The EU Parliament is pressing for new mandatory scanning of your private chats | Hacker News Reader

The EU Parliament is pressing for new mandatory scanning of your private chats

techradar.com

> According to a leaked memo, the EU Parliament is pushing to reach an agreement on the disputed child sexual abuse (CSAM) scanning proposal.

Let me highlight this for those who have repeatedly argued the EU Parliament is against the proposal.

This is an unfortunately common tactic in the EU - if people say no, bring it back again and again until it slips through.

The citizens of the EU who are against mass surveillance have to be lucky every time, the forces pushing this (disgracefully under the ruse of ‘child safety’) only have to be lucky once.

Worse of all they will not put it to vote if they know it will not pass. This way they can keep working on it (paid by our taxes ofc) and try again and again.

The article misrepresents the European Parliament’s child protection proposal as an attack on privacy rather than a targeted response to the growing problem of online child abuse. The claim that the EU wants to “mandate mass surveillance” overstates the scope. In fact, the legislation proposes specific detection orders, issued only with judicial approval, and applies them in a proportionate and time-limited manner [1].

It also ignores that encrypted platforms are currently being used to distribute child sexual abuse material (CSAM), with detection dropping sharply since platforms like Meta turned off scanning in the EU [2]. The proposed regulation seeks to restore basic protective capabilities under judicial scrutiny, not blanket surveillance.

The article further overlooks that the European Court of Justice has ruled out general and indiscriminate retention of data, which will still apply under the new law [3]. Rather than political blackmail, this is democratic legislation attempting to balance privacy rights with protecting children from horrific crimes.

The framing of this effort as “political blackmail” sensationalises what is actually a measured legislative process with checks, balances and limited scope.

[1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=COM%3A20...

[2] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-67870668

[3] https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/202...

Edit:urls

Won't someone think of the children?

EU is marching towards total dystopia worse than China. Based on the other comment there are even people who applaud the effort. It's absolutely sickening. Of course EU bureaucrats will then be in total disbelieve that parties who want to dismantle the EU are gaining support.

tl;dr: You are using outdated information and intentionally misrepresent the proposal.

Officer,

I will never accept mass surveillance of citizens under the disguise of protecting children which this proposal does not achieve at all. If they wanted to protect children they would work on school programs to teach children how to behave on the internet. Instead they are establishing a mass surveillance platform and using children to guilt weak and spineless politicians to agree to it.

> In fact, the legislation proposes specific detection orders, issued only with judicial approval, and applies them in a proportionate and time-limited manner

The document you linked is from 2022 and doesn't reflect the current proposal at all.

https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/chat-control/ (The Chat Control 2.0 proposal in detail)

> It also ignores that encrypted platforms are currently being used

Then they will use something else and you will be spying on regular people.

> The proposed regulation seeks to restore basic protective capabilities under judicial scrutiny, not blanket surveillance.

This is a lie. There's no targeting (except to exclude politicians and other government workers). Every message (video, image, text) will be scanned and reported if the AI considers it illegal.

https://european-pirateparty.eu/chatcontrol-eu-ministers-wan...

> has ruled out general and indiscriminate retention of data

Not to worry, EU Commission's ProtectEU plan includes mandatory data retention harmonized and shared across all member states. Did you forget to mention it?

https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-sa...

> measured legislative process with checks, balances and limited scope

Lobbied by surveillance companies who talk to EU representatives behind closed doors and some even leave to work for these companies?

https://balkaninsight.com/2023/09/25/who-benefits-inside-the...

original title: A "political blackmail" – the EU Parliament is pressing for new mandatory scanning of your private chats

And of course governments are exempted from the mandatory scanning.

Think of the number of politicians in the UK (not the EU but still) who communicated with private messages to coordinate the cover-up about the raping gangs scandal where it's now known that thousands of young girl where gang raped in the UK?

Think of the policitians who participated in the gang rapes: yes, there are officials involved.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grooming_gangs_scandal

So: "Think about the children", my FUCKING ASS.

Thankfully there are people fighting the good fight. In the UK the current government was forced to launch a nation-wide inquiry into these scandals (of course the people doing the inquiry are, themselves, corrupt but at least they cannot pretend that thousands of girls didn't get raped while the police and politicians covered it up).

But I tell you this: the people fighting the good fight and actually thinking of the children are not those putting in place these dystopian rules.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com