[orian]

From the source:

> 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!

What did the EU Parliament decide?

Breyer writes on his website that internet services and apps must be "secure by design and default". The EU Parliament has agreed to:

    "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."

A huge win for our privacy rights is also that the EU Parliament has decided to "clearly exclude so-called client-side scanning".

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

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!

[jdiez17]

Well, that is a big relief. Common sense prevails, which is absolutely not a given these days.

[TacticalCoder]

> ... which violate fundamental rights and stand no chance in court

Thankfully the EU still has the European Convention on Human Rights and an associated court which individuals can go to and sue their state: the European Court of Human Rights. This is unlike the European Court of Justice which cannot directly be seized by individuals.

That EU Convention on Human Rights contains the "right to privacy" (art. 8).

This may be what they meant by saying that this horrible text stood no chance in court: a deluge of individual going to to the EU Court of Human Rights invoking article 8.

Now I don't doubt that the sold outs and enemy of the EU states at the European Commission are going to come back with other horrible measures.

As a sidenote this whole "good cop (European Parliament) / bad cop (European Commission)" is a bit of a farce played on the EU people too.

[ta1243]

The fight is never over.

That's why we have strong checks and balances, the commission (made up of appointees of the 26 EU government heads) will push things, the council (made up of those heads) have to agree, and the Parliament (made up from a popular vote) has to agree, then if all that fails the courts step in

But the fight isn't as much against the government, it's the hearts and minds of the people to make them care more about their own privacy and security rather than "someone think of the children".

[jliptzin]

I don’t think the average person cares about privacy, sadly. “I have nothing to hide,” etc. The best argument I heard against this crazy policy (only heard recently during these hearings) was that many creators/sharers of this CSAM material is kids themselves! Young teens exploring their sexuality, swapping nudes with each other. So that means that if you’re scanning all messages and you come across one of these chats, instead of that conversation staying between the 2 teens (like it should), it’s getting scanned by the provider, flagged, uploaded upstream to some law enforcement center where god knows how many other people are going to be looking at it, only to realize that there was no abuse happening. And of course that comes with the risk of leaks/hacks/rogue employees spreading it even further. Completely insane!

[nonrandomstring]

> The fight is never over.

Checks and balances are working this time hopefully. Regardless our (good) multi-stage processes and multi-chamber structure and even, regardless matters of lobbying and money - in the moment of quiet while smoke is still on the wind - look for the shooter. "Who wants this?" and "What are their fears?" leads to a better leverage point closer to values than parameters.

There are a lot of people in the world right now anxious about the digital future. The EU Commission seem to hear too much from Chicken-Licken's gang of sky-repellant gizmo salesmen and not from calmer humane optimists.

[ta1243]

I can't see any specific benefit to this for a corporation, my feeling is it's a political response to a general disquiet with the tech industry abusing people, along the lines of "something must be done, this is something, therefore this must be done"

I'm sure some companies would make a fortune, but their lobbying power would be outweighed by other multinational companies like whatsapp and smaller companies like mullvad.

[gmerc]

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance wasn’t a platitude

[PoignardAzur]

Huh, they took a pretty holistic approach to the issue.