It shouldn't (directly) affect ProtonMail — they're based in Switzerland, which is not an EU member and thus not bound by EU law.

That said, it's possible that this could be implemented in a GDPR-like fashion, where non-EU companies offering services to EU persons would be required to follow these laws.

It's also worth noting that the EU and Switzerland do have some bilateral agreements [1] for single market access, though, which involves it adopting some required EU law to facilitate this access; however, that should not be relevant for this specific issue.

[1] https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/cs/MEMO_1...

I don't think Switzerland is subject to this but I could be wrong. I setup my own mail and xmpp server to be safe. I recommend others to do the same. Yunohost.org makes it easy.

I don't appreciate the way privacy advocates attack the "think of the children" cliche. It comes off as a flippant rejection of the importance of protecting the vulnerable.

The issue isn't the justification, it's that the ends don't justify the means. Sometimes you can't take an action even if you perceive it'll have a good result (spying on people [immoral means] to protect children [moral end]).

But it's a completely fake argument in these scenarios. It's always invoked when you want to do something different to infringe on personal liberties. If anything it's the people abusing vulnerable groups for their agenda are at fault for the argument becoming laughable, however I think most people in this discussion are able to differentiate fake "think of the children" from actually protecting vulnerable groups.

This isn't a debate about the merits of that. Europe has a lot of problems with human trafficking in general but this is about information control. And the strategy to get that realised with emotional topics was correctly predicted decades ago.