EU Commission Moves Forward with ‘Chat Control’ Proposal; EU Nations Push Back | Hacker News Reader

EU Commission Moves Forward with ‘Chat Control’ Proposal; EU Nations Push Back

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40 pointsrntn11 comments

Who in their right mind, except oppressive regimes would support unconditional spying on their communication.

That is just in line with the undemocratic structure of the EU. The council, no one voted for them to be in the position they are, has more power than the voted for parliament.

It's essentially a dictatorship.

EU commission is a pure technocrat governance system. No democracy. You're just supposed to trust the experts they install. Many of which come from "genteel" families (A.K.A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ursula_von_der_Leyen). It's unbelievable.

> The council, no one voted for them to be in the position they are, has more power than the voted for parliament.

Luckily, that's not true.

Parliament has the final say, if a proposal doesn't pass parliament, it gets dropped or returned for 'refinement' into a proposal that does pass parliament.

Article talks about the EU Commission though, not the European Council (not to be confused with the Council of the European Union (not to be confused with the Council of Europe)).

But yeah, too much of an 'old boys network' that works behind closed doors vs. democratically elected representatives when it comes to proposing laws or general direction.

To say nothing of the complexity & inefficiency of EU machinery.

For those interested in dubious institutions, the trilogue is a must know. Absolutely worth a read:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formal_trilogue_meeting

The amusing thing is that von der Leyen has used WhatsApp during Pfizer negotiations to avoid her communications becoming FOIAable.

It's absolute psychosis.

They talk about protecting adolescents when it is the same adolescents that will be the ones having their rights violated and investigated for sharing pictures with each other.

Fun fact: Austria is probably against it because a guy working for the government had his Apple time capsule confiscated. His WhatsApp messages with politicians were on there and got leaked which resulted in the downfall of the government, multiple resignations and court cases.

Money quote which he wrote to one of his underlings: „You work for the conservative party so you are basically a whore to the rich.“

So some powerful people realized what it means to be on the receiving end of this.

Not sure how "fun fact" and "probably... because" is supposed to sound legit.

The quote is legit [0] - the rest is speculation on my part but I think it's save to assume that a conservative party taking a u turn on their privacy policy regarding phone surveillance after having been brought down by leaks is not that far fetched.

[0]: https://www.derstandard.at/story/2000132106195/schmid-an-mit...

Easy, just pass a law that says you can't spy on government officials.

Yes that's true and I am sure they will do that. Politicians will of course get encrypted messengers because "national security". But their friends won't, their families won't, their children won't.

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