EU Chat Control: Germany's position has been reverted to UNDECIDED
142 comments
·September 17, 2025codeptualize
munksbeer
> It's ridiculous that they keep trying this absolutely ridiculous plan over and over again.
There is a certain group of politicians who are pushing for this very hard. In this case, the main thrust seems to be coming from Denmark, but from what I understand there are groups (eg. europol) pushing this from behind the scenes. They need the politicians to get it done.
ThrowawayTestr
Trolltrace is becoming real
Bairfhionn
The exclusion includes politicians because there would suddenly be a paper trail. Especially in the EU there were lots of suddenly lost messages.
Security is just the scapegoat excuse.
erlend_sh
That one line on its own should be enough put the illegitimacy of this proposal on clear display. Privacy for me (the surveillance state) but not for thee (the populace).
p0w3n3d
Oh Harry, don't worry! Everyone can happen to have bloated his aunt by an accident!
I like Ludo. He was the one who got us such good tickets for the Cup. I did him a bit of a favour: His brother, Otto, got into a spot of trouble — a lawnmower with unnatural powers — I smoothed the whole thing over."Longhanks
This chat control topic is undemocratic, allegedly illegal in many jurisdictions (such as Germany), yet, keeps coming up ever and ever again, and the politicians face no consequences whatsoever.
Endeavour like these make people vote for extremists, distrust the EU and democracies, or just give up on politics for good. These EU politicians endangering freedom, justice and democracy must be held accountable, with the most powerful punishments available.
outime
>Endeavour like these make people vote for extremists
Maybe it's time to start considering the current individuals in power as extremists? Just because their speech is more 'peaceful' doesn't mean their actions aren't extremist in nature.
AlecSchueler
> Maybe it's time to start considering the current individuals in power as extremists?
And what would this change?
pclmulqdq
The people in power.
fsflover
> current individuals in power as extremists
Those who support and push anti-constitutional laws, maybe. All individuals in power, no.
singulasar
or maybe let's not?
their actions are clearly not extremist, absolutely not perfect and not always equally democratic, but not extremist or violent like the actual extremists...
that_guy_iain
Or maybe it's time to realise you are the extremist.
ookdatnog
It's not undemocratic. The behavior of the parliament reflects the reality that only a tiny minority of the population care at all about this issue.
One might be tempted to blame a lack of media attention, but I don't think that's it. For example in the US, the Snowden revelations attracted tons and tons of media attention, yet it never became a major topic in elections, as far as I'm aware. No politician's career was ended over it, and neither did new politicians rise based on a platform of privacy-awareness. No one talks about mass surveillance today. No one cares. There is no reason to believe that the situation is different in Europe.
bondarchuk
Parliamentary democracy just fundamentally has a weakness when it comes to single-issue voting. After picking a party to vote on based on housing, economic policy, crime, ..., how much voting power so to say is left for.. which guy the party says they'll send to the european commission? And what that guy's stance on chat-control is? If they're even publicizing that...
robertlagrant
> The behavior of the parliament reflects the reality that only a tiny minority of the population care at all about this issue
Then it's not very democratic to change it.
gadders
It's the EU way - "We will keep holding the vote until we get the result that we want."
aleph_minus_one
> It's the EU way - "We will keep holding the vote until we get the result that we want."
Exactly. There is a reason why more and more EU-skeptical movements gain traction in various EU countries.
delusional
EU skepticism is at a 15 year low, and general approval hasnt been higher since 2007.
Europeans in general like or is indifferent towards the EU.
justinclift
That approach has spectacularly backfired for the UK, as they used to do the same thing too. ;)
FirmwareBurner
What do you mean by backfire?
cynicalsecurity
UK is much worse than EU in terms of privacy and encryption.
yohannparis
And who runs the EU? The MEPs and members of the countries government. It's not like it's a different country imposing their way onto us. Talk/contacts your ministers and MEPs if you want your voice to be represented.
shiandow
Right, because a commission that keeps bringing legislation to a vote until one of those two vote pools gets a majority, despite the law being against my government's constitution (in strong terms), and me having no way to stop it if all representatives of my country voted against, is totally not the EU imposing its way on my country.
Eddy_Viscosity2
> And who runs the EU?
How difficult is it to run? How much money do you need? What are the barriers to success? Is it set up so that only the already rich and powerful can run and win (and therefore they are just pushing their own interests), and if not do you need considerable financial support (and therefore are beholden to the already rich and powerful who funded your campaign)?
like_any_other
The problem is the indirection. Only the European Commission can propose legislation [1], so the legislative direction of the EU is entirely determined by them - MEPs can only slow it down.
And citizens don't vote for the Commission directly, meaning there's a lot of backroom dealing in its selection.
[1] Which also covers, I think, the act of repealing prior legislation.
FpUser
>"Talk/contacts your ministers and MEPs if you want your voice to be represented."
And be told to sod off.
From Wikipedia: [0]-"Currently, there is one member per member state, but members are bound by their oath of office to represent the general interest of the EU as a whole rather than their home state."
moffkalast
Yeah the Commission really needs to go, MEPs need to be able to propose laws. That's really all there is to it to fix the entire situation.
munksbeer
> It's the EU way - "We will keep holding the vote until we get the result that we want."
Please inform yourself or you're in danger of letting things happen through your ignorance. The commission is not pushing this. They're acting on instructions from a certain number of elected politicians.
And, you're misleading others when you post stuff like this.
None of us posting in these topics wants this proposal to pass. And in order to fight it, you've got to be correctly informed.
bluecalm
Don't forget "if we let people vote by some misfortune and their vote is opposite of what we wanted we will overrule it anyway".
p0w3n3d
It's Not Who Votes That Counts, It's Who Counts The Votes
potato3732842
>This chat control topic is undemocratic, allegedly illegal in many jurisdictions (such as Germany), yet, keeps coming up ever and ever again, and the politicians face no consequences whatsoever.
Politicians are basically whores that only use their mouths. They'll say whatever gets them in office and keeps them there. Whether that's simping for extremists, special interests, the teacher's union, etc, etc.
The state(s) wants this and the state itself is an interest that politicians can get ahead by pandering to, no different than any other interest (from their perspective as politicians and more equal animals generally, not our perspective as less equal animals under the boot). When you're talking about elections like the EU's big interest groups, like the state, tend to dominate.
p0w3n3d
European Commission is not a democratic body. No EU citizen voted for them.
munksbeer
The European Commission is a civil service drafting these proposals on instructions from elected politicians.
I am going to keep banging this drum because there is too much ignorance on this topic and it harms the fight against it more than helps.
qnpnp
By this logic, most of EU governments are not democratic bodies either.
bondarchuk
In my country I vote for a person and that person gets a seat in parliament. That is democratic according to this definition.
tjpnz
They need to be named. Shouldn't be able to go anywhere in Brussels (or any city in any member state) without seeing their photo and name on a giant bus shelter poster. I would throw some € in the direction of that.
nickslaughter02
Start with these:
Ylva Johansson from Social Democrats
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ylva_Johansson#Surveillance_of...
Peter Hummelgaard from Social Democrats
Quarrel
I'm not a fan, but in what was is this, or any other topic, undemocratic to have debates and votes on?
The sanctions politicians should face for bringing up unpopular topics should be that they don't get voted for.
> These EU politicians endangering freedom, justice and democracy must be held accountable, with the most powerful punishments available.
Yes. Vote them out. Keep raising it.
LikesPwsh
This topic is undemocratic because it's part of the constant attempts to rephrase and resubmit the same unpopular proposal.
It's p-hacking democracy. If a proposal has 5% chance of passing just resubmit it twenty times under different names with minor variations.
It wastes time that lawmakers could spend on proposals that the public actually want.
Arnt
It hasn't been resubmitted yet, has it? The proponents keep it alive without putting it to an actual vote, AIUI. They try to wait until they think they have a majority, and keep their proposal ready for a vote on short order before their majority dissipates.
Which is many things, I' might call it cynical, but it doesn't seem undemocratic.
rollulus
> Yes. Vote them out. Keep raising it.
How do I vote out hostile countries? I’m Dutch, what can I do with my vote to have effects on Denmark, which seems to be the biggest proponent of this BS?
munksbeer
> How do I vote out hostile countries? I’m Dutch, what can I do with my vote to have effects on Denmark, which seems to be the biggest proponent of this BS?
The same way you can vote out other politicians in your own country - you can't. Assuming you live in (say) Amsterdam, you have no right or control of who people from other regions of the Netherlands vote for.
Xelbair
How do i vote out representatives not from my country? In this case my country is vehemently opposed to this.
How do i vote out representatives if all of them support the measure despite it being unpopular in my country, no matter the faction? That was the case with centralized copyright checking.
EU parliament, and especially EC, are so far removed from any form of accountability, that frankly votes are almost irrelevant - same factions form no matter who's there, and EC runs on rotation.
Lobbying takes prime spot over votes.
EU is sitting in the middle ground between federation and trade union... and we get downsides of both systems.
FirmwareBurner
>Yes. Vote them out. Keep raising it.
OK. How do I vote out Ursula vd Leyen?
nickslaughter02
She's facing two more no confidence votes in October. You just need to convince all 720 members of European Parliament from 27 countries to get rid of her and her commission. Easy.
eqvinox
Next European Parliament election will be in 2029.
Edit: there was a copypaste of voting requirements here, from https://eur-lex.europa.eu/EN/legal-content/summary/voting-ri.... This is apparently wrong; you can also vote if you're not residing in the EU, only EU citizen. (I thought this was the case, and that link not saying that made me suspicious.) How it is possible that they've put up incorrect information on voting rights, I have no clue.
Actual reference, this time legal text: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A...
Any person who, on the reference date:
(a) is a citizen of the Union within the meaning of the second subparagraph of Article 8 (1) of the Treaty;
(b) is not a national of the Member State of residence, but satisfies the same conditions in respect of the right to vote and to stand as a candidate as that State imposes by law on its own nationals,
shall have the right to vote […]
So either citizenship or residency is sufficient.
aleph_minus_one
> How do I vote out Ursula [von der] Leyen?
This can only be done indirectly.
Under https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2024/11/27/which-meps-bac... you can at least find a chart ("Von der Leyen 2 Commission: How political groups voted") how the political groups in the European parliament voted regarding Ursula von der Leyen's second mandate as European Commission President.
fhd2
She was elected by the European parliament. As an EU citizen, you elect that one.
that_guy_iain
> This chat control topic is undemocratic, allegedly illegal in many jurisdictions (such as Germany), yet, keeps coming up ever and ever again, and the politicians face no consequences whatsoever.
How is it undemocratic? Arresting terrorists, drug dealers, child abusers, etc have no impact on democracy. And it's legal for the government to intercept your communications and has been for decades and in fact your communications have been mass monitored for decades and we still have democracy.
> allegedly illegal in many jurisdictions (such as Germany)
Germany is one of the leaders in data requests in the world. They're right on it.
> keeps coming up ever and ever again, and the politicians face no consequences whatsoever.
That's because we have a democracy and people vote on who they want. And if they do what people want they get another few more yeears. So these politicans just following the will of the people.
> Endeavour like these make people vote for extremists, distrust the EU and democracies, or just give up on politics for good.
Those people we can just ignore, they were always going to be on the fringe.
> These EU politicians endangering freedom, justice and democracy must be held accountable, with the most powerful punishments available.
They are not. You've just been blissfully unaware of the world you've been living in, and think this is something new. Nah, the only thing new is that everyone's messages are encrypted. That's the only new thing.
nickslaughter02
A few comments about the state of security and privacy in the UK so let me reply with a top level comment instead:
People forget that the UK has ChatControl. It was made into law as part of the Online Safety Act 2023. It has not been enforced so far because it's not "technically feasible to do so" and because companies threatened to leave the UK with their services. You can be 100% certain it will suddenly become feasible if EU does the same.
> The Act also requires platforms, including end-to-end encrypted messengers, to scan for child pornography, which experts say is not possible to implement without undermining users' privacy.[6] The government has said it does not intend to enforce this provision of the Act until it becomes "technically feasible" to do so.[7] The Act also obliges technology platforms to introduce systems that will allow users to better filter out the harmful content they do not want to see.[8][9]
yuumei
Worth noting that with RIPA (2000, activated in 2007) UK has enforced key disclosure. It is illegal to fail to disclose a password for any data for any reason (including random data).
I would say the UK has worse privacy than any other country on earth. I'm really hoping for plausible deniability to become more common to help protect against the government.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_disclosure_law#United_King...
nickslaughter02
More countries will follow after they ratify Russia's "United Nations Convention against Cybercrime" which has key disclosure explicitly stated in the text.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Convention_agai...
Yokolos
I can't believe with our history involving the Third Reich and the Stasi that we aren't staunchly opposed. Especially with the impending political upheaval when AfD finally gets enough votes to form a ruling government. Our politicians are insanely shortsighted and somehow don't understand the danger they're enabling.
patates
I didn't think this was even possible. Can EU laws actually override the constitutional rights of member states? I was under the impression that the principle of supremacy isn't absolute and doesn't extend to overriding a country's fundamental constitutional rights. If that's not the case, the danger isn't limited to just Germany. With authoritarian regimes gaining power everywhere, it would only take a few of them working together to pass an EU law that makes everything fair game.
piltdownman
For the most part yes, with caveats.
Specifically for Ireland, we are the only EU member state where the Constitution ordains a referendum to validate ratification of any amendments that result in a transfer of sovereignty to the European Union; such as the Nice Treaty which we can prevent from passing on an EU level. Ratification of other Treaties without the sovereignty component is decided upon by the states' national parliaments in all other member states.
Ireland, Netherlands, and Luxembourg also have veto powers when it comes to EU wide regulations. That's why Article 116 exists.
In the particular, the Seville Declaration recognised the right of Ireland (and all other member states) to decide in accordance with National Constitutions and laws whether and how to participate in any activities under the European Security and Defence Policy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seville_Declarations_on_the_Tr...
It's enshrined in German Case Law as 'Identitätsvorbehalt'.
https://www.bpb.de/kurz-knapp/lexika/das-europalexikon/30945...
The Polish constitutional court has also ruled that EU law does not supercede national law. Thus, primacy of EU law is wholly rejected in Poland.
https://www.euronews.com/2021/10/07/polish-court-rules-some-...
aleph_minus_one
> Can EU laws actually override the constitutional rights of member states?
Sometimes yes.
> I was under the impression that the principle of supremacy isn't absolute and doesn't extend to overriding a country's fundamental constitutional rights.
What are a country's fundamental constitutional rights can be "dynamically adjusted" depending on the political wishes. :-(
> With authoritarian regimes gaining power everywhere, it would only take a few of them working together to pass an EU law that makes everything fair game.
There is a reason why more and more EU-skeptical movements gain traction in various EU countries.
impossiblefork
No. The EU isn't a federation, there's no supremacy class. The member countries are sovereign and obviously can't go against their constitutions or basic laws.
p_l
Privacy of communications is usually a normal law not constitutional principle, so slots perfectly fine without any supremacy issues between constitution and EU law.
gpderetta
It is indeed a constitutional principle in many EU countries.
It is also part of the Treaty of Lisbon via the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, which is the closest thing to a constitutional level law for the EU.
Not that this has ever stopped anybody.
DocTomoe
You see, we the people are staunchly opposed. But the interests of our political leaders (we all know what 'leader' translates to) do not align with out interests. So ...
The problem is that this is not a party issue. This is a leadership issue. Power corrupts. The only way out of his is a massive overhaul of the political system that makes 'professional politicians' a thing of the past.
munksbeer
> You see, we the people are staunchly opposed.
Doubtful. We on hackernews are staunchly opposed. Most regular people either support or don't care.
selfunaware
AfD is under the watch of spionage agencies but somehow they are THE risk, not the legacy parties and bureaucracy.
Stevvo
You say this while Germany is actively supporting a genocide in Palestine. The world has really turned on its head.
varispeed
> Third Reich and the Stasi
It looks like German population actually enjoys these things. Third time lucky?
edit: how would you explain lack of protests or that the authors of proposal don't face criminal investigation? After all this is authoritarian regime refresh, just without the labels.
WinstonSmith84
Yes, Germany is very hypocritical, a lot of people have short memories.
On another hand, Germany is on the spotlight because it's the country which is going to decide at the end. Less critics about the usual suspects who love to restrict personal freedoms like France, Spain, Italy ..
dsign
I think the surveillance state is gonna stay; we have been slipping into it just so and every electronic system out there wants to spy on us, beginning with our Windows and Mac computers and even the Sonos speaker. Small mystery that police forces want their slice of pie so badly.
Freedom of expression has been of a limited nature already for some years (just cast Israel in a bad light in USA and see what happens). With the coming wave of AI-powered surveillance, which may be even powerful enough to read your sexual orientation from examining direction and duration of glances in survtech feeds, we just need a small misstep (say, another twin towers-type catastrophe) for even freedom of thought to become a privilege to be had in isolated and protected places.
Source: I write dystopias on the subject. https://w.ouzu.im
p0w3n3d
It's been constantly weakened and people were always saying "don't worry, we will find a workaround, we should do nothing".
ptero
Freedom of speech is doing not great, but still OK in the US. The government is not prosecuting for speech, which is what the free speech protections can and should guarantee.
What now happens more is that big private companies, having huge influence on individual life in everything from communication to banking, attack people for their views. The cure for it might be to ease and speed up the way for people to push back against that. From de-monopolization to government mediators and arbitrage binding for companies (but not for the individuals so they can still sue), etc.
ookdatnog
> The government is not prosecuting for speech, which is what the free speech protections can and should guarantee.
This has absolutely started happening, albeit not yet on a large-scale, systematic basis. Mahmoud Khalil [0] resided in the US legally when he was detained with the intention to deport.
DocTomoe
Between 'the government is no prosecuting for speech' and 'the government makes up unrelated charges when they do not like your speech', as seem to happen a lot these days is only a very, very thin line. Rümeysa Öztürk comes to mind [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detention_of_Rümeysa_Öztürk
nickslaughter02
> "I find it extremely worrying that the German government is so shirking its responsibility to take a position on this," said Left Party MP Donata Vogtschmidt, who chairs her group's digital committee. "Because in the Council of the EU, the current blocking minority against chat control depends directly on Germany." If the German government does not stick to the position of its predecessor, "the dam could break and the largest surveillance package the EU has ever seen could become reality."
> Jeanne Dillschneider, Green Party spokesperson on the committee, wrote to netzpolitik.org about her impression of the meeting: "The CDU/CSU, in particular, has often shown in the past how little the protection of fundamental digital rights means to them. I fear the same thing will happen now, even more so, with the CDU/CSU-led Ministry of the Interior." She therefore considers it "all the more crucial whether the Ministry of Justice upholds our fundamental digital rights during this legislative period."
> "I'm cautiously hopeful that some colleagues from the coalition parties apparently share my criticism of chat control," Dillschneider continues. "The question now will be whether they can actually bring themselves to reject chat control. However, I'm not particularly optimistic here."
> Dillschneider's committee colleague, Vogtschmidt, wants to ensure that the Bundestag is forced to take a position on the issue beyond statements made in committee meetings. This is permitted by Article 23 of the Basic Law, which allows parliament to adopt European policy statements. The government must then consider these in negotiations. Vogtschmidt believes: "Now I think chat control will have to be brought back to the Bundestag plenary session to raise awareness of this monstrous danger among a wider public. I will work towards this in the coming days!"
littlecranky67
Can someone please explain to me how that law will prevent anything or anybody from encrypted messaging, if I can just whip up a website and use javascript plus websockets/webrtc to implement encrypted chat? Like, yes, you can prevent the FANANG from implementing it, but criminals will just use the secure one...
probably_wrong
I believe the concept is that I may not be able to jail you for your criminal activity but I can still jail you for breaking the encryption law.
But more generally I think one has to account for the power of the default option - with so many criminals posting their crimes on social media and/or their Venmo descriptions, the likelihood of criminals abandoning (say) WhatsApp and coding their own is rather slim.
nickslaughter02
It will not. Criminals will move elsewhere and they will be spying on regular citizens. As intended.
cindyllm
[dead]
brainzap
Why cant they just record meta data and hand it out on courts order. Why must it be a backdoor
AndyMcConachie
As a Dutch citizen Chat Control is the first time I genuinely wish the Netherlands was not part of the EU.
Freak_NL
That seems naive — this was pushed by several Dutch ministers over the past decades. It would have been made law here in any case.
Law and order, tuff-on-crime political parties (PVV, VVD, CDA¹) just love the idea of control over citizen's chat messages.
This is not 'because of the EU'. We are part of the EU and influence its policies.
DonHopkins
Wish we the public could read all the private chat logs of all the people who decided to be undecided.
tietjens
What does this mean for `Datenschutz` in Germany? I can't imagine the courts would let this stand.
eqvinox
Datenschutz doesn't prevent court-ordered telecomms surveillance either. This would presumably fall in the same category. (Or in fact be unconstitutional, as BVerfG has already ruled several times regarding blanket data collection in other context.)
tietjens
Ah, so my email address is highly private info. But all of my communications are not. Great.
DocTomoe
No, you see, you can trust Father State. He would never ever do anything bad with your data. Trust him. 1933-1945? 1948-1990? Those were ... different times. He's been on a twelve steps program. He's better now.
Data to private companies? That baker that remembers your telelphone number that's DANGEROUS. He could sell the info how many breadrolls you buy per week to the FSB or the MSS. Also, we would lose a chance to add extra fines to small and medium companies, and no-one wants that, do we? ⸮
The older I become, the more 'government' - regardless of the colors it is wearing at the time - looks like Thénardier to me.
aleph_minus_one
> What does this mean for `Datenschutz` in Germany?
Datenschutz - Schmatenschutz.
"Datenschutz" is something that politicians talk about in their "Sonntagsreden" [Sunday sermons; a term hard to translate into English]. During the rest of the week, the politicians pass laws to gouge out civil liberties (because of "think of the children", "terrorists", "child abusers", "right-wing movements" - whatever is opportune in the current political climate).
tietjens
I get what you mean, but Datenschutz and the bizarre processes built to appease it make an appearance almost every day here.
flumpcakes
People are so emotive about this issue and the online safety act in the UK. They jump to conclusions that applied to any other issue would be conspiratorial.
It's not about "control" and "spying". The fact is it is policing that has been made extremely hard due to technology.
silk road was only busted because the guy had his http proxy responding on the VPS's IP and not just the tor eth. Silly mistake and unfathomably good luck that someone in the investigating team was just googling around.
The politicians are lay people, and only have one tool in their toolbox: laws. So every solution is a legal one.
"Sorry we can't catch the people sexually abusing one million children every year because they use a VPN." Solution? Create a law requiring VPNs to be registered to a user with their address. There's no conspiracy here - it's simple cause and effect. This is a contrived worst case example because this level of accountability? is not currently proposed.
I would prefer other solutions, but these solutions are firstly much easier for the politicians to understand and also much cheaper to implement and see results.
Bairfhionn
But they do find them without the tools. Every other week there are terror suspects arrested. Every week some pedophiles are arrested.
If something does happen later it comes out that the suspects were known already but they just didn't act on the suspicion.
ethin
This is utter nonsense. The "technology and encryption make law enforcement harder" narrative is pushed by people to gain power. That's all there is to it. Technology has, if anything, made surveillance and law enforcement so much easier than it ever has been before. Law enforcement always wants to look helpless and like the victim though because they want absolute control over your life.
pakitan
> "Sorry we can't catch the people sexually abusing one million children every year because they use a VPN."
Bullshit. The UK police basically ignored a pedophile ring under their noses, with zero VPNs involved. I'm not expert on the matter but I'm pretty sure a E2E is not an essential part of sexual abuse.
One interesting line in the proposal:
> Detection will not apply to accounts used by the State for national security purposes, maintaining law and order or military purposes;
If it's all very safe and accurate, why is this exception necessary? Doesn't this say either that it's not secure, or that there is a likely hood that there will be false positives that will be reviewed?
If they have it all figured out, this exception should not be necessary. The reality is that it isn't secure as they are creating backdoors in the encryption, and they will flag many communications incorrectly. That means a lot of legal private communications will leak, and/or will be reviewed by the EU that they have absolutely no business looking into.
It's ridiculous that they keep trying this absolutely ridiculous plan over and over again.
I also wonder about the business implications. I don't think we can pass compliance if we communicate over channels that are not encrypted. We might not be able to do business internationally anymore as our communications will be scanned and reviewed by the EU.