So, if I'm reading this correctly, Chat Control is bound to become law? and this is after I think 2/3 rejections, how democratic of the EU.

Oh, and parliamentarians starting their summer break whenever they want will never not be funny.

Well, these are the MEPs elected by member states. We don’t like the outcome but this means chat control is well supported within the government of each country.

If the former, the EU is an autocratic democracy. If the later, an autocratic oligarchy.

Either way bad. Only true democracy in Europe is Switzerland where the people actually get to vote on laws.

Nope. This is bad, but not THAT bad.

This is an extension of the existing Chat Control 1.0, which was set to expire (or maybe already has, I didn't keep track). AIUI it gives chat companies permission to scan user chats for illicit content, but does not mandate it.

This is bad, but it's not the much worse still Chat Control 2.0 that was defeated several times already.

Literally second paragraph.

> to reinstate the transitional regulation for Chat Control, which expired in April

2 - The vote was on the "Urgency requirement"

> parliamentarians starting their summer break whenever they want will never not be funny

Eh. This is the least problematic thing here. Some MEPs might just be on official PTO.

In Germany it's usually the other way around: the EU tries to force us to do objectively good things, while national and regional governments drag their feet implementing EU law or complying with regulations. We regularly have headlines about how we might have to pay fines to the EU, and every time it's for something where the EU seems clearly on the morally right side

And all that despite our government's best efforts to send their worst politicians to represent us in the EU. Describing von der Leyen as a disgraced politician who just failed upwards would not be entirely inaccurate

Germany is one of most wealthy, powerful and biggest contributors to the EU budget. They can't be bullied round easily.

"We regularly have headlines about how we might have to pay fines to the EU"

The state controls the media... a lot of headlines are orchestrated. But it is done so well, unless you know, you don't know...

Where Germany doesn't agree, it has sway. Where Germany and France don't agree, it is unlikely, and where Germany, France and Italy don't agree it's not going to happen as some countries matter more than others.

In some ways, the concentration of power in a dictatorship might be better, if the dictator was well morally aligned with the people. Trouble is, the people are seldom even morally aligned with each other in a unified way, so a dictator cannot easily represent their conflicting interests. Representative democracy does at least take a step towards solving that issue.

Whenever one reads EC you need to read: "All of the heads of state in a trenchcoat". Macron, Merz, etc

And yet this is an EP maneuver

And let's not forget on the American lobbyists pushing for it (Including Big Tech)

There are dictatorships, where a very select few people have absolute power, but there’s no visible dictator.

Iran is a country like this. There’s no visible dictator. It’s a game of power between the clergy, the military, and the civil government.

Chat control is no different.

> democracy is when you repeatedly push for unpopular laws until they pass, and the more times you do it the more democratic it is

It is unlikely that 60 additional “no” votes can be found by Thursday to stop this.

https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/poll-72-of-citizens-oppose-...

They keep voting and voting and voting until the energy of the people to protest diminishes or they find a way to get it in.

There needs to be a counter-balance where politicians can be removed or even punished by the people for proposing unpopular bills.

I keep telling people about such things and I am looked at as nerdy, geeky or boring.

But this stupid reaction finally explains to me why human life for ordinary people will always largely be a life of suffering.

And

“If it's a Yes, we will say 'on we go', and if it's a No we will say 'we continue'.”

- Jean-Claude Juncker

I really fear where this is headed.

In the meantime though, Signal specifically should not do something stupid like blocking the EU, which is basically surrender. They are a non-profit headquartered in the US, so there are zero business risks to non-compliance - nothing in the EU to fine or seize. And the EU has no jurisdiction over servers in the US, all they can do is build their own Great Firewall. (However, they might pressure AWS to deplatform Signal - hopefully the team is prepared for the possibility that self-hosting will be necessary soon.)

Very much. I also fear they coming for this, we already have instances of where using secure alternatives tags you as a criminal[0], so i don't doubt a future where non-approved applications will get you in trouble. With everything happening around Android locking itself down[1] and Windows being a spyware[2] anybody who wants privacy will be 'different', and can be tagged and excluded from parts of society for not using the same services.

[0]: https://x.com/GrapheneOS/status/1940440326830989549

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48801059

[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48815196

Imagine all I ever posted was cat pics... unless I have your public key and then all of a sudden those pics are decoded into messages of dissent

Google is already working on closing the possibility to install apps from outside the app store, Apple has been like that since forever. The fact that a few technically savvy users with rooted phones will still be able to use Signal doesn't mean anything. It will be dead if the EU decides they don't want it.

Anyway, this is about Chat Control 1.

Was having lots of people's lives saved by a much faster vaccine rollout not a good thing?

Authoritarian centralization efforts need to be fought Huang style - with an European twist - as we might be behind on a lot of axis but we "Didn't Wake Up a Loser".

China / US leadership must not be the carte-blanche to formalize whatever low bar in how we handle our own privacy; going straight for the "self own" I guess?

Sorry for prompt mode but I hope this is at least somewhat legible to fellow Europeans, if not please listen to antirez in original Italian or auto translated:

https://youtu.be/cmYiWsFn3GM

I hear quite a few tangents in there; the main one being: especially in EU we need to go "agentic". Don't wait for politics to do The Right Thing. They should play retrospective backup at best.

I'm thinking they might be actually thankful for having been provided vision / imagination.

Team up with the bureaucrats after the fact but don't listen to them too much - again - to Do The Right Thing. Especially when they are potentially infected by lobbyists...

FFS I hate this timeline; we really need to show up for real. Again and again and again and again...

The other part is steganography, or hiding real messages within a innocuous anodyne message stream. And encryption can be used in conjunction as part of hiding said messages.

It can be within pictures with the lowest bit values. It can be constructed punctuation and spaces. Lots of things.

But hidden and plausibly deniable messaging is the ONLY way to defeat a government(s) that want to invade every communication aspect for humans.

Found a new problematic meme? Someone leaked a video of you taking a bribe? Someone published a photo of damage from a missile strike? Add it to the database of forbidden media and quickly track down the source.

It's unlikely people can move their friends to their own platform but the best way I have found is to call it a "fall-back" platform for when Discord and others are temporarily offline. Get people used to the idea that is the place to share things they do not want leaked when the big platform 3rd parties expose files. The admin can encrypt the storage and periodically zero out files and zero out empty space for privacy.

People with slightly higher opsec may choose to block mobile proprietary devices.

Unfortunately, verified devices will close that loophole.

They are not elected. Even the EU is illegal, since joining the EU was rejected by people of many European countries, but that was ignored.

They just do what they want and do thorough media coverage. In rare cases that doesn't work, people just dissapear.

Thanks for the warning. Comment deleted to avoid jail time.

Commented on Tuesday, deleted the comment on Wednesday, the regulation is enacted on Thursday => OK.

Commented on Tuesday, did not delete before Thursday => jail (and it does not matter that you can't delete it anymore because it has a reply).

Sarcasm of course, as Russian laws do not apply here.

Delta Chat works with any email server and has a rich feature set, Bitchat is also good to have on hand. And of course the old standby GPG, flawed as it may be.

Also NNCP (https://nncp.mirrors.quux.org/) in case sneakernet solutions are ever needed.

I love how your average EU left-leaning cybertistic who has less serotonin than Werther and yet thinks all their country needs is more 3rd world "refugees" acts upon a tiny modicum of difficulty or government control (which should not be read as me advocating for it, naturally)

> Any advice from free people of China on circumventing government restrictions and control?

You should look into what goes on WeChat

But anyway the Chinese has way more agency and way less qualms about using air-conditioner so let me make a guess on who's surviving the heat waves