty in the name of safety. I feel deeply for the boy, but fear the man.
cco
To whom are you referring? A quick Google didn't reveal which minister from which country you're talking about but I'm curious to learn more.
devjab
What they should be doing is giving us the ability to use public apps without the apple store or google play. What they are doing is letting Palantir get our data, despite it being from a country that thas repeatedly threantened Greenland.
testdelacc1
This thread is going to be 400 comments of people talking about how stupid this is, how it won't work and never will, how no sane person could possibly want this. And you know what, I agree with all of that.
But there are a few people asking who is pushing for this legislation so hard. That's mostly police forces who are pointing out that they're unable to track the activities of criminal organisations. For example, in the UK sophisticated gangs steal cars and phones and ship them around the world where they're resold. They locate a buyer anywhere in the world who requests a specific car, find that car, steal it and have it in a shipping container within 24 hours. It's impossible to know who's done it, or track any of the communications involved.
In previous eras it wasn't possible to create international criminal organisations of this level of sophistication because it was harder to communicate securely. Now it's possible and we all pay the price of increased criminal activity. Everyone's insurance premiums go up, making everyone poorer. UK car insurance premiums are up 82% between 2021 and 2024 and insurance providers are still making a loss.
Just to drive this point home - watch/rewatch The Wire (2002-08), except make it impossible to tap the communications of the drug gangs because they're all using encrypted messengers with disappearing messages. Immediately the people running the organisation become untouchable. The police likely can't even figure out who the lieutenants are, let alone the kingpin. At best you can arrest a few street level dealers and that hardly disrupts the criminals at all.
On HN everyone is going to say "everyone has a right to private communication, even criminal empires". And sure, I'm not going to disagree. I'm merely pointing out that private communication allows criminal networks to be much larger, more effective and harder to disrupt. And all of society pays the price when we're victimised by criminals.
Edit: I'm not saying breaking encryption is a good thing or that it will work, I'm only pointing out why police forces want access to communication records. They're unable to do their jobs and are being blamed for the rise in crime. To prove that you've actually read my comment till the end, please mention banana in your comment.
asyx
This is true of course but the counter argument is that running your own infrastructure is probably not a problem for international criminal gangs but your group chat with the boys is not gunna go through some AI garbage filter and in the end we are still going to get our cars stolen but now the police is knocking because I called Merz a fascist bastard and once the actual fascist win an election they are going to knock on everybody’s door who called Weidel a pick me girl in Turkish.
In summary, without stupid jokes about German politics, the actual stated goal is unachievable but the real world consequences in a Europe that is sprinting to the far right are incredibly dangerous.
nickslaughter02
> Europe that is sprinting to the far right are incredibly dangerous
Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), the far right party, is against Chat Control.
mrintegrity
Because it's not popular, and they are a populist party. I'd wager they will be all for it if they were to achieve power.
sumeruchat
I used to be on your side but now that I live as a minority where the locals are increasingly becoming hostile and their very abusive rhetoric is accepted on social media and forums like reddit I actually want them to face the consequences of such speech and be deterred from uttering anything like that with their devices. (They can do so privately at the bar I have no problem with that.)
Another example is the recent nepal protests.
More abstractly I think that a multi-cultural or multi-ethnic society at scale is not able to handle anonymous and private communication without collapsing. If we dont go in the direction of benevolent censorship like China and Singapore I think the west is going to see some dark times.
pona-a
And how are you supposed to exist as any sexual, gender, religious, or political minority when Gestapo's listening in on every phone? And also, we were talking about private conversations, not Reddit, not any less private than what is spoken in your own home.
I am sympathetic to whatever made you believe that, but if you advocate for such evil, inhumane, reckless systems, you are not a good ally to anyone, including yourself or your community.
squigz
> I used to be on your side but now that I live as a minority where the locals are increasingly becoming hostile and their very abusive rhetoric is accepted on social media and forums like reddit I actually want them to face the consequences of such speech and be deterred from uttering anything like that with their devices. (They can do so privately at the bar I have no problem with that.)
It's interesting that a member of a minority would not see that this is exactly how minorities get oppressed. Sure, let's make trans hate speech illegal (and completely fuck privacy online in order to make it so)... then we block criticism of Israel... then we block criticism of The Party... now let's block anything that might "corrupt our children"... Actually we don't need that narrative anymore; we just block whatever The Party says to block. I hope being trans stays socially acceptable!
To say nothing of the fact that one country fucking over privacy for its citizens means fucking over citizens of many other countries too, who didn't agree to it.
atmosx
> More abstractly I think that a multi-cultural or multi-ethnic society at scale is not able to handle anonymous and private communication without collapsing. If we dont go in the direction of benevolent censorship like China and Singapore I think the west is going to see some dark times.
Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither and will lose both.
ACCount37
They ship entire CARS.
Not some kind of fancy sci-fi grain-of-sand sized microchips that are completely impossible to track. Not even drugs! Cars! Those huge metal objects that weigh over a metric ton each! Those cars!
If the police can't stop criminals from shipping CARS out of an ISLAND COUNTRY, the issue isn't that they don't have a way to breach privacy of every citizen. The issue is that they should be all fired and never allowed to do any government work ever again.
testdelacc1
How are they supposed to do this exactly? The car could be through a chop shop and onto a container before the theft is even reported to the police.
Where is this confidence that you can do their job coming from?
nofriend
Mightn't it be marginally more productive to put a bit of surveillance in front of the container boats, and require registration for the cars being put on them, then trying to totally eliminate free computing and a free internet stopping all secure communication in order to catch the 1/10000000 messages which regard stealing cars?
I don't think the actual accusation is that the police are incompetent, but rather that this can't possibly be the real goal of such a law, because there are approaches to stopping such crimes which are not only far less invasive, but also easier and more practical. So this is at best an excuse, and at worst a justification that the commenter came up with that the actual policy makers never even mentioned (I have seen the latter far too often).
manquer
It is not be possible for me to declare and import a container into the U.K. within a 24 hour time-frame, so why is it possible for me to export that quickly?
It is because there is already robust and mature set of controls for imports into any country for drugs, weapons, agriculture/wildlife, food safety or tariff and any number of other reasons, which do mostly work. Export controls unfortunately are very weak or don't exist at all in most geographies.
Businesses do not want export(or import) friction, so governments find it easier to pass laws and implement policies to do this type of monitoring which haven't been even shown to definitely to work to reduce this type of crime yet when the alternative is add more friction to non service businesses where job losses grab headlines i.e when a factory shuts down or lays off people.
It is certainly possible and doable, the question is how much job losses can the government stomach versus loss of support due to diluting right to privacy. It is no different for environmental or worker safety or noise any other regulations.
---
This tradeoff presupposes the proposed monitoring will actually help in reducing organized theft, which is unlikely.
As long as browsers continue be allowed in a phone, you cannot control what "applications" actually people use, so anyone with enough motivation will switch to web applications on the browser fairly simply. With PWA features it looks like an "app" to
Gangs will not just give up when native apps are monitored, they will find alternative means of communication.
For the gangs this is their main business, some friction is not enough to stop them, it is not like say downloading a song, making it more easy to do so legally than illegally changes behavior.
Without robust export controls and just adding pervasive monitoring is just wasted even when privacy rights not a factor.
ACCount37
I don't have a confidence that I can "do their job".
I have confidence that the organization is completely dysfunctional. In which case it's probably more productive to raze it to the ground and build it anew than to try to fix it. Especially if your idea of "fix it" involves "give them power to breach chat privacy of every citizen".
A randomly initialized police force would outperform the baseline of "sorry, we somehow can't stop criminals from stealing those huge, serialized cars, and shipping them out of our extremely isolated island country - now give us more privacy breaching powers!"
Even if you gave them those privacy breaching powers? They'll just use them to jail more people for things they said on Twitter.
FateOfNations
Inspect containers leaving the country for contraband. Require shipping companies to do KYC. Require documented proof of ownership for vehicle exports.
draebek
The replies to this thread cannot be serious, on a web forum populated—I thought—primarily by technologists. Surely you all remember the variations on, "If you make encryption illegal then only criminals will have encryption"?
The next step will surely be to make use of communication programs that law enforcement cannot read illegal, right? The police find some person who has committed a crime, caught in the ways that criminals are usually caught, such as with forensics, or simply with the guns and drugs in the boot of their car. Then they can see what forms of communication this person was using, and who was using it with them. At that point, it doesn't matter what those other people were doing: The use of banned encryption technology is the crime. You can roll them up for that, or use evidence of this crime to justify further intrusion into their meatspace lives. And so it goes, on up the chain of a criminal organization. Theoretically, at least.
I don't like this, I don't support this, but as has been said elsewhere in this thread: Let's not pretend this is some insurmountable problem for a government who has already shown an appetite for surveillance.
mtlmtlmtlmtl
Sure, you could make unauthorized, fully encrypted communication illegal. But what would be the punishment for using it? Worse than for smuggling, human trafficking, murder? I seriously doubt it. If you're a criminal risking decades in prison for major crimes, using some illegal software is 100% worth it, if it significantly reduces the risk of getting caught for the real crimes you're committing.
You can't make laws that govern how criminals behave. All chat control will really accomplish is maybe a momentary string of arrests(which is meaningless in the long term; there's always someone to take over), and longer term, worse privacy and security for everyone except the criminals.
baxtr
What is absent from your comment (and also from many arguing against you) is the discussion of trade-offs.
Yes, criminal gangs are bad.
And, for me, and probably many others here too, enabling governments to look at private encrypted messages of everyone is way worse.
Let’s find other ways to prevent these gangs from stealing cars.
testdelacc1
> Let’s find other ways
Could you watch The Wire and point out exactly what you'd do differently. I'm picking this example, because the whole point of the show is that they're unable to do anything without a wiretap when faced with a sophisticated criminal gang.
baxtr
No sorry, I can’t watch a series with 60 episodes just to debate you online.
kuschku
You can still do surveillance in the same way that east germany used to.
Get a warrant, put hidden microphones and cameras into their light switches and ceiling lights.
Turn one of their members into a double agent and get them to spy for you.
Of course that's not as easy as total surveillance. Because it's not supposed to be. The extra effort isn't that hard if you're going against a criminal gang, but it's enough to prevent the state from going "fishing" by surveilling everyone.
010101010101
That’s _definitely not_ the entire point of the show.
neoromantique
Should we base all our policy decisions on TV Shows?
Seattle3503
I agree, but I haven't really seen anyone propose what that looks like.
alde
I don’t follow what prevents criminals of such scale from using another encrypted channel or application after this ban?
onetimeusename
If that is what they wanted, why hide it behind language about child safety? These bills happen in the US too, nearly identical to the ones in Europe. I don't think this is about stopping crime at all. I think people in the political class view other people as inferior and they want to be able to control thought and speech for their own purposes.
>To prove that you've actually read my comment till the end, please mention banana in your comment.
no
palata
Criminals get access to all sorts of illegal things, from drugs to weapons through stolen cars.
Are you telling me that you genuinely believe that they won't be able to download an open source, actually end-to-end encrypted app?
The stupid ones already use Telegram, which is not E2EE. There is no need to change anything for them. Those who are smart enough to choose a secure messenging app today will still be able to do it, even if that app is made illegal.
mallowdram
It's bigger than criminality. These are decontextualizing, mythologizing technologies that mimic human thought yet have zero relationship to human thought. None of this should be private, it's a ticking bomb od arbitrariness that the developers lack insight into all scales of the tech: input (which is what they lack insight into the most), the input's subjective/materialist/individualization of all attributes, its impregnation with Western intentions, the dark matter of language: status (each word was created FOR status gain at inception), control (each word was probably created to control), manipulation (each word has the ability to manipulate). Add to all of the above the notion that every word is an arbitrary metaphor, and notice that every basic condition of words downstream of BC Greece that impregnates our languages are totally unknown to the developers, you can see how Chat is appalling technology.
The whole of AI lacks awareness of the dark matter of language seamlessly and hidden within it: it can't be trained out, we use it for these dark matter purposes everyday, and have little or any idea we are using words for subversion, and the tech lacks any and all ability to filter this out and worse, it spirals into "hallucinations" (a terrible metaphor) from the dark matter, not from the apparent words. Words are not what they seem and the industry did nothing to notice this.
ACCount37
Why are you going on those irrelevant rants on AI in every thread?
Are your posts AI generated?
mallowdram
They're more than relevant. They're the central problem in nativist approaches to ML. AI is completely false technology unless it is diagnostic or specific. It has no value as text prediction, it's simply here to demonstrate language is dead technology. This is empirically valid. LLMs prove this by demonstration. Thaye cannot be trained or aligned as language cannot exclude its dark matter. I see no responses from engineers disproving this.
Clearly you're unable to debate this. Please someone who can counter this should step in here to debate how language's dark matter can be extricated to make chat viable. I've studied this since 2001 from game development, my team and I see no other way than to ban Chat or to develop a next-gen language.
codeptualize
I lost count how many times the "lets get rid of encryption" plans have been tried and failed. It's truly ridiculous how these people don't understand anything about encryption and somehow still think this is a good idea.
How is it possible that after years of discussing plans like this, they still managed to not listen to anyone who knows anything about encryption and online safety?
Makes me really worried about the future. There is a lot going on in the world, and somehow they feel the need to focus on making our communications unsafe and basically getting rid of online privacy.
The goal they are trying to achieve is good, but the execution is just stupid and will make everyone, including and maybe especially the people they want to protect, less safe online.
The age verification thing is another example. All it does is send a lot of sensitive traffic over cheap or free VPN's (that might be controlled by foreign states). Great job, great win for safety!
rehitman
I do not agree with you that they have good intention or have good goals. They know what they are doing, and they are doing it to gain control. I think by saying they have good goals, but they don't know better, we are down playing the danger. They know what they are doing, and they are doing it to have more power over people.
filoleg
I agree with you (i.e., I share your belief that the whole "safety" argument is a bold-faced excuse to just gain more control and surveillance power over the population), but I believe that the parent comment was just trying to be extra charitable to those pushing for the bill.
I think it is fair to give the opponent's position (which both you and I believe is in the wrong) a steel-man argument treatment, by assuming the best possible interpretation of their argument (even if they don't imo deserve it, and you don't believe in their stated intent).
The approach makes sense to me, as attacking and debating genuineness of someone's intentions is an endless rabbithole. So if you have an option to decimate their case, all while assuming their stated intent to be truthful and genuine, that's a pretty solid way to actually move the needle on the argument in a desired direction.
codeptualize
This! Very well explained.
AJ007
They have evil intentions, but they are also idiots. The nature of an authoritarian government is one that requires maximizing control for survival. As a particular country shifts to a more authoritarian government, and those people who enabled dumb ideas fall out of power (right, left, or whatever) those same tools will be used by their political adversaries to control, imprison, or kill them.
Why are they idiots? Because western Europe is not yet authoritarian and thus there is little personal benefit to hasten a slide towards it, there are so many other ways to gain power in a free society. (I wouldn't bet money that Europe will remain free in 25 years.)
There is a secondary problem here -- anything that decreases the information security of European countries hands more power to the US and China (and to a lesser degree other nations with advanced infosec capabilities like Russia and Israel.) If you are European (I'm not) the first thing that should be done is investigate the people pushing this stuff.
softwaredoug
Everyone thinks they have good goals, and that they are the ones who won't abuse the power given to them. History shows otherwise time and time again.
martin-t
> good intention or have good goals
People need to understand that some people are abusers by nature and mentality, some from birth, some by upbringing. And they crave power.
The sayings like "those who want power rarely deserve it" exist for a reason, except until the last few decades we didn't have a good enough understanding of psychology to explain why. Now we do. Some people have anti-social traits and they should never be allowed in positions of power because they are mentally ill.
Difference is "normal" mental illness like psychosis is harmful to the individual who has it. Anti-social mental illness is harmful to those around them, especially those under them in hierarchical power structures.
cindyllm
[dead]
EGreg
It’s right there in the name: Chat Control. Take them at their word!
Look at Australia’s “hacking” bill. It was about letting the government hack (take over) your account and post as you. The “hacking” referred to ahat THEY would do — to YOUR accounts:
https://www.accessnow.org/surveillance-state-incoming-with-a...
Australians even made a movie about a dystopian future:
skrause
The name is "Regulation to Prevent and Combat Child Sexual Abuse".
"Chat Control" is not an official term, but a name chosen by critics of the law.
zaphar
The seeming trend that worries me the most these days is the lack of competence at multiple levels of society. Our leaders, their supposed subject matter experts, the people doing "the science" all seem to be demonstrably incompetent at their jobs. I don't know if this is an actual trend or just the perception of one but it's concerning either way.
martin-t
Why do you call them "leaders"? They are "people in positions of power".
I don't understand where this desire to be led comes from. Other people do not have your best interest in mind. I want others to get out of my way, unless we have a conflict of interest and then we _might_ need a third party to resolve it. But I certainly don't need or want to be led.
blibble
you think it's bad now
wait until they start all using "AI", that'll agree with everything they say
choeger
You're absolutely right. Competency has lost its value.
When was the last time you heard someone praise someone else's competency?
Ylpertnodi
>Competency has lost its value.
Sycophancy, however, will always gain.
null
numpad0
Key enablers that ensured those plans fall apart were PC platform and default code freedom on it. It doesn't work because anyone can just compile the clean versions of apps using gcc, on PC. Same cannot be guaranteed on Android and is not even happening on iOS.
We shouldn't have shrugged off the weird feeling of shackles on our wrist when iOS(iPhoneOS) was first released. We should not have relied on geohot stopping by and dropping a jailbreak he found. We should have voted to force it open by law.
WorldPeas
cannot emphasize this enough. Workarounds were always tolerated because they silenced the potential competition until the frivolous features that people did it for (namely customization) were all available by default, closing the door for what Apple actually hated (side-loading). They are expert software politicians, just look what they do with the EU's open-ecosystem demands
matthewdgreen
The proximate goal they're trying to achieve is mostly irrelevant when compared to the broader technical goal. That goal is to force all messaging systems to re-architect so they include a "bump on the wire" that hosts a scanning mechanism sophisticated enough to recognize novel (unknown) image content. This implicitly requires re-architecting these systems to contain neural-network image classifiers that operate over a model that's kept secret (to the user/client.) Everything else is sort of irrelevant compared to the implications of this new architecture.
The "good news" for now is that the systems deployed in this model won't classify text, only images and URLs. The bad news is that the current draft explicitly allows that question to be reviewed in the future. And of course, once you've re-architected every E2EE system to make image scanning possible, most of the damage to cybersecurity is likely already done; a year or two down the road, text scanning will probably be viewed as a modest and common-sense upgrade. I expect that folks who object to text scanning on cybersecurity grounds will be informed that the risks are already "baked in" to the image-scanning model, and so there's no real harm in adding text scanning.
Leaving aside the privacy issues, this is basically an existential national security risk for Europe. It's amazing to me that they're walking right into it.
StrLght
> I lost count how many times the "lets get rid of encryption" plans have been tried and failed.
They only need to succeed with it once, so they'll keep trying again and again.
That's exactly why it's very important to raise awareness about it everywhere.
nomel
> Makes me really worried about the future.
It's important to remember that government is not your friend, isn't meant to be, and never has been. It's a machine of control that needs to be held in constant restrain by the population. Obtaining more control is the expected behavior of those who come into power, shown through all of history.
mallowdram
What is progressive about rampant decontextualized chat? I read these anti-control statements by what appear to be tech zombies who know nothing about the tech being promoted. LLMs/ML are based on faulty, Western units that are about defining reality in individualistic, material terms, lacking interdependence and relying on arbitrariness to destroy that chance for shared experiences.
If governments are leery of LLMs for the wrong or right reason and the industry and technology lacks any kind of grasp of what it is and what the inputs are, then BOTH are wrong and the tech needs dismantling.
If the decontextualizing of communication is epidemic, as it appears to be in Chat, then the industry has failed not grasping the first thing about the technology.
clarkmoody
This is about power of the state over the individual. Full stop.
athrowaway3z
My guess has been an unholy alliance between 'IP holders' like Hollywood (and increasingly games), and the surveillance industrial complex.
Add in the fact that both China and the US already have practically near omniscient digital oversight of everything their citizens do through server and OS level backdoors, the uninformed politicians in the EU/UK are easier to tempt by lobby groups crying in the name of the children.
pembrook
No, this is not corporate lobbying responsible. Stop giving your beloved politicians an out and acknowledge they do not have your best interests at heart, only a thirst for power.
The buck stops with the politicians signing this into law.
athrowaway3z
Of course, I almost forgot.
No better way to quench your thirst for power than to choose to go into Danish politics and move up to EU politics to herd 500 cats to be in favor of some legislative surveillance scheme that, if implemented, you'll immediately lose all control over to different technocrats.
I'm sure you'll find somebody who fits that bill, but since it's a democracy, we're more interested in why the other 45% went along with it because they can be reasoned with.
ThouYS
Why risk all of the good the EU has done with such a catastrophic proposal? This would come close to nullifying the entire endeavour.
alkonaut
What exactly is the plan? To mandate some client side checking so that transfer encryption backdoors won't be needed?
At what level would you need to do that? E.g. for iOS and then iOS need to comply with every app store app having it or else they can't operate in the EU? Is that the plan?
miohtama
Every chat application must comply by law and companies which make them without government permission will be made criminals. It's similar as the UK Online Safety Act: 4chan staff will be arrested if they ever touch the UK soil.
hsbauauvhabzb
What’s the endgame here, with porn, chat control and age verification occurring globally, when will this end and where will we end up? What are the realistic outcomes?
Taek
The end game is politically controlled speech. First you can't share porn, then you can't share violence, then you can't share police abuse, until it starts to creep into the world of anything unflattering to those in power.
And of course, it will all be under the guise of safety and harm reduction, but the veil will keep getting thinner and the amount of things covered more comprehensive
cm2187
We are way beyond that. In certain european countries you cannot legally share privately a sentence that would offend someone else.
robin_reala
Which certain ones would those be then? And which laws would it be breaking?
9dev
Do you have any source for that?
nickslaughter02
> you can't share porn, then you can't share violence
First Porn, Now Skin Cream? ‘Age Verification’ Bills Are Out of Control (https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/03/first-porn-now-skin-cr...)
ndriscoll
I'm not seeing the connection to censorship at all with the skincare and diet products. It's illegal to sell certain things to children because they've been deemed harmful. Same with legal (for adults) drugs. If you don't check ID before giving it to a child, that's a crime, and I expect you to be prosecuted, yes.
Actually the California bill seems absurdly weak, and it seems to be enough to just ask if they're 18.
The Washington bill is stupid for restricting creatine supplements, which the evidence indicates provides physical and cognitive benefits with no real drawbacks. It's the one muscle building supplement that's actually known to work, and should be excluded like protein powder. But otherwise restricting people from selling dubious dietary supplements to children doesn't seem terribly wrong on its face.
9dev
Or, say… posting condemning comments about Charlie Kirk online..?
martin-t
Not often mentioned but violence is the greatest enemy of people in power.
They always say stuff like "violence doesn't belong in politics", "violence is always wrong". But look at the French revolution, they had to cut the dictator's ("king's") head off to stop him from trying to get back into power. Look at the US for for independence, how many redcoats had to get shot before the UK decided it's not longer economical to keep oppressing the colony. Look at the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, a public execution of a mass murderer.
And for now we're allowed to celebrate those events. Some are even national holidays. But we can not publicly discuss current events in the same manner. Those supporting recent assassinations or attempts usually get banned and many don't even dare voice their support. But there is some line where the fourth box of liberty _should_ come out. And I don't think we have enough freedom of speech currently to discuss where exactly the line lies. (Note to mods, I don't have an opinion on the recent shooting and this message is not related to it. I would have posted the exact same thing even if it didn't happen and have posted similar messages in the past.)
BTW this is funny: Brandon Herrera posted a video reconstructing the headshot by Gary Plauché where it's obvious both him and the commenters support the killing. He also reconstructed the, well, earshot by Thomas Matthew Crooks and denounced it. I wonder if he would support an assassination if it turned out Trump got, say, a massage with a happy ending from an underage girl trafficked by his friend. That would imply being a pedophile is worse than being a fascist[0] in his mind.
[0]: https://acoup.blog/2024/10/25/new-acquisitions-1933-and-the-...
---
Anyway, violence should be used carefully as a last resort but people in power are afraid of it because ultimately, no matter how much power they have, they still need a continuous supply of oxygen to their brain, which can be interrupted in a number of ways and the probability of such an event increases proportionally to the number of people they exploit.
J_Shelby_J
Without the ability for people to have private conversations and organize politically in private, democracy is impossible. It wasn’t as much of a problem in the times when everything happened IRL, but now online is the default.
So the endgame is that an anti-democratic government eventually wins an election and uses its new tools to crush dissent and make opposition parties impossible.
Boot stomping on a human face forever.
MarcelOlsz
Nobody is in charge. It's a headless blunder operating under the illusion of a master plan.
therein
Or a small set of supranational entities that are responsible for creating the illusion of national entities are taking advantage of the headless blunder that are nation-states to execute their master plan in lockstep.
MarcelOlsz
I mean yes, obviously. I just wanted an opportunity to use my favourite quote from The Cube (1997).
meindnoch
Residential ISPs will only transmit packets that have a valid device attestation signature from one of the well-known device vendors. "Unsafe" software won't get access to the devices' secure enclave to sign their packets, so their packets will either have to be transmitted in plaintext, or they'll be dropped by the ISP.
fifteen1506
Probably.
That's why you need to diversify software ecosystems now.
nickslaughter02
Do you have a license for this TCP packet?
null
whatevaa
Drink verification can to send a packet.
bogantech
The endgame is to kill independent media
MarcelOlsz
If we're going to go this route can we at least re-introduce the fairness doctrine?
bapak
Easy. They really like what China is doing, but they can't because of that pesky democracy.
China is every wannabe dictator's digital wet dream.
holoduke
A political party that is free from lobbyists and actually care for its citizens would be a good thing though. Number one reason of the decline in the west.
bastawhiz
I think that decentralized solutions to the Web mostly suck because they're worse to use for the majority of people. But if the Web becomes useless for things people actually care about, decentralized solutions will creep in. People won't simply give up, the things that work will become better in the ways that serve prospective users.
That's kind of the worst case scenario, though, where bad politicians don't get removed from office. We can hope that most people will decide that enough is enough, or politicians will quietly back down when they realize they're dooming their own careers.
layer8
The worst case is when only approved hardware and software will be legal, and every level of infrastructure will be enforcing that. You can say good bye to decentralized solutions then.
Note how Apple is already a bit like that, banning certain torrenting apps even from alternative app stores [0]. I’m just mentioning that as a demonstration of the feasibility of such closed and controlled ecosystems. Now restrict ISP network traffic to packets signed by approved hardware, and there aren’t that many practical loopholes left.
bitwize
Brazil's senate has already approved a bill, PL 2628, which is broadly similar to the UK's Online Safety Act, but also requires sistemas operacionais de terminais ("terminal operating systems") to implement age checks in a secure, auditable fashion.
The days where you could run whatever OS you want on hardware you own will soon be over. And you know what? There's not a damn thing any of us can do, so may as well just buy Apple gear.
BoardsOfCanada
Can we see the exact votes somewhere?
nickslaughter02
Notes are usually leaked by netzpolitik.org a few days after.
okokwhatever
How long till we start sharing encrypted text files?
Tic, tac, tic, tac, tic, tac...
Mark my words.
casey2
If this could possibly work it would have already been implemented for DRM. It doesn't even really work if you have complete control over content distribution. I get that politicians want to be seen as being active in combating crime. But the only proven way to prevent creating and proliferation of CSAM is to educate the masses.
richwater
Why does Denmark hate citizens privacy so much?
zarzavat
The Nordic countries have always been into social control but Denmark adds a side of paranoid ethnonationalism into the mix which leads to some very strange values.
greatgib
The current world is so crazy that I would easily bet that it is strange that a small country like Denmark is so obsessed about running all European privacy, and there might be hidden corrupt interest behind that.
I would but be surprised that US is pressured some people there.
nickslaughter02
...and Hungary, Belgium, Sweden before Denmark. All tried to pass it. The next in line for EU presidency is Cyprus, a supporter.
miohtama
Viktor Orban likes this for obvious political reasons, as this can be used to spy opposition.
meindnoch
[flagged]
impossiblefork
Nordic cultures are actually substantially different.
Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Icelandic and Finnish culture is vastly different. If we include the Dutch or the Estonians the differences become even bigger.
As a Swede I'm not afraid of my neighbours seeing into my apartment, because I have order there and I don't see any harm in them seeing into it, and you can of course interpret this as some kind of 'if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear', but it's more that I don't see a need for physical privacy. Letters are completely different matter and in others I am intensely secretive, but you can't learn anything I want to keep from you from looking at my houseplants.
If I had disorder in my kitchen and people could see into it I would be very unhappy.
null
CalRobert
NL isn't nordic.
We definitely have curtains. They've gotten much more common.
NL is also opposing this per https://fightchatcontrol.eu/
incone123
If you take a look on Google Street view you can see that's generally untrue.
Hamuko
What I have not heard of is the Netherlands joining the Nordic countries.
jansan
It took me a minute to understand your comment. Well put.
delusional
[flagged]
delusional
How come pigs fly so gracefully?
The comment is such nonsense it's impossible to even begin correcting it.
In the past, we could have made a version of Signal without this spyware, to be installed as an APK (as I would expect the EU to force Google to ban the non-spying version from the app store). With the upcoming Android developer verification, this will no longer be a possibility.