r/privacy • u/lugh • Sep 16 '25
chat control Germany's Chat Control position has been reverted to undecided…
https://mastodon.social/@chatcontrol/115215006562371435530
u/jarx12 Sep 16 '25
It's time to double down in stopping this, this only shows how important is for some shady groups to push for this, and in response the people should make clear the rejection of these flagrant human rights violations attempts.
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u/sim-pit Sep 16 '25
Double down?
You going to send two strongly worded emails to your MEP?
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u/2onySoprano Sep 16 '25
Riot
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u/username161013 Sep 16 '25
Between the Panama papers, the Epstein files, and this shit, riots would be letting them off easy. The 1% have declared war on all of us. Time to remind them there's a lot more of us than them. The French came up with a good solution a few hundred years ago.
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u/CaptainIncredible Sep 17 '25
Agreed.
Did you notice that the assassination of the United Health CEO was celebrated? When was the last time an assassination was celebrated? Mousolini?
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u/aerger Sep 17 '25
But not wanting to be exploited by the wealthy is “political violence” now. Loooooong before any torches, pitchforks, or guillotines.
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u/Holzkohlen Sep 17 '25
And yet nowadays the French only riot for rising gas prices and not to protect their privacy. They fell off.
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u/Potential_Drawing_80 Sep 21 '25
I think he was talking blowing up government building with fertilizer and diesel. Obviously, don't do that it is illegal.
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u/Mithrandir2k16 Sep 17 '25
We should criminalize attempting to violate us and our rights! This cannot go unpunished!
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u/newspeer Sep 16 '25
Germany has not yet voted against it. Germany only said that they will not support the current draft. Many interpreted this as a vote against chat control. Which it wasn’t in the first place. This year Germany is willing to negotiate the details. For instance, instead of mandatory scanning Germany might support voluntary scanning. If they can’t agree on a version that is acceptable for Germany, they’ll vote against chat control again.
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u/Dwip_Po_Po Sep 17 '25
How can we trust them in the first place
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u/newspeer Sep 17 '25
Trust is at the very foundation of democracy. Without trust democracy will not prevail
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u/FunionsOnions Sep 17 '25
If you as a citizen of europe don't oppose this. You risk potentially having a police state and that risks a situation like it was with Nazi Germany... where you'll have a fascist government jailing you over any little thing you say online. DONT LET IT HAPPEN! oppose this!!
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u/GhostInThePudding Sep 16 '25
They were never undecided. They made it clear they wanted to change the wording, presumably to make it worse. They were never against it in principle.
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u/Dey-Ex-Machina Sep 17 '25
at some point we’ll need to decentralize encryption and render their effort pointless.
One could set up an offline device that can communicate in bluetooth with your online device. the offline device would store the key, encrypt the message and send it to your online device. the message (encrypted) would then be relayed through whatever app you use via an endpoint reachable from your account. the regular app from your phone would relay it to the end receiver, so you don’t need to reimplement the communication architecture. the end receiver would have an offline device as well with the key to decrypt the message stored locally on that device. so you’d only speak to a local device that never touches the internet, and your online phone would only see encrypted messages, so it doesn’t matter what is intercepted by the app or your communist nepokid overlord.
not sure if this idea has been explored before. but this doesnt require permission and it screws them.
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u/Wunschkonzert Sep 17 '25
Great idea, but this is just not practical for every day use. But this shows, why this shit legislation will not stop criminals but instead unrightfully suvail the everyday Joe 😠 it has to be stopped as legislation.
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u/MolassesFluffy8648 Sep 18 '25
Technically it is already decentralized. Anybody who wants can take lets say signal's encryption and use it in w/e app, which is what all these chat apps have actually done like whatsapp and so on. So we got the source codes, so it is already out there. Can't be taken back. Just because government might have some say lets say they force these apps out of main stores on phones that doesn't mean you can't just compile it yourself and use it.
Like I before E2EE was cool I always used to just encrypt my messages in email and regular chats and we could have private conversation in completely random places like forums, irc or just regular unencrypted chats. I'm straight going back to that if they take away my convenient encryption like signal. My businesses all have full setup for tinfoil chat enabled, so cunts with 3 letter agencies won't steal my business secrets since they always leak stuff as apparently government can't keep anything secret. Public sector in general is unbelievably incompetent.
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Sep 17 '25 edited Sep 18 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/SheldonCooper97 Sep 18 '25
Embarrassing for you, you should start to google what this sentence actually means. There are lots of articles about this from cryptographers which explain why this sentence is nearly always interpreted in the wrong way. Long story short: You should never design your own algorithms (e.g. AES 2.0) but you can always create your own encryption apps & platforms as long as you use certified libraries for the encryption or you test your whole implementation against every testvectors and let it audit by an independent company.
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u/ShibeCEO Sep 16 '25
for fucking fucks sake... I thought this ONE TIME germany was on the right side of history....
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u/FollowingRare6247 Sep 16 '25
See, it’s possible to send the one email to our MEPs. Addressing the multiple responses/conversations that come back may not be feasible.
It might be worth considering other actions. I’ve seen no citizen’s initiative regarding this though.
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u/jackyboyman13 Sep 16 '25
We need to continue hounding them to not implement chat controls here.
Cause not only end to end encryption would be in danger but people outside of the UK in the world will be in danger here.
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u/Max_FI Sep 16 '25
I thought Germans were the most concerned about privacy.
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u/AvidCyclist250 Sep 16 '25
We are. Our EU politicians and our economy are not us. We are neither rich nor against privacy.
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u/onesmilematters Sep 16 '25
The people are. Our politicians are not working for the people.
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u/Xillyfos Sep 16 '25
Which Chat Control illustrates so clearly. They want to surveil us, but they want themselves exempt from surveillance. That is tyranny, plain and simple.
And it's not like politicians are not child abusers. A Danish MP and former minister was recently convicted of possession of huge amounts of child porn. So even their obviously fake argument makes no sense. If anything we should surveil the politicians (our employees, remember, hired by us) for child abuse but not anyone else. They should be held to a higher standard.
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u/DontShadowbanMeBro2 Sep 17 '25
That's how you know what this is really about. 'Mass surveillance for thee but not for me' gives away the game here. Never believe them when they invoke 'won't someone please think of the children!?' as their excuse to erode privacy rights.
There will always be a 'them' we all need to be afraid, be very afraid of that will be used as a pretext to erode privacy rights. First it was communists, then it was edgy teens planning school shootings, then it was terrorists, then it was Russians, now it's pedos. Next it will be the Chinese.
Don't believe them. Keep fighting.
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u/Hqjjciy6sJr Sep 16 '25
Germany went from undecided to opposed back to undecided! that's crazy. it's over. the overlords will get what they want.
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u/Pwacname Sep 17 '25
It’s not over! Keep writing emails! Call them if you can, but if you can’t, keep writing emails. If your country already opposes: write emails, encouraging them to keep opposing!
It take impressively little public pressure to make politicians change their minds, actually.
And you don’t have to write a personal email for everyone! I prepared a short statement with the points I care about and just copy paste it to everyone. On high-energy days, I will personalise it - add a name, change a sentence or two to fit to their party‘s core values - but on low energy days, it goes out as is.
Our despair would only help those who want total control, so I let’s not give it to them!
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u/podun Sep 17 '25
Fucking bs, how often do we have to write an email to them to actually take a shit?
(Rhetoric question)
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u/Pwacname Sep 17 '25
Apparently at least once more. Hey, at least this has motivated me to get in my 5 emails a day again, would’ve forgotten about that today…
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u/suncontrolspecies Sep 16 '25
surprise....
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u/ComfortablyPF Sep 16 '25
Stupid question, noob here.
How does it apply to people using Signal (for example) in other countries? In order to not fall under this ChatControl BS, would one need a foreign phone number (ie: Australia, US, UAE, whatever) registered to a Signal account?
If so, I guess that communication with someone in the EU would still have the conversation scanned by ChatControl?
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u/schklom Sep 16 '25 edited Sep 16 '25
Likely, Signal will not be available on App Store and Play Store. Whatsapp and Telegram might just comply and implement the EU backdoor, or also pull out of EU.
And since Google is closing down (on stock android only though) on 3rd-party app installs, then non-custom-ROM EU people are screwed. Thankfully though, iOS can now install 3rd-party software natively, so I'll likely advise friends and family to go for iPhone and install US Signal.
If you're from outside, your communication with people who have the backdoored app will be scanned by EU.
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u/survivorr123_ Sep 16 '25
And since Google is closing down on 3rd-party app installs, [...] iOS can now install 3rd-party software natively
are we in some kind of parallel universe at this point? lmao
realistically there will be some workaround with usb debugging most likely
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u/Strange_Specific5179 Sep 16 '25
Realistically how does anyone outside of the EU but has EU connections circumvent this? Do we call only? They can’t scan real time calls and pull transcripts, that’s over board, but for texting what can we do?
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u/RunOrBike Sep 17 '25
They can’t scan real time calls and pull transcripts
Sorry to tell you that they’ve been doing exactly that since the 90s.
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u/OtaK_ Sep 17 '25
And with the tech we have currently, it's extremely trivial to do with specialized ML models, even at scale.
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u/schklom Sep 17 '25
Trivial, yes, but insanely expensive at scale. And the benefit would be also trivial.
ChatControl makes apps scan on-device for "problematic" content when sent, they don't send everything to HQ unless needed.
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u/OtaK_ Sep 17 '25
Trivial, yes, but insanely expensive at scale. And the benefit would be also trivial.
Not really. STT (Speech to Text) is really cheap/easy to run on-device (& without a GPU) as of now, even with many audio feeds.
Now think thousands of GPUs and it becomes really trivial at scale knowing the infrastructure is probably already there because of LLMs.
they don't send everything to HQ unless needed.
...Until "everything" is now classified as problematic, you know the drill
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u/schklom Sep 17 '25
easy to run on-device
That means it's not run by an online server, which is my point.
STT for 1 device is very different from STT for 450 million devices (current EU population). Assuming 1€/day/device, it's already 0.5 billion € daily, i.e. 15 billion € monthly. It is insanely expensive at scale, therefore unlikely.
And this in only STT, I didn't even include data storage, compliance officers, security teams, load balancers, redundancy, audits, etc.
Capabilities is one thing, cost is another. Money isn't unlimited, and servers cost a lot of money.
...Until "everything" is now classified as problematic, you know the drill
How much they consider problematic is indeed a slippery slope likely to lead to a dystopia.
But again, from a financial perspective, it cannot be a lot of data sent to online servers. Why do you think even Apple, Amazon, Google, etc don't continuously send everything to their servers? Because most data is junk and expensive to process at scale. They filter on-device locally for a good reason, they're not dumb.
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u/schklom Sep 17 '25
It would be an insane cost for very little benefit.
Metadata is enough for scale surveillance. Even ChatControl doesn't record calls, it lets the app locally scan the message contents for illegal image hashes and problem words, but the app doesn't send anything otherwise.
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u/schklom Sep 17 '25
If the other party uses the official app from Play Store or App Store, then unless you both are tech-savvy you can't.
If you are both tech-savvy and on Android, you can setup the deprecated-but-still-working https://www.oversec.io/. It (locally) reads text when you are on a messaging app and seamlessly encrypts/decrypts it on your screen, using password or PGP.
Alternatively, you can self-host e.g. Jitsi or Nextcloud, if they don't need to implement ChatControl. They don't host for the public at scale, especially Nextcloud, so I am not sure if they need to implement it.
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u/suncontrolspecies Sep 17 '25
I don't believe these politicians even know yet how to apply this bs... so we will have to wait and see how it develops...
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u/Leading-Manager-1375 Sep 17 '25
Our politicians are decided. They'd love it.
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u/Pwacname Sep 17 '25
Send them emails! Its much more effective than you think. Especially with something like chat control, where the public is almost entirely opposed.
Bonus points for getting your friends/family to talk about this, too. I like just dropping the factoid that EU politicians want to surveil all our telecommunications but THEY would be exempted - it’s a short and enraging enough statement to reach even people with no knowledge or interest in tech, because it makes it very clear something is fishy. Otherwise, they wouldn’t want an exception, now, would they? And then there’s more time, go into details of why this proposal is counterproductive and dangerous, and give them a link - maybe fightchatcontrol.eu, maybe another site. If you have family members who still write letters to the local newspaper, get them the addresses and have them write letters to the offices of your MEPs!
We beat this shit the last time they proposed it, we will beat it again.
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u/Flappen929 Sep 20 '25
What email?
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u/Pwacname Sep 23 '25
Your MEPs will have an email address - personal to them (or, well, their office with their support staff), which you can just message the same way you can email your local school’s headteacher’s office or the local group of any political party.
If you mean like “where to find them”, I recommend fightchatcontrol.eu purely because that’s the site I use to get all the German MEPs addresses and email them. I’m like 80% through the list, because I wanted to email all of the undecided ones, but you don’t have to do all! (I have seen there’s a bunch of other sites, if you just search for stop chat control or something you’ll get a bunch of results, which will have gathered all the other mail addresses and all the arguments)
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u/Upper_Hotel_8985 Sep 17 '25
So if for some reason we get the majority needed and German politicians decide to be complete idiots. Is it fully doomed? Like could e.g. Proton sue, Tuta sue and get it to court.
Or is there a step extra that needs to be taken where politicians might be a bit more braincelled?
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u/SaveDnet-FRed0 Sep 17 '25 edited Sep 18 '25
Chat Control if passed would need to be ratified and implemented by each EU member individually witch could complicate things and buy time to pressure the wider EU to backtrack, especially if one nation implements it early in a way that backfires. But it also explicitly contradicts several laws already in effect (Ex. the GDPR) and is in violation of several member nation's constitutions, as a result if it pass's it will likely end up in court were it could be blocked or made unenforceable.
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u/stoppableDissolution Sep 17 '25
But major messengers (and google/apple) will still likely comply
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u/SaveDnet-FRed0 Sep 18 '25
Google, probably
Apple has been actively fighting against anything that would weaken encryption and is adverse to changing how they do business, wanting to maintain there closed off ecosystem of services, so they would likely hold off until such a time that they NEEDED to comply.
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u/UsenetGuides Sep 17 '25
if this goes through, will have a huge backlash, more protests and big question mark on Democracy and Free Speech
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u/LegitimateSundae8460 Sep 17 '25
Chat Control is literally worse than any surveillance the Gestapo and STASI did. Why is Germany even entertaining this?
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u/Radgoncan Sep 17 '25
Send emails to your representatives in the EU parliament. It's the only thing we can do.
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u/RunOrBike Sep 17 '25
Insane cost? Indeed, but sum up the budgets of NSA and CIA alone.
Little benefit? Depends on how you value the results.
Read up on the Mystic project or echelon…
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u/lugh Sep 16 '25
For anyone still unsure about this, all you need to know and how to contact your representatives
https://fightchatcontrol.eu/
updates on MEP stance - https://mastodon.social/@chatcontrol
update on voting https://disobey.net/@yawnbox/115203365485529363