Chat Control 1.0 and 2.0 Explained

ChrisArchitect

Related today: Chat Control passed first round in EU Parliament https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48819008

olejorgenb

Chat control 1.0 "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. "

rwq-askh

EU politicians spend more time on chat control than on the reopening of Hormuz or EU energy security. It is a complete joke.

cynicalsecurity

To everyone who wants to dismantle the EU: this is not the solution. Dismantling the EU is like burning down your own house just to get rid of flies. The UK left the EU and implemented its own version of chat control - Online Safety Act - without any transparency or real opposition. The right solution is the political fight. Europe is our home. We must keep it in good shape by getting rid of anything that makes it worse - like Chat Control.

zoobab

Age verification for 'appstores' (debian repos?) is inside ChatControl v2.

terabytest

As a EU citizen I’m at a loss for what to do about this. I feel that they’re going against any average citizen’s interest. What can we do to make them stop?

Zufriedenheit

They claim to protect consumers and privacy and then push this creepy surveillance state.

arjie

I don't understand. How does it affect encrypted messages? It seems like either you need: 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.

delichon

To be fair, this is even worse. https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2026/07/07/european-parli... The party that they want to ban is a consistent and loud opponent of chat control. It would be hard to imagine a US party that didn't believe the other party is out of compliance with US values. As a justification for blocking democracy it's universal and ever present.

mikaeluman

Most everyone would love to see more work on stopping child sexual abuse. 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.

grg0

This website is gold, thanks for all the work.

shevy-java

Lobbyists control the EU. So much is clear to everyone now. 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.

ggirelli

So, I blinked and forgot to check for updates on this and they voted a few hours ago to reinstate this... https://www.heise.de/en/news/Showdown-in-Strasbourg-The-unex...

wazzup_im

It's funny they thing criminals are using those platforms for discussion

smashah

Why do these Epsteinist Occupied Governments think they'll get away with this unscathed. These demons are addicted to destroying freedom.

michaelmrose

How many child abusers are liable to be detected using platforms that are known to report you when you can google (or chatGPT) how to avoid detection?

AuthAuth

When it comes to online actions people ask for way more than reasonable. You dont get to be an invisible, impossible to track, unaccountable hacker man free to roam the internet on equal footing to the rest of the users.

keraf

The same governments pushing for this type of regulation are also the ones that fail to condemn high profile individuals involved in the crimes that these regulation are supposed to help fight. Makes you really wonder if it's about protecting the children.

nlarion

Charlatans and demagogues.

BatFastard

Anyone know how Signal is responding to this? They ARE E2EE.