Mullvad VPN: "This is a Chat Control 3.0 attempt."
64 comments
·December 21, 2025ori_b
BlackjackCF
These should be enshrined into law... and there needs to be some sort of rule to prevent lawmakers from trying to ram through laws with the same spirit without some sort of cool down period. The fact that lawmakers have tried to push the same crap multiple times in the last 4 years despite a ton of opposition and resistance is ridiculous.
IlikeKitties
There are already MANY laws in the EU and Germany for me regarding privacy. All the proposals are blatantly illegal in Germany for example. Just recently our highest court declared large scale logging of DNS request as "very likely" illegal.
pcrh
A decent example being Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights:
>1. Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.
>2. There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.
Specifically:
>A 2014 report to the UN General Assembly by the United Nations' top official for counter-terrorism and human rights condemned mass electronic surveillance as a clear violation of core privacy rights guaranteed by multiple treaties and conventions and makes a distinction between "targeted surveillance" – which "depend[s] upon the existence of prior suspicion of the targeted individual or organization" – and "mass surveillance", by which "states with high levels of Internet penetration can [] gain access to the telephone and e-mail content of an effectively unlimited number of users and maintain an overview of Internet activity associated with particular websites". Only targeted interception of traffic and location data in order to combat serious crime, including terrorism, is justified, according to a decision by the European Court of Justice.[23]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_8_of_the_European_Conv...
timschmidt
Similarly, the 4th amendment to the US Constitution reads in full:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
"papers, and effects" seems to cover internet communications to me (the closest analog available to the authors being courier mail of messages written on paper), but the secret courts so far seem to have disagreed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intellig...
hexbin010
> There are already MANY laws in the EU and Germany for me regarding privacy
Which apply equally to the government?
pavlov
Germany has a history of its government using data collected about citizens against them.
Much legislation was created after WWII to try to prevent that from happening again.
IlikeKitties
Yeah, a lot of them apply explicitly to the government. In Germany at least most privacy laws flow from Article 10 of our constitution and for example Article 8 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. Both of which have been used in the past to explicitly remove laws that violated privacy in the name of security.
delusional
Fix the problem the proposal tries to fix, and the proposal goes away. Until you fix the problem, the only proposal that exists will keep being the only one that exists.
I suppose you could be politically nihilistic enough to think there's no reason for this law to exist, or that it's primarily some authoritarian suppression agenda, but I find that preposterous. Bruxelles is a lot of things, but authoritarian is not one of them. Child sexual exploitation is a problem, and it does demand a solution. If you don't like this one, find a better one.
atq2119
This framing is extremely counterproductive, though.
Most societal problems cannot be fixed entirely. There will always be child sex abuse just like there will always be murder, theft, tax evasion, and drunk driving. It makes sense to see if things can be improved, but any action proposed must be weighed against its downsides. Continued action by police is a good thing, but laws for that have been established for a long time, and the correct answer may well be that no further change to laws is required or appropriate.
(Ab)using child sex abuse to push through surveillance overreach is particularly egregious considering that by all objective accounts most of it seems to happen in the real world among friends and family, without any connection to the internet.
Xelbair
I find it preposterous that anyone defends this agenda that flips concept of 'innocent until proven guilty' on it's head by collectively punishing everyone for POSSIBLE crimes of some individuals.
In a way that any criminal will be easily able to circumvent by not following the law, so it doesn't even achieve it's goal.For example with one time pad exchanged outside of Eu's control + stenography messaging, bundled into 'illegal' app that works as VPN over HTTPS.
I find it preposterous that this issue is pushed without any input from citizens in most of member states - as it wasn't a part of political campaign of either internal elections nor EU ones!
i can keep going on and on. This isn't anything inevitable, this isn't anything that needs to be even solved. This is all done by a single lobbying group trying to push this for years.
trueismywork
Its like govt banning bleach and when chemical companies protest, the govt tells them to fix problem of people mixing bleach and vinegar. Its a problem, it has to be solved. If you dont like this, find another solution govt says.
delusional
It's also a bit like when the government bans opioids because they're an addictive narcotic, but then allows their use in specific circumstances where the benefit outweighs the downsides, and then works with the industry to try and make it harder to abuse them.
It's like a lot of things.
cogman10
It's something that can't be fixed, so rather than trying to cure it through bad privacy invading laws we should be looking in how to mitigate the problem through good reporting, accountability laws, and therapy laws.
A few examples of how mitigate the problem
* Require 2 adults at all times when kids are involved. Particularly in churches and schools.
* Establish mandatory reporting. None of this BS like "I'm a priest, I shouldn't have to report confessionals." That sort of religious exemption is BS.
* Make therapy for pedophiles either fully subsidized or at least partially subsidized.
* Require adult supervision of teens with kids (one of the more common sources of child sexual abuse).
CSAM will happen. It's terrible and what's worse is even if the privacy invasion laws could 100% prevent that sort of content from being produce, that just raises the price of the product and pushes it to be off shored. No amount of chat control will stop someone from importing the material via a thumbdrive in the mail.
The problem we have is the truth of "this will happen no matter the laws passed". That truth has allowed politicians to justify passing extreme laws for small but horrific problems.
timschmidt
The Epstein debacle seems to indicate that child sexual exploitation is a preferred method of entrapping, blackmailing, and controlling world political and science leaders and the wealthy. And implicates the same intelligence agencies calling for mass surveillance.
MrNeon
I'm curious, what would you personally consider to be a step too far in the fight against CSAM?
Zealotux
In the ancient Greek colony of Locri, any who proposed a new law would do so with a rope around their neck, if the law was voted down, they would get hanged.
Food for thought.
simonebrunozzi
Zaleucus [0] from Locri wrote the first law system in the 7th century BC. Might be connected to what you have shared.
Today's Locri is in Calabria, a region in Italy that many consider infested with mafia-like organizations, which is of course sad, but also ironic.
kgwxd
I don't think that system would have the desired results in a world where most people have already voted to hang themselves.
moralestapia
So, they succeed and repeal it a third time. What can be done to stop them from trying again and again and again until they get away with it?
gorgoiler
I love The Internet, it came into my life as I became an adult, I’ve watched it change the world, and I find attempts to lock it down to be abhorrent.
I also grew up in a world where intelligence fieldcraft was an in-person activity where it was just about possible for one side to keep track of the other side, or at least hold some kind of leverage, counter-leverage, and counter-counter-leverage to stop the Cold War getting out of control.
The internet, as well as giving us all this freedom to communicate, also gave the Controls of this world — high level intelligence officers based in their home countries but directing operations overseas — a wonderful new lever to influence, harass, and sabotage. Why burn an agent when you can find a useful idiot in a foreign country to agitate on your behalf?
I sympathize with nation states’ urge to be able to see what’s going on online, but I hate the way they’re going about it. How do we balance a free Internet against a need to crack down on foreign influence?
Xelbair
>I sympathize with nation states’ urge to be able to see what’s going on online, but I hate the way they’re going about it. How do we balance a free Internet against a need to crack down on foreign influence?
and more importantly - whose influence? how do we pick whom do we ally ourselves with and who we go against? How do we prevent such system from being abused to just entrench current powers that be, and stifle genuine opposition?
If it is done behind closed doors, there's not much difference in EU becoming like Russia or China, with a coat of liberal paint instead.
IlikeKitties
> The EU Commission and several member states are also looking for new rules on data retention. In a new ”Presidency outcome paper”, the member states discuss metadata retention: which websites you visit, and who is communicating with whom, when and how often. The ambition is “to have the broadest possible scope of application” and this time some member states also want the proposal to include VPN services.
SV_BubbleTime
VPN is a trust exercise, but, I’m sure if Mullvlad isn’t the best out there, they’re far from the worst.
charcircuit
They are not the best because they no longer support port forwarding. Their IPs are low quality and get you flagged as suspicious.
newdee
Which VPN provider doesn’t have their addresses flagged? I know a few offer “residential” IP addresses (for quite the premium), but as I understand it, these are a bit of a grey area and are also usually shared, so usually just a matter of time until they’re banned or flagged as proxy/shared/anonymiser.
edm0nd
They had to disable port forwarding due to abuse and spam iirc.
dr00tb
Can recommend https://njal.la if you still need port forwarding.
bossyTeacher
how does it compare to mullvad?
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holoduke
I once liked the EU. Well still do it because of the east to travel without borders. But it's leadership is something dangerous and may shape to some form of dictatorship or entity that does not serve its people. But a small minority consisting out of some large companies.
izacus
This is a proposal from one wing of polititians that still hasn't even passed a basic voting process in EU parliament.
So what exactly are you screeching about? Which nation on this world has leadership that never proposes anything like this? Which one is 100% pure and noone even thinks about bad things to bring up to a vote?
hdgvhicv
The EU leadership is the leaders of the 27 sovereign countries
Now you can argue there is a democratic deficit in those countries, sure.
Xelbair
There's democratic deficit in the whole system as this issue wasn't part of most internal election campaigns, effectively circumventing democratic process, due to lack of input from citizens themselves.
EU severely lacks checks and balances if it tries to be something more than trade union.
lawn
Your description match the US as well.
hkpack
I think EU will manage without you liking it. But painting its leadership as the one trying to shape dictatorship is incredible ignorant.
Europe is preparing for the Russia invasion from one side, and betrayal by the US from the other.
A country serving small minority of large companies is the best description of the US, not the EU.
hexbin010
> Europe is preparing for the Russia invasion from one side, and betrayal by the US from the other.
Are you attempting to justify ChatControl with that situation? You might need to help us out with how you arrived at that exactly
IlikeKitties
> Europe is preparing for the Russia invasion from one side, and betrayal by the US from the other.
Let's assume for a moment that would be true. And let's also ignore the lack of a nuclear weapons in most EU countries.
How does breaking encryption for normal people help? Spies and Operatives will just use PGP and ignore these laws, because that's what spies do.
true_religion
Mind you I don’t believe this, but the logic is if encryption is banned, then anyone using it will be easier to find like spies.
Before online encryption, spies still used code books but having one in your house was essentially proof you were a spy.
kace91
I'm as pro european as they come, but I think the author didn't deserve a downvote.
If there is a moment when the EU could not afford to take hits to their popularity, it is now. And here we are, gifting free shots to anti-EU populists.
amarcheschi
Measures such going dark and similar ones are wholly supported - and pushed - by police forces around europe, not by politicians. I do agree that the politician should grow a spine and trust computer scientists for one, since they're the ones making laws after all
ekjhgkejhgk
Like, whos is pushing this shit? Who exactly is it that wants this? Which individuals?
NewCzech
How would you like your censorship wrapped? Anti-terrorism or protecting children?
https://starecat.com/content/wp-content/uploads/control-of-i...
ImHereToVote
The same ones that pushed to scuttle Germany's nuclear reactors.
hdb385
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anura761
[flagged]
hkpack
To be honest, I think VPN businesses and specifically politically charged ones like Mullvad is doing disservice for the security of the country and specifically EU in this case.
I think the right course of action should be a political activism, not a technological one. Especially when the company doing it makes a fortune.
The course, when one can just disengage from participating in society by sidestepping the problems by either using VPNs in terms of censorship or by using Crypto in case of regulations is very dangerous and will reinforce the worst trends.
Finally such person will still have to rely on the community around for physical protection to live.
So instead of speaking from the high ground, please, tell us what your solution about mass disinformation happening from US social media megacorps, Russia mass disinformation, mass recruitment of people for sabotage on critical infrastructure.
Tell us, how can we keep living in free society when this freedom is being used as a leverage by forces trying to destroy your union.
I just want to remind you that dismantling EU is strategic goal of the US, Russia and China.
Please, give us your political solutions to the modern problems instead of earning a fortune by a performance free speech activism.
amarcheschi
What? You don't need VPNs to do anything of that, we have political parties and journalists doing the job from within already
quotemstr
In the history of humanity, it's never been the side attempting to restrict expression and the flow of information that's been in the right.
You don't "solve" the spread of "disinformation" because it's not a real problem in the first place. What you call "disinformation" is merely an idea with which you disagree. It doesn't matter whether any idea comes from the west, from China, from Russia, or Satan's rectum: it stands on its own and competes on its merits with other ideas in the mind of the public.
An idea so weak that it can survive only by murdering alternative ideas in the cradle is too fragile to deserve existing at all.
When you block the expression of disagreement, you wreck the sense-making apparatus that a civilization uses to solve problems and navigate history. You cripple its ability to find effective solutions for real but inconvenient problems. That, not people seeing the wrong words, is the real threat to public safety.
As we've learned painfully over the past decade, it is impossible for a censor to distinguish falsehood from disagreement. Attempts to purify discourse always and everywhere lead to epistemic collapse and crises a legitimacy. The concept is flawed and any policy intended to "combat the spread of disinformation" is evil.
qotgalaxy
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IlikeKitties
> So instead of speaking from the high ground, please, tell us what your solution about mass disinformation happening from US social media megacorps, Russia mass disinformation, mass recruitment of people for sabotage on critical infrastructure.
Education. Education. Education. The only thing that ever worked. is Education. Censorship and a total surveillance state aren't an option. Why bother protecting freedom and democracy if you have to destroy freedom and democracy to do so?
And in case of sabotage of critical infrastructure, the answer is three-fold: 1. Apply the law to the saboteurs. 2. Retaliate in asymmetric fashion. We can't sabotage their hospitals but we can stop buying russian oil and gas, take their money and 3. arm ukraine.
> Tell us, how can we keep living in free society when this freedom is being used as a leverage by forces trying to destroy your union.
Are you or have you ever been a communist? We surveived the cold war and the warsaw pact. We can survive a third rate petrol station masquerading as a state.
> Please, give us your political solutions to the modern problems instead of earning a fortune by a performance free speech activism.
Who is earning a fortune here?
quantummagic
> Education. Education. Education.
The problem is that many of the most highly educated people are the ones fully supporting censorship in the fight against disinformation. Higher education has become a bastion of illiberal ideology.
paulryanrogers
Just because some education implementations have problems doesn't mean education itself must be excluded from the solution.
Public education and universities played a large role in freeing me from generations of magical thinking and religious indoctrination.
moomoo11
I think it’s because once you educate yourself, you see how the masses behave and it’s like the ultimate revelation.
They are consumers. Feeders. They want to be told what to think.
Most people don’t even have an internal monologue and many people say they don’t even think much, not even a thought.
You thought for yourself. You used your brain. But you are outnumbered. Vastly.
Until people lobby for these privacy rights to be enshrined in law, this will continue to be a problem.
Defeating one bad law isn't enough.