Eu revives chat control, ways to navigate it if this happens?

Benjamasu

secrec Is Canada the country that bans moo-moo raw milk? I believe farmers there are also forced to pour "excess" milk down the drain. That's insane.

de0u

Benjamasu Is Canada the country that bans moo-moo raw milk?

There is already a moderator post in this thread that addresses this sort of question: other8026. This is a GrapheneOS forum, not a raw-milk forum, and the topic of this thread is a proposed EU regulation on client-side chat scanning.

secrec

Benjamasu I'm not a calf, so I wouldn't know 🤷‍♂️

Eirikr70

de0u I like raw milk /s

Eirikr70

Franckienogotobollywood Anyway I'm not worried that EU may impose backdoors. I don't believe that they ever will find a majority for that. As for client-side control, I wouldn't be so sure that they won't do it, since it appears a rather balanced way to fight criminality with a limited impact on privacy.

Franckienogotobollywood

Eirikr70 I'm thinking of something smaller than customer-side analysis.

ryrona

Seven-of-nine In case this client side scanning will come: How to prevent Graphene OS from updating and keep the last version without client side scanning on the device?

It won't be part of GrapheneOS either way. GrapheneOS does not include any end-to-end encrypted chat app or other end-to-end encrypted cloud functionality, so will not legally have to implement anything. GrapheneOS is entirely out-of-scope for the proposed law. It will only affect end-to-end encrypted chat apps you install yourself.

Eirikr70

Franckienogotobollywood Can you be more specific or do we have to guess?

Pocketstar

My suspicion is that they can only implement this law on people who actively agree with it and signed up to it, I imagine that happens when people sign the terms and agreements upon starting the chat app, otherwise a warrant and a good dose of suspicion is still needed in order to peep into people's messages.
Most proprietairy apps would then become victim to this new law, but not some FOSS-based applications like Briar, Cwtch, SimpleX and possibly even Molly-FOSS. (Signal fork)
After all, people still have constitutional rights.
Please correct me if I'm wrong.

However, considering Google might disallow such apps after Google's new policy takes place, or they will let developers sign the terms for all of their userbase instead.
I'm just speculating here though...

Van-de-GraaffeneOS

grayway2 Do you know how much people rely on apps from Meta (WhatsApp, Facebook messenger, instagram) or Telegram to communicate with the rest of the world ?

If those apps comply, anyone still using them will get what they bloody well deserve. If their choices boil down to...

privacy + temporary inconvenience
prison + familiarity

... and they choose #2, maybe they belong in prison. It's mass undisciplined consumerism that gives legislators the hubris to draft laws like this in the first place.

But hey, maybe prison won't be so bad for them! It'll be just like Whatsapp: Everyone they know is there. 🤣

DeletedUser433

Van-de-GraaffeneOS Many people require WhatsApp or some other type of messenger to hold a job or maintain their network. I'm not sure if you're implying that refusing to use Whatsapp when 100% of your clients, colleagues and employers do it is a temporary inconvenience, but it would help if you elaborated a little on that

Van-de-GraaffeneOS

DeletedUser433

Unless your job title is "assassin" or " drug dealer", you probably risk no danger if you continue to use those garbage apps strictly for work-related discussions.

However, if those discussions include sensitive, privileged or classified information (financial data, corporate secrets, names/locations of discreet VIP clients, etc.), your employer may appreciate you informing /h(im|er)/ that the threat of corporate espionage and third-party data exfiltration has reached "level 🤷🏻‍♀️". Prepare a short list of alternatives to suggest in this conversation.

The temporary inconvenience to which I'm referring is the process of migrating to another method of communication. If your workplace, clients or professional colleagues require true privacy, you have no other choice but to adapt.

Governments always hire the lowest bidder. That's who will be designing the backdoors.

DeletedUser433 some other type of messenger

There's dozens of messengers. Some of them aren't shit.

Eirikr70

Some reading for the always-pessimistic-and-fearmongers. Don't get me wrong, it is nothing else than a question from a Parliamentary.

wonder75

Signal published a statement yesterday. They are afraid Germany might support chat control which would make implementation much more likely. They again say they would leave the marked if chat control is implemented in the EU:

For a future with privacy, not mass surveillance, Germany
must stand firmly against client-side scanning in the Chat
Control proposal
We are alarmed by reports that Germany is on the verge of a catastrophic about-face, reversing its longstanding and principled
opposition to the EU’s Chat Control proposal.
In a very real way it could spell the end of the right to privacy in Europe. Germany has long been a champion for privacy;
drawing on its own history of the terrible harm that can be facilitated by mass surveillance and standing firm to safeguard this
right for all of Europe. To capitulate now, at a time of great geopolitical uncertainty where the cybersecurity of our core
infrastructures matters more than ever, would be an incomprehensible strategic blunder, and a fundamental betrayal of Europe’s
commitment to learn from history.
Under the guise of protecting children, the latest Chat Control proposals would require mass scanning of every message, photo,
and video on a person’s device, assessing these via a government-mandated database or AI model to determine whether they
are permissible content or not.
This is a horrifying idea for many reasons. First, the technical consensus is clear. Scanning every message–whether you do it
before, or after these messages are encrypted–negates the very premise of end-to-end encryption. Instead of having to break
the gold-standard Signal encryption protocol to access someone’s Signal messages, hackers and hostile nation states only
need to piggyback on the access granted to the scanning system. This threat is so severe that even intelligence agencies agree
it would be catastrophic for national security. These proposals ignore the strategic importance of private communications, and
the longstanding technical consensus that you cannot create a backdoor that only lets the “good guys” in. What they propose is
in effect a mass surveillance free-for-all, opening up everyone’s intimate and confidential communications, whether government
officials, military, investigative journalists, or activists. For all of Europe’s talk of sovereignty, this is a bizarre cybersecurity
decision on multiple fronts.
For Signal, Chat Control is also an existential threat. We do one thing and we do it very very well: we provide the world’s largest
truly private communications platform. And we know that encryption either works for everyone, or it doesn’t work for anyone; a
backdoor in one part of a network is a vector into every other part. And we will not compromise the integrity of our service, or
endanger the safety of the people who rely on us around the world, often in contexts where private communications are the
difference between life and death. If we were given a choice between building a surveillance machine into Signal or leaving the
market, we would leave the market. This is not a choice we would make lightly, and our great hope is we never have to face it.
But if Chat Control were enforced against us, that’s likely where we would end up.
The good news is there is still time to stop this. The German government, particularly the Ministry of Justice, must hold the line.
Good decision-making in Germany could spell the difference between a future where the human right to private communication
exists in Europe or one in which Europe’s economic, social, and political security are imperiled by Chat Control’s mass
surveillance free-for-all. We urge Germany to be wise and to stand firm in its principles. We cannot let history repeat itself, this
time with bigger databases and much much more sensitive data.
Meredith Whittaker
President, Signal Foundation

https://signal.org/blog/pdfs/germany-chat-control.pdf

Van-de-GraaffeneOS

wonder75

Germany and mass surveillance doesn't really seem like a very historically sensitive combination. I thought their entire legislative process was run through the filter of guilt and shame, perhaps I was misinformed.

n3t_admin

Van-de-GraaffeneOS what are you talking about? They are doing the exact same thing and discussing the exact same thing everyone else does. There is no political taboo around mass surveillance at all. The only thing holding the government back, is the huge amount of privacy activists/advocates in Germany. Even if you look around this forum, the amount of German users is disproportionately high.

Van-de-GraaffeneOS

n3t_admin

By putting forth the possibility that I may have been misinformed, I'm already acknowledging my lack of experience in these matters. Even to be informed is, at best, to possess second-hand knowledge. It doesn't compare to experience or discovery.

I do realize what you're saying. I see that the necessary amount of pressure is being placed on the German government by the people themselves, and it makes me very happy to see that the people are so passionately involved in defending their natural right to privacy.

My biggest error was assuming that there must be some internal system of checks and balances built into the legislative process. My best guess as to why I jumped to that conclusion was that I must have based it on what I've been told by cousins who have lived there. They paint a picture of an impressively bureaucratized government that — while inconvenient at times — usually tends to benefit the people in the end.

This is in stark contrast to the reality I'm seeing in this situation. The last line of defense against chat control was citizen advocacy and activism, not constitutional roadblocks and judicial intervention. That is way too close. Stay vigilant, citizens of Germany…

gvprtskvni

… and thank you for scoring this victory.

gvprtskvni

German government officially rejects Chat Control: https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/citizen-protest-halts-chat-control-breyer-celebrates-major-victory-for-digital-privacy/

dc32f0cfe84def651e0e

gvprtskvni https://old.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/1o0sdx3/germany_might_vote_against_chat_control/

No decision was made yet. It the governments decision and "only" the Bundestag parliamentary group leader, who is not part of the government, has published his groups current opinion.

malatoi

Van-de-GraaffeneOS This is not a victory but a little light at the horizon. It is just the parliamentary group of the CDU (part of the government of Germany), which is against the chatcontrol . The final decision will be made by the BMI (Federal Ministry of the Interiorand) the BJI (Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection). Source: https://netzpolitik.org/2025/eu-ueberwachungsplaene-unionsfraktion-jetzt-gegen-chatkontrolle-innenministerium-will-sich-nicht-aeussern/

Eirikr70

@Van-de-GraaffeneOS mentionned the checks and balances. They are huge in the case of the EU. Even in the case the European council would approve the chat control, there are other steps forward, including the European Parliament. And that institution is traditionally very careful about liberties. So I strongly doubt that the chat control might get to be an applicable european rule.

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