Chat Control 2.0 — 6th Trilogue done, negotiators not falling for fake targeting workaround — 7th Trilogue on the horizon in Nov

General News
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Post-Trilogue update (short preliminary version, might add more later):

The plan below to work around the “targeting” limitation has been blocked. In his update on his homepage Patrick Breyer accredits success besides trilogue shadows’ steadfastness to efforts of civil society. This means “you”.

Read his summary and more details in his article, as I would only repost his condensed overview. (It’s shorter this time. :wink:)
There seem to be agreements on publicly available data and crawling through it, which has long been requested as an alternative for costly active (maybe real time) scanning.
As it stands, the trilogue shadows defended the majority’s stance of keeping privacy intact.

Additionally, expect another trilogue in November, as discussions will probably continue.

Yesterday Patrick Breyer, former MEP with the Pirate Party and digital freedom activist, posted about the upcoming sixth trilogue on Chat Control 2.0.

The trilogue negotiates extent of the later proposal (TBD), which according to a leaked document (I could not yet skim it, this is Breyer’s claim until I can clarify or quote) is said to now include a workaround to deploy a mass scanning by allowing scanning of “parts of a service” and “search plans”, which Breyer calls “mass surveillance by another name”.
The Council’s own legal service says such framing would not hold up in judicial review (para. 47). This is likely due to “targeted” being reframed as “parts of a service” instead of a person.

  1. In the light of the above, even though the detection order is addressed to a single service provider with regard to a specific interpersonal communication service or a part or component of it, it is highly probable that in case of judicial review, a data screening obligation such as that provided by the obligations in the detection orders would be considered as general and indiscriminate, and therefore not targeted processing of data.

On fightchatcontrol.eu/#delegates you can set the filter to “EP Trilogue Shadows” to see all 8 responsible MEPs / trilogue shadows.
I’d recommend contacting yours before Tuesday, Sep. 29th (it’s only 1 for the trilogue) and express your concerns and opposition of the recurring initiative to circumvent citizen’s rights in order to introduce general and indiscriminate mass scanning.
You could use the template on that site, but a short personal email could be even more effective.

Here’s an extensive overview of Breyer’s over the whole Chat Control affair, with a paragraph anchor on the continuously updated timeline.

I don’t have much more time to include more details in this post, but I’ll probably expand it a little later (and add more links).
In the meantime, feel free to comment or add to this, I will append a link to and/or quote from your post to this.

Also, don’t forget that despite the recent reinstation of CC1.0 by foul play, the majority has been against both CC1.0 and 2.0 since at least half a year, when a majority voted against extending CC1.0. The majority of the trilogue shadows also declared their opposition of both, as is recorded on fightchatcontrol.eu, with only 1 of 16 points in favor of 1.0, and 2 unknown regarding 2.0.

Let’s not accept our freedom to be eroded by any means or trickery.

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Europe needs to stop lecturing the rest of the world about corruption and human rights, and clean up their own house instead.

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It’s more virtue signalling than lecturing, but I agree.
Although there are bad apples everwhere.
These ones have been rather crafty in how they weasel their will into the regulation, sometimes even violating rules of the parliament.

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Don’t forget that Canada has its own Chat Control in form of Bill C-22.

It’s bleak for privacy.

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I am not familiar with the extent or status of said Canadian bill…
However, current discussions about Canada becoming an EU “associate member” might open the door to initiatives to apply similar regulation to Canada as well, if the EU finally drops Chat Control.
Not in the binding sense, more like an obligation to play by similar rules by popular demand.
Depending on the agreed final status, it could even pave the way for Canadian businesses in the privacy sector to pivot and move there, or Canadian citizens could gain access to services only EU law applies to.

Of course this is purely speculative and farfetched; it all depends how the association turns out, if it does get established at all.

That being said, please do rally all the Canadians here to oppose any initiative to erode privacy. There surely are sources and activists like Breyer in Canada. If anything, repost their blog posts or tweets/toots here and bump the respective threads.
The more opposition there is around the globe, the more there is to show your local legislation.

It’s kind of like an arms race against mass surveillance lobbyism, and we can surely be louder than a handful scumbag lobbyists.

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Bill C-22 might become law as early as October, at least that’s what I know.

I doubt the EU would do anything to prevent it from happening. They might not drop Chat Control, but who knows?

GamersNexus has talked about the bill, but that was a few months ago. I’m sure there’s more, but that’s all I know.

I also posted this thread before.

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I’ve seen the video, and Steve makes a good point about then conflicting regulations between Canada and the EU.
Proton might then just cease operating in Canada, because the EU market is much larger.

This could constitute a precedence and more companies could follow suit and leave, or just not bother to operate in a privacy-hostile environment.

This needs to be fought by Canadians for the time being however, even if Canada is to become closely connected to the EU.

If it is an important matter to you personally, find activists and initiatives that fight such regulations.
Repost their guides and advice here or whereever else you have some reach.
People need concise and easy resources they could pick up on and get their behinds up for.

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Sorry for double posting, but I think this bump is better suited in a separate post.

Tomorrow is said trilogue and today is the last chance to let your MEP know you support their stance of opposition or to convince the few that are not yet on the opposing side.

You don’t need a long email to send them. Send them a statement about you are opposed to it due to reasons they surely have heard enough of, and don’t forget to include your personal contact, even if they won’t likely respond.
(Mind you, responses to my emails to CC1.0 kept trickling into my inbox, by them or their secretary, although it first seemed nobody bothered.)
You’d want credibility over your status as a citizen they represent, so anonymous messages or spam addresses should be avoided.

On fightchatcontrol.eu (filter by “EP Trilogue Shadow”) their official MEP email addresses are shown when you click on their name.
There is only a total of 8 trilogue shadows, so your country might not even have one directly.
It might still be sensible to express concerns to them as a EU citizen, but I’d keep it short, maybe just reassuring them.

I’ll update the OP and title as further development surfaces.
Keep an eye out for posts regarding the date the respective vote will be held and be prepared to contact all your MEPs in the future.
It might be wise to write a template now, if you want to send them an extensive email before the vote.

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I predict that there won’t be any privacy-friendly countries for companies to operate in the future. Like, I can’t think of any country that truly respects privacy.

I’m neither Canadian nor European so all I can do is to spread the word on social media, and even then, nobody gives a shit.

Should we fail to prevent it from happening, I wouldn’t give a shit about privacy.

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You never know, it could happen. There is a limited amount of sh*t people put up with.

See the increasingly aggressive initiative in the US with regards to Flock cameras.
We’re talking about a nation that is home to the most invasive global companies by now, and it went from political debates to outright destroying hardware currently.

Not many countries have seen a revolution in recent times, but if I’m to predict anything, then it would be the existence of a tipping point at which such disregard of privacy and ever increasing surveillance will bear at least violent riots.

Also, even if it does look like people don’t care, it is still your duty to try. These companies (and goverments / political movements) trust that people just give up at some point, but if you’re one who still cares, you are obligated to keep caring until others do too.

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New article from yesterday. Corruptions as its finest…

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This is more or less the same he already posted in his overview, but more article-shaped.

I love how aggressively he posts, but these articles are are too long to share nowadays. Many people surely look at the mass of text and then don’t bother.
(I have seen comments on websites consisting of four or five long sentences and people already calling it “wall of text”.)

I’m tempted to do it myself, but the amount of research it would take for a mere educated layman…

Anyway, keep in mind that it might not even be corruption (I mean, its a far cry from what seems to be the status quo in the US), but MEPs could be just not educated enough and naively believe what lobbyists sell them.
I’m sure some really do have ulterior motives, but I don’t think it’s the majority which it would take to push things through.

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Another double post, but with an update on the time:

According to Breyer the trilogue is set to happen at 18.00 / 6.00 pm (I assume it’s CEST), so contacting your trilogue shadow is still feasible.
It might be more sensible now to call their office instead of emailing them, but emailing is still signals your opposition of other forms and votes.

If you want to call your trilogue shadow MEP, fightchatcontrol.eu also lists both their office telephone numbers in Brussels and Strasbourg;
they probably are in Brussels today.

If you’re worried about costs for international calls to Belgium/France, an outgoing call to another EU member country should be capped at 0.19€/min.

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Yeah, but even with violent protests, I doubt they would change their minds. Plus, such laws go into effect before people begin to realize.

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Yes, but laws can be removed again, if there is enough demand in the population (you elect the legislative power in many places, after all).

Sometimes such laws even violate others, so even if they’re adopted initially, you (or some more powerful parties or initiatives) can still sue the government for it and have it ruled invalid.

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Not in the UK though.

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Which part? I have modified the wording of the election part now.

I’m not particularly familiar with the UK system. I hastily judged from common republic or democratic systems, sorry.

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I, too, am not familiar with the UK system, but as far as I know, a lot of people demanded the government to repeal the Online Safety Act, a widely controversial law, but they refused.

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EU: if at first you don’t succeed, tri tri tri again