Hacker News Reader

Comment by belowavgiq | Hacker News Reader

"The procedure now chosen gives the proponents of Chat Control a significant tactical advantage. Since the law is in its second reading, an absolute majority of 361 votes of all parliament members is required for amendments or a renewed rejection on Thursday. In contrast, a simple majority of the MEPs present is sufficient for the other side. As many parliamentarians have historically already departed by the last day before the summer break, the re-enactment of the regulation is considered almost unavoidable."

So, if I'm reading this correctly, Chat Control is bound to become law? and this is after I think 2/3 rejections, how democratic of the EU.

Oh, and parliamentarians starting their summer break whenever they want will never not be funny.

View on HN

> So, if I'm reading this correctly, Chat Control [2.0, implied] is bound to become law?

Nope. This is bad, but not THAT bad.

This is an extension of the existing Chat Control 1.0, which was set to expire (or maybe already has, I didn't keep track). AIUI it gives chat companies permission to scan user chats for illicit content, but does not mandate it.

This is bad, but it's not the much worse still Chat Control 2.0 that was defeated several times already.

Thanks for the correction! I guess I can live with that.

yes. Frog will be boiled tomorrow, no need to panic today.

I think their point is that you lose some battles in a war, chat Control 1.0 is a battle that was already lost. While it is still worthwhile to make an effort to retake lost ground there, that can be done strategically and through habitual effort and does not demand immediate attention the same way an imminent threat of losing new ground would be

> chat Control 1.0 is a battle that was already lost

That’s not true, the previous instance of it expired, and the parliament rejected it. It wasn’t already lost, it was actually a win for people against the proposal

>That’s not true,

my bad then, i misunderstood the context

I can't actually think of a good reason that the law should prohibit a company from having the option to automatically scan private messages for CSAM. Can you?

Certain implementations may fall afoul of data protection laws however.

Because they shouldn't be scanning private messages indiscriminately no matter for what. Lets rephrase it and look at it from "private companies will scan their users private messages for evidence of crimes and report people to police." Where is the limit here? I think it is naive to assume this will stop at csam and will soon be used as a judicial bludgen to extort random citizens for petty crimes that in any other case nobody would ever care or know about.

>extort random citizens for petty crimes that in any other case nobody would ever care or know about.

With the massive, byzantine web of local, state and federal laws everyone is violating numerous laws and regulations all the time. The goal here isn't to arrest everyone all the time for petty crimes and regulatory violations, it is to give the ability to the powers-that-be to select anyone engaging any frowned-upon behavior and pull up a list of legal violations that can be used to silence and/or imprison them. Activists, protesters, political opponents, people who are against whatever latest war the government chooses to engage in or speaking up against "chat control" or whatever the latest Orwellian government seizure of power is will be the ones who are targeted. The end game, which we are rapidly approaching with the elimination of privacy and individual autonomy, is totalitarianism.

Has this happened before?

The NSA wiretaps all phone calls - do they extort random citizens for petty crimes that in any other case nobody would ever know or care about?

Microsoft has your browsing history - we know this because of the recently unsealed court case. Do they do it?

Facebook already ignores this law and scans the content of all private messages anyway. Are they doing what you predicted?

I don't think even the actual Stasi was stopping people at random for petty crimes, right?

I absolutely believe that if the NSA wants something from you badly enough and has the dirt to blackmail you than they will do it.

So you specifically are rebutting the petty crimes however the real risk is leverage that the government and orgs gain by having asymmetrical access to information that no one else does at scale. This can be used for a variety of reasons but see below some examples of internal corruption by employees and what I would argue is the exact misuse of this power to gain political leverage. https://www.reuters.com/article/world/uk/nsa-staff-used-spy-... https://www.aclu.org/news/national-security/prospect-blackma...

These are what leaked. Which is to say that it is very naive to assume that large powerful organization is not going to use its power for gain.

Microsoft and Facebook both use the scanning to network your connections and to build profiles of users to better manipulate your behavior. Hence the Cambridge Analytica Scandal let alone what we dont know about.

Why hand over power to these super powerful and large orgs? What do we supposedly gain as a society? I mean look at flock and Palantir, all it takes is for the political winds to change and the power is there because of these bills.

Yeah it's a risk. But if X is happening right now and Y is not happening and you claim Y happens whenever X does, you really need to explain why the current situation is different or your argument falls apart.

It says they may do that. It doesn't say they have to - we all know which messengers are the secure ones.

A good reason might be that you don't want your private messages to be scanned by any third party in a conversation...

Then don't send them over Facebook - with or without this law

Yeah, or by email, or text message.

> or maybe already has, I didn't keep track

Literally second paragraph.

> to reinstate the transitional regulation for Chat Control, which expired in April

What percentage of EU citizens support Chat Control and what percentage oppose it?

Why is this answer down voted? Isn't a reasonable question to ask? Are the lawmakers proposing laws the majority of the people want?

We never know, because it depends on what your source of information is instructed to propose. Like public opinion polls that created false illusion of what majority wants. But it's just a sample with manufactured questions manipulated to answer specific options.

Personally, I don't fell lawmakers proposing laws that I want. Firstly, because I don't belive that laws are solutions for problems.

> So, if I'm reading this correctly, Chat Control is bound to become law? and this is after I think 2/3 rejections, how democratic of the EU.

Yes, (un?)fortunately that's how democracy works. You keep trying until you get the required majority. No different than elections.

And now, instead of blaming "democracy" or the EU, how about we look at people we all elected to our national and EU institutions who are now making this happen.

And just preemptively, there's is not a single person in a decision-making position on this issue whose power wasn't gifted to them either directly or indirectly by the voters. So let's not blame the EU for people being dumb with their votes.

1 - this is about Chat Control 1.0

2 - The vote was on the "Urgency requirement"

> parliamentarians starting their summer break whenever they want will never not be funny

Eh. This is the least problematic thing here. Some MEPs might just be on official PTO.

The voting dynamics changing beacause elected representatives can't plan their vacations like any regular work place is pretty silly

Yes it's a dirty trick

> how democratic of the EU.

Really, it's not the first time the EU pulls that kind of shite off.

And summertime is the perfect time, in Europe everyone's at the beach.

They even managed to find a work around an actual referendum.

It’s the council. We have to be clear which institution we are talking about within the EU, otherwise that doesn’t make any sense. The European Parliament already pushed back that proposal. The EU is made of a lot of different actors with their own agenda.

Here the council, with the help of the EPP party is doing that undemocratic maneuvering: They made it on purpose so that the parliament is unlikely to be able to push back a third time (all of that leaked a few days ago)

If the EU as a system has an undemocratic backdoor it's descriptively correct to call it undemocratic. Not to play too hard on the HN user stereotype, but you wouldn't call a computer system that is mostly secure other than a known privilege escalation exploit secure, would you?

Every single democratic system relies on norms at some level. Democratic isn’t a boolean flag. When the French prime minister is using the 49-3 rule to bypass the parliament that’s undemocratic, that doesn’t make the system itself undemocratic. When a US president is using an executive order to pass a law that’s undemocratic, that doesn’t make the system itself undemocratic. Here the maneuver goes against the spirit of democracy and against the expected norms, however the EU itself is democratic

If France has a way for the prime minister to bypass democracy that's undemocratic.

That’s what I wrote

No.

The way the EU is designed has nothing to do with the US or France. First the Parliament and Council (the bodies democratically elected) do not have power of legislative initiative.

Then the Commission, which is a "super" executive power, is not democratically elected. Unlike France or the US (the two you mentioned).

The EU has an architecture that is fundamentally different from the US or French system. In many way it is actually closer to something like the UN or PRC.

In parliamentary democracies, governments tend to not be democratically elected. The Commission is no different than most European governments when it comes to that.

You’re missing the point I’m making, which is about how „democratic“ is a nuanced spectrum. I’m not drawing parallels regarding the way the institutions are implemented. Also, the French prime minister and government isn’t democratically elected. Only the president is

> Only the president is

The head of the executive is elected, that makes quite a big difference.

> You’re missing the point I’m making, which is about how „democratic“ is a nuanced spectrum.

Yes and some have the right to argue that China is a democracy. They do have a lot of elections. And the CCP has a very broad spectrum of ideas and politics within it, in fact much broader than the people you will find in the EU Commission.

In the end it is about how much you perceive the common will is represented and served by the regime in place. Chat Control has openly gone against it for years and is being shove down our throat.

And there is a reason why farmers have been driving their tractors to Brussels from all over Europe for decades. The trip ain't cheap.

>When a US president is using an executive order to pass a law

An executive order isn't a law. It is an instruction for an executive branch agency or committee.

https://www.federalregister.gov/presidential-documents/execu...

Pragmatically the difference does not really matter, om the other hand a executive order migth have more action behind it than a law.

Even with the hugely expansive U.S. government and executive branch, an executive order is much more restricted in scope than a law passed by congress.

Well, we don't really see all the democracy in the US, especially in this last term.

When the congress doesn't even know that the president can do this or that, it's just dictatorship with some theater. In Europe, the EU's powers are much much more limited.

> you wouldn't call a computer system that is mostly secure other than a known privilege escalation exploit secure, would you?

People do this all the time, regardless of whether or not they're right or wrong. "This product I own is definitely secure because the marketing says so, even if the CVEs prove me wrong" is a common sentiment online and in real life.

Not to play too hard on the computing-detatched normie stereotype, but this type of surveillance is bound to succeed due to their apathy. We've seen this play out in the US before, and it's always a shoo-in for the surveillance legislation. Security, privacy and fairness doesn't even cross most people's minds anymore.

> The European Parliament already pushed back that proposal. The EU is made of a lot of different actors with their own agenda.

It doesn't matter how the European parliament voted.

https://www.politico.eu/article/president-vs-parliament-robe...

It does matter, the parliament vote is precisely what pushed the council/EPP to do their most recent push in such a disgusting, undemocratic way. The parliament still has a say, but elected are likely to already be on vacation (which is another dumb thing, but what the bad actors here are actively taking advantage of)

> how democratic of the EU

Well, these are the MEPs elected by member states. We don’t like the outcome but this means chat control is well supported within the government of each country.

MEPs are directly elected by citizens, not governments. It's the Council instead where representatives (ministers) of all national governments sit

Yup, edited to clarify I mean the MEPs bring “the will of the people”. Clearly not enough has happened on local level to raise awareness / lobby against chat control. I don’t think many outside tech are even aware if the slippery slope of the surveillance machinery.

The European Council (heads of states) sets the agenda, the European Commission (delegates from each state) writes the laws, and the MEPs (elected by the public) decide whether or not to accept the laws.

The Council decided Chat Control was on the agenda, the Commission wrote the law, and the MEPs voted to reject said law in March. Then the president of the parliament (not the MEPs at large) asked the Council to ignore the March vote and proceed with the agenda under urgency as if it had passed.

Now a minority of the MEPs (331 out of 720) - but a majority of who were present at the time and chose not to abstain - have voted to deal with the matter under urgency, but haven't voted on the substance of it. This makes the actual vote happen on the last sitting day, when apparently they are hoping a lot of MEPs will be away.

The first sentence is correct, but

> The Council decided Chat Control was on the agenda

The Council is different from the European Council (yes, the treaty drafters were not much creative in naming institutions), the latter is composed of the heads of states and sets the agenda like you said, while the former is composed on ministers in the policy area under discussion, and it's a "co-legislator" together for the Parliament (on most areas, including Chat Control 1.0 & 2.0, both must agree to pass an act).

The issue here (it's part of the "democratic deficits") is that, in its second reading, the EP needs an absolute majority to amend/reject the Council first reading, and a simple majority to approve it and pass it into law.

The parliament rejected the proposal twice. Yes the governments support it, but not the people of European countries

And who exactly elects the governments I wonder? Aliens?

uhm, the will of the people is often already half-lost with the politicians/parties they directly elect, so I would hardly consider another layer of representative "demo"cracy on top of another layer of representative democracy following the will of the people at all.

But true, I blamed this on the Commission when I should have just started with this criticism of the overall system.

Is it really supported by the people, or just the politicians?

If the former, the EU is an autocratic democracy. If the later, an autocratic oligarchy.

Either way bad. Only true democracy in Europe is Switzerland where the people actually get to vote on laws.

We have representatives in Switzerland, please don’t misrepresent our political system to push your anti-EU agenda. We do not vote on every single laws. It’s a semi-direct democracy. A representative democracy is the most common instantiation of democratic systems.

Representative democracy vs direct democracy is the actual dichotomy you’re looking for.

Making it not illegal for Facebook to scan your DMs is not autocracy. (And we know Facebook does that whether it's legal or not.) To make it autocracy, at a minimum they'd have to mandate the scanning, which is Chat Control 2, which is still not passing.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com