this post was submitted on 27 Nov 2025
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I'm posting this to hopefully stop the posts that keep appearing, suggesting that progress has been made to defeat chat control. That's not correct.

The article:

Contrary to headlines suggesting the EU has “backed away” from Chat Control, the negotiating mandate endorsed today by EU ambassadors in a close split vote paves the way for a permanent infrastructure of mass surveillance. Patrick Breyer, digital freedom fighter and expert on the file, warns journalists and the public not to be deceived by the label “voluntary.”

While the Council removed the obligation for scanning, the agreed text creates a toxic legal framework that incentivizes US tech giants to scan private communications indiscriminately, introduces mandatory age checks for all internet users, and threatens to exclude teenagers from digital life.

“The headlines are misleading: Chat Control is not dead, it is just being privatized,” warns Patrick Breyer. **“What the Council endorsed today is a Trojan Horse. By cementing ‘voluntary’ mass scanning, they are legitimizing the warrantless, error-prone mass surveillance of millions of Europeans by US corporations, while simultaneously killing online anonymity through the backdoor of age verification.” ** Continue reading here - https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/reality-check-eu-council-chat-control-vote-is-not-a-retreat-but-a-green-light-for-indiscriminate-mass-surveillance-and-the-end-of-right-to-communicate-anonymously/

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[–] jaselle@lemmy.ca 1 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

I'm only arguing that such a magic bullet is possible. Every objection this article raises seems like it is a straw man criticism -- they're imagining potential flaws in a zkp system of their own design. Take this one:

What ZKPs don’t do is mitigate verifier abuse or limit their requests, such as over-asking for information they don’t need

If the only info available is y/n "I am a minor," then this isn't possible.

or limiting the number of times they request your age over time.

well... we could just limit this! The user's browser needs to cooperate for this anyway, so the user would obviously need to consent to each of these.

Look, I agree that this shouldn't be necessary in the first place. And the EFF is right to raise the concern that ZKP has to be done right if it's going to be done at all. But I'm disappointed that this is resulting in misinformation about ZKPs.