Contrary to headlines suggesting the EU has “backed away” from Chat Control, the negotiating mandate endorsed today by EU ambassadors in a close split vote paves the way for a permanent infrastructure of mass surveillance.
While the Council removed the obligation for scanning, the agreed text creates a toxic legal framework that incentivizes US tech giants to scan private communications indiscriminately, introduces mandatory age checks for all internet users, and threatens to exclude teenagers from digital life.
The article is non-paywalled, freely readable on the link --^
Including it here because Chat Control goes against the spirit of Open-Source technologies (which are usually meant and built for control over one’s device, privacy, trust… and no black boxes analyzing the content of messages you’re sending to your partner).
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Prohibition leads to the propagation of means of evasion. By attempting to ban teenagers from popular means of communications they will incentivize mass adoption of “illicit means” of communications, and create another generation both familiar and comfortable with “illegal online activity” like the Napster generation. Just like Napster, this will also accidentally push youth into online platforms and channels where they are more likely to encounter content not suitable for minors and malware.
The only “truly effective” form that this type of internet control can take is requiring a digital ID verification to establish a connection to the network at the ISP, and that is a nightmare setup we should be prepared to fight tooth and nail.
This is depressing.
The current proposal as far as I understand it is that they will tell a company/service to “voluntaraly” scan the content.
Then an open source project that is forced to comply can just stop development and be forked on the last commit and shrug shoulders.
Which will buy enough time, because legally making those requests will take time and work. I can easily see fork related infrastructure for end users making it really eash or automatic to keep up with that cycle.
But even better would be to develop open source hardware based communication solutions, that don’t have the abilitu to add a backdoor through a software patch. Think like a pager with all the security and privacy bells and whistles.
A much better and desired solution is to stop this law from ever happening by societal pressure, in my personal opinion. I wasn’t born in the EU, but I live here many years now. I choose to believe that EU isn’t fully corrupted, and that many good and meaningful changes are still happening.
Yes, but how though?
We’ve stopped chat control over and over for years. But now they seem to have went through with it.
Usually the linked website has instructions. Now it simply says:
About the Vote: The Council mandate was today endorsed by the Committee of Permanent Representatives (COREPER). About the Procedure: The text will now be negotiated with the European Parliament. The Parliament’s mandate (adopted in Nov 2023) explicitly rules out indiscriminate scanning and demands targeted surveillance based on suspicion.
If there is an organized protest in front of the parlament, link it please.
I choose to believe that EU isn’t fully corrupted, and that many good and meaningful changes are still happening.
Lmao
The EU as an organisation is 100% detached from any working class political will. It is entirely beholden to business interests and maintaining bourgeoisie rule through surveillance, overregulation and racial animosity towards anyone who’s not white western European. Especially towards slavs and East Europeans who are basically second class citizens used for ultra cheap manual labor.
The EU has absolutely no progressive power beyond the usual shiny, white washed aesthetics of neoliberalism.
Seconding this, I don’t think it ever even could have gone the other way. In the end the EU (and all its members) is just another bourgeois state with the same flaws as any other, economically and politically beholden to the will of US’s imperialism and capital.
I feel like the biggest issue is the lack of 3rd party app stores or the need to “sideload” as opposed to just fucking installing an application like any normal computer
Whats the difference between sideloading and installing? I don’t get it tbh.
On windows for example, it is the norm to go online to a website, download an exe and double click it - instead of going to the microsoft store. And both are ways to install software. Neither way is doing it sideways.
But also
I can easily see fork related infrastructure for end users making it really eash or automatic to keep up with that cycle.
There could be a store that installs software from github (there already is) and additionally tells you “hey this app you have got forked and the fork has more development happening, do you want to switch to that one and migrate all your settings? y/n”
I think the term was originally coined for installing apps on jailbroken iphones, but every company with its own app store has since adopted it because it makes it sound shady.
There shouldnt be a difference but there is. Most iPhones require sideloading to get non-Apple App store apps.
The issue is for most people, if the government fucks around and gets Signal banned, Apple is their enforcer all the while harping about security and standards and other nonsense. Its horseshit because the lack of encrypted messengers like Signal makes people sitting ducks for surveillance and prosecution from a corrupt governement and Apple enforces their violent monopoly on deciding if the people using its products have safe access to quality, encrypted appz
if the government fucks around and gets Signal banned
you can use threema or wire or something else will become available on the appstore
Good luck to find people to use this apps.
You know, the network effect etc… 😔
But wait, the same EU is asking for interoperability to fight the network effect !! Maybe there is a light !
I dont think they necesswrily have the best intentions for interoperabillity.
Why wouldnt they do the same to Threema and Matrix/Elements/etc
The same stuff would likely apply to Threema, any chat app that publicly is known for e2ee and refuses to backdoor it will be fair game
e2eu encryption
