Chatcontrol: EU Wants to Scan All Private Messages, Even in Encrypted Apps

As the old saying goes, the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

And the willingness and ability to enforce it. The current iteration of ChatControl is pushed by Denmark, which is at present the President of the Council of the European Union. The Danish Constitution itself enshrines the right to privacy of communication [0], but this is not stopping Denmark from wanting to ratify ChatControl anyway.

[0]: https://danskelove.dk/grundloven/72

In the charter, the protection of personal data and privacy is a recognized right. So chat control is also probably against the EU law.

For example, in the EU you technically have the right to freedom of expression, but you can also be arrested if you say something that could offend someone.

Similarly rights to privacy are often ignored whenever a justification can be made that it's appropriate to do so.

I don't know about elsewhere in the world, but here in the UK you don't even have a right to remain silent because the government added a loophole so that if you're arrested in a UK airport they can arbitrarily force you to answer their questions and provide passwords for any private devices. For this reason you often here reports of people being randomly arrested in UK airports, and the government does this deliberately so they can violate your rights.

Constitutions don't enforce themselves. The US constitution has a crystal clear right to bear arms but multiple jurisdictions ignore it and multiple supreme court rulings and make firearm ownership functionally impossible anyway. Free speech regulations have, thankfully, been more robust.

The only thing that stops bad things happening is a critical mass of people who believe in the values the constitution memorializes and who have enough veto power to stop attempts to erode these values.

The US has such a critical mass, the gun debate notwithstanding. Does the EU have enough people who still believe in freedom?

The people who wrote this proposal said it themselves - "Whilst different in nature and generally speaking less intrusive, the newly created power to issue removal orders in respect of known child sexual abuse material certainly also affects fundamental rights, most notably those of the users concerned relating to freedom of expression and information."

This proposal is illegal. The fact that CJEU at least haven't issued a statement that this is illegal tells you everything you need to know about the EU and its democracy.

The issue is what is the European Commission willing to do in order to guarantee that fat contract check goes to Palantir or Thorn or whoever has the best quid pro quo of the day.

This is not Stasi this is Tech billionaires playing kings and buying the EC and Europol for pennies on the dollar and with it the privacy of virtually every citizen of zero interest for law enforcement or agencies.

Yes, it would lower such barriers for countries that are commonly seen today as Europe's adversaries. But in this case, the U.S. (or rather, U.S. organisations and corporations) might be the primary bad actor pushing for ChatControl. See e.g.:

Thorn (organization) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorn_(organization)

"Thorn works with a group of technology partners who serve the organization as members of the Technology Task Force. The goal of the program includes developing technological barriers and initiatives to ensure the safety of children online and deter sexual predators on the Internet. Various corporate members of the task force include Facebook, Google, Irdeto, Microsoft, Mozilla, Palantir, Salesforce Foundation, Symantec, and Twitter.[7] ... Netzpolitik.org and the investigative platform Follow the Money criticize that "Thorn has blurred the line between advocacy for children’s rights and its own interest as a vendor of scanning software."[11][12] The possible conflict of interest has also been picked up by Balkan Insight,[13] Le Monde,[14] and El Diario.[15] A documentary by the German public-service television broadcaster ZDF criticizes Thorn’s influence on the legislative process of the European Union for a law from which Thorn would profit financially.[16][17] A move of a former member of Europol to Thorn has been found to be maladministration by the European Ombudsman Emily O'Reilly.[18][19]"

Additionally, it would not surprise me at all if Palantir is lobbying for this either. Many EU countries, like Germany and Denmark, have already integrated Palantir's software into the intelligence, defence, and policing arms of their governments.

But at the end of the day, while it is convenient to blame external actors like U.S. corporations, ultimately the blame lies solely on the shoulders of European politicians. People in positions of power will tend to seek more, and I'm sure European politicians are more than happy to wield these tools for their own gain regardless of whether Palantir or Thorn is lobbying them.

Hitler knew if he had lost, he would have been executed. Didn't stop him from going war.

Maybe a less extreme version of this is that if you become president you are stripped of all property and become the ward of the state after your term is over, enter a monastery sort of situation, for the rest of your life.

We can. This has already happened with the fairly recent SALT TYPHOON hacks. China (ostensibly) abused lawful wiretapping mechanisms to spy on American (and other) citizens and politicians. The news at the time wasn't always explicit about the mechanism, but that's what happened.

China wouldn't have been able to do this if those mechanisms didn't exist in the first place.

Two cultures: https://benwheatley.github.io/blog/2024/05/25-12.04.31.html

Take Germany for example. For decades now we have let SPD, CDU, Greens, FDP ruin our country. AFD won't be better by the way. Again and again we vote against our own interest out of stupidity, complacency, or whatever it is. Oh, they want to raise pensions? What a coincidence just before the elections! Aaaand all the pensioners votes are secured for a party that will further ruin the country and line their own pockets. We do the same frickin shit every single time. And now it is so bad, that if we don't do it, then we will get right extreme AFD, that has even less a clue of what should be done, is paid by Pootin, and would fuck up things even faster.

The basic premises, that you are voted out of office, if you do badly does no longer hold here. It's all money and population brainwashing, to vote against our own interest. What our ancestors have built up from the ruins of WW2, we throw out of the window in ever election that we elect the same shitty parties again: CDU/CSU, SPD, Greens, FDP, AFD, Linke, BSW... None of these deserve our trust and vote. It apparently is asking too much of the citizens of a wannabe democratic country to check alternative parties in a Wahlomat before an election, to decide what fits best ones ideas.

We need more diverse mobile OSes that can be used as daily drivers. Right now, it's almost a mono-culture with the Apple-Google duopoly. Without this duopoly, centralization and totalitarian temptations would be less likely.

There's GrapheneOS, which is excellent and can be used without Google, but it relies on Google hardware and might be susceptible to viability issues if/when Google closes down AOSP. Nevertheless, they are working on their own device that will come with GrapheneOS pre-installed, which is exciting.

There's also SailfishOS, which has a regular GNU/Linux userland and almost usable at this stage with native applications. As a stopgap, it can also run Android applications with an emulation layer, and plenty of banking ones work just fine.

Yes but.. it can't just be vague exhortations and generalities. I didn't know the pertinent bodies previously, but after GPT'ing on it, it looks like they include:

One is "DG Home," an EU department on security that drafts legislation.

Another is Europol, a security coordination body that can't legislate but frequently advocates for this kind of legislation.

And then there's LEWP, The law enforcement working party, a "working group" comprised of security officials from member EU states, also involved in EU policy making in some capacity.

I think the blocking states should be resisting these at these respective bodies too.

European Commission: Commissioners are nominated by elected national governments and must be approved by the directly elected European Parliament.

Council of the EU: Ministers are accountable to their national parliaments, which are elected by citizens.

European Council: Composed of heads of state/government who were elected in their own countries.

European Parliament: Members are directly elected by EU citizens every five years.