🗳 🇪🇺 📵 Hyperdemocratic European Parliament reimposes mass electronic surveillance regulation after a majority votes it down three times

An extension of the European Union’s mass surveillance regulation known as Chat Control 1.0 failed to make it out of the European Parliament twice in March. Unable to summon a clear parliamentary majority, advocates (mostly in the centre-right European People’s Party [EPP]) turned to the European Council, which adopted the failed Chat Control 1.0 renewal on 2 July.

The Council’s position hardens automatically into law unless the European Parliament can summon an absolute majority to stop it. To forestall any such majority from forming, the EPP on Tuesday moved with member state backing for urgent procedure, angling to force their scheme through in the last days before the summer holiday, after many MEP’s had already left. The parliament narrowly approved the urgent procedure, and in consequence there were not enough votes to stop Chat Control 1.0 when it came for a vote today. Hours ago, a majority of 314 MEPs voted to stop Chat Control against the wishes of the Council, while a minority of 276 voted to let it happen. Because 314 is less than the absolute majority of 361, Chat Control 1.0 passed even though most MEPs present didn’t want it to.

It was a sleazy vote, not least because it’s far from clear this procedural manoeuvre was even appropriate in this case. Also, electronic surveillance is bad, but if we are honest with ourselves this battle was already lost.

Chat Control 1.0 was first instated in 2021 as a temporary exemption to the ePrivacy Directive of the EU, allowing messaging services and online platforms to scan chats and other electronic communications for child sexual abuse material. The exemption expired in April, but various platforms have continued their surveillance with no legal basis in the intervening months. Now their formal permission to scan our private communications has been restored and extended through April 2028. We are, in other words, merely returning to the prior regime.

Chat Control 1.0 is a temporary stopgap while the European Parliament, the Commission and the Council try to negotiate their Child Sexual Abuse Regulation, or Chat Control 2.0. As envisioned by the Commission, this permanent law would not merely allow platforms to scan private communications for child sex abuse material, but require them to do so; require additional AI-assisted automated scanning not only for known child pornography but also for such vaguely defined activities as “grooming”; and extend scanning to end-to-end encrypted services like Signal via mandatory monitoring on the client side. This insane proposal has been watered down over the years, in large part because of parliamentary opposition, but it’s coming in some form. We’re getting Chat Control 2.0 before Chat Control 1.0 expires, and Chat Control 2.0 will be at least somewhat worse.

What’s amazing to me about all of this is this man:

His name is Manfred Weber, and he’s a Bavarian politician (CSU) who also happens to be president of the pro-surveillance EPP and leader of the EPP faction in the European Parliament. Weber loves electronic surveillance and he has been the driving force behind Chat Control from the beginning. Naturally, Chat Control is something that Weber would have a lot of trouble imposing in Germany, where surveillance is widely deplored and where our Basic Law guarantees as “inviolable” the so-called Briefgeheimnis – “the privacy of correspondence, posts and telecommunications.”

From his perch in the European Parliament, however, he has been able to hollow out this core constitutional principle of the Federal Republic from a procedurally rigged vote in Strasbourg, without any domestic debate or anybody in the Bundestag having a single thing to say about it.

This is a very advanced novel form of democracy that we have achieved here in the European Union.

🔗 https://www.eugyppius.com/p/hyperdemocratic-european-parliament

🚀 🇨🇳 🚢 China has become the second country in the world with an orbital-class launcher system with first-stage booster recovery through controlled reentry and propelled landing.

After delivering its payload to low Earth orbit, The Long March 10B had its booster landing on a recovery ship in the South China Sea with a net-and-hook system.

📎 Visegrad24

🚀 🇨🇳 🚢 Long March 10B became the fifth orbital rocket class to propulsivly land and be recovered! China Rocket Co. becomes the third company, along with SpaceX and Blue Origin, to recover their booster.

📎 Chandler G

🇹🇷🇷🇺🇺🇸⚡️ — Türkiye is seeking Russia's consent to transfer its S-400 air defense systems to a third country in an effort to clear the way for purchasing U.S.-made F-35 fighter jets, according to Bloomberg.

➡️ The proposal comes months after President Erdoğan suggested returning the S-400 systems to Russia, an idea that gained little support.

➡️ Ankara also proposed keeping the S-400 while allowing U.S. oversight of its operation to address concerns that the system could compromise the F-35's stealth capabilities, but that proposal was also rejected by U.S. officials.

➡️ The S-400 systems remain in Türkiye's inventory but are currently not in operational use.

🇬🇧⚡️ — Britain has designated Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Oracle as critical third-party suppliers to the country's financial sector, bringing the cloud providers under direct regulatory oversight.

➡️ The move is intended to strengthen the resilience of the financial system by reducing the risk of widespread disruption caused by cyberattacks, technology failures, or major service outages.

🇷🇺🇺🇦⚡️ — Russian President Vladimir Putin is rejecting calls to negotiate peace with Ukraine, with recent Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian oil refineries and ports strengthening his resolve to continue the war, according to three sources close to the Kremlin cited by Reuters.

➡️ Putin is instead likely to escalate the conflict in the coming months, with one source describing a "high probability" of further escalation.

➡️ One source familiar with Putin's thinking said the Russian leader has "dug in his heels" on capturing the remainder of Ukraine's Donbas region and recently rebuked advisers who proposed a ceasefire along the current front lines. Another source said Putin believes Russian forces will soon secure the rest of Donbas.

🇺🇸⚡️ — The U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has completed "diamond stamping" of all canned subassemblies for the B61-13 nuclear gravity bomb three months ahead of schedule at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee, according to Defence Blog.

➡️ The milestone follows the completion of the first B61-13 production unit in May 2025, nearly one year ahead of its original target date, making it one of the fastest U.S. nuclear weapons development programs since the Cold War.

➡️ The B61-13 is a variable-yield nuclear gravity bomb with a maximum yield of 360 kilotons—around 24 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. It is designed to replace older B61-7 bombs and will be deployed on the U.S. Air Force's B-21 Raider stealth bomber.

🇺🇸⚡️ — Boeing announces the first manufactured MQ-25A Stingray unmanned aerial refueling aircraft has completed its second test flight, testing the aircraft's airborne landing gear for landing the UAV.

The MQ-25A Stingray is set to enter Initial Operational Capability with the U.S. Navy by February 2029.

🇮🇷⚡️ — A large fire broke out at the Poldokhtar Petrochemical Complex in Iran, Tasnim News reports.

➡️ A thick column of smoke rose over the Pol-e Dokhtar area shortly after 17:00 local time, drawing attention to the large blaze at the petrochemical refinery.

🇸🇦⚡️ — Saudi Arabia's biggest price cut for crude oil sold to Asia in more than two decades has still left its flagship grade more expensive than some rival Gulf supplies, limiting demand despite the sharp reduction, Reuters reports.

➡️ The kingdom cut the August official selling price (OSP) for Arab Light to US$1.50 per barrel below the Oman/Dubai benchmark—an US$11-per-barrel reduction from the previous month. Prices for its other four crude grades were also lowered by US$11 per barrel.

🏹 🇲🇽 🇺🇸 Fiber-Optic Kamikaze Drone Found In Mexico Signals New Drone Threat South Of Border

The global proliferation of low-cost suicide drones is setting off alarm bells across the US military and among national security officials and experts. The race to harden high-value assets in the homeland, from military bases and airports to power substations, crude oil refineries, stadiums, and data centers, is already underway as officials fear the next major threat could come from a cheap drone equipped with a warhead.

The latest warning that Ukrainian-style drones are just south of the US-Mexico border comes from a new report by the Mexican newspaper El Sol de Durango, which states that Mexican federal forces discovered an unjammable fiber-optic kamikaze drone during a raid on a compound.

The raid took place at a compound in the Dolores del Río neighborhood, located deep inside north-central Mexico, about 500 miles from the US border and about 560 miles from Mexico City by road.

The Mexican Army and National Guard secured the perimeter of the compound, while Durango's regional federal prosecutor's office and other law enforcement agencies found the fiber-optic suicide drone, guns, ammunition, ATVs, and other vehicles.

The importance of this find is that fiber-optic kamikaze drones, once largely confined to major war zones across Eurasia, from the Russia-Ukraine conflict to the Gulf area, now appear to be spreading worldwide.

Military bases, airports, power substations, refineries, ports, data centers, and other critical infrastructure are entering a whole new risk environment in which cheap drones can cause outsized damage.

https://www.zerohedge.com/military/fiber-optic-kamikaze-drone-found-mexico-signals-new-drone-threat-south-border

#BREAKING | 🇩🇪 🚩 — A far-left extremist group calling itself "Kommando Angry Birds" has claimed responsibility for sabotage on a railway line north of Leverkusen, Germany.

The group stated it placed incendiary devices in cable shafts near the Wupper Bridge on the Cologne–Düsseldorf route. The resulting fires damaged several signal cables. The affected track section was closed for repairs following the incident on or around July 10.

The claim was posted on the platform Indymedia on Saturday morning. Police are treating the case as suspected sabotage and are investigating. The group, which has claimed previous attacks, describes itself as an anti-industry and anti-technology movement seeking the "complete dismantling of the techno-industrial system" for environmental reasons.

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🇮🇷❌🛥❗️ — Initial reports of a ship attacked on the entrance of the entrance of Straits of Hormuz