EU Council Approves New "Chat Control" Mandate Pushing Mass Surveillance
45 comments
·November 28, 2025piker
SiempreViernes
Well, the impression of speed is mainly in the head of the headline writers.
What has actually happened is that after about three years of faffing about the Council finally decided on it negotiation position begore the Coreper 2 meeting last week, thought it seems they ran put of time at actual the meeting and had to have the formal approval this week.
The Council is only one of three parties that draft new laws, so now there's are still several rounds of negotiations left.
Nothing substantial has happened to the three texts since last week, it's just that "chat control is back" drives traffic and "Council preparatory body formally approves draft position that got consensus previously but didn't formally get passed because people were fighting over Ukraine stuff for too long" doesn't.
arlort
Because it doesn't, people are just embarrassingly ignorant of how the EU legislative process works so when a vote to give first approval to a text is cancelled before it takes place journalists and reddit all over pull out the mission accomplished banners and when a negotiating position is approved everyone has a surprised pikachu face
The "proposal" was made something like 3 years ago, the killing never happened and the passing, if it passes, will happen in at least one year from now because this will definitely take a long time to get through parliament and even longer to get through the trilogue.
The process is many things but quick it is not
iLoveOncall
You are a fool if you think the UK is better. I've moved from the EU to the UK and it is worse in every way when it comes to authoritarian measures.
I'm not sure how you can have already forgotten the fact that we have to upload or face or ID to access websites.
poszlem
I think he meant that as "I live in the UK where this is already bad, yet the EU still ended up worse.".
cbeach
In the UK we've had an authoritarian Conservative government for 14 years, followed by an even more authoritarian Labour government, which we'll have until 2029.
In 2029 it's likely we'll have a more libertarian government:
https://www.politico.eu/europe-poll-of-polls/united-kingdom/...
Reform will repeal some of the awful legislation that's been passed over the last few years (e.g. Online Safety Act). They've been loud critics of government overreach.
https://www.ft.com/content/886ee83a-02ab-48b6-b557-857a38f30...
forgotoldacc
America also has a party that always runs on the idea of small government and restoring rights to the people. Every time they get power, they do the exact opposite.
jbstack
"a more libertarian government"
As long as you are white British. If you're anything else you're probably going to be worse off under Farage.
It's a shame that if you want to vote for someone with different policies to the two main parties, you have to accept that you are also voting for an outspoken racist. Then again, if he wasn't, he probably wouldn't be popular enough to win.
Ylpertnodi
> Reform will repeal some of the awful legislation that's been passed over the last few years (e.g. Online Safety Act). They've been loud critics of government overreach.
A lot of politicians change when they get in power.
paganel
Because that's what autocracies in anything but name usually do. Who's going to stop them?
Simulacra
That could be a result of the Parliamentary style system. With multiple parties - each sharing a part of the government - proposals and alliances can shift rapidly. It all depends on how big the pie becomes for each to get a slice
margorczynski
How they're packaging it now? Terrorism? Child porn? Russian agents?
Either way politicians prefer to push unpopular stuff like this via the EU because the responsibility gets muddied - "we didn't want it, the EU regulation requires us to spy on you!".
SiempreViernes
It's important to know that the "new" in the title is entirely made up, it's the same draft as last week when they just ran out of time at the meeting, probably because they were fighting about Ukraine stuff.
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permo-w
why are specifically the Danish so obsessed with pushing this through? it always seems to come back to them
epolanski
Lobbying.
EU delegates and council members have to report their meetings with lobbyists.
Palantir and Thorn lobbyists (just the most famous ones, but you can add another few dozens security and data companies) are recorded meeting many times with countless of them, including Ursula von der Leyen.
It's really as simple as that, sales pitches convincing them of all the benefits of having more intelligence "to catch criminals (wink)".
Macha
Partly it's because the Danish have the rotating EU presidency at the moment so they have the job of pushing things forward (which also means receiving the most lobbying). In the previous wave earlier in the year, it was the Polish for the same reason.
Partly it's they don't have the same pro-privacy culture that say Germany and many of the eastern european countries have.
People also think the current Danish PM was also offended by a former prominent Danish politician and cabinet minister who was arrested for CSAM possession.
permo-w
I wonder how aware they are of the damage to the EU's reputation that they're continually creating by repeatedly bringing this back
I think this theme of the EU, this lack of taboo against continually bringing unwanted laws until they pass by fatigue, it may well be the death of the institution as a whole. every time they try, every time people hear about it, more and more think worse of the EU, and unlike most western governments, the existence and function of the EU is actually severely vulnerable to what people think of it. no other major government takes as much reputational damage from laws that don't even pass, and the existence of no other major government is as vulnerable to reputational damage as the EU is right now. all it takes is another 1 or 2 major exits and the whole thing will slowly collapse, which is insanely sad
Macha
The UK government laundering unpopular regulations through the EU and then blaming the EU for them even when the UK had proposed and often championed then was definitely a factor in Brexit passing.
Somewhat relevantly, the UK already has their own version of this legislation in the Online Safety Act which lead to a bunch of small-medium UK community sites closing and the likes of Imgur, pixiv and 4chan blocking the UK.
arlort
The council of the EU operates on a rotating chair model (which gets called Presidency, sometimes Presidency of the EU)
It's currently held by Denmark so it's the Danish delegation that's mostly doing the brokering etc for this semester
sillyfluke
I guess it never hurts to try and find alternate ways of placating the US in order to make them get over their Greenland obession.
concinds
The US pressured the UK to withdrawn encryption backdoors.
AndrewSwift
It would be nice to have details:
It rewards or penalizes online services depending on whether they agree to carry out “voluntary” scanning, effectively making intrusive monitoring a business expectation rather than a legal requirement.
jeroenhd
This is the same way the law in many EU countries mandates ISPs to store communication logs for every internet subscriber for months or longer.
The legal mandate was shot down by the EU courts, but every country then figured out their own loophole and as a result data retention is effectively mandatory but not by clear and public law.
raverbashing
Exactly this
But people like to sensationalize stuff
This is less worse than the original proposal
Oh and honestly game chat rooms should not be private.
(of course personal 1:1 messages should)
jeroenhd
This achieves every goal the original proposal achieved, except the wording is sneakier.
Services are obligated to do risk analysis and take appropriate safety precautions against high risk actions. High risk actions include "anonymous accounts", "uploading media", and of course "encrypted messages".
The moment they catch the next random pedo, every messenger app on their phone will be tasked with explaining why they didn't do enough to stop the pedo. They'd better get their business together next time, because otherwise they might be held liable!
There's no law that says you have to hand over arbitrary data to the police without a warrant but when Telegrams shady owner landed in france, he was locked up until his company pledged to "work together with police better".
Don't be fooled by pretty words, none of this optional stuff is optional for any messenger the government doesn't already have the ability to read along with.
snvzz
Business, eh. Maybe it's time to go open source and fully distributed peer-to-peer. Something like Tox[0] or SimpleX[1].
The (actual) solution should be to fix legislation to adequate protect privacy, because they'll attack this next.
But meantime, a technical solution is better than nothing.
IlikeKitties
> Hi Mom, please install this peer to peer dark net chat to talk to me in the future, thanks Oh honey, why don't we just use iMessage instead. Thx bye.
mrtksn
[dupe] 135 comments : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46062777
dupedupedupe
Thank you ChrisArchitect. That story was mysteriously (downranked/downmodded/deranked/downweighted) from the front page.
Perhaps it met the criteria for a Major Ongoing Topic (MOT) or a MegaMOT, or the "flamewar detector" kicked in, or just that it wasn't convenient to discuss, but we'll never know since the precise moderation action(s) applied to individual stories is opaque.
christkv
Note how they exclude themselves. No privacy for the you only for them. We will all become lawbreakers in the near future as the voluntary aspect is enforced.
lifestyleguru
Suddenly it has become normal to scan face in 3D, nonchalantly demand copy of ID and passport, freeze people's money and demand full financial statement arbitrarily. Not only there is no push back but things are becoming more and more restrictive.
Authorities and banks avalanche everyone within their reach over all available communication channels with "warnings" about scams and frauds.
What direction are they aiming with this total control?
balamatom
Considering that in concert with all of the above a device has been developed that emulates human speech more convincingly than most humans, I guess it's pretty obvious
pixelpoet
Why are all politicians so shit? Launch these no-good leeches into the sun.
Nobody wants this, including they themselves, which is why they specifically exempt themselves from it.
jeroenhd
Don't forget the lobbying. Behind every authoritarian move are a group of companies lobbying for these changes. When you work for law and order, there are only so many customers you can sign, so signing new services is the most reliable way to accomplish growth.
Whoever wins the bid for the (visually hashed) child porn database Whatsapp uses is bound to receive billions of API calls the month the contract goes live. They won't make whatsapp pay for that directly, of course, but I'm sure they'll be "covering operating costs" with government grants to "protect" the public. They get to be rich claiming everyone is a paedophile yet to be caught while pronouncing themselves the foremost fighters against child abuse.
latexr
Clearly it’s not all of them. Some countries voted against, and even the ones voting in favour had a few people against.
The question is more why do the shit politicians rise to the top. Outside forces (rich people and companies) have too much power and can exert too much influence.
In this case I’m particularly curious about the Danes. They insisted on this more than any other previous attempt. They are forever soiled as fighting against the will of the people.
lambdaone
It's baffling from our perspective, but perhaps not so much if you try to look at it the mindset of its proponents.
It's been sold as "for the children". A very substantial proportion of the population are natural authoritarians, and this is red meat for them. Never mind that "the children" that they profess to be protecting are going to grow up living in an increasingly authoritarian surveillance state, this is what authoritarians want for our future, and they see it as not only morally good, but any opposition to it as indefensible.
tgv
> The question is more why do the shit politicians rise to the top.
Dumb and greedy voters, traditional and social media, and electoral interference are known reasons. But it's also a matter of compromise: you vote for a party because you agree with a bunch of their points, but almost certainly not all. Topics like privacy are ignored by the general public, so politicians are hardly held accountable for them.
jeroenhd
Some countries have more faith in their institutions than others. Countries with good and reliable institutions, comparatively at least, are easier to convince this won't be abused and is for the greater good. I'm not surprised the Danes have found a faction to support this bullshit.
roenxi
Well obviously they want it, they voted for it. They probably see the situation in terms of something like class war. There are a bunch of people they don't like in society and they want to identify and marginalise them.
As for why politicians turn out this way, they're just pretty ordinary people (often quite impressive people actually, relative to the norm). Most people don't get an opportunity to show off how useless their political principles are because they have no power or influence. That's why there is always a background refrain of "please stop concentrating power to the politicians it ends badly".
balamatom
>Why are all politicians so shit
So that you can blame them for your problems.
usrnm
Mostly because they are people
baal80spam
Who would have thought?!
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udev4096
Why is this even surprising? Mass surveillance is not a new thing. It's been there since the inception of the internet. This only makes it "official" and is nothing more than a formality. We need to fight back by using decentralized and p2p software
Even living nearby in the UK it blows my mind how quickly the EU proposes, kills and then revives and passes controversial legislation in such a short timeframe.