Comment by x775 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by x775 | Hacker News Reader

I am the creator of Fight Chat Control.

Thank you for sharing. It is unfortunately, once again, needed.

The recent events have been rather dumbfounding. On March 11, the Parliament surprisingly voted to replace blanket mass surveillance with targeted monitoring of suspects following judicial involvement [0]. As Council refused to compromise, the trilogue negotiations were set to fail, thus allowing the Commission's current indiscriminate "Chat Control 1.0" to lapse [1]. This would have been the ideal outcome.

In an unprecedented move, the EPP is attempting to force a repeat vote tomorrow, seeking to overturn the otherwise principled March 11 decision and instead favouring indiscriminate mass surveillance [1, 2]. In an attempt to avoid this, the Greens earlier today tried to remove the repeat vote from the agenda tomorrow, but this was voted down [3].

As such, tomorrow, the Parliament will once again vote on Chat Control. And unlike March 11, multiple groups are split on the vote, including S&D and Renew. The EPP remains unified in its support for Chat Control. If you are a European citizen, I urge you to contact your MEPs by e-mail and, if you have time, by calling. We really are in the final stretch here and every action counts. I have just updated the website to reflect the votes today, allowing a more targeted approach.

Happy to answer any questions.

[0] https://mepwatch.eu/10/vote.html?v=188578

[1] https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/the-battle-over-chat-contro...

[2] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/OJQ-10-2026-03...

[3] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/PV-10-2026-03-...

You're doing God's work mate.

It's really surprising to me that this issue keeps coming up time and time again, until I realised that it's non-voted in parties actually trying to pass this stuff!

I didn't realise that the EU parliament simply says yes or no to bills and doesn't actually propose new laws, whilst the EU Commission are appointed and decide on what bills to push through.

The Commission consists of the Member States. So obviously they are also voted-in parties since the government of the Member States is democratically elected

True but it's a step removed. The MEPs are directly voted in whilst the EC are not, they're "voted in" on account of "voted in" people assigning them to the EC.

I mean nobody argues that the FED governor is voted in, right? In reality a lot of people argue that they're unelected and yet making decisions that affect everyone.

As it should be.

It's good that both the US Fed Reserve Governor and EC appointees didn't have win popularity contests to get there.

Eh in a way, I can see both sides of the coin. On one hand if Fed governors didn't have independence, the inflation rate would make Venezuela look like a bastion of economic management. On the other hand, you end up with situations like this where the EC can just keep trying to force in poor policy.

The Fed has a pretty strict and narrow mandate and an even narrower toolset. They can't start coming up and imposing random laws and regulations (outside the banking sector) just because they want to...

Worth noting they have a strong incentive to grow payroll, which currently stands at 25,000-ish.

You argue that people electing officials who make policies affecting those people is bad?

Very, very bad. Have you seen the quality of politicians today?

This in standard in europe. Most places don't vote for their PM or President either, they're just the leader of the largest party in parliament and chosen by parliament

Oh, if unelected officials is the standard, that's fine then. Move along.

Generally a lot of people do vote for the PM i.e. chose the party to vote for based on it's leader(s)

Wait but the commission is assembled by the PMs / presidents… so it’s elected by people who were elected by people who elect.

The European Commission represents the interests of the member states, while the European Parliament represent the interests of the citizens. NO LAW CAN PASS without the consent of the citizens directly elected representatives. There is no "pushing through".

If you don't like how you are represented at the commission, then blame your government. It is THEIR representative - not yours.

Also, don't forget that the commission as a whole needs to be approved by a vote at European Parliament - i.e. by the directly elected representatives.

An empty justification, since a state has no interest apart from its citizen's interests.

I hope you agree that elected representation isn't perfect - there is going to be disalignment, ways in which representatives resemble each other more than they resemble their voters.

This disalignment can only get amplified with every layer of indirect election. It never gets better.

A states interests are long term and strategic. These aren't the same as an aggregation of citizens relatively short term interests, but should absolutely be influenced by them.

I totally agree with what you say about elected representation - but I am also thankful that decisions aren't made through direct democracy given that so many people are often dangerously uninformed and easily manipulated.

> An empty justification, since a state has no interest apart from its citizen's interests.

Sometimes a government only cares about a few citizens, or in some cases one citizen.

No, the European Council is suppose to represent the interest of the member states. The European Commission is suppose to be the executive of the European Union. Translating to the USA system, it would be like saying that the White House is suppose to represent the USA states. No, It's suppose to represent the interest of Europe as an entity.

Any introduction to democracy explains that the power is separated in the executive, the legislative and the judicial.

The European Parliament is suppose to be the legislative body but can't initiate legislation.

The Commission is suppose to be the executive, but, somehow can also initiate legislation and is not elected directly by the citizens. And the council that, I suppose would be the equivalent to a senate, is not directly elected by the citizens.

And we could talk about how all the important decisions are done in the dark, or how, like in this case, when something is not 'correctly' voted, they just keep bringing it back until it pass, or how they have started to 'sanction' people without judicial supervision.

It's time to open the eyes, because this is not going to improve. The EU 'democracy' is a joke.

No, this is a discussion about the "unelected" European Commission. I haven't mentioned the European Council because it is irrelevant.

The European Commission is formed of representatives of the individual states. They are NOT representatives of the citizens, other than by proxy.

YOUR government can request that THEIR representative raise or support legislation among the commission. If you have a problem with your countries representative at the commission then take that up with your government.

Proposals being "brought back" for discussion in some form is just a part of legislation. It happens EVERYWHERE - not just at the EU level.

Sanctions are proposed through the commission because it is a consensus of state government foreign policy.

How would YOU propose that the EU work to be "more democratic" - while also considering that your government needs to be involved and influential?

The whole idea with the current structure is that it "meets in the middle" between national sovereignty and citizen representation.

I agree it's not a perfect system, and there is certainly a lot of opportunity for positive change (I would like to have some process for parliament to request legislation from the council. I would like more transparency in what the commission does), but to dismiss it as "undemocratic" makes no sense and is just repeating an uniformed rhetoric.

The fact that you think that the Commission represent the states members instead of the interest of the European Union shows how mess up and contradictory the system is. The Council is the body that represent the state members.

You probably think that, because the commission is composed by representatives of every country, but they are "bound by their oath of office to represent the interest of the EU as a whole rather than their home state". That in itself is already contradictory. Those representatives are not elected officials but are the more powerful in the system.

The European Commission is the executive branch of the European Union. In not sane system, the executive branch is in charge of proposing legislation, because that make the all 'separation of powers' concept useless.

>>"How would YOU propose that the EU work to be "more democratic" - while also considering that your government needs to be involved and influential?"

Well, or you give the parliament real legislative and budgetary powers or all the system is a farce and you should dissolve it. If you want to keep the interest of individual countries in the process you need another chamber, elected by the people, that would represent the national interests.

Not only the system is undemocratic but it's winning power. The European Council can sanction you because doesn't like what you are saying without any judicial supervision. The budget is used to blackmail countries that don't agree with the commission views. Even the European Central Bank was used for blackmailing Greece in the Debt crisis of 2011. If that's democracy, the word democracy has not meaning anymore.

So your proposal is to remove the input from the individual state governments and make it entirely citizen led?

Wouldn't that make it a government and remove the sovereignty of the individual states?

Not saying thats a bad idea - its just the exact opposite of the usual "undemocratic" rhetoric.

The EU could be just a bunch of agreements between countries about commerce and freedom of movement. The EU could be a federation of states with proper institutions. What the EU should not be is a superstructure over member countries without proper democratic control. And this is what is now and going worst by the day.

If you are interested in a federation, you could have an American bicameral model, with the senate representing the countries interest (1).

The current path of the EU is, in my opinion, very worrisome. The important issues are decided in close doors. The Commission and the Council feel that they can 'sanction' citizens without judicial supervision. The countries that not play along are blackmailed. The Commission officials feel that they can speak for all Europe when most citizens disagree with what they are saying. They feel that they can block the public discourse that they don't like, and now they want total control of our communications.

(1) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Congress

The american system is the last one we should copy. EU is different, its not a nation, it is made up by nations. All your points reads mainly like you don't understand what EU is now and what it to be more like what you imagine it should be.

Also countries can not be blackmailed enough as the Hungary debacle clearly shows.

So your ideal is the EU as a federation - i.e. the removal of domestic authority.

Can you give concrete examples of these "important issues" that are supposedly being decided behind closed doors?

What sanctions are you talking about that require judicial supervision? Pretty sure all EU states can issue their own sanctions without needing a court to approve them.

How exactly is the Commission blocking public discourse? What are they doing, and where is this happening?

>The European Commission represents the interests of the member states, while the European Parliament represent the interests of the citizens.

Both represent the interests of themselves, the unelected bureucracy, and the elites.

The commissioners are a few but the people who make the actual bills and policies are clerks and bureaucrats who were never elected neither directly nor indirectly. And while the commissioners do change, the EU bureaucrats never change.

They're just like the civil service in the UK, or any other country. They do the bidding of our nationally elected governments. Nearly all proposals coming from the commission originate from the national governments.

So a law:

Starts with member states directly elected ministers pushing and agenda or the council (again elected) agreeing to push an agenda -> Commissioners take this agenda and work with it to propose law (using EU civil service like any other country does) -> The law then gets voted on by the EU directly elected ministers, who are meant to (and do) represent the people of the states more directly.

Everything in that step is as democratic as any other nation (or nearly).

Most people really don't understand the EU - and yes, it is confusing. This unfortunately makes it easy for certain interests to weaponise this misunderstanding. I've spent years (and years) explaining these concepts, but ultimately like any other argument, this is not a debate from logic, everyone has already made up their minds on emotion or ideology and nothing will make a difference.

The first level democracy itself is a farce - coalition governments run by parties the majority doesn't want, MP seat allocations under ridiculous non-representative rules, campaign programs and pre-election promises broken all the time, 4 or 5 years of politicians left unchecked with no in-between recourse like referendums and assessments except to vote someone else next year, and that's without taking into account the mega-business interests sponsoring and controlling them.

Once removed even from that, the E.C. second level democracy is beyond a farce.

The EP has the right to make amendments to proposed legislation, its not simply a yes no vote.

In fact what is described as "Parliament surprisingly voted to replace blanket mass surveillance with targeted monitoring of suspects following judicial involvement" is exactly the EP voting to amend the Commission proposal on an extension of existing itermim rules with text that explicitly limits the scope.

I am always curious when I see these kinds of movement. It seems abundantly clear that the options on any vote in any legislature for a proposed bill are always “yes” and “ask me later”. So when I see things like Fight Chat Control, it feels like the call is “we must tell our legislators to press the ask later button!”

Why? Why has your approach not been toward passing active legislation that protects these rights going forward? Genuinely curious. I understand that finding and pressing the “don’t ask again” button is always harder, but I don’t understand why “we punted on this decision!” is a celebratory moment.

Also curious, as much as the American amendments are problematic, they do at lease create a hard position on things. We are devolving into a space where I’m genuinely scared that the future will become entirely controlled by big money, and it will be too late to change it.

From my understanding Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union is somewhat similar to US Constitution & amendments. Both do still allow government to restrict the freedoms granted by those in some situations though I do think the US Constitution does tend to set higher bar on the interference.

There have been EU laws which get struck down because they violated the Charter (e.g. Data Retention Directive).

Hopefully even if the worst comes to pass and the EU ends up enacting this law there are still the courts on the EU level and then the national governments and courts in countries where this type of surveillance is illegal can still decide to do whatever the want (i.e. national constitutions general take precedence over EU treaty obligations)

The future you fear is already here, sorry.

Because we can barely stop new legislation we don't like, let alone pass new ones we do. You're out-monied by lobbyists at all levels.

Maybe a movement could match a lobbyist in terms of money. I hope so.

> we can barely stop new legislation we don't like, let alone pass new ones we do

These are literally the same process.

Is it? Stopping is a matter of ground swell support contacting representatives and saying "please don't". Enough people do it to enough receptive reps and they'll vote no.

Passing new ones that "you like" requires lawyers to write laws, get those laws in front of reps, get them to agree to try and pass it, stake some of their reputation on pushing it, get the ground swell to support it -- which might be difficult when the current law is "dont scan messages", you can easily say "hey dont scan anything! support that!" vs "hey scan somethings sometimes", cause many people will call that a slippery slope. I don't see how they are at all the same process.

Stopping legislation means organizing a sufficient number of no votes.

Passing it means organizing a sufficient number of yes votes.

They are the same process and they require exactly the same work. They take place at the exact same moment in time and space, although they are mutually exclusive.

You're free to describe things however you want, but your descriptions won't change the underlying reality.

> Passing it means organizing a sufficient number of yes votes.

EU Parliament can't propose legislation, only vote on proposals from the Commission. We'd have to convince the Commission to propose a law to prevent themselves from trying to pass this bullshit over and over.

It's far far easier to tear down than to build.

Yup, just look at the USA. Despite all chambers being under one party, the executive cabinet is still choosing to bypass laws to force stuff. Because waiting for legislation o pass it legally is sill a higher barrier than smashing he rule of law.

> Yup, just look at the USA. Despite all chambers being under one party, the executive cabinet is still choosing to bypass laws to force stuff.

There's still no procedural difference between passing laws by executive fiat, repealing them by executive fiat, or ignoring them by executive fiat. The first of those things is called an "executive order" and the others are called "prosecutorial discretion", and the culture traditionally views authority exercised as an "executive order" negatively while viewing "prosecutorial discretion" positively, but in the implementation, "prosecutorial discretion" is commanded by executive orders (the documents) in the same way that "executive orders" (new legislation from the president) are.

If you want to get a new executive order issued, or an old one rescinded, or an incipient one forgotten, the process is the same (you convince the president) in all of those cases.

> You're free to describe things however you want, but your descriptions won't change the underlying reality.

You should be delivering this advice to your nearest mirror.

> Maybe a movement could match a lobbyist in terms of money. I hope so.

That's just more lobbying. Politics needs less money involved, not more.

> You're out-monied by lobbyists at all levels.

What does industry gain from new laws here?

Better advertisement. Like for example this new bill pushed by Facebook in US about age verification by PC. It will create a universally available API of sorts, which any ad corpo can poll and get more private information about PC user.

Same with this Stazi 2.0 shit by EU. I'm sure the data produced will be either directly processed by some corpo having ad interests, or freely gifted to such corpos.

You can always find something. There's always someone profiteering from anything and everything that politicians could possibly do.

Politicians demanding total surveillance and population control? Of course there's an industry or two for that. Are they lobbying for this stuff? Absolutely.

But what's the causality? That's the ideological question.

In my view, it's a bit too convenient to blame all political evils on capitalism. Power is its own aphrodisiac. Bigotry has no prerequisits. Neither does stupidity.

Less industry, more small coalitions or special interest groups. Any number of things. To name a few factors

- ideaological. They truly believe this is the best choice, or are fixated only on this choice and nothing else. They are putting their money where their mouths are

- financial. Straightforward one. If they need a service to collect ID's and you can get a government contract, that's big, safe, money. Or a politician is bribed and doesn't care either way. Companies find loopholes to sell data and make even more money.

- power. You get a law passed, you get more leverage to being voted into politics, or maintaining your incumbency. You show you can "get things done"

>Why has your approach not been toward passing active legislation that protects these rights going forward?

Maybe because the Commission holds the true power and the commissioners aren't directly elected by the people so you don't have any leverage against the commissioners. You can't just say "behave nicely or we won't support you at the next elections".

You kind of can, but you get to only vote for the full package i.e. the party which wins the national elections will get to appoint its own commissioner. Most people obviously only care about the domestic issues and likely will not change their vote regardless of what the appointed commissioner thinks or does.

That's not true. The commission do the bidding of the Council or other elected national ministers. Re-posting my comment: ---

They're just like the civil service in the UK, or any other country. They do the bidding of our nationally elected governments. Nearly all proposals coming from the commission originate from the national governments.

So a law:

Starts with member states directly elected ministers pushing and agenda or the council (again elected) agreeing to push an agenda -> Commissioners take this agenda and work with it to propose law (using EU civil service like any other country does) -> The law then gets voted on by the EU directly elected ministers, who are meant to (and do) represent the people of the states more directly.

Everything in that step is as democratic as any other nation (or nearly).

Most people really don't understand the EU - and yes, it is confusing. This unfortunately makes it easy for certain interests to weaponise this misunderstanding. I've spent years (and years) explaining these concepts, but ultimately like any other argument, this is not a debate from logic, everyone has already made up their minds on emotion or ideology and nothing will make a difference.

It is true though. He said "directly elected by the people" and they are obviously not. If we are being honest, the system where privileged few select other privileged few among themselves is called oligarchy.

What is true? There are many true statements that are meaningless in the context. The commission isn't elected is true. But understanding how they start working on laws is the context, and key to understanding why that doesn't really matter.

People don't want you to look deeper. They want you only have the most shallow understanding, because that allows them to manipulate more easily.

> toward passing active legislation that protects these rights going forward?

That's not something the "legislators" in the EU parliament can do. It's effectively a consultative body which can either approve or send back the legislation provided to them so the council and commision can find sufficient workarounds...

What would actually help is if a government of a country where this type of Stasi/KGB style surveillance is constitutionally illegal like Germany to speak out and tell the EU (and Denmark which keeps pushing this) that they can go fuck themselves and that they will prosecute any company which is trying to comply with these regulations. (which would be perfectly legal since constitution/basic laws still supersede any type of EU treaty obligations in most countries.

The European """Parliament""" can only reject laws, but not propose new ones.

Passing legislation is harder. It should absolutely be the goal but it can't be passed if there is already legislation allowing the abuse.

Thank you for what you're doing, this is an important fight.

The story is tragically illustrative of the maxim that you can oppose terrible legislation a hundred times but they only have to pass it once.

Fair play x775, I'm currently moving lots of EU and UK projects away from US-owned and/or sited infrastructure. There is a huge marketing push from the EU cloud providers to display their sovereign wares. Maybe us Europeans need to make them more aware of how futile it is to move to EU companies if there are laws equal-to or more pernicious than the US CLOUD Act? A dozen large EU tech companies will sadly exert more pressure on EU lawmakers than trying to explain to 500 million normal people how a law that looks like it will protect children is a smokescreen and terrible for civil liberties.

>let's vote on this proposal

>rejected

>let's vote on it again!

Is it still a democracy if you just keep redoing the vote until you get the outcome you want? The politicians involved in this should be ashamed of themselves.

Only if you have more votes after it passes, to vote on unpassing it again

I feel like we do that pretty regularly in the US.

This only makes sense if each representative is getting feedback from their constituents each time they take the new vote..I think

"Conservatives" feel no shame.

But they are first-class in acting like a victim

It's the same thing as with your republicans.

Italy, the biggest country opposing this, is composed of mainly "conservative" MEPs from FDI. I think you have a very narrow world view.

FDI is not in EPP

Im no conservative, but I thought useres of this site were more intelligent than to throw massive negative stereotypes out about groups of millions of people.

There are luckily not millions of conservative politicians. Those we have right now do already enough damage.

The older ones who resigned when they fucked up, or had a moral compass seamed to have disappeared. Instead we have more and more "MAGA-Style"-Politics

Their leadership in my country has done this for a decade, but the conservative approval rating for the president is still in the low 80's at worst.

At what point do we admit that most of a group people are fine with a negative stereotype?

Sounds a lot like nagging [0] with some trick wording [1] in the nag.

I think the website is missing a dark pattern here, spray-and-pray, which is throwing as many reincarnations of the same thing as possible, hoping one eventually sticks.

[0] https://www.deceptive.design/types/nagging

[1] https://www.deceptive.design/types/trick-wording

Some interesting reads

https://balkaninsight.com/2023/09/29/europol-sought-unlimite...

https://www.ftm.eu/articles/ashton-kutchers-non-profit-start...

Great work! There is maybe some bug. When you click on one of the 4 "opposing" countries (e.g. Czech Republic, Poland), it scrolls down and then shows that majority of the representatives from the country actually support it. Is that intended? Won't that make people from those countries "relax" even though they might have an impact by contacting their represenatives?

I swear to god if the UK gives the world yet MORE surveillance state...

This one is EU I think, but yes UK and everyone else needs to actually protect their citizens' rights.

> This one is EU I think...

You misspelled Palantir.

Tolkien had a lot of other catchy names which are yet unused. EU can create it's own Angband or Ungoliant spying corporation :) .

Gorgoroth sounds about right.

Thanks for your work. Just how is it possible for non-EU lobby to make vote a law in EU, and push for it ?

Money.

I've just used it to send email to my representatives (Croatia). Thanks for the effort.

Why this attempt is not treated as terrorism and authors of the proposals are not arrested?

Chat Controls fulfil the definition of terrorism wholly.

You're a hero

You are a beacon of hope man. Please, please, continue the good fight, we need you.

We keep seeing the establishment resurfacing and imposing this blanket surveillance globally. What's happening in Brazil, the UK, EU, and has already happened in the US with no legislation or via the 5-eyes is scary.

Who are these people pressuring elected politicians and unelected bureaucrats to legislate against their constituents? Who are these lobbyists?

I get that there is a large constituency that wants to control dissidents and the narrative in the name of child abuse - see what's happening in the UK where people get arrested in the thousands for posting comments online.

Abolishing privacy is not the way to protect children. Police work and prosecution is. For reference see the grooming gangs in the UK, the infamous Eps*% case for which everyone is still walking free, and other cases in various EU countries. This is not whataboutism, it's proof that we have not taken the required steps as a western society to combat this. You don't press the nuclear option as your first action.

If it's bot farm meddling that is the true target, then ban bots and get technology to work properly. Creating ID honeypots on poorly protected website operator servers is not the solution.

Call your politicians, call your EU MEPs, call everyone you can. This matters because it's about our future.

Can we start organizing a strike of tech workers already? Pretty please? Just say the word.

Maybe reach out to Signal to implement some kind of one-way channel so you can reach people easily?

We need to put actual pressure on those fascists. Next time they even mention it, we flood the council website with an identical search query, say "Does no mean yes after all?" and if they persist, we strike for couple days.

Is there any point in fighting it given that they will rename, repackage and resubmit the legislation in mere days if it doesn't pass?

Don't get me wrong: my blood boils reading those legislations, but rationally I don't see a path to victory here.

How can people support your work?

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