Most everyone would love to see more work on stopping child sexual abuse.
But this is the ultimate "grant me dictatorial powers so I can do good" play.
Rather than narrow and specific - it's a broad based law that suddenly touches everyone even though offenders are a small percentage and should be able to be targeted more efficiently.
Yep, and this is a perfect example of a base rate fallacy situation... even if the scanner is 99.99% accurate, because an even higher percentage of photos are innocent, most matches the scanner will find will be false positives.
Back in the day when I was like 15 and DC++ was still a thing, I used to browse people's shared folders. One day I came across a file called "the paradox of false positive". It was a 1 pager that described how a machine which is 99.9% accurate at identifying terrorists would be completely useless due to this false positive base rate fallacy you're describing.
It really stuck with me throughout the years. It's kind o remarkable how even a 99.9% accurate heuristic is insufficient at scale.
Which begs the question: lets assume the intentions are pure (which we know they're not but lets be generous), what other options are there when 99.9% heuristic is not good enough? how do you design systems when they're guaranteed to fail as they scale up?
The bad consequences are diffuse, abstract and distant (conspiracy-looking, tinfoil-like), while it's very easy to viscerally understand that "even if they just save one child, it's already worth it".
They should give precise numbers of how many such crimes are detected via such means or are expected to be detected per year, and how many of those are not possible to catch through regular investigative work. It just seems ridiculously out of proportion especially that with all this flurry around the topic, the criminals surely aren't using WhatsApp for this any more, but especially won't be once the law is adopted. Sure, many are likely stupid but if they are so stupid, won't they fall into other honeypots?
Why are chat apps the best leverage for uncovering this? They'd have to justify this with some sort of data and numbers.
Because later they can just come back and say, well unfortunately they are now all using other means, so now we need to break https,we need to ban e2e, we need to ban vpns, tor and foss operating systems etc etc.
The party that they want to ban is a consistent and loud opponent of chat control.
It would be hard to imagine a US party that didn't believe the other party is out of compliance with US values. As a justification for blocking democracy it's universal and ever present.
Alternative for Germany (Alternativ für Deutschland, AfD) is a party that wants to revoke citizenship of brown people and expel them from the country. There are very good reasons they should be banned. Their opposition to chat control is completely incidental.
Sorry but I'm correcting your misinformation statement with the facts from a liberal leaning AI:
The line that it “wants to revoke citizenship of brown people and expel them” overstates what appears in the AfD’s official national platform. Its 2025 manifesto proposes:
1. ending birthright citizenship for children of foreign parents;
2. removing the normal entitlement to naturalization based on lengthy residence;
3. generally ending dual citizenship;
4. deporting people without a legal right to remain, foreign criminals and people whose refugee protection has expired.
But it does not officially propose stripping all non-white German citizens of citizenship or deporting people based explicitly on skin colour.
> Political groups are factions of the Parliament, while parties are alliances of national parties at EU level, funded through the EU budget. Neither the group in the Parliament nor the lawmakers will face any consequence if ESN loses its status as a European party.
It’s important to note the lawmakers stay in office even if the European party is banned.
Europe is also not the US and from my knowledge it seems that this is the only party suspected of not complying with values. There are many many more parties that they are not trying to ban.
I don't know how the procedure for banning a europarty looks but in Germany the bar is very high. It must be against the core constitutional values (human dignity, freedom, democracy) and pose a threat to that (infamously NPD was not banned as it was found to small to pose a threat).
The procedure here seems to be similar to Germany that the parliament can only request a review from an independent body (in Germany the constitutional court) if this is the case, the actual decision comes from that body after a lengthy process.
Behind the europarty is (among others) the AfD for which the public has been debating for years now on wether to attempt to ban them because of their danger, so it doesn't seem very far fetched for their EU party really.
This is a bit skewed. AfD stands for a lot more than "merely" an
opponent of chat control, including worshipping the 1930s era.
As another example, one of their members (Noah Krieger) fights on behalf of Russia, conquering lands
and killing civilians (article from today only in german, sorry:
https://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/videos-mit-schutzweste-u...). And
many other problems I could list about AfD. So t he "they want
to ban those opposing chat control" - sorry, that is a huge
simplification.
> It would be hard to imagine a US party that didn't believe the other party is out of compliance with US values.
Ah? And why are there only two corrupt parties in the USA to begin with?
I mean that's no real choice. Both are corrupt, and one now entered
cult-status with the mad orange king. His cronies get rich. Everyone sees
this. So, sorry, but your attempt to promote the USA while praising the
AfD, is simply flat out rubbish nonsense. We only have bad actors here,
no good ones.
Well it's privacy from private companies. The government still needs to see everything you do just in case. Its not like you have anything to do hide? Do you?
At this point I think it's obvious that EU is in turmoil. They're struggling to come to grips with the idea of a Russian invasion on their eastern borders, and simultaneously USA pivoting to Asia and not willing to front their defense after 40+ years of imploring them to do so themselves.
They've outsourced nearly every critical component of a large sustainable society to the rest of the world: Russia, USA, China, India.
But at the same time, their politicians can't do anything because the minute they suggest that they might have to start cutting pensions and public welfare, and all of these different things in order to start supporting national industry and defense, they lose support immediately.
It's hopeless. Enormous amounts of money is flowing out of Europe into China and the US. Europe has dogshit to offer. You already see it with gdp not growing. Whereas rest of the world did grow. Even Russia has higher GDP growth than Germany. Euro leadership is not smart.
> They're struggling to come to grips with the idea of a Russian invasion on their eastern borders
Or rather struggling to hold onto the fantasy of a Russian invasion on their Eastern borders, when Russia has spent 4 years in order to manage to hold on to a quarter of Ukraine, entirely filled with Russians.
> But at the same time, their politicians can't do anything because the minute they suggest that they might have to start cutting pensions and public welfare, and all of these different things in order to start supporting national industry and defense, they lose support immediately.
They don't have to do this [edit: spend excessively on defense], they can cut public spending somewhat and invest (and aid private investment), but the EU is too weak to do this. What they're hoping is that spending on arms can revive their economies. They deeply need a looming threat to convince member states to do this. They should instead make the EU a real federation with teeth (and a real central bank), or call it a day.
The EU needs a proper way to get investment into technology, innovation and infrastructure, not to invade the east a third time (not that they're willing to spend the money on that either, no matter how hard they propagandize and censor.)
The EU seems to spend most of its time threatening to regulate things that it has no ability to produce, and is also not investing in its future ability to produce. It seems doomed to continue to be a vassal of the US, or if it wises up just a little bit, a vassal of China.
edit: Wolfgang Munchau can't stop banging this drum. The European upper-middle class is completely delusional (and up its own ass) in a way that makes even Americans look almost sane. European elites are just US pawns, while they feed these delusions with anti-American "fellow kids" rhetoric.
Well the Americans are not particularly clean in this situation. For them it's all about creating a situation where Europe keeps buying overpriced weapons from the US to support Ukraine in their slow march to death. Most euro leaders have sold their souls to the devil and live in a bubble of illusions and wishful thinking. They are all employees of the the American system. You won't even make it to the selection level it you don't comply with their ideas and morals. The only way out of this is a new wave that ditches the US completely and start doing business with Russia and China on a massive scale. Not gonna happen though.
I don't understand. How does it affect encrypted messages? It seems like either you need:
1. allow MITM decryption by a privileged authority
2. require all devices doing E2EE have a non-user-modifiable piece of functionality to scan on-device
The second is the Apple style on-device CSAM scanner? I have to say that I do sometimes think about it while taking a photo of my baby playing in the bathtub - photos like my parents have of me which have been kind of nice to see later. It would be a pity if I had to have a separate analog camera just for baby photos because then I'd need to learn the whole developing film stuff.
Apple's proposal was only for photos being uploaded to iCloud and not local ones.
IIRC weren't there some thoughts that they'd switch iCloud to E2E but add local scanning on upload (compare to what it currently when Apple, Google, etc. freely scan all your cloud photos anyway). That didn't seem like a terrible deal on paper.
Haha, we do have those Instax Mini cameras. They make for a nice dose of nostalgia. We have a big frame full of photos of our friends and family on the wall and it's nice to walk by.
I am not fully acquainted with the details, but I would not discard (3) make e2ee illegal, at least for platforms of certain size etc. That is what the proponents ultimately want anyway. If they settle for anything else, it's because of the resistance.
That is a much more simple prediction. I do use Telegram with our family claw-like and it does not do E2EE by default. You need to do a secret chat or whatever. I think you're probably right. We'll just lose E2EE.
> The second is the Apple style on-device CSAM scanner?
This is exactly what has been proposed. E.g. WhatsApp has a piece of code that scans images and texts before sending. After that, they are "encrypted".
You are correct in that both option 1 and 2 are possible. For end-to-end encrypted messages only option 2 is possible. The content will be scanned directly on your own device and the data will be sent to the authorities without your knowledge, if the software detects something suspicious. This is called client-side-scanning.
"A temporary derogation from the ePrivacy Directive that allowed (but did not require) providers to scan private messages of unsuspected users for potential child sexual abuse material."
Does that imply it's currently not allowed?
EDIT: apparently not enforced at least:
"Chat Control 1.0 expires
The legal ground for voluntary, indiscriminate scanning ends. Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Snap state they will continue scanning private messages regardless. "
> EU politicians spend more time on chat control than on the reopening of Hormuz
I thought I'd heard it all here on HN, but expecting EU to clean up after the US shooting itself in the foot with a completely unnecessary war probably comes somewhere in top 5 easily.
The US is now getting money from every ship passing the street. How people not see that for the US the world is a game of command and conquer. They rule everything and if it's not ruled it gets bombed.
>but expecting EU to clean up after the US shooting itself in the foot
Please don't pretend to misunderstand a point just to manufacture the opportunity to reply in bad faith.
Nobody in EU is saying the EU should clean up others' mess around the world, people are just saying the EU should be busy building domestic capacity and capabilities to insulate itself from the issues caused by others around the world, such as securing domestic energy supplies so that the next time USrael blows up the middle east, the EU can just eat it no issue indead of being at the mercy of foreign oligarchs for overpriced energy.
US is so monetary rich and energy rich that they can afford to blow up the middle east every 10 years with little domestic consequences for them, and still have enough gas to drive their Ford F-450s Super Duty to Walmart, heat their pools and AC their homes, without leading to national unrest, but EU is so energy starved that securing energy independence should have been a national security issue for the past 20 years already, not since 2022.
And not just energy, EU is exposed in other areas as well (SW, AI, semiconductors, lithium batteries, agriculture, manufacturing, defense, etc), and again, it will only wake up in panic mode at the 11th hour when US or China twists their arm in some spontaneous international dispute. But politicians instead of focusing on preemptively securing these vulnerabilities BEFORE shit hits the fan, are too busy focusing on controlling people's privacy, which is what EU citizens and commenters here are criticizing.
> people are just saying the EU should be busy building domestic capacity and capabilities to insulate itself from the issues caused by others around the world
If this is what you wanted to have said, say that from the beginning instead of leaving some vague and ambiguous "general complaint about the Strait of Hormuz" and maybe others like me will understand you better.
Somehow you seem to imply none of those things are happening right now in Europe, is this really your perspective? You think no one is thinking about domestic energy supplies? Do you not understand how EU works? Lots of things are happening in parallel, not the least a lot of work around energy dependency and other core infrastructure issues.
>Somehow you seem to imply none of those things are happening right now in Europe, is this really your perspective? You think no one is thinking about domestic energy supplies? Do you not understand how EU works? Lots of things are happening in parallel, not the least a lot of work around energy dependency and other core infrastructure issues.
"The purpose of a system is what it does". So far there's no sign of any progress, it's just getting worse. The Draghi report was two years ago and nothing has been done to address the issues it raised.
> EU is so energy starved that securing energy independence should have been a national security issue for the past 20 years already, not since 2022
Setting up the next Stasi is more important to the eurocrats than energy and food security. Wait, they did the Mercosur agreement which will cripple more of the domestic agriculture in exchange for dumping German diesel cars onto unsuspecting South Americans.
But they can't do shit about Hormuz. Only talk, talk and more useless talk, go away USA you're not using our bases to refuel and then some more useless talk.
Yes. Basically Eastern Europe, which is what the US actually needed. Bulgaria speculated a bit for the opportunity to spend 1bn on weapons for their second hand F16s (better than plowing MiG 21s that they had).
Probably also why we now have a flood of lame Trump jokes about Meloni.
You are mistaking Hacker News for Xitter or Truth Social. This is not an argument, it is just a pile of buzzwords and grievance posting.
“Next Stasi”, “eurocrats”, “cripple domestic agriculture”, “dumping German diesel cars”, “useless talk”. None of this actually responds to the point about European energy dependence.
Either the EU opens Hormuz or the EU pays twice the pre war rate for gas / oil indefinitely. Of course at least they can put the subjects that bitch about it in jail now.
Well everyone pays the same for oil (unless there are export/import control and adjusted by transportation costs) worldwide.
So americans will be paying 2x as well its just that some of that money will stay in the country instead of going to the middle easter or US (which happens to be the largest supplier of oil to the EU)
Back in 2025 EU imported ~15% from the gulf. China was over 40% and Japan at 95%...
how is EU supposed to open hormuz? do you expect them to raise armies and go to war over a shipping lane? I think US demonstrated plenty enough this is not a viable strategy (this was known for the past 50 years)
Would've been so much better to reduce the scope of your comment to just energy security.
I don't see how the EU lived live with already higher energy prices compared to the US for so long and still don't make better renewable policy top priority.
As a EU citizen I’m at a loss for what to do about this. I feel that they’re going against any average citizen’s interest. What can we do to make them stop?
Short-term, follow the steps on the website and contact your political representative to explain to them why it's such a bad idea.
Long-term, switch to another messenger app that's opensource and truly E2E encrypted.
That also shows why this is such a foolish proposal.
The truly scary people are not on the "consumer" chat apps anyway and most certainly will be the first ones to switch to another communication channel if this passes. If this will have any effect it'll be that some, "dumb" criminals will be caught.
Vote for parties that oppose this nonsense. In the meantime, install Linux on your desktop/laptop, and a free Android variant on a compatible phone. Use Signal, and urge your family and friends to do the same.
To everyone who wants to dismantle the EU: this is not the solution. Dismantling the EU is like burning down your own house just to get rid of flies. The UK left the EU and implemented its own version of chat control - Online Safety Act - without any transparency or real opposition. The right solution is the political fight. Europe is our home. We must keep it in good shape by getting rid of anything that makes it worse - like Chat Control.
Dismantling the EU is like burning down your own house
I'm not an expert, but isn't "your own house" should rather be your country in this analogy? It ought to be still there without some bureaucratic institution on top of it.
Just think "neighborhood", no? This seems like splitting hairs... And to what end? to take a shot at EU supra-national structure? ("What, you don't ally to your country?" kinda shade.)
Maybe “your own city” would be a more precise metaphor than “your own house”. Your country is your house, but the EU is the city around it, with the roads, infrastructure, shared rules, market, security, and institutions that make the house function.
The concept of a modern nation is also relatively new. It emerged as an identity for groups of people who were no longer defined mainly by the monarchs ruling over them. That identity replaced the king as the symbol of belonging.
But now nationalism is often doing the opposite. Instead of freeing people from old power structures, it is holding Europe back.
So yes, maybe it is not literally “your house”, but the point still stands. Burning down the city around your house is not exactly a smart move either.
>the EU is the city around it, with the roads, infrastructure, shared rules, market, security, and institutions that make the house function.
If you measure "function" by the relative economic and military power of the country, then the EU has overwhelmingly degraded the function of its initial members compared to when they joined.
> If you measure "function" by the relative economic and military power of the country, then the EU has overwhelmingly degraded the function of its initial members compared to when they joined.
Very sure that when the EU was still in its infancy, we had only "west Europe" in arms, vs a USSR (aka all the eastern states and Russia). Now all those states are part of NATO and the EU.
Instead of the border to the closest hostile nation (Russia) being barely 100km from here, its now over 1200km to the first contact point.
That same Russia can barely deal with a Ukraine, that has some spare change backing from the EU. How is again at a war economy? Ukraine, sure, Russia, sure, EU ... nowp.
We now have Northern members that used to be neutral or not part of NATO, that are now part of it.
I feel like people love to misrepresent a lot of history. We have never been in a better position as a EU, vs what we used to be 40, 80, 100 years ago.
Yea, we have a lot of buildup to do again, but lets be honest, i rather see buildup now with modern kit for the modern battles, then relying on outdated 1990's doctrine and weapons. And even that is still a slow process with transitioning to the new reality of drones, drones and drones. Do not forget that 90% of the kills are now by drones.
People love to parrot those US talking point that often have no sense of history and our current EU reality in regards to security. While i admit, that we are still too reliant on US kit, even that is slowly changing. The EU moves slowly but it moves. Better then being some nations that are stuck in Imperialistic ways of thinking, like Russia.
No, every country remains sovereign. Hungary's previous regime ignored the EU for over a decade. Many countries are instituting border controls again despite the Schengen agreement.
Exactly. This is ridiculous behavior. Simple solutions for complex problems are usually the wrong ones.
One griefer which promised prosperit fueled Brexit, which caused Britain visible stagnation and now he is a candidate for MP promising to fixing it all yet again.
I need to repeat, that Simple solutions for complex problems usually do not work.
the eu has always been an instrument of american imperialism. leader like ursula was casted away of german politics for corruption and most of the other big names had ties to american companies like goldman sachs or’other financial institution. the eu is a prison for all of us. for a moment germany thought they could use it as an instrument to win and crush its biggest competitors (france and uk) but now they dont have an energy sector (lost thanks to their dear american friend bombing nordstream and foreign countries financing an anti nuclear narrative) and as such they now also lost the heart of their economy : their industry. the final nail in the coffin is spain opening the gates to millions of mens from less developed countries while major european economies have record youth unemployment.
its a crime against what was not so long ago some of the greatest nations on earth. now were as citizen are living under a distopia of urss with the worst of capitalism combined with the worst of communism. mass surveillance, removal of all personal freedom (freedom of speech, right to own property and cars, right to inherit, right to have a nation for our people, harshnpunishment for any contestation’up to jail timz for memes while at the same time very lenient justice toward murderers, rapists and other criminals.)
we gave away our right to exist and be nations and we did that without even a fight
russia was indeed the ones who pushed germany to be reliant on their energy instead of going for nuclear. they funded green party to do that. and germany on their side then voted laws and pushed eu to remove nuclear from green energies list so that france wouldnt have an edge against germany shooting themselves in the foot
>Dismantling the EU is like burning down your own house just to get rid of flies.
I don't like this comparison at all. Europe, the land that housed, fed and scarified my ancestors, is my house, not this supra-governmental corrupt bureaucratic institution called the EU that does not represent me nor speak in my name.
Empires, monarchies, governments and all such man-made institutions like the EU get torn down all time, when they become too bloated, incompetent, corrupt and cronyistic and lose legitimacy in the eyes of the people. See all human history.
Forests go through prescribed burns in order to be saved, for their own good, and so must political institutions. And when the rot is too big, it can't simply be "patched" anymore, it needs to be torn down and rebuilt from scratch with fresh new people, which in turn will get corrupted over time and get torn down, and so on, rinse and repeat because that's human nature.
Ironically, the EU has achieved its goal of uniting all Europeans, as in they're all now united via hating what the EU has become and what it's doing.
Let's stop the blut and soil BS right here. I am all for european panationalism but don't pretend that Europe is "your house" where "your ancestors" were. You come from a very specific culture inside it which has its own specific language and traditions and that has spent most its history warring with its neighbours, sometimes people in the next village speaking a different version of your lanuage. My ancestors and your ancestor probably scarified each other, the land didn't
Turns out unifying a lot of different countries that have different languages and interest is a hard problem and in order to satisfy everyone a little bureaucracy is the price to pay. You may find it too bloated, too slow or even too corrupt but burning it to the ground is a lunacy for people who entertain clean slate delusions: Whenever it happens, it is a catastrophy for everyone but a few opportunists.
Europe is imperfect but it has rejected the idea of war outside of itself. I don't think any European citizen would go to war with their neighbour. Just that is an amazing achievement. Now it can stay an economic union and big powers can pick and choose how to manipulate each one of us for their own purposes or it can strive to be a political union and have a standing on the international stage. We're not there yet but we will, eventually, we just need to hang tight. Things take time.
>Europe is imperfect but it has rejected the idea of war outside of itself. I don't think any European citizen would go to war with their neighbour. Just that is an amazing achievement.
Not really. South American countries don't go to war with each other and they don't have a union. Nor do central American countries.
You may argue these were all in the 19th century, and that is true. It's possible South America learned their lesson from the world wars. An alternative explanation is the presence of the US. It was never going to let another regional power roll up smaller states in the Western hemisphere so there was no point in being expansionist.
And that's not counting the Falklands war because Britain doesn't feel like it belong in the neighborhood but it's still an invasion of sovereign territory out of nationalistic motives
I'll grant none of those was a major conflict and that it's an interesting case but still.
Maybe the fact that apart from Brazil, they have a language in common makes it harder to sell the neighbour as a foreigner ? What else could it be ? I am genuinely curious
I'm just noticing that only European people seem to be disallowed from calling their land "their land" and outsiders "outsiders". it's "blut and soil", as if the men who fought Nazis fought Nazis for some high-minded ideals rather than their land and their people.
Oh, you're just noticing are you ?
Who are those people who are "disallowing" you from calling your land your land ? How do you handle living under such oppression ?
Just come out of the woods will you
It turns out people don't like to be invaded, yes, simple as. Of course you would very much like to convince everyone that immigration is just the same as an invasion and thus, the same way to deal with it is justified. So just say so instead of dancing around and posing as the victim.
Would you also tell that to native American Indians? Or to the Japanese? Or to the Indians?
It's no BS unless you've been brainwashed and make massive efforts to ignore reality. Blood based belonging to a place is hardwired in every culture and society on the planet, from Asia to the Americas. NA, UK, AU, NZ, and the EU just have added a lot of PR paint on top to pretend it doesn't exist in their liberal societies, but it does, except it's much more under the table and subversive.
>a little bureaucracy is the price to pay.
Taking away people's privacy and freedom of speech is a little more problematic than just "a little bureaucracy".
>Europe is imperfect but it has rejected the idea of war outside of itself. I don't think any European citizen would go to war with their neighbour. Just that is an amazing achievement.
That WAS an achievement in the past, but if you dissolve the EU institution tomorrow, no former EU member state will suddenly got to war with their neighbour just because the EU doesn't exist anymore. So the myth that the EU is somehow preventing war in EU today is bogus. That was history, this is today.
> Taking away people's privacy and freedom of speech is a little more problematic than just "a little bureaucracy"
I mean yes but it is ultimately your framing. It's concerning and worth being fought against but no worse that what US was, is or has tried to do, and despite the corrupt buffoon at its head right now, it is not a dictatorship yet. What we need is a good balance of powers and well-designed institutions, and not as you suggested, to destroy it.
> That WAS an achievement in the past, but if you dissolve the EU institution tomorrow, no former EU member state will suddenly got to war with their neighbour just because the EU doesn't exist anymore. So the myth that the EU is preventing war in EU is bogus. That was history, this is today.
Fair enough but that does not warrant the use of the past, it IS an achievement.
Also, give it time and history will do its thing. Remove the EU and, sooner or later, war will come back. The same way that if you remove the counter-powers, tyranny will come back
EDIT:
You added this part about in response to my blood and soil line afterwards:
> It's no BS unless you've been brainwashed and make massive efforts to ignore reality. Blood based tribalism and ingroup preference is hardwired in every culture and society on the planet, from Asia to the Americas. NA, UK, AU, NZ, and the EU just have added a lot of PR paint on top to pretend it doesn't exist in their liberal societies, but it does except it's much more under the table and subversive.
Interesting how people seem to think reality is on their side and people who think otherwise must have been brainwashed.
Anyways, is it hardwired or is it "soft" wired ? Are we only responding to our wiring or did we manage to create cultures around it or are we condemned to an endless loop of prewired behaviours ?
Sexual desire is also "hardwired" in us and yet we finally managed to no rape each other based on dominance hierarchies. Is that the kind of society you are looking forward to ? One based on some kind of supposedly natural order ?
Yes tribalism does exist, we know what kind of world it produces. It's utter shit. Poverty and misery for everyone but the people at the top.
I swear you people are so bored that you cannot appreciate the sheer amount of material wealth you are effing bathing in. You dream of an heroic past that never existed where you get to be the hero.
Ha the times where being a man with no other skills than violence could get you riches ! Let's conveniently forget about most people, living under the boot in a life of injustice and life-threatening poverty.
I agree on the base of the argument. EU after all was created because of one tragedy. I'm absolutely sure that there will be more gruesome wars on the continent and I even wouldn't rule out the collapse in the future because petty tribalism holding everything back as always.
But this is the ultimate "grant me dictatorial powers so I can do good" play.
Rather than narrow and specific - it's a broad based law that suddenly touches everyone even though offenders are a small percentage and should be able to be targeted more efficiently.
Back in the day when I was like 15 and DC++ was still a thing, I used to browse people's shared folders. One day I came across a file called "the paradox of false positive". It was a 1 pager that described how a machine which is 99.9% accurate at identifying terrorists would be completely useless due to this false positive base rate fallacy you're describing.
It really stuck with me throughout the years. It's kind o remarkable how even a 99.9% accurate heuristic is insufficient at scale.
Which begs the question: lets assume the intentions are pure (which we know they're not but lets be generous), what other options are there when 99.9% heuristic is not good enough? how do you design systems when they're guaranteed to fail as they scale up?
They should give precise numbers of how many such crimes are detected via such means or are expected to be detected per year, and how many of those are not possible to catch through regular investigative work. It just seems ridiculously out of proportion especially that with all this flurry around the topic, the criminals surely aren't using WhatsApp for this any more, but especially won't be once the law is adopted. Sure, many are likely stupid but if they are so stupid, won't they fall into other honeypots?
Why are chat apps the best leverage for uncovering this? They'd have to justify this with some sort of data and numbers.
Because later they can just come back and say, well unfortunately they are now all using other means, so now we need to break https,we need to ban e2e, we need to ban vpns, tor and foss operating systems etc etc.
Reminder that none of this has any evidence that it helps CSA, but nobody cares about the actual children.
https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2026/07/07/european-parli...
The party that they want to ban is a consistent and loud opponent of chat control.
It would be hard to imagine a US party that didn't believe the other party is out of compliance with US values. As a justification for blocking democracy it's universal and ever present.
It’s important to note the lawmakers stay in office even if the European party is banned.
Europe is also not the US and from my knowledge it seems that this is the only party suspected of not complying with values. There are many many more parties that they are not trying to ban.
The procedure here seems to be similar to Germany that the parliament can only request a review from an independent body (in Germany the constitutional court) if this is the case, the actual decision comes from that body after a lengthy process.
Behind the europarty is (among others) the AfD for which the public has been debating for years now on wether to attempt to ban them because of their danger, so it doesn't seem very far fetched for their EU party really.
As another example, one of their members (Noah Krieger) fights on behalf of Russia, conquering lands and killing civilians (article from today only in german, sorry: https://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/videos-mit-schutzweste-u...). And many other problems I could list about AfD. So t he "they want to ban those opposing chat control" - sorry, that is a huge simplification.
> It would be hard to imagine a US party that didn't believe the other party is out of compliance with US values.
Ah? And why are there only two corrupt parties in the USA to begin with? I mean that's no real choice. Both are corrupt, and one now entered cult-status with the mad orange king. His cronies get rich. Everyone sees this. So, sorry, but your attempt to promote the USA while praising the AfD, is simply flat out rubbish nonsense. We only have bad actors here, no good ones.
They've outsourced nearly every critical component of a large sustainable society to the rest of the world: Russia, USA, China, India.
But at the same time, their politicians can't do anything because the minute they suggest that they might have to start cutting pensions and public welfare, and all of these different things in order to start supporting national industry and defense, they lose support immediately.
Also, EU countries in Eastern Europe do already have a high military spending, and even Western European countries are improving.
The situation is less than ideal but not hopeless.
Or rather struggling to hold onto the fantasy of a Russian invasion on their Eastern borders, when Russia has spent 4 years in order to manage to hold on to a quarter of Ukraine, entirely filled with Russians.
> But at the same time, their politicians can't do anything because the minute they suggest that they might have to start cutting pensions and public welfare, and all of these different things in order to start supporting national industry and defense, they lose support immediately.
They don't have to do this [edit: spend excessively on defense], they can cut public spending somewhat and invest (and aid private investment), but the EU is too weak to do this. What they're hoping is that spending on arms can revive their economies. They deeply need a looming threat to convince member states to do this. They should instead make the EU a real federation with teeth (and a real central bank), or call it a day.
The EU needs a proper way to get investment into technology, innovation and infrastructure, not to invade the east a third time (not that they're willing to spend the money on that either, no matter how hard they propagandize and censor.)
The EU seems to spend most of its time threatening to regulate things that it has no ability to produce, and is also not investing in its future ability to produce. It seems doomed to continue to be a vassal of the US, or if it wises up just a little bit, a vassal of China.
edit: Wolfgang Munchau can't stop banging this drum. The European upper-middle class is completely delusional (and up its own ass) in a way that makes even Americans look almost sane. European elites are just US pawns, while they feed these delusions with anti-American "fellow kids" rhetoric.
edit2: Munchau example: https://unherd.com/2026/07/the-great-german-own-goal/
1. allow MITM decryption by a privileged authority
2. require all devices doing E2EE have a non-user-modifiable piece of functionality to scan on-device
The second is the Apple style on-device CSAM scanner? I have to say that I do sometimes think about it while taking a photo of my baby playing in the bathtub - photos like my parents have of me which have been kind of nice to see later. It would be a pity if I had to have a separate analog camera just for baby photos because then I'd need to learn the whole developing film stuff.
IIRC weren't there some thoughts that they'd switch iCloud to E2E but add local scanning on upload (compare to what it currently when Apple, Google, etc. freely scan all your cloud photos anyway). That didn't seem like a terrible deal on paper.
Polaroid coming back in business! I would not complain at all if we started reverting some of our lifestyle behaviors back to analog.
This is exactly what has been proposed. E.g. WhatsApp has a piece of code that scans images and texts before sending. After that, they are "encrypted".
"A temporary derogation from the ePrivacy Directive that allowed (but did not require) providers to scan private messages of unsuspected users for potential child sexual abuse material."
Does that imply it's currently not allowed?
EDIT: apparently not enforced at least:
"Chat Control 1.0 expires
The legal ground for voluntary, indiscriminate scanning ends. Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Snap state they will continue scanning private messages regardless. "
https://howtheyvote.eu/votes/195338
They did id sneakily.
https://www.politico.eu/article/president-vs-parliament-robe...
As I understand it, there will still be another related vote on Thursday, so call your representatives!
I thought I'd heard it all here on HN, but expecting EU to clean up after the US shooting itself in the foot with a completely unnecessary war probably comes somewhere in top 5 easily.
We aren't done yet. Game on after the midterms.
Please don't pretend to misunderstand a point just to manufacture the opportunity to reply in bad faith.
Nobody in EU is saying the EU should clean up others' mess around the world, people are just saying the EU should be busy building domestic capacity and capabilities to insulate itself from the issues caused by others around the world, such as securing domestic energy supplies so that the next time USrael blows up the middle east, the EU can just eat it no issue indead of being at the mercy of foreign oligarchs for overpriced energy.
US is so monetary rich and energy rich that they can afford to blow up the middle east every 10 years with little domestic consequences for them, and still have enough gas to drive their Ford F-450s Super Duty to Walmart, heat their pools and AC their homes, without leading to national unrest, but EU is so energy starved that securing energy independence should have been a national security issue for the past 20 years already, not since 2022.
And not just energy, EU is exposed in other areas as well (SW, AI, semiconductors, lithium batteries, agriculture, manufacturing, defense, etc), and again, it will only wake up in panic mode at the 11th hour when US or China twists their arm in some spontaneous international dispute. But politicians instead of focusing on preemptively securing these vulnerabilities BEFORE shit hits the fan, are too busy focusing on controlling people's privacy, which is what EU citizens and commenters here are criticizing.
If this is what you wanted to have said, say that from the beginning instead of leaving some vague and ambiguous "general complaint about the Strait of Hormuz" and maybe others like me will understand you better.
Somehow you seem to imply none of those things are happening right now in Europe, is this really your perspective? You think no one is thinking about domestic energy supplies? Do you not understand how EU works? Lots of things are happening in parallel, not the least a lot of work around energy dependency and other core infrastructure issues.
"The purpose of a system is what it does". So far there's no sign of any progress, it's just getting worse. The Draghi report was two years ago and nothing has been done to address the issues it raised.
Setting up the next Stasi is more important to the eurocrats than energy and food security. Wait, they did the Mercosur agreement which will cripple more of the domestic agriculture in exchange for dumping German diesel cars onto unsuspecting South Americans.
But they can't do shit about Hormuz. Only talk, talk and more useless talk, go away USA you're not using our bases to refuel and then some more useless talk.
Tbf this is only the position of a few extreme governments. Other European countries have been perfectly happy to let the US use their bases for this.
Probably also why we now have a flood of lame Trump jokes about Meloni.
“Next Stasi”, “eurocrats”, “cripple domestic agriculture”, “dumping German diesel cars”, “useless talk”. None of this actually responds to the point about European energy dependence.
That's literally what the top poster said.
Your points make sense, "EU should reopen Hormuz" is laughable
So americans will be paying 2x as well its just that some of that money will stay in the country instead of going to the middle easter or US (which happens to be the largest supplier of oil to the EU)
Back in 2025 EU imported ~15% from the gulf. China was over 40% and Japan at 95%...
Exactly, that's why it was obvious he was speaking implicitly.
And well... EU will have to clean up others mess that they sprayed all over Europe anyway.
I don't see how the EU lived live with already higher energy prices compared to the US for so long and still don't make better renewable policy top priority.
Chat Control passed first round in EU Parliament
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48819008
I think there is no way to fix this system from the inside - it is designed to be abused like that. We need an alternative system.
Long-term, switch to another messenger app that's opensource and truly E2E encrypted.
That also shows why this is such a foolish proposal.
The truly scary people are not on the "consumer" chat apps anyway and most certainly will be the first ones to switch to another communication channel if this passes. If this will have any effect it'll be that some, "dumb" criminals will be caught.
Then there's the whole kerfuffle about how to actually implement this
So the thing that comforts me is that it's a dumpster fire all the way down and I'm sure there will be plenty of legal complaints about it
-- Canadian
The concept of a modern nation is also relatively new. It emerged as an identity for groups of people who were no longer defined mainly by the monarchs ruling over them. That identity replaced the king as the symbol of belonging.
But now nationalism is often doing the opposite. Instead of freeing people from old power structures, it is holding Europe back.
So yes, maybe it is not literally “your house”, but the point still stands. Burning down the city around your house is not exactly a smart move either.
If you measure "function" by the relative economic and military power of the country, then the EU has overwhelmingly degraded the function of its initial members compared to when they joined.
Very sure that when the EU was still in its infancy, we had only "west Europe" in arms, vs a USSR (aka all the eastern states and Russia). Now all those states are part of NATO and the EU.
Instead of the border to the closest hostile nation (Russia) being barely 100km from here, its now over 1200km to the first contact point.
That same Russia can barely deal with a Ukraine, that has some spare change backing from the EU. How is again at a war economy? Ukraine, sure, Russia, sure, EU ... nowp.
We now have Northern members that used to be neutral or not part of NATO, that are now part of it.
I feel like people love to misrepresent a lot of history. We have never been in a better position as a EU, vs what we used to be 40, 80, 100 years ago.
Yea, we have a lot of buildup to do again, but lets be honest, i rather see buildup now with modern kit for the modern battles, then relying on outdated 1990's doctrine and weapons. And even that is still a slow process with transitioning to the new reality of drones, drones and drones. Do not forget that 90% of the kills are now by drones.
People love to parrot those US talking point that often have no sense of history and our current EU reality in regards to security. While i admit, that we are still too reliant on US kit, even that is slowly changing. The EU moves slowly but it moves. Better then being some nations that are stuck in Imperialistic ways of thinking, like Russia.
One griefer which promised prosperit fueled Brexit, which caused Britain visible stagnation and now he is a candidate for MP promising to fixing it all yet again.
I need to repeat, that Simple solutions for complex problems usually do not work.
its a crime against what was not so long ago some of the greatest nations on earth. now were as citizen are living under a distopia of urss with the worst of capitalism combined with the worst of communism. mass surveillance, removal of all personal freedom (freedom of speech, right to own property and cars, right to inherit, right to have a nation for our people, harshnpunishment for any contestation’up to jail timz for memes while at the same time very lenient justice toward murderers, rapists and other criminals.)
we gave away our right to exist and be nations and we did that without even a fight
I don't like this comparison at all. Europe, the land that housed, fed and scarified my ancestors, is my house, not this supra-governmental corrupt bureaucratic institution called the EU that does not represent me nor speak in my name.
Empires, monarchies, governments and all such man-made institutions like the EU get torn down all time, when they become too bloated, incompetent, corrupt and cronyistic and lose legitimacy in the eyes of the people. See all human history.
Forests go through prescribed burns in order to be saved, for their own good, and so must political institutions. And when the rot is too big, it can't simply be "patched" anymore, it needs to be torn down and rebuilt from scratch with fresh new people, which in turn will get corrupted over time and get torn down, and so on, rinse and repeat because that's human nature.
Ironically, the EU has achieved its goal of uniting all Europeans, as in they're all now united via hating what the EU has become and what it's doing.
Turns out unifying a lot of different countries that have different languages and interest is a hard problem and in order to satisfy everyone a little bureaucracy is the price to pay. You may find it too bloated, too slow or even too corrupt but burning it to the ground is a lunacy for people who entertain clean slate delusions: Whenever it happens, it is a catastrophy for everyone but a few opportunists.
Europe is imperfect but it has rejected the idea of war outside of itself. I don't think any European citizen would go to war with their neighbour. Just that is an amazing achievement. Now it can stay an economic union and big powers can pick and choose how to manipulate each one of us for their own purposes or it can strive to be a political union and have a standing on the international stage. We're not there yet but we will, eventually, we just need to hang tight. Things take time.
Not really. South American countries don't go to war with each other and they don't have a union. Nor do central American countries.
No? Here are some examples I found:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Pacific
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peruvian%E2%80%93Bolivian_War_...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peruvian%E2%80%93Bolivian_War_...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraguayan_War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uruguayan_War
You may argue these were all in the 19th century, and that is true. It's possible South America learned their lesson from the world wars. An alternative explanation is the presence of the US. It was never going to let another regional power roll up smaller states in the Western hemisphere so there was no point in being expansionist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paquisha_War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cenepa_War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beagle_conflict
And that's not counting the Falklands war because Britain doesn't feel like it belong in the neighborhood but it's still an invasion of sovereign territory out of nationalistic motives
I'll grant none of those was a major conflict and that it's an interesting case but still. Maybe the fact that apart from Brazil, they have a language in common makes it harder to sell the neighbour as a foreigner ? What else could it be ? I am genuinely curious
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_War
do you feel the same way when Africans speak of Africa?
Can you provide me with some example of something that you think I would not disapprove of and that amounts the exactly the same thing ?
Or maybe can you try to defend the blood and soil rethoric (call it the way you want) instead of a drive-by comment ?
Just come out of the woods will you
It turns out people don't like to be invaded, yes, simple as. Of course you would very much like to convince everyone that immigration is just the same as an invasion and thus, the same way to deal with it is justified. So just say so instead of dancing around and posing as the victim.
Would you also tell that to native American Indians? Or to the Japanese? Or to the Indians?
It's no BS unless you've been brainwashed and make massive efforts to ignore reality. Blood based belonging to a place is hardwired in every culture and society on the planet, from Asia to the Americas. NA, UK, AU, NZ, and the EU just have added a lot of PR paint on top to pretend it doesn't exist in their liberal societies, but it does, except it's much more under the table and subversive.
>a little bureaucracy is the price to pay.
Taking away people's privacy and freedom of speech is a little more problematic than just "a little bureaucracy".
>Europe is imperfect but it has rejected the idea of war outside of itself. I don't think any European citizen would go to war with their neighbour. Just that is an amazing achievement.
That WAS an achievement in the past, but if you dissolve the EU institution tomorrow, no former EU member state will suddenly got to war with their neighbour just because the EU doesn't exist anymore. So the myth that the EU is somehow preventing war in EU today is bogus. That was history, this is today.
I mean yes but it is ultimately your framing. It's concerning and worth being fought against but no worse that what US was, is or has tried to do, and despite the corrupt buffoon at its head right now, it is not a dictatorship yet. What we need is a good balance of powers and well-designed institutions, and not as you suggested, to destroy it.
> That WAS an achievement in the past, but if you dissolve the EU institution tomorrow, no former EU member state will suddenly got to war with their neighbour just because the EU doesn't exist anymore. So the myth that the EU is preventing war in EU is bogus. That was history, this is today.
Fair enough but that does not warrant the use of the past, it IS an achievement. Also, give it time and history will do its thing. Remove the EU and, sooner or later, war will come back. The same way that if you remove the counter-powers, tyranny will come back
EDIT: You added this part about in response to my blood and soil line afterwards:
> It's no BS unless you've been brainwashed and make massive efforts to ignore reality. Blood based tribalism and ingroup preference is hardwired in every culture and society on the planet, from Asia to the Americas. NA, UK, AU, NZ, and the EU just have added a lot of PR paint on top to pretend it doesn't exist in their liberal societies, but it does except it's much more under the table and subversive.
Interesting how people seem to think reality is on their side and people who think otherwise must have been brainwashed.
Anyways, is it hardwired or is it "soft" wired ? Are we only responding to our wiring or did we manage to create cultures around it or are we condemned to an endless loop of prewired behaviours ?
Sexual desire is also "hardwired" in us and yet we finally managed to no rape each other based on dominance hierarchies. Is that the kind of society you are looking forward to ? One based on some kind of supposedly natural order ?
Yes tribalism does exist, we know what kind of world it produces. It's utter shit. Poverty and misery for everyone but the people at the top.
I swear you people are so bored that you cannot appreciate the sheer amount of material wealth you are effing bathing in. You dream of an heroic past that never existed where you get to be the hero.
Ha the times where being a man with no other skills than violence could get you riches ! Let's conveniently forget about most people, living under the boot in a life of injustice and life-threatening poverty.
QED. End of story. Rest is just meaningless ranting that doesn't disprove anything I said before.
But this is the hatred you are talking about?
https://www.politico.eu/article/europeans-embrace-eu-gloom-w...