The Belgian Council presidency seems set to greenlight Chat Control on Wednesday 19 June.
This confirms fears: the proponents of Chat Control want to exploit the situation after the European Elections, in which there is less public attention and the European Parliament is not yet constituted.
If Chat Control makes it through the Council now, there is a risk that the Parliament in its new composition will not fight as fiercely as before and surrender our previous wins.
Timeline
On Thursday, 13 June, ministers were set to debate a progress report. (Find a recording here) The Belgian Council presidency announced that they will present a new compromise proposal afterwards. According to documents leaked by netzpolitik.org, the session to seek an agreement on it will already take place on Wednesday, 19 June.
Won’t predators just use something else such as readily available open source software, reducing this legislation to a mass surveillance bill to spy on and control regular citizens?
How isn’t this anything more than a license to invade your privacy on this weak-ass premise that maybe you’re a criminal and stupid enough to use Facebook Messenger (or similar)?
It’s only the latest gambit in a world-wide effort (seemingly led by the five eyes) to undermine and eliminate any widespread use of end-to-end encryption so that they can continue spying on everyone.
Didn’t the court already decide that there is no way they can do that?
I’m not sure which court you’re talking about.
But this has been going on for years, they’re trying again and again. After the last proposal was deadlocked in the Council they now narrowed the scope slightly by excluding text messages, which seems to work as France is wavering on it’s contra-stance.It’s not illegal when you have to “consent” or basically be unable to use any chat service properly. At least that is what they seem to think. I am no legal expert in that matter but it’s still shitty that they are effectively trying to force you to consent to it.
Its most likely still absolutely illegal and for that part Abuse of law. The GDPR would fuck them in the ass for this as well. They just keep making these things against a windmill. Let’s be real, these authoritarian politicians need to be put to sleep and the pressure on the courts need to increase significantly to never allow such things.
This won’t stop actual predators.
This will punish normal people, the actual criminals will just use something else, like always.
Fuuuuuccckk these inept computer illiterate idiots that come up with this… Is what I would say if I didn’t know this is just thinly veiled attempt #364163549 at getting rid of encryption so that they can monitor the everything while nobody else can, of course…
Ah yes, the pretence of democracy continues
I tried doing my part.
Criminals have already been using alternative ways to exchange data for a lo.g time, especially those who are exchanging images and videos (such as CSAM) as everyday messengers are completely inapt for transmitting such large volumes of data. And these algorithms will yield a lot of false positives too.
And it is the wrong signal to authoritarian countries as it makes people and companies extremely vulnerable. As Markus Hartmann, Chief Public Prosecutor in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, said not long ago on chat control:
“From the point of view of information security there is to assume an increased risk [of hacking]. There is no special expertise [demonstrated by politicians] in this area with regard to the signal effect for authoritarian states.”
[Original link in German, translation my own.]
imagine children protesting against this.
Huh?
