Contrary to what this heading suggests, nothing has been "decided" here.
This article is not only inaccurate, it is falsely misleading.<p>The Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) adopted a "draft Parliament position" [0] and that's that.<p>This still needs to go through so-called "tri(a?)logue negotiations", held between the EU parliament, commission and council. [1]<p>Still a tad early for calling this a win!<p>[0] - <a href="https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20231110IPR10118/child-sexual-abuse-online-effective-measures-no-mass-surveillance" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20231110IP...</a><p>[1] - <a href="https://netzpolitik.org/2023/ueberwachung-eu-innenausschuss-stimmt-fuer-die-ablehnung-der-anlasslosen-chatkontrolle/#netzpolitik-pw" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://netzpolitik.org/2023/ueberwachung-eu-innenausschuss-...</a> (German)
I was upset at the parliament for even considering this and extremely relieved that they chose not to pursue this draconic instrument. That said, we as citizens will have to remain vigilant and let our voices be heard because the onslaught on our privacy is constant from both commercial interests, spy agencies and state actors. These parties have no issue keeping pressure up over decades whereas we the citizens can become exhausted and exasperated.<p>We need some laws to swing our way; enshrine our rights to privacy in clear terms so implementing laws like chat control become a non-starter.
From the source:<p>> Chat control - one of the worst EU plans that is also being described as a surveillance monster - must be stopped. And the EU Parliament has just decided to do so! In a historic agreement on the EU Commission's Child Sexual Abuse Regulation (CSAR) the European Parliament wants to remove chat control requirements and safeguard secure encryption. The decision came after extensive backlash against the original proposal from technology and security experts, to international scientists and to citizens across Europe. This is a great win for our right to privacy and for upholding our democratic values in Europe, but the fight continues!<p>What did the EU Parliament decide?<p>Breyer writes on his website that internet services and apps must be "secure by design and default". The EU Parliament has agreed to:<p><pre><code> "safeguard the digital secrecy of correspondence and remove the plans for blanket chat control, which violate fundamental rights and stand no chance in court. The current voluntary chat control of private messages (not social networks) by US internet companies is being phased out. Targeted telecommunication surveillance and searches will only be permitted with a judicial warrant and only limited to persons or groups of persons suspected of being linked to child sexual abuse material."
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A huge win for our privacy rights is also that the EU Parliament has decided to "clearly exclude so-called client-side scanning".<p>In contrast to the original chat control proposal, the version of the EU Parliament wants that a new EU Child Protection Centre proactively searches publicly accessible parts of the internet for child sexual abuse material with automatic crawling, which can also take place in darknet and would be much more efficient than private surveillance measures by providers. Found abuse material must be reported and taken down by the provider.
Fight is not over<p>While the EU Parliament's decision is a huge win, the fight is not over. It is expected that the EU Commission will continue to push for general surveillance chat control measures. Now is the time for each and everyone of us to join this fight!
Despite the lobbying from American organisations (Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, Palantir and others who worked with Thorn on this [1][2]) the EU Parliament did the right thing this time.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.thorn.org/partnerships/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.thorn.org/partnerships/</a><p>[2]<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130420162917/http://www.wearethorn.org/aboutus/#techTaskForceExpanded" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://web.archive.org/web/20130420162917/http://www.wearet...</a>
Makes lot of sense. In some EU countries like Finland the privacy of communication is a CONSTITUTIONAL right. So you need good reason to break it. And I don't think generic muh terrorism passes the bar.
Private messages won't be scanned for now, but what about the certificates in web browsers that could be swapped at will by any certificate in the control of some EU apparel so that "encrypted" web traffic could be sniffed and MITMed?<p>Which moreover came with a fineprint specifying that it'd be illegal for browsers to warn users about certificate being swapped?<p>Is that out of the window for now too?
I'd love to know who was in favour of the new better proposal and who was in favour of the old proposal. A clear insight into their values. It's EU parliamentary elections next year, I'd nearly argue those supporting this new better proposal would be a good voting choice next year and to steer clear of those in favour of the old proposal.
I'm very relieved by this. It is shocking that there was even the possibility of such a law passing, because it would've turned a lot of people, including myself, absolutely against the EU.
Prefect combination with Article 45 (<a href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/11/article-45-will-roll-back-web-security-12-years" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/11/article-45-will-roll-b...</a>). You can roam around EU versions of websites that rely on government own certificate authorities and allow you to log in with your eIDAS id - which will be a requirement for all "very large online platforms."<p>The EU Parliament giveth and taketh away.
What really blow my mind is that now we need so much energy and be that thankful to the EU for something that should be so basic and obvious.<p>When you compare how scandalous and impossibly excessive was looking the story of "1984" a few dozen years ago and that now it is the new normal.
In a lot of countries, even democratic ones, we are already far worse than what was described in the book. But very little persons are shocked about that...
<i>> In contrast to the original chat control proposal, the version of the EU Parliament wants that a new EU Child Protection Centre proactively searches publicly accessible parts of the internet for child sexual abuse material with automatic crawling, which can also take place in darknet and would be much more efficient than private surveillance measures by providers. Found abuse material must be reported and taken down by the provider.</i><p>This is a good start, if it is sufficiently well-funded and appropriately staffed.<p>I hope that they crawl much more than the public "clearnet" and "darknet", since a lot of media is shared inside the various walled gardens that make up the internet here in the '20s.
What's the closest thing to EFF for these kinds of things in Europe? I always feel like there's a huge difference in quality of reporting where EFF produces some of the best content I've ever read on any topic, and stuff about EU privacy is often a lot harder to follow.<p>I know about statewatch and some individuals I follow who do a pretty good job, but feels like there is a gap for an organization to step and replicate what EFF does in the US.<p>I would happily support with money and time.
This website is a throwback to a design choice that (thankfully) has mostly died off - choosing a mid-grey for your text, making it much more effort to read.<p>I used to have Stylebot pinned to my extensions to fix it, but haven't had to do it in ages. Designers - please don't do this.<p>(I think it comes from people designing on much higher contrast Apple monitors and not testing on anything else)
More in depth analysis from a NGO lobbying for online privacy:
<a href="https://edri.org/our-work/eu-parliament-committee-rejects-mass-scanning-of-private-and-encrypted-communications/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://edri.org/our-work/eu-parliament-committee-rejects-ma...</a>
This is exactly as I expected it would end. We'll see this happen again, and again, and again.<p>Some politician gets the genius idea to have backdoors in encryption, initial support, then reality sets in and the plans are abandoned.<p>There is just no sensible way to implement this, therefore it's not going to happen.<p>This iteration did go a bit further than usual.
Wow, EU Parliament did the right thing this time.<p>When I heard an interview with a Swedish EU politician, I thought it was a lost cause. She was completely blinded by the possibilities and saw no downside whatsoever.
The EU needs to stop it with all this heavy handed regulation. At the end of the day it only hurts businesses. Businesses rely on the data contained within these communications in order to improve their services. This is why US tech companies are growing while EU equivalents are not.<p>It's all well and good to consider user privacy and user safety but not when it stifles the market.<p>[Please note that this is a satirical comment based on some of the arguments I've seen here in the past]
Next step would be OS maintainers to make APIs for providing e2e encryption functionality and then app stores requiring these apis to be used for private messaging.