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Comment by isodev | Hacker News Reader

The EU elections are just around the corner. It's a good moment to make an informed decision and stop electing alt-rights who'd do anything under the slogan of "protecting the children".

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This proposal is coming from the EU council, which has nothing to do with this election (it is made up of PMs or Presidents of the EU countries).

The EU election is important though to ensure that the EU Parliament doesn't enact such a horrid proposal into law.

Who should we vote for then? That’s very hard to decide without a lot of research. I would say the pirate party is a safe bet. But if there are multiple candidates you need to be sure your vote goes to a strong candidate to increase your chances of success. But just figuring out who this might be is already hard.

Then of course there’s the non-democratic structure of the union itself where the non voted commission decide the laws.

It varies from country to country who you can vote for to oppose such legislation. You need to investigate your local representatives.

Also, the Commission only proposes legislation, it doesn't enact it. Only the EU Parliament can enact legislation. The comission is similar to the Government of most democratic countries, also in the fact that it's not directly democratically elected. However, you still have plenty of democratic control over it, just not in EU specific elections, but in your own country's elections.

Edit: mistook the Council for the Commission. Corrected in line.

This is not reality TV, it's important that you cast a vote aligned with your views, not who is most likely to win or loose. If you're unsure which party represents your views, you can use tools like https://euandi.eu/

The EU structure is democratic, you can see a summary of each body and how its formed at https://european-union.europa.eu/institutions-law-budget/lea...

Parliament's involvement depends on the policy area and may imply (a) being consulted, (b) giving consent or (c) co-legislating on an equal footing with the Council (ordinary legislative procedure). In case of "chat control" (actually called CSAR or COM/2022/209), we are in case c) - it was Parliament rejecting big parts of the proposal [0].

The OP refers to a document discussed during ST 9093 2024 INIT, it's part of the same package of legislation priorities (2022/0155(COD)) and it's currently awaiting the opinion of Parliament [1].

I know these make for very click-baity titles, but this is the moment when one can follow the feed and publications of their MEPs and contact them when one doesn't agree with some of their positions. Logs of all meetings are available online.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_to_Prevent_and_Comb...

[1] https://oeil.secure.europarl.europa.eu/oeil/popups/ficheproc...

It originally comes from the Commission, not the council:

https://fortune.com/europe/2023/10/26/eu-chat-control-csam-e...

Back in May last year, the European Commission proposed what security maven Matthew Green described as “the most terrifying thing I’ve ever seen”—a law that would force everyone from Facebook to Signal to scan everyone’s messages

The ChatControl2.0 proposal was put forth by Ylva Johansson who is from the left in Sweden. She literally says "But think of the children" in every interview she made after this. There has been many accusations of corruption, for example the council was in contact with the AI companies that stand to gain from getting this in law.

https://www.svt.se/nyheter/ylva-johansson-ifragasatts-om-lob...

I don't like mass-surveillance or "dragnets" which are actually considered unconstitutional in the US (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragnet_(policing) ), where you make an extraordinary amount of people suspects in order to catch a single suspect.

In medicine there is a number called NNT (Number Needed to Treat) which is a really good comparision to this. It's how many you have to treat with a medicine or procedure in order to help one patient. If that number goes up too large it's a bad sign, like if you would have to feed 1 million people a pill every day to avoid 1 heart attack per year.

Here you have mass surveillance and an incredible breach of privacy of 500M citizens, in order to catch how many pedos? If they would even be caught by this at all to start with.

>If they would even be caught by this at all to start with.

I doubt it. Teenagers sending each other naked pics, maybe (but after the law passes they will know they have no privacy and will stop doing that. I fear what awareness of constant surveillance does to a young brain). The actual pedophiles were always on top of their opsec game. In this case it sounds like they just need to opt-out of scanning and send each other obfuscated links or base64 encoded encrypted zip files in text? This is child's play, there were highly sophiasticated pedophile groups using tor-only infrastructure with forced opsec and rotating identifies every month. They never trusted mainstream chat apps, and they won't be affected. This only makes it possible to track regular people.

Can't upvote this enough. Such proposal is against the privacy and basic human rights or ordinary people (wveryone is guilty unless proved innocent). Big groups making and sharing such content won't be affected by this at all.

I wish they made it easier to vote in these EU elections. I live abroad. For me to cast my vote I’d have to physically travel to my country’s embassy which is several hours travel away return during the voting hours. Or give proxy to someone living there (don’t know anyone since I’ve never lived in that city).

Meanwhile, Canada lets me vote by mail, no fuss, and they even send the ballot to my home address automatically every election.

Would that really be so hard to do for EU or national elections?

The Netherlands does allow citizens living abroad to vote using mail-in ballots, so it’s something that your country has to arrange.

I can only hope… but won’t hold my breath.

Spain too

The EU elections allow you to either vote in your country of residence or in your country of birth. You just need to register beforehand and you'll just be able to vote at a local ballot.

Here in Germany they even actively inform you of that choice. I got a letter both from the dutch government and the German government that I can make a decision to either vote in Germany or in Netherlands

Yes, I’m not saying it’s impossible. I still need to travel to my residence country’s capital which is several hours away and not free to get to in order to cast my vote in person. That’s quite a hurdle and I’m not surprised that participation is so low as a result.

You can vote at embassy? I need to travel back to the actual country.

I'm in the same situation because I forgot to change the country, but you totally have the right to vote for the EU country of residence.

It's up to your country to determine how tedious they want to make it. For a counter example, as an Estonian citizen, I can vote in these EU elections via the internet using my private, government certified, P-384 key.

I hope there'll come a time where the idea that these events that distribute ultimate power might not be flawlessly executed and maybe even partially fraudulent is seen with merit. It's certainly not the time yet, as always seen when this comes around.

Alt rights? You realize this is being driven by the heads of state from mainstream parties, yes?

Yes, I know how the EU works.

These heads of states also got elected in their respective countries. You don't want to see "chat control" proposals coming from the council of Europe? Then don't elect the likes of Orban/Melonie/Geert Wilders!

Next week we're voting for the EU Parliament where MEPs are responsible for discussing and accepting/rejecting proposals from the EU Council.

Wilders only formed a coalition about two weeks ago, and he isn't the prime minister so wouldn't be in the Council anyway.

As for the others, why do you think these laws come from the council? EU law never comes from the council, it's always proposed by the Commission. There's a list of people who are most responsible for this specific law here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/s/Q4fRGd1a2e

None of the people on the list are heads of state, as per usual. They are senior members of the Commission and the usual assortment of lobbyists who feed them ideas.

that's such a hilarious /r/politics-tier take, I literally can't even.

You’re correct, these elections are pretty important, as we can vote for the parties/people that would bring this thing called the EU a little bit closer to disintegration, i.e. vote for the Nigel Farages of your countries. At this point the ghouls in Brussels are un-reformable.

Are you even EU citizen? You seems to be posting mostly Russian POV.

What type of question is that?

If you’re so curious, yes, on top of being pro/Russia I’m also a Mets fan. LGFM! How does knowing more about me help bring this conversation forward? Should I in turn ask about your favorite MLB team?

Yes the best solution to democratic process is to vote for famous populist alt right politician whose politics is build around saying whatever generates most clicks/hate at the time. Best part is once in power these people are as corruptable if not more because they just dont care and will sell their votes to the highest bid. Snakeoil sellers.

> do anything under the slogan of "protecting the children".

This is far too forgiving a representation, they are surveillance wolves disingenuously wearing the sheeps' wool of protecting children to further their eventual thought-policing goals of "total information awareness."

Doing anything to protect children is difficult to object to. Using the children as their pretense for monitoring dissidents is really the heart of the matter. It's important to differentiate between the two.

I get that this difference could be subtly implicit in that comment, but let's please make it explicit.

These laws, as required by the EU constitution, do not come from the people who are elected, so changing who gets voted in will have zero impact on whether such laws appear or not.

Moreover the EU Parliament is controlled by social democrat (left) parties. There currently a bunch of stories in the press freaking out over the possibility that the EU Parliament might actually become majority right wing for the first time ever, example:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/ecfr.eu/publication/a-sharp-rig...

So it's very unclear how you reached your conclusions about who people should stop electing and what effect that would have.

That is ridiculous.

Both the commission and the parliament are controlled by socialists (of various kinds).

It doesn't work like the US - it's not binary "left or right".

So why did gp talk about the alt right?also I disagree, there is a binary left right in Europe too. Unless it's for social stuff then most parties are on the right in Europe lol

We should seriously ask, if being part of EU is beneficial or not. Electing left or right is just a game to keep system working. But it serves to scrap responsibility from us and lead to slavery with every new regulation.

Leaving the EU hasn’t really been helping the UK either

Sure, voting system remains same.

It hasn't really been hurting them either. By the way, UK had GDP growth by .6% in first quarter of this year, which is a lot more than a lot of other EU countries.

Presumably Signal will remain available in the UK. At least, it could.

Yes, at this point I see no way forward except with the EU. Unless each individual country wants to go at it alone and eventually end up working as a Vasal state to either USA, Russia, or China.

The cost of products and manufacturing is so low that a significant part of the final price is made up of overhead costs such as tax, tariffs, and transport. All of these will go up by stepping out of the EU due to increased friction.

If anything, we should go a lot further into embracing the EU. In the current political landscape we are committed.

Current nonEU members like Switzerland or England are vasals of who?

Prices of energy and basically everything in EU is so ridiculous high. Free marked is crippled because of centrally planed economics pushed by EU grants.

Switzerland applies many many EU-regulations without having a say in it.

They also pay towards EU funds.

They are also part of Schengen.

Other countries have also seen inflation of prices of energy and other things. I doubt any of this would become cheaper if you leave the eu.

Oh yes, EU has a solution! Its called CBDC. No cash, no different currency, just digital numbers. Im sure they solve inflation made by fiat money.

you can have an economic community without the political aspect of it

What does that look like? Let's say you have a large exporting country that decides its exporting needs are more important than the employment needs of other countries in the block, how do you handle that without political alignment? Economic community is political community. The only question is what flavour of economic community, which IMO is where the EU has gone well off track.

Unfortunately, these days economic community is not enough. With the US slowly falling apart due to internal polarization, rusia and china trying to grap as much power as they can, Middle East far from stable, and the disrupting impact of climate change, focusing only on the economy ignores our biggest problems.

If you put ideology on first place, competition will crush you easily. China don't care about environment and they make high fortune on it, like other countries did previously.

What frustrate me most is how EU sponsor their business from our taxes in name of care about environment. Ie grants on photovoltaic panels that are made from 95% in China or donated EV's that ruin traditional car manufacturing in EU.

China will (and does to a certain extent) care about the environment because they know it will eventually be a massive problem for them. Their single-party state has only managed to stay in power because it's been very good at driving up the standards of living. And you can only pollute so much before those standards stop going up and people start to get displeased, which is why they've been trying so hard to move up the value chain and export their pollution to other countries (via cheap loans).

Which doesn't change anything I wrote above. Pollution is made and driven by centrally planed economics from our taxes.

I think the widening of the EU that we have seen precludes the deepening of the EU that you advocate. This is a difficult balance. we should want deeper coordination within the EU. But we should also want to help and integrate our neighbors, rather than seeing them languish and become, as you put it, vassal states. And those goals are at odds.

This is partially because coordinating more countries is inherently more difficult if everyone can veto. But cultural diversity also plays a role. Deepening coordination means letting the EU decide more. Letting a more similar culture decide more will feeo better. beyond that, they are probably more likely to decide what you would have decided anyway. That is how a wider EU works against a deeper EU.

But the good thing about the EU and a lot of its programmes is that the future generations in each are more and more well-travelled and more and more accepting of other members' cultures. Even nowadays the attitude towards, say, Poland in most younger circles in the West is much more positive than it used to be 20 years ago. Give it enough time and the people of the bloc will learn how to deal with their neighbours' cultures.

If you leave the EU who are people in your country going to vote for? Most likely, either the right or the left.

Leaving the EU doesn't automatically make a country not right/left/whatever. Even before the EU most countries had the same thing. The UK left and still have left/right/whatever. You need to change a lot more than EU membership status to avoid the whole left/right issue.

It’s funny that those chat censorship laws seems to be mostly at EU level. Very few countries have something similar going on locally.

Probably because they know it's not politically popular. As members of the EU, they can work with their commissioners to bring in unpopular legislation and then blame the eu if anyone complains. The UK used to do this a lot, and I expect other countries do it too.

I don't know if youre trying to imply I said any thing about the censorship law, but all I was pointing out was that leaving the EU doesn't change anything about parent's idea about voting left/right/whatever.

What I'm saying, it looks like those are pushed at EU level seemingly by bureaucratic apparatus regardless of ruling parties. Yet such ideas seem to be nowhere to be found at home, again regardless of ruling parties.

I'm probably wrong, but my gut feeling is that euro bureaucracy is playing it's own game. And it has little in common with democracy, citizen rights and citizen will at large. Infamous Juncker's phrase about how to push through unpopular regulations is the modus operandi of those people.

What I'm saying is why are you commenting it to me? I don't care either way. There's other comments that your reply would fit better under. Trying to drag everyone into an EU good/EU bad discussion is not what everyone wants. I simply stated that leaving the EU doesn't make left/right disappear, which is true. You can argue your separate point to me all you want, but I dont really care.

Leaving the EU, however, triggers competition. These small European countries will compete for talent/money/knowledge and that means more freedom and less taxes.

But hey gotta deny the EU is not working even after hitting the wall and your face is dangling from the other side right?

I didn't say anything about it working or not, did I? The only thing I pointed out was that that leaving the EU isn't going to change parent's idea about leaving the EU to avoid voting left or right. Your comment doesn't apply or mean anything to me. I don't live in Europe nor do I follow all their politics enough to have a skin in the game.

Centralised government and power is much more dangerous for society, than decentralised nations.

Im not sure why someone in Brusell should vote about regulations for entire Europe.

You cannot imply same rules for entire nations like all are the same. They are not. They have different cultures, different values, different taxes, different wealth, etc...

> You cannot imply same rules for entire nations like all are the same. They are not. They have different cultures, different values, different taxes, different wealth, etc...

I'm not implying anything. I'm stating the fact that partisanship is not only dictated by EU membership. Maybe you're correct, maybe not, I dont really care, but it has nothing to do with my comment. Please try again with someone else who cares as much as you do.

We shouldn't leave, we should reform!

That means power taken from the committee and brought to parliament. So the decision-making becomes more politicized, and thus more public. Politicizing isn't great, but without it the committee van fly under the radar. Moreover, without it the committee is fully beholden to the national governments, who won't be held to account for their decisions.

I've stopped taking the whole "change it from withing / reform" arguments seriously when it comes to anything larger than a village or small community. The entire system has gotten to this point because the rules, processes and incentives all aligned and co-evolved to get it here. Every single one of those "memes" (borrowing from Dawkins here) will fight very hard for its own survival. And their survival depends on the status-quo staying as is without change.

The only way forward is to not participate and/or burn it all down and start from scratch. And we all know what a polite and neutered society we are currently because things are relatively "okay" for us, so we're not at threat, so we're not willing to do the drastic measures necessary for correction here. That includes me, as I will not be sending my sons to the slaughter.

>The only way forward is to not participate and/or burn it all down and start from scratch.

You can't honestly suggest that. From where? "village or small community" level?

You can still legally leave the EU. But this draconian law has not passed yet and has been up many times before, most likely it wont pass.

It's not a perfect answer, and one can "not participate" in more ways than one. Also, it depends on the individual and what makes sense for them and their family.

It's also a case of "picking your poison". So if the recent war wasn't happening, I'd be moving straight to Russia as right now it seems to be the sanest when it comes to these specific things. But that comes with dealing with some of the "negatives" as I'm sure you all can imagine.

If money wasn't a problem, personally I'd fund some sort of island or floating-island community to promote self-sustainable practices whilst staying as far as practically possible from the craziness going on in the west.

It's the governments of the EU countries that are agreeing to this in the Council (apparently it's going through because France is lifting its veto). If enough people cared about this, they would put pressure on their governments to scrap this. But this is not ever talked about except in these circles (unlike, say, the migration pact).

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