> Furthermore, the next massive threat to digital civil liberties is already on the agenda: Next up in the ongoing trilogue, lawmakers will negotiate whether messenger and chat services, as well as app stores, will be legally obliged to implement age verification. This would require users to provide ID documents or submit to facial scans, effectively making anonymous communication impossible and severely endangering vulnerable groups such as whistleblowers and persecuted individuals.
I once had a lawmaker explain the constant work of defending an issue in a helpful way.
In a democracy, we don't kill our opposition. If they hold certain views, e.g. that security trumps privacy, they're going to litigate that view. Probably for their whole lives. That means they'll continuoiusly bring up the same ideas. And you'll have to continuously defeat it.
But there are two important aspects to this. Passing legislation takes as much work as repealing it. But unpassed legislation has no force of law. Being on the side that's keeping legislation from being passed is the decisive upper hand. You have the status quo on your side. (The only stronger hand is the side fighting to keep legislation from being repealed. Then you have both the status quo and force of law.)
The second point is that legislative wants are usually unlimited. Especially once a group has invested into political machinery to organise themselves, they're not going to declare victory and go home after passing their law. They're going to push for something else. Thus, repeatedly failing to pass a law represents a successful bulwark. It's a resource sink for the defense, yes. But the defense gets to hold onto the status quo. The offense–the guys pushing for Chat Control–are effectively throwing money into a pit. The only thing they may have to show for their work is a more-experienced machine, but that's true for both sides.
In the end, each generation tends to have a set of issues that are continuously battled. The status quo that persists or emerged then forms a bedrock that tends to be forgotten for a while. This is the work of a democracy. Constantly working to convince your fellow citizens that your position deserves priority. Because the alternative is the people in power killing those who disagree with them.
Perhaps this is bad news for "messenger and chat services, as well as app stores" who solicit "users" to exploit them for commercial gain, for example _if_ users are unwilling to accept "age verification" and decide to stop using them. The keyword is "if"
The third parties know it's possible for capable users to communicate with each other without using third party "chat and messenger services" intermediaries that conduct data collection, surveillance and/or online ad services as a "business model". Thus the third party "tech" company intermediaries strive to make their "free services" more convenient than DIY, i.e., communication without using third party intermediation by so-called "tech" companies
But users may decide that "age verification" is acceptable. For many years, HN comments have repeatedly insisted that "most users" do not care about data collection or surveillance or online advertising, that users don't care about privacy. Advocates of "Big Tech" and other so-called "tech" companies argue that by using such third party services, users are consciously _choosing_ convenience over privacy
Perhaps the greatest threat to civil liberties is the mass data collection and surveillance conducted by so-called "tech" companies. The "age verification" debate provides a vivid illustration of why allowing such companies to collect data and surveil without restriction only makes it easier for governments that seek to encroach upon civil liberties. While governments may operate under legal and financial constraints that effectively limit their ability to conduct mass surveillance, the companies operate freely, creating enormous repositories that governments can use their authority to tap into
That most implementation will try to collect far more data is the real concern.
Trilogues should be burned down, closed doors meetings with Ministers writing laws from their own services.
They even used a teddy bear image.
https://www.eppgroup.eu/newsroom/epp-urges-support-for-last-...
"Protecting children is not optional," said Lena Düpont MEP, EPP Group spokeswoman on Legal and Home Affairs. "We call on the S&D Group to stop hiding behind excuses and finally take responsibility. We cannot afford a safe haven for child abusers online. Every delay leaves children exposed and offenders unchallenged."
Personally, I feel there must be other privacy-preserving ways to address child abusers than mass surveillance.
Also, for the record, here is the list of parties that lobbied for this for Mrs Düpont, alongside very few privacy-focused organisations. Not sure why Canada or Australia are lobbying for EU laws.
ANNEX: LIST OF ENTITIES OR PERSONS FROM WHOM THE RAPPORTEUR HAS RECEIVED INPUT
- Access Now
- Australian eSafety Commissioner
- Bundesrechtsanwaltskammer (BRAK)
- Canadian Centre for Child Protection
- cdt - Center for Democracy & Technology
- eco - Association of the Internet Industry
- EDPS
- EDRI
- Fundamental Rights Agency
- Improving the digital environment for children (regrouping several child protection NGOs across the EU and beyond, including Missing Children Europe, Child Focus)
- INHOPE – the International Association of Internet Hotlines
- International Justice Mission Deutschland e.V./ We Protect
- Internet Watch Foundation
- Internet Society
- Match Group
- Microsoft
- Thorn (Ashton Kutcher)
- UNICEF
- UN Special Rapporteur on the right to privacy
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/A-9-2020-0258_...
> The Commission’s failure to identify the list of experts as falling within the scope of the complainant’s public access request constitutes maladministration. [0]
> The Commission presented a proposal on preventing and combating child sexual abuse, looking in particular at detecting child pornography. In this context, it has mentioned that support could be provided by the software of the controversial American company Palantir... [1]
> Is Palantir’s failure to register on the Transparency Register compatible with the Commission’s transparency commitments? [1]
(Palantir only entered the Transparency Registry in March 2025 despite being a multi million vendor of Gotham for Europol and European Agencies for more than a decade)
> No detailed records exist concerning a January meeting between European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and the CEO of controversial US data analytics firm Palantir [2]
[0] https://www.ombudsman.europa.eu/en/decision/en/176658
[1] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-9-2024-00016...
[2] https://www.euractiv.com/news/commission-kept-no-records-on-...
They really have no shame, do they? https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-66772846
Kutcher defended a rapist in court when they thought they were anonymous (they weren't), the same rapist who bragged about assaulting their underage peer/co-star to Kutcher, and then harassed the children of the plaintiffs[1] in his trial where he was convicted and sentenced to 30 years to life:
> Another plaintiff stated that she and her neighbors observed a man snapping pictures from her driveway, and later that night, broke a window in her 13-year-old daughter's bedroom.
[1] https://people.com/tv/danny-masterson-church-scientology-sue...
I don't have many opinions on this but this sort of lazy logic would make me nervous. 36% is not a small number and that's before the folks doing this activity find out that private message is less patrolled.
> This means on April 6, 2026, Gmail, LinkedIn, Microsoft and other Big Techs must stop scanning your private messages in the EU
It had already passed and started?
Facebook and others have been scanning your private messages for many years already. Then someone discovered that this practice is illegal in Europe. So they passed the temporary chat control 1.0 emergency law to make it legal. The plan was to draft a chat control 2.0 law that would then be the long-term solution. But negotiations took too long and the temporary law will expire on the 4th of April (not the 6th) which means that it will be illegal again for Facebook and others to scan the private messages of European citizens without prior suspicion of any wrongdoing.
Chat Control 1 says, eh do it anyway if you want on a voluntary and temporary basis until the Courts get around to saying no.
Chat Control 2 says you have to. Until the courts finally get around to striking it down in 15 years.
Users need the ability to choose operating systems and software that is not exclusively green-lit by a first-party vendor. It's not glamorous, but pretending that software isn't a competitive market is what put us into this surveillance monopoly in the first place. "trust" distributed among a handful of businesses isn't going to cut it in a post-2030s threat environment.
For Americans, imagine if only Republicans ever got to propose legislation and only Democrats could vote on it. That's more or less it.
Well, that's because she was nominated by European governments, which happen to be largely run by right-wing parties right now. There have been socialist personalities in her place in the past. That has nothing to do with democracy.
I thought Juncker was an idiot but VdL is corrupt to Hillary levels and worse than the disastruous Merker/Juncker duo in every way. I'd like to see her replaced with someone like Macron. That's the type of leadership that the EU needs right now.
Otherwise it would be trivial for a government to intentionally fail to pass anything they disagree with, and thus act as a de facto dictatorship.
I don't think "democracy is flawed therefore we need less of it" is a good idea.
Looking at what each of my MEPs voted they seemed to pretty accurately represent their own party lines, the right and far right voted for, left and center left voted against. I'm shocked! Shocked! Well not that shocked.
From the point of view of the individual, the parliament is our first defense. And this is an example of it working
It's when laws can exist, but simply have bad implementations, where you obviously can't jump to an amendment process.
At the end of the day you still need people to actually believe it, for whatever "it" is.
Years after harm was done and lives were ruined no less.
The only way to really stop this would be to pass legislation that permanently strengthens privacy rights.
Did it work? One political party (EPP) didn't like the result of the previous vote and so they forced a re-vote.
> After the European Parliament had already rejected the indiscriminate and blanket Chat Control by US tech companies on 13 March, conservative forces attempted a democratically highly questionable maneuver yesterday to force a repeat vote to extend the law anyway.
https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/end-of-chat-control-eu-parl...
20 out of 184
The measure voted on is "Extension [of Chat Control 1.0]", it was voted 36% "for" and 49% "against" (so result is "against"), and looking at "Political groups", majority of EPP MEPs voted "against" (137 out of 164 votes).
(Edit: word choice)
S&D voted even more for this than the conservatives themselves. ESN the least.
Less tight.
Note that in some countries it has _both ruling coalition and opposition_ member parties.
It means the people who get to vote on if you have a right to privacy or not.
It seems this second time around amendment votes produced a final draft that the parliament as a whole found unacceptable, which apparently includes the majority of the EPP.
You can see the outcome of the individual amendment votes here, starting on page 15: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/PV-10-2026-03-...
and what the actual amendments were here: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/LIBE-AM-784377...
It is however quite tedious to go trough this to figure out what the final draft text was that then lead to the outright rejection.
From the tweet, it seems tuta is implying it was the vote in favour of amendment 34 that killed the extension; I guess that's possible but certainly not obvious from the amendment text:
> Reports on the 1325% increase in generative AI produced child sexual material requires voluntary detection to be calibrated to distinguish artificial material and avoid diverting resources from victims in immediate danger. Such measures should prevent the revictimization of children through AI models, while ensuring that this technological development does not justify general monitoring, a relaxation of privacy standards, or the weakening of end-to-end encryption.
The ostensible reasons for mass surveillance fail. That's very interesting.
It is not exceptional for most MEP from a member state to be in the opposition at the national level, particularly in contexts where it is seen as a protest vote. Turnout is usually low for European elections, so they tend to swing a bit more than national elections.
If you look at local politics and news they are all lobbying massively for it (or some people do). The reason is usually "for sake of the children". Parents in particular are heavily in favor of chat control.
You could interpret the results as the Danish government being for Chat Control, but "normal" Danish people not following the same trend
France has had really strange tendencies lately, e.g. when they arrested Telegram founder.
Only 51% of people able to vote in European elections actually vote (with 2,81% white ballot), so it’s not even a majority of electors sustaining them, despite abstention being at record low level in decades.
Elites being disconnected from people day-to-day reality and needs is a recurrent topic leaking even in the mainstream media which almost all owned by oligarchs by now.
European institutions are notoriously opaque and byzantine, which doesn’t really help with feeling represented, even before Qatar gates and the 1/4th of MEP revealed "implicated in judicial cases or scandals."
https://www.touteleurope.eu/institutions/elections-europeenn...
https://vote-blanc.org/europeennes-2024-la-repartition-par-d...
https://www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs/article/2024/06/10/euro...
https://www.bfmtv.com/politique/gouvernement/gerald-darmanin...
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/les-decodeurs/article/2024/02/02/o...
> In early October 2025, in the face of concerted public opposition, the German government stated that it would vote against the proposal
German MEPs also voted against this one.
(Note that the German government and German MEPs aren't the same thing here.)
We will see many new initiatives, old wine in a new bottle. Any bet that EU diehard bureaucrats will change tune, not the goal. They are going to use the so called salami tactic.
Death of free speech by many cuts, so to say. It is in the left wing DNA. Have a look at German history regarding "Landes-Verfassungsschutz" units. It is disturbing to read this article here: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verfassungsschutz_Nordrhein-We...
And back then already it was the so called center-right party ruled against this left wing initiative - imagine, first thing you do right after WW2 is ramping up a control unit to control freedom of speech.
Please value free speech. Agree to disagree, but remember: those who live by prohibitions will ultimately use this tool against you as well. Consider wisely what is something you dislike personally and simply exercise your right to not listen to certain voices or appeal to prohibition.
Prohibition becomes a tool and everybody knows that people love to use their tools. And since I have a law degree, often times what you plan is not what is finally what courts decide, how they apply the law.
Freedom rights are fundamental.
it is more than that. since 2021 an EU interim regulation (2021/1232), set to expire on 3 april, was allowing companies to voluntarily scan messages. this vote was about the renewal of that regulation. since it has been rejected, the regulation is no longer in effect.
So to him they are probably left-wing.
Someone somewhere really really wants this and has the time and resources so it’s an inevitability.
Saying that it doesn’t matter is just defeatist (and unfortunately always parroted on HN) and plainly wrong. Defeatists have been proven wrong time and again.
Of course our national govts have been pretty woeful ever since, but in 2029 we will have the opportunity to vote for genuine, dramatic change, with strong options on both the left and right side of politics.
Regarding the creeping surveillance state, Reform UK have explicitly stated they will repeal the awful Online Safety Act.
This is how we wrestle control back from the establishment.
But I'm sure voting for Nigel Farage one more time will fix everything
Told you so.
> The European Commission wants a backdoor for end-to-end encryptions for law enforcement
https://www.techradar.com/pro/security/the-european-commissi...
Good thing the EU didn't take a page out of the US' book, because things like the PATRIOT act are already pithy and hard to outmarket.
If RPCCSA were actually called PROTECT, the nickname "Chat Control" would have been fighting a losing battle.
Ask a European who isn't in tech, and they won't know what you're talking about. Maybe they will today specifically, this vote is bound to get some press, but in general, mainstream media doesn't care much about this bill.
Even Europeans in tech who aren't in the "tech equivalent of gun nuts" culture that HN seems to exemplify are 50/50.
It’s not. People on Reddit, Mastodon, and other websites are also aware (of course not everyone, but not everyone on HN either).
> Ask a European who isn't in tech, and they won't know what you're talking about.
People who haven’t heard about Chat Control haven’t heard the bill’s real name either. That’s true of the overwhelming majority of EU regulation, Chat Control isn’t special in that regard.
Even more unfortunately, the issue is so emotional that we can't have a reasonable discussion on it. This limits the discussion to proposals that sound good to angry people. And the opposition to those who can get angry about something else. Which limits how much reason is applied on either side.
For example, look at the idea of a national sex offenders registry, like we have in the USA. The existence of such a registry is reasonable given that we're no more successful at stopping people from being pedophiles, than we are at stopping them from being homosexuals.
But the purpose of such a list is severely undermined when an estimated quarter of the list were themselves minors when they offended. The age at which people are most likely to land on the list is 14. But a man who liked 13 year olds when he was 14, is unlikely to reoffend at 30. What is the purpose of ruining the rest of his life for a juvenile mistake?
Such discussions simply can't be had.
am I like misunderstanding or what does this mean exactly? I'm so confused. "reoffend" what kind of offense are we talking about here?
they care less and less about it being obvious too.
our new prime minister (NL) was asked about some campaign promises recently (ones important to a lot of his voters actually) and he justs plainly said somethin like: yeah well sometimes u just gotta say shit to get votes.
i mean, its not news ofc... but now they dont even care to mask it. They know the public will just bend over and take it anyway.
Someone should sell calendars based on when this typically gets proposed as well as dates throughout the year when past instances of check control came up against key procedural hurdles.
Now let's start preparing for the next one.
Until we meet again.
This is sad that this has gotten this far. If they wanted to pass a law to blow up citizens, do you think European Parliament would seriously consider it? It is exactly the same calibre of idiocy.
I would expect German authorities to issue arrest warrants and properly investigate this.
For context:
If terrorism is defined as using violence or threats to intimidate a population for political or ideological ends, then “Chat Control” qualifies in substance. Violence doesn’t have to leave blood. Psychological and coercive violence is recognised in domestic law (see coercive control offences) and by the WHO. It causes measurable harm to bodies and minds.
The aim is intimidation. The whole purpose is to make people too scared to speak freely. That is intimidation of a population, by design.
It is ideological. The ideology is mass control - keeping people compliant by stripping them of private spaces to think, talk, and dissent.
The only reason it’s not “terrorism” on paper is because states write definitions that exempt themselves. But in plain terms, the act is indistinguishable in effect from terrorism: deliberate fear, coercion, and the destruction of free will.
Any time a scumbag politician tries this again:
"Mr. Jones, secretary of communications for the state, TTL (Time-to-live) left. 2 Hours? 1 Day? 1 Week?"
It would stop fast.
Anyone want to build this? There is a lot of money being left on the table.
I highly doubt they have given up here too
https://howtheyvote.eu/votes/189270
Just pointing this out because yesterday there was the myth around that "chat control is pushed by the conservatives", obscuring the actual political dynamics in the EU about it.
EPP wanted indiscriminate scanning instead, not targeted one.
Mass surveillance isn't really a question that projects well onto the left-right scale, and attempting to make it fit a left-right question is more likely to distract than provide a useful understanding.
While your examples were on the economic left, they were clearly authoritarian.
And they will try again tomorrow. Until it passes.
> Also compared to whom?
Why compare? The fact that there are worse regimes than the EU doesn't make the EU even a single bit better. Lesser evil is still evil. Let us strive for good.
You're inverting roles here.
Just look at the UK and how crazy they've gone now that the EU can't shoot their ideas down anymore.
... I mean this is how all parliamentary systems work. It's more _visible_ in the EU than in others, I think, because the council/commission are more willing to put forward things that they don't really think the parliament will go for (in many parliamentary systems, realistically the executive will be reluctant to put forward stuff where they think they'll lose the vote in parliament).
But there's not really a huge difference; it would just be _quieter_ in most parliamentary systems, and you wouldn't really hear anything about it until the executive had their votes in place, brought it forward, and passed it. I actually kind of prefer the EU system, in that it tends to happen more out in the open, which allows for public comment. And public comment and pressure is a huge deal for this sort of thing; most parliamentarians, on things they don't understand, will vote whatever way their party is voting. But if it becomes clear that their constituents care about it, they may actually have to think about it, and that's half the battle.
Once laws are passed they aren't revoked. So it's just a matter of political climate. Just wait for people to get a little more negative, a little more paranoid (which has historically been "helped along" in various ways)-- a law only needs to pass once, and then we're stuck with some stupid bullshit forever.
It doesn't really seem like how you'd want to design it.
And not being able to deny the Holocaust doesn't mean you don't have free speech
You can see it the other way around, without the EU, Denmark and others would have already implemented ChatControl in their country. This is driven by member states (Denmark), not the parliament, after all.
With the former approach, every country is allowed to try different things, some amazing, some dumb, and learn from the amazing and dumb things that others have done.
In the latter, there's only one governing body, and whatever that body said, goes. There's no science or statistics, just sides shouting their arguments at each other, calling people names.
Both the EU and the US used to heavily lean towards the former approach, but they're slowly but inexorably moving towards the latter.
There are many reasons to abolish the EU, but the topic here is chat control.
> You can see it the other way around, without the EU, Denmark and others would have already implemented ChatControl in their country. This is driven by member states (Denmark), not the parliament, after all.
Would they? We don't know. Would the government of Denmark be ready to commit political suicide by insisting again and again on something so unpopular?
The whole premise of the EU is to allow various unelected interest groups to push unpopular regulation to the EU member states without any consequences.
> insisting again and again on something so unpopular?
Didn't the UK do exactly this?
> directly elect some kind of president
We do not need a president with over-powers, and electing directly one does not solve anything for democracy, as the recent history in countries like the US and France shows. The point of directly electing a president is giving that role more power. The current structure in the EU is not so much president-centric either executive or legislative wise, but more like comission-centric, which is what imo has the biggest problem in terms of democracy in the EU.
They do.
> directly elect some kind of president
I get the impression you're coming at it from a US perspective, and it's not that, and doesn't intend to be for now. The president is elected by majority of the MP's who have been elected by the people of their respective countries. Almost like the US electorial system, except it's done internally because people generally only vote for their own best interests and not that of the entirety.
Perfect, no, it can be slow and a lot of red tape, but what system isn't flawed.
Many EU nations are not presidential, and personally I prefer parliamentary republics than presidential ones.
give everyone half a dozen votes or more, and and you'll get a more representative sample.
for example instead of electing a president, elect a while leadership team. independent of party affiliation. (i'd get rid of parties completely while we are at it, every candidate should be independent (the expanded version of that gets even rid of candidates, every adult can potentially be elected, but that is a more complex system that needs more elaboration))
Why exclude teachers from picking the education minister? If we're restricting votes, shouldn't they be the only ones doing so instead?
It's like on the Apollo missions where some parts were made by two completely different manufacturers and worked completely differently.
Hybrid political systems are best. Of course if we like democracy (and most people do), then that should be the most common kind of component. But I'd still like to have some different paradigms mixed into the system. And that's exactly what most modern constitutions do, for better or for worse.
Maybe also a 3rd chamber, where the weight of your vote was proportional to IQ (much more palatable in EU than US).
...
We do? What did you think the European Parliament elections every four years were for?
> directly elect some kind of president.
Why? Nowhere in Western Europe except very arguably France (France, as always, has to be a bit weird about everything, and has a hybrid system) has a directly elected executive. True executive presidential systems are only really a thing in the Americas and Africa (plus Russia, these days).
Like, in terms of big countries with a true executive presidency, you’re basically looking at the US, Russia and Brazil. I’m, er, not sure we should be modeling ourselves on those paragons of democracy.
> They have no accountability, no checks and balances.
The parliament has the same accountability and checks and balances as any national parliament, more or less (more than some, as the ECJ is more effective and independent than many national supreme courts).
Probably it is not taught as part of the curriculum in Russia.
imagine system where we directly elect the whole cabinet. only people with electoral approval should get to be ministers. and the prime ministers or presidents job is to only manage that group.
Generally, a prime minister is less powerful than an executive president, often much less powerful.
> and the prime ministers or presidents job is to only manage that group.
On the face of it, that is the PM's primary role in a parliamentary democracy. Now, the complication is that, in many parliamentary systems, the PM has significant power over the ministers (either via the ability to directly appoint them, or via being the head of the ruling party/coalition/or various other means). But generally, the PM is less powerful in nearly all systems than, say, the US president; in particular the finance minister is often a separate semi-independent power within the cabinet.
You're missing a [citation needed] on that.
How is that an EU problem? Without the EU, like here in the UK, we had non-elected lobbyists pressuring our elected government to implement age checks, message scanning, etc. And it is still continuing.
You're fighting the wrong fight by blaming the EU for this.
EU has checks and balances that were intended for a trade union, not a nascent superstate. If we don't implement proper checks and balances in a real fucking hurry, we'll wake up one morning and realize the EU has turned into another Soviet union, and by then it'll be far too late to do anything about it.
If accountability is to work, it has to be more than an abstract theoretical possibility.
Even if there was an option in the national elections that didn't want this stuff, convincing a majority of voters to disregard national politics for an election cycle to have an imperceptibly small impact on the council members is such an unlikely outcome the council or comission would de facto be committing genocides before voters would be mobilized, and even then it's unlikely they'd face any repercussions.
And no, this isn't dog whistling violence. It is simply applying signal. The only other message I can think of is engaging an investigative journalist/PI and starting to figure out who is lobbying the person, and start pressuring them.
Why do you keep lying?
They keep getting away with these attrition tactics with regards to implementing near Stasi levels communication surveillance. What about the day they're pushing to give the council unlimited powers, or to abolish voting rights, or to purge jews?
If the EU were to not exist, your representatives in the Council/Commission (e.g. your national government) would be more powerful because they wouldn't be checked by the Parliament, not less.
Your problem is with your government, they just successfully deflected it to the EU in your mind.
Again, why are you aggressively lying here? Why are you misrepresenting workings of EU despite them following every single democracy out there?
Also - wasn’t this program voluntary? This seems like the height of backslapping. Would have been better if they just sat on their hands and did nothing in the first place.
You described 95% of EU's work.
This gave companies permission to do things which would ordinarily be illegal under the ePrivacy directive, but did not make it mandatory for them to do so. That permission is now revoked (or will be when the derogation they were trying to extend expires in two weeks).
