Reality Check: EU Council Chat Control Vote is Not a Retreat, But a Green Light for Indiscriminate Mass Surveillance and the End of Right to Communicate Anonymously
www.patrick-breyer.de
Contrary to headlines suggesting the EU has "backed away" from Chat Control, the negotiating mandate endorsed today by EU ambassadors in a close split vote paves the way for a permanent infrastructure of mass surveillance. Patrick Breyer, digital freedom fighter and expert on the file, warns journal

Contrary to headlines suggesting the EU has “backed away” from Chat Control, the negotiating mandate endorsed today by EU ambassadors in a close split vote paves the way for a permanent infrastructure of mass surveillance.

While the Council removed the obligation for scanning, the agreed text creates a toxic legal framework that incentivizes US tech giants to scan private communications indiscriminately, introduces mandatory age checks for all internet users, and threatens to exclude teenagers from digital life.

The article is non-paywalled, freely readable on the link --^

Including it here because Chat Control goes against the spirit of Open-Source technologies (which are usually meant and built for control over one’s device, privacy, trust… and no black boxes analyzing the content of messages you’re sending to your partner).

  • vas@lemmy.mlOP
    21·
    18 hours ago

    A much better and desired solution is to stop this law from ever happening by societal pressure, in my personal opinion. I wasn’t born in the EU, but I live here many years now. I choose to believe that EU isn’t fully corrupted, and that many good and meaningful changes are still happening.

    • HelloRoot@lemy.lolEnglish
      5·
      15 hours ago

      Yes, but how though?

      We’ve stopped chat control over and over for years. But now they seem to have went through with it.

      Usually the linked website has instructions. Now it simply says:

      About the Vote: The Council mandate was today endorsed by the Committee of Permanent Representatives (COREPER). About the Procedure: The text will now be negotiated with the European Parliament. The Parliament’s mandate (adopted in Nov 2023) explicitly rules out indiscriminate scanning and demands targeted surveillance based on suspicion.

      If there is an organized protest in front of the parlament, link it please.

    • Big_Bob [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
      64·
      18 hours ago

      I choose to believe that EU isn’t fully corrupted, and that many good and meaningful changes are still happening.

      Lmao

      The EU as an organisation is 100% detached from any working class political will. It is entirely beholden to business interests and maintaining bourgeoisie rule through surveillance, overregulation and racial animosity towards anyone who’s not white western European. Especially towards slavs and East Europeans who are basically second class citizens used for ultra cheap manual labor.

      The EU has absolutely no progressive power beyond the usual shiny, white washed aesthetics of neoliberalism.

      • Narri N.@lemmygrad.ml
        33·
        17 hours ago

        Seconding this, I don’t think it ever even could have gone the other way. In the end the EU (and all its members) is just another bourgeois state with the same flaws as any other, economically and politically beholden to the will of US’s imperialism and capital.