As EU Commission Moves Forward With ‘Chat Control’ Proposal, EU Nations Continue To Push Back
from the sorry-just-not-on-board-with-this-whole-neo-stasi-shit dept
Do not go gentle into that mass surveillance night, as the phrase goes. The EU Commission is sure something needs to be done about the sharing of child sexual abuse material (CSAM). And it’s not wrong! Things need to be done.
But these are not the things. While the spread of CSAM is definitely something to be concerned about, the solution is not opening up everyone’s content and communications to government examination. But that seems to be what the EU Commission wants. It has been pushing for client-side scanning of content (something that necessitates the destruction of end-to-end encryption) and other forms of mandated monitoring for several years now.
But every time the EU Commission pushes, it gets pushed back. Several tech companies have announced their plans to stop offering services in EU nations if this proposal passes. Several EU members have announced their unwillingness to vote in favor of this proposal. Others have simply stated they will never attempt to enforce even if it becomes law.
Even the EU Commission’s own legal counsel has stated the proposal would violate existing EU laws. That legal advice suggests the law will immediately be found unlawful the moment it is challenged in the EU rights court. Moving forward without significant alterations would be nothing more than the supporters of the proposal setting fire to the public’s money. And yet, the push from the Commission continues.
But! So does the pushback. Here’s the latest, as reported by Andre Meister for Netzpolitk. (Apologies in advance for any auto-translation issues appearing in the quoted sections.) While noting that nine states agree (for the most part) with the mass surveillance proposal, plenty of others have something to say about this absurd power grab being proposed in the name of the abused children.
Here they are, in the order reported by Netzpolitik:
In the coalition agreement, the German federal government rejects “general monitoring obligations” and “measures for scanning private communication”.
[…]
Austria calls the current proposal “not capable of approval”. The random chat control is “not in accordance with fundamental rights”.
[…]
The Netherlands sees the chat control “very critically”. Providers should be obliged “at the very most” as a “last resort” to check the content, before “all other measures must be taken”. The protection of human rights “must not be left to the service providers”. The Netherlands demanded that “neither new material nor grooming” should be sought.
That’s three solid “no’s.” As the German government has already stated, it won’t be involved with this mess should it become EU law. Austria has now joined Germany in stating there’s no possible way the law will be legal. And the Netherlands wants to see limits Commission members are currently unwilling to apply to the law in order to prevent service providers from being held legally accountable for the actions of their users.
There’s more:
Poland cannot “support” the draft and criticizes that “many Polish proposals were not taken into account”. The chats of unsuspected persons must not be checked without cause, that is disproportionate.
That’s another nation unwilling to pass the proposal in its current state. Its objection has been greeted with confusion by the very subservient Spanish government, which seems to feel the law is not about giving the government more access to communications, but about “risk reduction and prevention.” And that’s only the sort of obtuseness a burgeoning fascist state can provide. Governments that actually respect rights have objected. The Spanish government, however, wants its populace cowed and a new set of tools to oppress Catalan dissidents.
Meanwhile, on the encryption front, the EU remains a land of contrasts:
A month earlier, the then Swedish Council Presidency had proposed two new paragraphs . They should make it clear that the law does not include “general monitoring obligations” or “measures to circumvent encryption”. Spain had called for end-to-end encryption to be banned and has scrapped both proposals.
Nine countries support the deletion, including Italy, Romania and Hungary.
Seven countries are against the deletion, including Portugal and Austria. Sweden has a “headache” about it. Poland refers to it as the “red line”. Austria wants to resume the ban on general surveillance, which is also in the Digital Services Act . The Netherlands is calling for the “protection of end-to-end encryption” to be anchored in the legal text.
As it stands now, at least four countries are prepared to fully reject the proposal. Others are unhappy, but are hoping their objections will factor into the next round of edits. A few countries (looking at you especially, Spain) appear to believe any expansion of the surveillance state is acceptable, whether or not it has any effect on the creation and distribution of CSAM.
What’s on display here highlights the insularity of those pushing for surveillance power expansions. They thought no one would object to the proposal for fear of appearing aligned with child abusers. But the opposite has proven true: member states are unwilling to make everyone subject to increased surveillance just because a small minority of service users choose to commit criminal acts.
Filed Under: austria, chat control, csam, encryption, eu, eu commission, germany
Comments on “As EU Commission Moves Forward With ‘Chat Control’ Proposal, EU Nations Continue To Push Back”
Is this the same EU
Is this EU that wants to be able to scan everyone’s private communications the same EU that doesn’t allow a company to place cookies on a persons browser without their consent?
Re: Took the wrong lessons from 1984
‘Violations of privacy and tracking of a person’s activity online and offline is terrible… when we’re not the ones doing it!
HOW about reverse it all
Every thing is Public, with NOT identification.
Acknowledging, that HUMANS are weird and strange, and as long as they stick to certain ideals, WE wont hunt you dont with all the random Data we can find.
WOW, sounds like some religions.
The thought is WHY bury anything. Let it all be Public, from the corps to the gov. to your Home life. Its almost that bad NOW with the internet and your kids.
NO more secrets.
Just no identifying, data to track.
when are people in the EU gonna learn that the EU commission is the go to bunch of people that those such as them ovie/music industry go to when they want something done that otherwise wouldn’t be done? go back some years and check it’s involvement when those running the original Pirate Bay were wanting to be arrested, taken to court, found guilty and jailed by the USA entertainment industries! they even fixed the guy who was affiliated to the industries to be the judge and they got away with doing so! as usual, throw money in the right direction and you can buy the services of anyone to do whatever you want, even when that is more illegal than what those you want to put in jail have done!
'You first'
I’m willing to entertain the idea if those pushing it are willing to show that they believe their own arguments.
Open up, completely, their personal and professional data and other communications for the public to look into at their whim(the public will of course never abuse this access) for a period of no less than a year to show that they’re willing to operate under the same rules that they would foist on everyone else, with any refusals on their part taken as an admission of support for CSAM and other criminal behavior since clearly that’s the only reason someone would be against such an invasive system.
If they are willing to play by the same rules as everyone else I might be willing to believe that they’re truly doing this in good faith and with honest intentions. Anything less…
What a bunch of b*llsh*t
So this is what you get when you place people in a position of power to make decisions or plans about things they clearly do NOT know anything about. And what’s worse, simply refuse to listen to people who DO know something about the subject, like little spoiled children who want to get their way, and will put up a tantrum when they don’t.
I’m a fairly tech savvy user. There’s no way I will allow spyware to be installed on my devices. How will they enforce this? Surely with Windows and stock Android, it’s easy enough to push a sneaky update. But with open source software such as Linux for computers, and LineageOS for an Android device? Good luck with that. And for services that would pull out of the EU, a VPN makes short work of that.
Unless open source software such as Linux / Unix, LineageOS and VPN providers get banned out of the EU as well. But that’ll truly mean the EU has descended into a totalitarian regime.
Compare it all with the real world...
Most “democratic” governments don’t allow random openning and scanning of mail content, grabbing and examining personal hand-off materials, nor do they automatically allow listening in on phone calls without some form of court order first. What makes electronic versions of these activities so different that the rights of those using them no longer apply? We acknowlege electronically searching someone’s phone or computer is akin to a physical search of their home and papers – why is a democratic authority going backwards here?
Eventually will someone searching Google about bombs or writing a novel that mentions terrorist activities expect a visit from the SWAT team based on what words their computer sees and alerts behind their backs?
Spread?
What spread?
Some organizations, notably NCMEC and the IWF, have been bellowing loudly about large numbers of reports. The reports have pretty clearly gone up because of more thorough reporting (by the same platforms they’re now beating about the head and shoulders with the resulting numbers). There’s little or no reason to believe that there’s actually a bigger problem.
This an especially interesting case because of the huge conflict of interest. These are primarily advocacy organizations, with strong interests in exaggerating problems. However, they’ve also managed to get special legal status for themselves. They are the only official reporting channels and the only people who can legally see all of the reported material. The reports are what they say they are and the reported material is what they say it is, and if you doubt them in any way, tough.