But this is the ultimate "grant me dictatorial powers so I can do good" play.
Rather than narrow and specific - it's a broad based law that suddenly touches everyone even though offenders are a small percentage and should be able to be targeted more efficiently.
Back in the day when I was like 15 and DC++ was still a thing, I used to browse people's shared folders. One day I came across a file called "the paradox of false positive". It was a 1 pager that described how a machine which is 99.9% accurate at identifying terrorists would be completely useless due to this false positive base rate fallacy you're describing.
It really stuck with me throughout the years. It's kind o remarkable how even a 99.9% accurate heuristic is insufficient at scale.
Which begs the question: lets assume the intentions are pure (which we know they're not but lets be generous), what other options are there when 99.9% heuristic is not good enough? how do you design systems when they're guaranteed to fail as they scale up?
edit: and what do you know, I just saw this as I scrolled down on HN https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48816959
And there is a saying where I grew up: you need a village to raise a kid, I feel like we lost track of that and feel the issues of that now.
Btw, von der leyen is trying to get stuff like this written down as laws since 2009, it got her the nickname Zensursula.
And Germans and Europeans looked at that and thought the best place for her is leading the EU?!
Remind me again how she got elected in that position?
Because it seems like the entire EU population knew her being infamous for that, except for the few elites who appointed her there via "democratic process" to the head of the EU.
Also most of the EU population don’t know her for anything at all. I’d be surprised if more than 50% of Europeans could name her.
I am not against EU cooperation, mainly in external security and free market economy. But the system we have is not very democratic, and def not very representative of people. They act like demigods, elected by parliament with no real consequences of their actions.
I disagree. That's an executive power position for an entity that lacks sovereignty. Giving it the legitimacy of direct vote is highly problematic.
Start by giving more power to parliament.
And it fails miserably.
If anything I find GenZ a lot more focused on explicit consent than GenX.
No it doesn't. That's just needlessly reductionist doomerist take with no argumentation to back that up.
Define failure and success of the system in this context.
1. The cultural factor is rising expectations for children and their parents, costing both time and money;
2. The political/social factor is nanny states and academic institutions that the public expects to not only teach but raise their kids;
3. Technology. Especially the Internet, mobile devices, social media, and short form content. Technology distracts and isolates both kids and parents.
An example of the three factors at work is the all-too-common local news trope of ”Nosy neighbor calls CPS because the family next door lets their kids walk to school. Whole family traumatized as a result.”
I mean, I'll gladly send you 10k years back and have you tell me how it goes.
That's a good way to put it
In fact that's why nothing ever gets done to improve things in the EU/west, because we expect perfect outcome in every new change and we want potential risks to be zero before something new is implemented, so it's easier for leaders to just never do anything, never change anything, just sit and maintain the status quo while we go through managed decline complaining things keep slowly getting worse.
Or is that where you want other people to end up while you peddle propagandist fairytales about failed parenting?
Suppose I invent a device that can detect whether there is a giant invisible dragon living in your house, and it has an accuracy of 99.999%
Now, I use it in your house and it tells me there is an invisible dragon… so what are the chances that there is a dragon in your house?
Based on your statement, it would be 99.999% likely that there is an invisible dragon in your house. However, we actually know that there is a 0% chance there is an invisible dragon, so even with the positive test result we still know there is a 0% chance a dragon is there.
Whereas if only 0.001% of your population are terrorists then 99 out of 100 alerts are false positives at which point the system is well on its way to being useless.
There is an important difference between scenarios where we care about the relative versus absolute frequency of errors.
> There is an important difference between scenarios where we care about the relative versus absolute frequency of errors.
The context is chat control without probable cause over the whole population of Europe with a low prevalence. My point, and presumably that of OP, is that even a small relative frequency of errors will yield an unsustainably high absolute frequncy of errors.
> This is merely information provided to a human agent.
It will be in theory. In practice the human agent will just forward the decision. A human agent is not sufficient; you need to test only with probable cause for the kind of scenario we're talking about. The exact opposite of "Chat Control 1.0 and 2.0".
P.S.: The comment I originally replied to choose a very convoluted way of saying that the false discovery rate of the test matters for a proper evaluation. Both you and they explain this by throwing numbers without context in combination with slightly inaccurate definitions. I got the definitions mixed up differently, which led to this follow-up.
> even a small relative frequency of errors will yield an unsustainably high absolute frequncy of errors.
That depends entirely on the rate of true positives in the general population and the rate at which the test successfully catches them. If the success rate is reasonably high and the rate of true positives is within one base ten order of magnitude of the rate of false positives then regardless of volume the stream of reports would be expected to prove quite useful.
To put this in concrete terms, if 1 billion messages are scanned, there are 100 violations, 99 of those violations are successfully detected, and there are an additional 1000 false positives reported, then you've got about a 10% hit rate when examining reports. That would provide a genuinely useful starting point.
But it's not at all clear that we can expect numbers like that. Both because the scanners are likely much worse but also because criminals can't reasonably be expected to stick around on conforming platforms in the event that such measures are enacted.
Even if the reports were 100% accurate I'd still be opposed to it on ideological grounds. I don't think pervasive surveillance of that nature is compatible in the long term with a free and democratic system of government.
> Both you and they explain this by throwing numbers without context in combination with slightly inaccurate definitions.
It was my intent to provide reasoning for all the numbers I put forward. They were meant as examples.
As to definitions I wasn't going by anything formal. I tried to spell out exactly what I meant by each term. Apologies if I wasn't entirely clear about that. Regardless, the precise definitions of the terms aren't what matters here. It's the practical end result - what percentage of the alerts are false?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_and_negative_predicti...
[1]: https://www.covid2020.icu/false-positive-false-negative-simu...
You typically use the Bonferroni correction when making general statements about a statistical relationship. You wouldn't use it for checking if a particular image shows illegal content. If you kept testing with your image classifier, your significance threshold would need to be continuously lowered and you would asymptotically reach zero.
Relevant XKCD: 882
https://www.koffellaw.com/blog/google-ai-technology-flags-da...
The corporate liability of such content being found on their cloud is so insanely nuclear, that they're not gonna wait and ask you "hey are those nudes your own kids or are you a pedo?" before they wipe the account with all pics off their servers.
If the scanner is 99.99% accurate, then most classifications will be correct.
So a quota of 0.1% or even less material being detectably criminal sounds realistic (probably not much less, though).
outlier cases aside, there is also just a large amount of processing power that will go into this, the service can only be worse off for it. Privacy is not just about being able to hide things, it is also about being in control of how you present to the world. not because that control is maniupulative but because we all exist within our own microcosms of uniqueness, using words slightly differently than each other, and having certain balances of intention and meaning with those we send messages to that cannot be fully presumed from a 3rd party. even in images.
Are they really saying "if you want to send private messages then go make your own network" ?
Unironically, we should all move to using TOR.
Anyone setup a .onion mirror for HN yet? I'd assume usual HN-mirror-rules, no login or posting but free to view...
No, because with the way things work, they'll make that illegal next.
"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule."
H.L. Mencken
> The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.
> For every problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
> Freedom of press is limited to those who own one.
https://www.thatprivacyguy.com/blog/chat-control-the-415-who...
The irony is, you don't actually need Tor on my site because there is no logging, no third parties, no adtech etc. it is just static HTML files - so whereas I would normally recommend Tor I designed the site specifically to be privacy first.
I will try to figure out what is going on though because obviously I am fully supportive of people protecting their privacy with Tor.
I will investigate.
By the parents. Install parental controls that only allow to message you and closest relatives. Problem solved.
They should give precise numbers of how many such crimes are detected via such means or are expected to be detected per year, and how many of those are not possible to catch through regular investigative work. It just seems ridiculously out of proportion especially that with all this flurry around the topic, the criminals surely aren't using WhatsApp for this any more, but especially won't be once the law is adopted. Sure, many are likely stupid but if they are so stupid, won't they fall into other honeypots?
Why are chat apps the best leverage for uncovering this? They'd have to justify this with some sort of data and numbers.
Because later they can just come back and say, well unfortunately they are now all using other means, so now we need to break https,we need to ban e2e, we need to ban vpns, tor and foss operating systems etc etc.
Anyways, once that implemented noone will report to you and there will be no means of pushing against it because all your online efforts to coordinate will be compromised.
Because narrow law is easier to avoid or find the loophole and a single case is enough to induce panic and anger.
Reminder that none of this has any evidence that it helps CSA, but nobody cares about the actual children.
This is like trying to prevent burglary by working with the factory that manufactures pry bars.
> suddenly touches everyone
..............I see what you did there.
Voluntary for whom? The service provider? Can I opt out of getting scanned?
> Does it touch encrypted messages? - No. End-to-end encrypted communications were never scanned but providers could deploy client-side scanning under this law.
So it circumvents e2e encryption?
---
How would these laws prevent me from just side loading my own open source client?
They do not.
Non of these laws stop you from opting out of surveillance, but altogether it gets so hard that at some point you get more suspicious and tracked if you do all this than if you don't do any of these.
Unlike governments, generally, the companies may use control over communications for any purpose. For example, a surveillance-based advertising services is one purpose that we know about. The companies can collaborate with any party; it may be another another company, it may be a government. The company can utilise surveillance data collected and/or its ability to throttle and censor communications to further any purpose. The parties with whom the company collaborates may potentially use the data for any purpose
Unfortunately for users, the company is not required to disclose with whom it collaborates nor the terms of such collaborations. Hence users have no way to verfiy. Users of these "free services", have few, if any, rights against the company
This situation is preventable. What enables it to exist is user "consent" to ceding control over their private communications ("chat control") to so-called "tech" companies
1. This is accomplished through granting the company total control over the client software, e.g., "automatic updates'. The company effectvely (a) blocks chat participants from using their own client software and (b) forces chat participants to use client software controlled by the so-called 'tech" company. This software is provided for free and primarily serves the company, not the user, advancing the company's commercial interests, e.g., surveillance-based advertising services, at the expense of the user's privacy and security interests
This fact was summarised in a submission that reached the HN front page yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48792203
1. allow MITM decryption by a privileged authority
2. require all devices doing E2EE have a non-user-modifiable piece of functionality to scan on-device
The second is the Apple style on-device CSAM scanner? I have to say that I do sometimes think about it while taking a photo of my baby playing in the bathtub - photos like my parents have of me which have been kind of nice to see later. It would be a pity if I had to have a separate analog camera just for baby photos because then I'd need to learn the whole developing film stuff.
Polaroid coming back in business! I would not complain at all if we started reverting some of our lifestyle behaviors back to analog.
IIRC weren't there some thoughts that they'd switch iCloud to E2E but add local scanning on upload (compare to what it currently when Apple, Google, etc. freely scan all your cloud photos anyway). That didn't seem like a terrible deal on paper.
Does this mean every parent has to now make sure not to take pictures of their children playing in bath for instance, in order not to trip these scans for false positives?
They CLAIM they scan for CSAM, so watch out your documents and pictures with something that govt also wants to track.
Even with e2ee enabled for iCloud Photos/files (which NOBODY uses, and furthermore is entirely disabled in the UK), it sends identifying hashes of plaintext file content to the server without e2ee.
This is exactly what has been proposed. E.g. WhatsApp has a piece of code that scans images and texts before sending. After that, they are "encrypted".
Meanwhile, Governments can take away your freedom, block your right to speech, ruin your entire life, seize your private assets/wealth, take away your children, deport you, etc...all depending on how the cultural wind is blowing on a particular day. And they are legally entitled to hold a gun to your head or kill you if you don't comply.
These are not the same level of risk. Yet more hysterical attention is paid to the former instead of the latter. This is dumb.
Be more worried about governments. Read more history.
A reminder that governments can buy from private companies. A company like Palantir can buy data from private companies then incorporate it into the software it sells to governments.
Governments can do a lot of things that hurt you, this is a consequence of having power. Giant Corporations can also hurt you because they also have power.
In general I would agree that say, walmart, is mostly interested in encouraging you to shop at their stores more frequently with the information they gather, it's also true that other corporations are currently selling the information they gather to the government.
And, of course, if I dislike what e.g. the department of labour is doing with information it's collecting, I can vote for various representatives up and down the hierarchy of power, in the USA this would include things like state governors / attorneys, federal legislators, presidents, etc, all of whom have some level of influence over my information being collected and used.
If I dislike what walmart is doing, my options are considerably more limited. I can lobby for a law to be passed against it or I can essentially wish for it to go out of business.
False dichotomy, they are the same Lernaean Hydra.
How has that been going? Did you manage to elect someone, who made a positive change? Let's be charitable - you can pick an example from your life that goes back up to 50 years.
No. My point is you should fear centralized power in general, and in exact proportion to the scope of the power being centralized. All power gets abused.
Governments are centralized power on a scale that makes the most powerful corporation on earth look like an ant. Historically AND currently, the worst atrocities come from governments, not companies.
Yet, internet discourse (and new legislation) over the past 10 years has pretended like the biggest threat to us re: data collection is private companies. They are indeed a threat. But they are NOWHERE near the scale of the threat that data collection by governments represents.
This blind spot is part of the reason mass surveillance legislation is being rolled out (largely successfully) everywhere right now.
For example, we've created such a boogieman out of facebook/social media (which, ironically, doesn't even exist anymore as people remember it) that it has manufactured consent among the public for governments building the infrastructure for 1984. A far greater threat to us than micro-targeted face cream ads ever were.
Both large gov't and large corpo are horrible and both should be equally avoided.
You don't seem able to hold two ideas in your head.
Yes, companies can abuse their power. Yes, governments can abuse their power.
However, the power wielded by governments is on a whole different scale, so the capacity for abuse and atrocity is exponentially larger (governments have killed millions and can literally destroy the entire world with firepower 100X over).
You say that govt is holding a gun to citizen's head, but govt also holding a gun at private company's head.
By that logic, you should fear companies at least as much as their governments when handing them your data.
But companies have additional goals: to increase profit. Which can be achieved by selling more toilet bowl cleaner. But also by externalising harm/pollution/costs, monopolising, reducing taxes, etc. All of which harm you, personally.
So, sure, worry about governments. But worry more about (big) companies. Read more history.
This fact alone makes the comparison you’re trying to make pretty silly. You have far, far more to fear from the country from which you’re a citizen than the company for which you’re a customer.
Read more history.
Also, governments consists of a large amount of human each acting for their own benefit. Assuming they can easily collectively united as a single force to use violence to harm all citizen (on the topic of privacy, it really is the case) suddenly is wild.
On the contrary, for a limited government, it very likely will result in using the monopoly of violence to provide extreme capitalism style IP and private property protection which results in dominating power of large companies. On the other hand, every bit of history demonstrated you can never maintain monopoly of violence if you are really against people.
Monopoly on economic is strong because it can be guarded by violence, while violence cannot be easily guarded by itself within a country (unless AI overlord really comes).
Read more history.
You fundamentally are unable to judge risk correctly due to your political bias.
You're even admitting the risk of companies harvesting data is that it may fall in the hands of governments.
Yet you still think a private company lobbying to reduce taxes is a greater threat than your government wielding enough firepower to kill millions of people and destroy the entire world.
Companies can use it to determine voting patters and sell that to interested political parties. Government are made from political parties and can steer money to those parties, thus the data can now be sold indirectly to the government.
Companies can use it to indirectly target competitors through their customers. Creating a monopoly is much more profitable than just selling more products. Gaining favors with political parties in the above strategy can also help here.
Companies can sell data to governments of other countries. Just because your own government has laws that forbids it, it doesn't mean other countries has the same laws or will treat the citizens of your country as their own. Trade like this can also occur in multiple steps. Company sell data to country A, and country A shares/sells it to your own government. Your own government might finds this preferable to buy it directly as laws may not apply to data shared/bought, even if that data is about their own citizens.
Selling personal data to the government is profitable, but there are also other interested parties. People in legal disputes may want information about the other side, or the juries, or even the judge. Companies that want to do industry espionage would want to buy information about other companies employees. Criminal organizations very much like to buy information about vulnerable people like the elderly. Again, the data doesn't need to be sold directly but can go through many hands until it finally reach the most scummy buyers, and the money will slowly trickle upwards to the seller.
As long as someone collects the data and is willing to sell it to someone, sooner or later it will be sold/leaked to someone who shouldn't have it. That is the fundamental issue with companies collecting personal information.
I keep trying to explain to people that any data companies harvest, for whatever purpose, can then be accessed by the government, and that trying to draw distinctions in what is a big massive ouroboros is irrelevant.
Even if you trust the company AND trust the government, the data exists forever, and no one can trust all future governments and all future corporations.
If the government weren't legally able to use the toilet bowl cleaner companies data against you, it wouldn't matter.
The problem is us giving governments the right to use this data against us (passports to access the internet, messages being under constant surveillance, etc.)
In Europe we're happily handing over our rights every day so that governments have more power over us (supposedly to "protect" us from the big bad evil American tech companies).
Except, Google just wants to make $100/yr off me instead of $50/yr by me voluntarily choosing to use them.
Meanwhile, EU governments want to literally control what I think and feel and do, and take out $100,000 in debt on the backs of each of my children (we're at 115% debt-to-GDP in France) to fund this nightmare surveillance state.
Plenty of companies collecting data are operated by people who want to control what you think, feel, and do both for profit and based on their owners personal beliefs.
Look trying to separate them is foolhardy. Corporations exist due the limitation of corporate liability provided by government. There's no scenario where you have a corporation without government. A corporation will sell you out wholesale to continue having the right to make 100 bucks a year off of people.
And to steal tips [1], lower your salary [2,3], charge you more [3,4], and limit how you may use "your" property [5]. I'm sure there are many I've missed.
Oh and how could I forget - to smear you if you stand in their way [6].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DoorDash#Withholding_of_tips_a... (try doing that when tips are in cash)
[2] https://www.morningstar.com/news/marketwatch/20260401139/emp...
[3] https://towardsjustice.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Real-S...
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination
[5] https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/27/nvidia-limits-data-center-us...
[6] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/aug/07/monsanto-fu...
Meanwhile governments wield enough power to destroy the entire world 100X over, and are currently shoveling young boys into the meat grinder of war to be slaughtered by the thousands every day.
As a left-leaning forum, HN has a giant blind spot re: government power vs. corporate power. I'm trying to point this out.
Yes, companies can abuse their power. But their power pales in comparison to government power.
Even if true it's almost entirely orthogonal.
The "right" is usually only against government control, intervention and surveillance until they get into power. Then they double down on them. Also right wing parties/groups are generally better at controlling and silencing internal opposition (since they are lot better shutting up and falling in line when push comes to shove regardless of their personal beliefs). So they are usually a lot more effective at imposing these things.
They've outsourced nearly every critical component of a large sustainable society to the rest of the world: Russia, USA, China, India.
But at the same time, their politicians can't do anything because the minute they suggest that they might have to start cutting pensions and public welfare, and all of these different things in order to start supporting national industry and defense, they lose support immediately.
Also, EU countries in Eastern Europe do already have a high military spending, and even Western European countries are improving.
The situation is less than ideal but not hopeless.
I would really challenge that idea that increasing military spending will create a solid and useful military force.
Most of the money you inject within the military industrial complex is wasted and stolen. At some point it can become counterproductive, we can see it with the US military where recently Iran’s $30k shahed drone destroys $300M US radars.
Note that today's politician never state goals in practical military terms but rather in billions and trillions spent. So they are always victorious. I do not remember Alexander the Great, Hannibal, Julius Caesar, Napoleon Bonaparte or Genghis Khan stating their objectives in terms of money spent.
Germany is the EU proof of that. It outpends France at defense spending but its military is massively smaller and less capable, and also non-nuclear to boot. So they're getting a very poor bang for their buck. Mostly because of bureaucracy and corruption are eating most of their money before it gets spent on the troops.
>Most of the money you inject within the military industrial complex is wasted and stolen.
That's why I'm not holding my breath at the whole "German rearmament" propaganda. Most of the money will go to boost the stock of Rheinmetall and friends, not boost the troops.
The EU is about twice as industrialized as the US is, In the town of Unterlüß of four thousand people Germany produces about half as many artillery shells as the entire US does (and nationally alone now produces more) and Ukraine and Europe have, for the last 18 months, defended Ukraine without about any support from anyone else. Where do you get your information about Europe, on twitter?
Go demand that the original poster provides value.
But of course Europe just ignored that warning. Like it anyways has.
They just want total control.
Last year it was about having to scan your face to verify your age to access porn (to protect the children). They said: It's not about control, it's about protecting children.
Last month the same government announced they will use the same technology to prevent access to Youtube and Twitter without giving over your ID and confirming who you are... Still under the 'protecting the children' banner.
Instead of using the criticism to improve the system, the corrupt system starts to attack and forbid the criticism.
"A temporary derogation from the ePrivacy Directive that allowed (but did not require) providers to scan private messages of unsuspected users for potential child sexual abuse material."
Does that imply it's currently not allowed?
EDIT: apparently not enforced at least:
"Chat Control 1.0 expires
The legal ground for voluntary, indiscriminate scanning ends. Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Snap state they will continue scanning private messages regardless. "
https://howtheyvote.eu/votes/195338
They did id sneakily.
https://www.politico.eu/article/president-vs-parliament-robe...
As I understand it, there will still be another related vote on Thursday, so call your representatives!
Not for the last few months, no; Chat Control 1 expired.
The Commission is an expression of _governments_ (and this one in particular is the result of painstaking compromise) and is only loyal to presidents and prime ministers. It has no accountability to the EP, and it shows.
That framing is distracting us from the authoritarian vs civil liberties issues, which is a dangerous and immediate threat to our ability to have any significant political influence of any kind.
If a conservative wants to preserve some status quo, basically all policy they use (and have available as a tool) in a permanently changing and developing world (socially, technologically) is that of restrictions, especially on civil rights, and of authoritarian mechanisms like police power. For weird reasons, conservatives never* want to preserve status quo civil rights like workers rights, freedom of information rights and similar that are anti-authoritatian.
This can change in the future, as it has before, but in 2026, even libertarians only care about personal freedom for a certain class of people.
In Spain (you can see this in the website) our traditional left and right parties are largely in favor, while the parties in both ends of the spectrum (at the lack of better term: far left and far right) seem to be largely against.
The sad thing is that it seems that the parties that are already established or likely to alternative in power are the ones that are pushing for it, and this makes it very difficult to fight against
there is more than one left wing faction in the eu - we got greens (more radical and oppose chat control), s&d (mainstream parties like german spd, mostly support), the left (hardcore socialist/communists) and renew europe (centrist liberals). none of them are completely united on this.
far right parties are also against chat control most of the time. christian parties (moderate right wing) support it for moral reasons. its really more of a establishment/alternative issue than left/right.
Or they scan at the edge on the user's device.
Either way, both are very prone to false positives and and very much privacy invading.
Scan on end user's devices, but never transmit the result of that. Only report it ON the device itself to the user. A false positive when you send a pic of your naked kid to your spouse might show a warning icon asking you if you are sure you want to send it.
Also: for minors (Who is a minor not determined by some central age verification, but by me specifying in the Apple/Android family settings who my kids are) you could make sending certain things it blocking or subject to parent approval. E.g. if my daughter is tricked into sending nudes, it's something that's handled the same as if she wants to install an app or visit a specific web page.
No encryption is ever backdoored. Anything beyond this, e.g. reporting any user actions, would be allowed only through a court, just like any wiretapping always was.
So then the user can "just" install their own client.
Concretely, are there documented examples of abuses ? Are the checks & balance sufficient ? I understand ChatControl 2.0 goes way beyond, be it goes "beyond" enough that it does not get a majority in parlement, and can't move forward.
But for CC1.0 we don't need to imagine anymore - we have 2 years of application. Is that enough to evaluate ?
The national government of Bulgaria's position isn't necessarily in line with Bulgarian MEPs.
I thought I'd heard it all here on HN, but expecting EU to clean up after the US shooting itself in the foot with a completely unnecessary war probably comes somewhere in top 5 easily.
We aren't done yet. Game on after the midterms.
Please don't pretend to misunderstand a point just to manufacture the opportunity to reply in bad faith.
Nobody in EU is saying the EU should clean up others' mess around the world, people are just saying the EU should be busy building domestic capacity and capabilities to insulate itself from the issues caused by others around the world, such as securing domestic energy supplies so that the next time USrael blows up the middle east, the EU can just eat it no issue indead of being at the mercy of foreign oligarchs for overpriced energy.
US is so monetary rich and energy rich that they can afford to blow up the middle east every 10 years with little domestic consequences for them, and still have enough gas to drive their Ford F-450s Super Duty to Walmart, heat their pools and AC their homes, without leading to national unrest, but EU is so energy starved that securing energy independence should have been a national security issue for the past 20 years already, not since 2022.
And not just energy, EU is exposed in other areas as well (SW, AI, semiconductors, lithium batteries, agriculture, manufacturing, defense, etc), and again, it will only wake up in panic mode at the 11th hour when US or China twists their arm in some spontaneous international dispute. But politicians instead of focusing on preemptively securing these vulnerabilities BEFORE shit hits the fan, are too busy focusing on controlling people's privacy, which is what EU citizens and commenters here are criticizing.
If this is what you wanted to have said, say that from the beginning instead of leaving some vague and ambiguous "general complaint about the Strait of Hormuz" and maybe others like me will understand you better.
Somehow you seem to imply none of those things are happening right now in Europe, is this really your perspective? You think no one is thinking about domestic energy supplies? Do you not understand how EU works? Lots of things are happening in parallel, not the least a lot of work around energy dependency and other core infrastructure issues.
"The purpose of a system is what it does". So far there's no sign of any progress, it's just getting worse. The Draghi report was two years ago and nothing has been done to address the issues it raised.
That's literally what the top poster said.
Your points make sense, "EU should reopen Hormuz" is laughable
Exactly, that's why it was obvious he was speaking implicitly.
And well... EU will have to clean up others mess that they sprayed all over Europe anyway.
So americans will be paying 2x as well its just that some of that money will stay in the country instead of going to the middle easter or US (which happens to be the largest supplier of oil to the EU)
Back in 2025 EU imported ~15% from the gulf. China was over 40% and Japan at 95%...
It's unlikely to happen, but that's the one thing I can see that the EU could contribute to the opening of Hormuz.
Add to that the risk that every diminishing level of comfort for a population in EU seems to bring new percentages for extremist parties.
The second order and third order effects of any decision are too big and almost everyone posting EU should do <insert here a single simple thing> is most probably wrong in ways they dont even know about. That does not mean we should not debate but we should slow down a bit the extreme choices and try to be a bit more understanding of various details.
Yup, go set up an EU Stasi ready for them when they get to run the show.
What is there to debate? The US and Israel have attacked Iran without a very clear plan to prevent it from acquiring nuclear capability and this has backfired with Hormuz straight traffic being blocked. Whatever the EU says at this point won't solve anything. What they've done up to this point, stay out of it, was the correct corse of action. Right now the US is basically bullying Iran to make a deal or get bombed.
Tbf this is only the position of a few extreme governments. Other European countries have been perfectly happy to let the US use their bases for this.
Probably also why we now have a flood of lame Trump jokes about Meloni.
“Next Stasi”, “eurocrats”, “cripple domestic agriculture”, “dumping German diesel cars”, “useless talk”. None of this actually responds to the point about European energy dependence.
I don't see how the EU lived live with already higher energy prices compared to the US for so long and still don't make better renewable policy top priority.
It’s not about catching hackers or child predators, it’s about government control.
Long-term, switch to another messenger app that's opensource and truly E2E encrypted.
That also shows why this is such a foolish proposal.
The truly scary people are not on the "consumer" chat apps anyway and most certainly will be the first ones to switch to another communication channel if this passes. If this will have any effect it'll be that some, "dumb" criminals will be caught.
Then there's the whole kerfuffle about how to actually implement this
So the thing that comforts me is that it's a dumpster fire all the way down and I'm sure there will be plenty of legal complaints about it
I think there is no way to fix this system from the inside - it is designed to be abused like that. We need an alternative system.
Chat Control passed first round in EU Parliament
https://aboutsignal.com/news/the-end-of-private-conversation...
> Every new car sold in the European Union must include a driver monitoring camera (allaboutcookies.org)
the eu should never have been born. The above are its results - and just an example. How do we fix that disaster?
But the mandate to keep "equipment" in the car is very different from kill-switches depending on sensors and embedded in electronics - the poster seems to have meant this.
Did they? That makes a good amount of difference, you know. Especially when "they" may be a vocal exception.
> How is this supposed to prove anything
Prove what. Nothing seems to be disproven.
Edit: look, if you were trying to negate a "bad A" through an "(also) bad B", review and revise your logic. Which is important because that non-argument has been exploited to bend the political opinion of street-rubes to CEO-rubes for the past few years ("Bad Springfield hence [...] not bad Vernapool").
Look, this was a headline I recalled seeing in the news. I do not live in the US, and honestly I'm kinda tired of hearing as much about your (?) politics. If I hadn't used the uncertainty qualifier, I would have been lying.
That said, I believe it did pass almost unanimously, coming into effect in 2027 or something. The law in question required all cars come equipped with intoxication detection systems and refuse to start failing that check.
> vocal exception
I'm not from there, yet even I can tell the system is as broken as it could be. There are two parties funded by almost the same oligarchs, one advocating for open fascism and the other aimlessly laundering elite interests in nominal progressivism, while being more concerned with exterminating actual leftists within than tackling their opposition. You've steadily passed age verification in most major states, followed by a bipartisan federal bill.
Your system does the same thing as EU-steadily laundering corporate agenda into legislation. At least in most of the EU, this shared disease hasn't progressed into the stage of eroding so much of workers rights and basic environmental protections. But with the recent populist currents, I can imagine the median voter will vote for their starvation if only to spite the brown people.
> Bad Springfield hence not bad Vernapool
The argument that started this thread was that the EU itself needs to be entirely abolished because it produces laws of this nature.
If you apply that same standard, do you think cessation is what the US states should do too? Well, these same laws easily pass into state legislation too. All you'd be doing is delaying the inevitable, if you don't cut the problem at its root.
We have damages now. The car systems destroyed. How would we be able to fix that, to revert from that and the rest of the damages - which they are carrying on perpetrating as we speak, inventing new.
This is not any more a matter of prevention, it is a matter of fixing the past and preventing the future predictable damages.
I believe that the EU will cause so much strife that the long peace we've enjoyed on the continent will be brought to an end, not because of the EU, but because of the wedges drawn between pro-EU and EU-skeptic countries.
>Europe is our home.
At the same time parts of my country feel less and less like home if at all and those politicians really hate adressing it.
I don't like this comparison at all. Europe, the land that housed, fed and scarified my ancestors, is my house, not this supra-governmental corrupt bureaucratic institution called the EU that does not represent me nor speak in my name.
Empires, monarchies, governments and all such man-made institutions like the EU get torn down all time, when they become too bloated, incompetent, corrupt and cronyistic and lose legitimacy in the eyes of the people. See all human history.
Forests go through prescribed burns in order to be saved, for their own good, and so must political institutions. And when the rot is too big, it can't simply be "patched" anymore, it needs to be torn down and rebuilt from scratch with fresh new people, which in turn will get corrupted over time and get torn down, and so on, rinse and repeat because that's human nature.
Ironically, the EU has achieved its goal of uniting all Europeans, as in they're all now united via hating what the EU has become and what it's doing.
Turns out unifying a lot of different countries that have different languages and interest is a hard problem and in order to satisfy everyone a little bureaucracy is the price to pay. You may find it too bloated, too slow or even too corrupt but burning it to the ground is a lunacy for people who entertain clean slate delusions: Whenever it happens, it is a catastrophy for everyone but a few opportunists.
Europe is imperfect but it has rejected the idea of war outside of itself. I don't think any European citizen would go to war with their neighbour. Just that is an amazing achievement. Now it can stay an economic union and big powers can pick and choose how to manipulate each one of us for their own purposes or it can strive to be a political union and have a standing on the international stage. We're not there yet but we will, eventually, we just need to hang tight. Things take time.
Not really. South American countries don't go to war with each other and they don't have a union. Nor do central American countries.
No? Here are some examples I found:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Pacific
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peruvian%E2%80%93Bolivian_War_...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peruvian%E2%80%93Bolivian_War_...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraguayan_War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uruguayan_War
You may argue these were all in the 19th century, and that is true. It's possible South America learned their lesson from the world wars. An alternative explanation is the presence of the US. It was never going to let another regional power roll up smaller states in the Western hemisphere so there was no point in being expansionist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paquisha_War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cenepa_War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beagle_conflict
And that's not counting the Falklands war because Britain doesn't feel like it belong in the neighborhood but it's still an invasion of sovereign territory out of nationalistic motives
I'll grant none of those was a major conflict and that it's an interesting case but still. Maybe the fact that apart from Brazil, they have a language in common makes it harder to sell the neighbour as a foreigner ? What else could it be ? I am genuinely curious
do you feel the same way when Africans speak of Africa?
Can you provide me with some example of something that you think I would not disapprove of and that amounts the exactly the same thing ?
Or maybe can you try to defend the blood and soil rethoric (call it the way you want) instead of a drive-by comment ?
Just come out of the woods will you
It turns out people don't like to be invaded, yes, simple as. Of course you would very much like to convince everyone that immigration is just the same as an invasion and thus, the same way to deal with it is justified. So just say so instead of dancing around and posing as the victim.
> Nigeria says 2 nationals were killed during anti-migrant violence in South Africa
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/nigeria-ghana-malawi-fore...
> ‘Leave or return in a coffin’: The threat driving migrants out of South Africa
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/06/29/africa/south-africa-anti-...
Would you also tell that to native American Indians? Or to the Japanese? Or to the Indians?
It's no BS unless you've been brainwashed and make massive efforts to ignore reality. Blood based belonging to a place is hardwired in every culture and society on the planet, from Asia to the Americas. NA, UK, AU, NZ, and the EU just have added a lot of PR paint on top to pretend it doesn't exist in their liberal societies, but it does, except it's much more under the table and subversive.
>a little bureaucracy is the price to pay.
Taking away people's privacy and freedom of speech is a little more problematic than just "a little bureaucracy".
>Europe is imperfect but it has rejected the idea of war outside of itself. I don't think any European citizen would go to war with their neighbour. Just that is an amazing achievement.
That WAS an achievement in the past, but if you dissolve the EU institution tomorrow, no former EU member state will suddenly got to war with their neighbour just because the EU doesn't exist anymore. So the myth that the EU is somehow preventing war in EU today is bogus. That was history, this is today.
If they were saying to me what you wrote that $big_chunk_of_land "is the land that housed, fed and scarified my ancestors, is my house, not this supra-governmental corrupt bureaucratic institution called" $state_institution, I would laugh them off, yes
I mean yes but it is ultimately your framing. It's concerning and worth being fought against but no worse that what US was, is or has tried to do, and despite the corrupt buffoon at its head right now, it is not a dictatorship yet. What we need is a good balance of powers and well-designed institutions, and not as you suggested, to destroy it.
> That WAS an achievement in the past, but if you dissolve the EU institution tomorrow, no former EU member state will suddenly got to war with their neighbour just because the EU doesn't exist anymore. So the myth that the EU is preventing war in EU is bogus. That was history, this is today.
Fair enough but that does not warrant the use of the past, it IS an achievement. Also, give it time and history will do its thing. Remove the EU and, sooner or later, war will come back. The same way that if you remove the counter-powers, tyranny will come back
EDIT: You added this part about in response to my blood and soil line afterwards:
> It's no BS unless you've been brainwashed and make massive efforts to ignore reality. Blood based tribalism and ingroup preference is hardwired in every culture and society on the planet, from Asia to the Americas. NA, UK, AU, NZ, and the EU just have added a lot of PR paint on top to pretend it doesn't exist in their liberal societies, but it does except it's much more under the table and subversive.
Interesting how people seem to think reality is on their side and people who think otherwise must have been brainwashed.
Anyways, is it hardwired or is it "soft" wired ? Are we only responding to our wiring or did we manage to create cultures around it or are we condemned to an endless loop of prewired behaviours ?
Sexual desire is also "hardwired" in us and yet we finally managed to no rape each other based on dominance hierarchies. Is that the kind of society you are looking forward to ? One based on some kind of supposedly natural order ?
Yes tribalism does exist, we know what kind of world it produces. It's utter shit. Poverty and misery for everyone but the people at the top.
I swear you people are so bored that you cannot appreciate the sheer amount of material wealth you are effing bathing in. You dream of an heroic past that never existed where you get to be the hero.
Ha the times where being a man with no other skills than violence could get you riches ! Let's conveniently forget about most people, living under the boot in a life of injustice and life-threatening poverty.
But this is the hatred you are talking about?
https://www.politico.eu/article/europeans-embrace-eu-gloom-w...
seems legit lol
Probably because most Europeans are clueless and brainwashed by MSM pro-EU propaganda, and never hear about the nasty things the EU tries to do like chat control, age-ID, car surveillance, or taxing parcels.
To most Europeans EU just means going to Spain on vacation and going to work in Germany for more money, anything else stupid the EU does never reaches them directly until much later when the second order effects hit but then it must be because the fault of Putin or Trump.
Most Europeans are pretty detached from EU politics. If you ask them who their EU MEPs /representative are most have no clue without googling, they just know some of the ones in their own country, but EU politics might as well be on another planet.
seems legit lol
Probably because most Europeans are clueless and brainwashed by MSM pro-EU propaganda, and never hear about the nasty things the EU tries to do like chat control, age-ID, car surveillance, or taxing parcels.
So which is it?
Are the stats fake, or are Europeans actually saying this because they are brainwashed?
Because you are trying to have both. First, official EU polling is illegitimate propaganda. Then, in the next breath, you explain why Europeans really do support the EU. That means the poll is not fake. You just hate the answer.
Every result you dislike is fake, and every person who disagrees with you is brainwashed. Very brave epistemology.
One griefer which promised prosperit fueled Brexit, which caused Britain visible stagnation and now he is a candidate for MP promising to fixing it all yet again.
I need to repeat, that Simple solutions for complex problems usually do not work.
its a crime against what was not so long ago some of the greatest nations on earth. now were as citizen are living under a distopia of urss with the worst of capitalism combined with the worst of communism. mass surveillance, removal of all personal freedom (freedom of speech, right to own property and cars, right to inherit, right to have a nation for our people, harshnpunishment for any contestation’up to jail timz for memes while at the same time very lenient justice toward murderers, rapists and other criminals.)
we gave away our right to exist and be nations and we did that without even a fight
Dismantling the EU is like burning down your own house
-- Canadian
The concept of a modern nation is also relatively new. It emerged as an identity for groups of people who were no longer defined mainly by the monarchs ruling over them. That identity replaced the king as the symbol of belonging.
But now nationalism is often doing the opposite. Instead of freeing people from old power structures, it is holding Europe back.
So yes, maybe it is not literally “your house”, but the point still stands. Burning down the city around your house is not exactly a smart move either.
If you measure "function" by the relative economic and military power of the country, then the EU has overwhelmingly degraded the function of its initial members compared to when they joined.
Very sure that when the EU was still in its infancy, we had only "west Europe" in arms, vs a USSR (aka all the eastern states and Russia). Now all those states are part of NATO and the EU.
Instead of the border to the closest hostile nation (Russia) being barely 100km from here, its now over 1200km to the first contact point.
That same Russia can barely deal with a Ukraine, that has some spare change backing from the EU. How is again at a war economy? Ukraine, sure, Russia, sure, EU ... nowp.
We now have Northern members that used to be neutral or not part of NATO, that are now part of it.
I feel like people love to misrepresent a lot of history. We have never been in a better position as a EU, vs what we used to be 40, 80, 100 years ago.
Yea, we have a lot of buildup to do again, but lets be honest, i rather see buildup now with modern kit for the modern battles, then relying on outdated 1990's doctrine and weapons. And even that is still a slow process with transitioning to the new reality of drones, drones and drones. Do not forget that 90% of the kills are now by drones.
People love to parrot those US talking point that often have no sense of history and our current EU reality in regards to security. While i admit, that we are still too reliant on US kit, even that is slowly changing. The EU moves slowly but it moves. Better then being some nations that are stuck in Imperialistic ways of thinking, like Russia.
My answer: regulating something:)
If the german government and its parties actually listened to people, the AFD would have like 5% and would be non issue. Same with all extremist parties tht try to latch on some idea to get voted in.
How many people of their party must make such statements while being welcome in the party, for it to not be misinformation/misrepresentation.
Throwing out citizens because of some birth attribute they can not influence could be seen as inhumane. Would you think it's ok to throw out everybody with a certain eye color?
But then it needs to be defined what is local culture and what is foreign. And people would need to get the same treatment independently of their background. That is not what the AfD argues.
This point of view is seems actually widely represented in German politics
>That is not what the AfD argues.
Ironically AfD leader is a lesbian married with immigrant Sri-lankian woman, so I doubt your claims.
I'm inclined to vouch for the comment however I'm not clear if the self admitted AI copy and paste is in keeping with the current HN guidelines.
Obviously the fascists don't put their most odious ideas in writing, they plan them in secret instead.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/19/turmoil-in-ger...
Those aren't citizens though? I don't agree with their ideals but lets please be honest about what they do and don't support.
Read just a little bit more of the article ;)
I was skeptical enough to look over the linked correctiv article and I notice that while those contacted are generally quoted as dodging most of the other questions they invariably come out against expulsion of legal citizens.
> And all those who campaigned for refugees could go there, too.
Are there any credible sources for this independent of the correctiv article? Because this sellner character is approaching comic book villain level in their portrayal of him and thus I find myself not wanting to take the word of a single outlet.
Just read his Wikipedia article [0] and you'll find out more about his character, like this gem:
> Sellner said that Jews were a problem in the 1920s and made references to the "Jewish question"
> Are there any credible sources for this independent of the correctiv article?
Correctiv is a non-profit investigative journalism outlet that managed to infiltrate this secretive far-right meeting. They are known to be gold-standard levels of credible and have won a ton of journalism prizes. It's not exactly yellow press.
Due to the very nature of it being a secretive meeting, their reporting is exclusive. Obviously the neonazis want to put on a nice face, so they didn't exactly invite Reuters to their lets-plot-deportations-of-foreign-born-citizens meeting.
To quote his ideological companion from across the pond, Nick Fuentes :
> This is why I tell people, hide your power level. OK? You're not hiding your power level if you're in a group chat with hundreds of people saying we're going to put people in gas chambers. OK, guys? [1]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Sellner [1] https://www.mediamatters.org/white-nationalism/nick-fuentes-...
Setting aside the other attendees wikipedia more than covers sellner in that regard.
This explains why they are publicly denying what they are plotting in private.
Here's some choice quotes, translated to English.
"We must proceed completely peacefully and deliberately, adapt if necessary and butter up the opponent [literally: smear honey on their mouths], but when we are finally ready, we will put them all against the wall. (...) Dig a pit, all in and quicklime on top."
-- Holger Arppe, former AfD Vice Chair [0]
"The worse Germany is doing, the better it is for the AfD. [...] Therefore we have to consider a tactic between: How bad can things get for Germany? And: How much can we provoke? [...] Because then the AfD does better. We can always just shoot them all later. That's not an issue at all. Or gas them, or however you want. I don't care!"
-- Christian Lüth, AfD Press spokesman [1]
"It doesn't matter, nothing will change, even if we were to eat chalk [act harmless]. Even if we said: yes, we are separating from X, Y and Z now and acting moderate here."
-- Hans-Christoph Berndt, AfD Brandenburg senate leader [2]
[0] https://taz.de/Frueherer-AfD-Fraktionsvize-verurteilt/!56167... [1] https://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/afd-sprecher-wollte-fluc... [2] https://mik.brandenburg.de/sixcms/media.php/9/Einstufungsver...
Like this is not just me mischaracterizing my political opponents, it is the most accurate label based on their behavior. They're the type of people who want to make the 1930s happen again in Germany.
This is why I react somewhat strongly when people try to relativize their abhorrence and make excuses, most frequently out of incorrectly mapping their own country's political systems.
I hope I could convince you that - especially given Germany's past and its commitment to never let this happen again - banning them is not some sort of political repression, but an immune response from democracy under attack. It is a manifestation of defensive democracy [0] , the principle written into the German constitution after the horrors of fascism.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defensive_democracy#Germany
If you seek to convince people then leading with the sort of examples you linked me is probably the way to go. For those open to new information it cuts to the chase and the rest you weren't going to convince regardless.
The trouble with the german approach that bans political parties is IMO that it creates an easily abused tool that muddies the water. It's no longer so simple to judge a given situation since now you need to consider the content and context of the speech as opposed to merely whether or not it constituted a direct threat of violence.
Meanwhile I don't think it's likely to be effective for the stated purpose. In one scenario the extremists get laughed out of the room as a tiny minority. In another they hold the majority in which case banning them is extremely unlikely to work out favorably. Imagine if Trump who won the popular vote this last time around had been banned by the sitting establishment. There's no way we come out of that unscathed.
Problem is, the German Verfassungsschutz (lit. "Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution", the domestic intelligence agency) was itself infiltrated by the far-right [0] and so didn't ring the alarm in time.
I agree with you that there's probably no way to come out unscathed from trying to ban them now - their followers are already radicalized and it probably wouldn't be pretty. But that being said, what else should we do? Just do nothing and let it all happen once more? Break our promise of never again? Watch history repeat itself? No - we have to at least try.
That's essentially the point you made, while conflating pulling the rug out from under people's feet because they've committed the crime of being brown with never having made the offer in the first place.
Because living in these countries usually comes with significant downsides for minorities. E.g. most middle east countries are limiting freedom for women compared to men.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalization#Summary_by_coun...
It’s important to note the lawmakers stay in office even if the European party is banned.
Europe is also not the US and from my knowledge it seems that this is the only party suspected of not complying with values. There are many many more parties that they are not trying to ban.
The procedure here seems to be similar to Germany that the parliament can only request a review from an independent body (in Germany the constitutional court) if this is the case, the actual decision comes from that body after a lengthy process.
Behind the europarty is (among others) the AfD for which the public has been debating for years now on wether to attempt to ban them because of their danger, so it doesn't seem very far fetched for their EU party really.
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2024/01/11/l...
> It would be hard to imagine a US party that didn't believe the other party is out of compliance with US values
This is a limitation of the American two-party system that incentives polarization instead of cooperation.
We have a working multi-party democracy and a majority across parties and ideologies voted for this.
To say this has anything to do with Chat Control betrays either a deep lack of understanding of European politics or a conscious attempt to mislead in order to garner support for extremists.
As another example, one of their members (Noah Krieger) fights on behalf of Russia, conquering lands and killing civilians (article from today only in german, sorry: https://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/videos-mit-schutzweste-u...). And many other problems I could list about AfD. So t he "they want to ban those opposing chat control" - sorry, that is a huge simplification.
> It would be hard to imagine a US party that didn't believe the other party is out of compliance with US values.
Ah? And why are there only two corrupt parties in the USA to begin with? I mean that's no real choice. Both are corrupt, and one now entered cult-status with the mad orange king. His cronies get rich. Everyone sees this. So, sorry, but your attempt to promote the USA while praising the AfD, is simply flat out rubbish nonsense. We only have bad actors here, no good ones.
This is kinda vague, i.e. afaik German laws discriminate lonely people by taxing them more then married.