Alain Fontaine

Congratulations, EU Democracy Is Dead: The Chat Control Heist Explained Step by Step Congratulations, European Parliament. You actually did it. While half your colleagues were already on vacation, the other half who stayed behind just helped ram through the exact same mass surveillance scheme that had already been killed in March. You did not win a debate. You ran a heist. And today you finished the job. Here is exactly how you pulled it off with the final numbers so nobody can lie about what happened: Step 1: It was already dead.
In March 2026, when the chamber was full, Parliament rejected the extension of Chat Control. The surveillance lobby did not have the votes. It was over. Buried. Step 2: You cheated to bring it back.
On Tuesday you forced an “urgent procedure” through with a pathetic 331 304 vote, ignoring Pirate MEP Marketa Gregorova’s warning that it violated Parliament’s own rules. You called it procedure. Everyone else called it what it was: cheating. Step 3: You picked the perfect day to rob everyone.
You deliberately scheduled the final vote for today the absolute last plenary session before summer recess. The day when the maximum number of MEPs are already gone, bags packed, flights booked, thinking about beaches instead of backdoors. You knew exactly what you were doing. Step 4: You used the rules as a weapon.
Because this was second reading, opponents needed a full absolute majority of 361 votes out of 720 to stop it. Anything less and it passes automatically. No new debate. No second chance. Just “not enough people showed up, so mass scanning is back.” Step 5: You let the empty seats win for you.
Today only 607 MEPs could even be bothered to attend.
314 voted to reject Chat Control.
276 voted to keep the surveillance regime.
17 abstained. 314 was a clear majority of the people who actually showed up. But it was still 47 votes short of the 361 you needed. 113 MEPs were missing. And just like that, Chat Control is back from the dead. The infrastructure to scan private messages, break end to end encryption, and hand every future government and hacker a universal backdoor is now moving forward again. The 807 scientists and cryptographers who warned this is technically broken and makes everyone less safe? Ignored. The democratic rejection from March? Wiped away by procedure and empty seats. This was not legislation.
This was a calculated, cynical rules heist timed for when the room was half empty. You did not win on arguments. You won because enough of your colleagues decided their holiday was more important than stopping mass surveillance of 450 million people. So congratulations, European Parliament. You did not protect children.
You protected the surveillance lobby.
 #ChatControl #StopChatControl #Privacy #DigitalRights

Il y a 6 mois, j'en avais marre de dessiner mon homelab sur draw.io. Résultat toujours moche, jamais à jour, à recommencer dès que je touchais un truc. Je fais de l'architecture toute la journée au boulot, donc voir mon propre réseau perso ressembler à un gribouillage me gonflait particulièrement. A force de chercher quelque chose que je ne trouvais null part, je l'ai codé (bon claude m'a pas mal aider aussi). Homelable, c'est un peu la rencontre entre mon métier et ma passion : cartographier une infra, sauf que là c'est mon Proxmox, mes NAS, mes trucs Zigbee et Z-Wave, pas un SI d'entreprise. Je pensais faire un outil perso pour 5-6 personnes aussi tordues que moi. Résultat : plus de 2000 stars sur GitHub et des milliers d'installations. Je ne m'y attendais pas du tout, et ça me fait toujours un peu bizarre à chaque fois que j'y pense. Et j'en suis un peu fier :D C'est plus vraiment mon outil, c'est devenu celui de la communauté, avec ses idées et ses besoins que j'aurais jamais imaginés tout seul. Si vous voulez jeter un coup d'oeil (ou si vous êtes aussi fou que moi à maintenir une infra SLA 99.99 chez vous : https://lnkd.in/epiGuBDf homelable.net

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