What about being required to carry a your-own-government-controlled tracking device?
Because the US or Chine government can't harm me in Europe via the data they collect from me, But the EU authorities can if they want to, so naturally I fear them more if they were the ones hoovering my data.
What are the odds they're using this on-shore tech grab to implement their own domestic version of China's social credit score system, to easily get data on their own citizens who commit "wrong-think", without having to through the effort to twist the arm of US entities every time they want to do that?
Food for thought, but I do think we're living the last years of online anonymity, it's inevitable.
The EU commission just passed chat control to have government mandated software in every phone
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/12/after-years-controvers...
The most recent related information I could find was some movement to extend the temporary derogation of the ePrivacy Directive, which expires on 2026/04/03, to 2028/04/03 but even that did not seem to have passed yet. [2]
The very fact they're trying to extend the temporary derogation hints to me that they think it'll take some time yet to pass Chat Control (if at all).
[1] https://oeil.europarl.europa.eu/oeil/en/procedure-file?refer...
[2] https://oeil.europarl.europa.eu/oeil/en/procedure-file?refer...
Only from corporations, but not from their own governments. A lot of Europeans put a lot of blind faith into their governments and the EU, and criticism of these institutions is usually met with accusations of being a bot, MAGA or russian troll.
>The European institutions are characterized by a huge devision of power.
Didn't really stop them passing whatever rules they wanted during Covid, did it? Sure is convenient that we keep having more and more crisis and boogiemen that governments can leverage to deflect accountability and bypass the wishes of the population, for our own good of course.
>There is no chance that European instutitions can impose their will against a considerable majority of people.
Famous last words. People always can be, and routinely are, manipulated to vote against their own best interests, even if everyone claims manipulation doesn't work on them. The propaganda industry is HUGE.
A individual person can be smart, but people together as a collective voting block, are stupid, and the elites treat us like cattle, as seen in the recent files.
The problem with this phrasing is it makes it sound hyperbolic, but it is important to remember the world is large and there are always, in a literal and normal sense, multiple major crises going on at any moment.
People who don't pay much attention to politics sometimes get confused about why crises elevated by the corporate media get ignored. A big answer is becuase they are elevated for political reasons, usually the crisis is fairly routine in absolute terms.
True, but my point I wanted to draw attention to, is HOW these crisis are handled now, not that there's many of them.
Every crisis now seems to be exclusively used as a vehicle to justify taking away just a little bit more of your freedom and anonymity, or implement more fiscal policies that will leave you footing the bill but just so happens it will be enriching the wealthy as a side effect.
Because such policies shoved out the door in times of crisis, don't pass through the lengthy public debates and scrutiny regular policies have to go through, so it's the perfect opportunity to sneak and fast-track some nefarious stuff in.
I'm not that old yet, but I don't feel like this backdoor was misused to this extent in the past, like pre-2008 I mean (except 9/11 of course). It definitely feels like politicians have gooten of taste and are abusing this exploit now more with every little opportunity.
>Or today with Russia and Ukraine situation. Sure is convenient that we keep having more and more crisis and boogiemen that governments can leverage to deflect accountability and bypass the wishes of the population, for our own good of course.
>Why do you think Germans supported to tie themselves to Russia's gas and destroy their nuclear power.
You see you might get called a bot, Russian troll, or MAGA a whole lot less, if you didn't pull out ALL the topics those groups are playing at once. There is plenty to criticize about the EU institutions, but man that is a very odd focus.
Germany ties itself to Russian gas, and the people who point that out get called Russian trolls. Great argument bro.
I do not agree with the overall conclusion that "EU bad". But there are some pretty bad things going on, and the trend is definitely concerning. If you wait until you're on fire, you waited for too long.
In some areas, sure - like GDPR.
In other areas, absolutely not - like chat control.
As another commenter pointed out, it seems as if government mandated privacy intrusion is OK, while violations by corporations are quickly shutdown. It’s like the opposite of how it works here in the US.
Once you give people an outside boogieman(Putin, Trump, Covids, etc) or a self inflicted false flag crisis(surge in crime rates) to shake them up to their core and put the fear in them, you can then easily sell your intrusion of privacy in their lives as the necessary solution that protects them.
When you start lose control of your people because their standard of living has been going downhill for 2 decades and they realize the future prospects aren't any better so they hate you even more, you can regain control of them by rallying them up on your side in a us-versus-them mentality against external and internal aggressors you paint as the enemy. The media is your friend here. /s
Also, your police aren’t afraid to go the extra mile to quash dissent. Look at what’s happening in the UK for example with Palestine Action. The only difference is that they are less armed and better trained.
Since you’re a pedant, look at what Germany is doing in this same area.
The Danish proposal for indiscriminate chat control did not receive enough support and was retracted last autumn. Similar proposals have been put forward regularly over the past 30 years and have so far come to nothing just as regularly.
The Danish proposal for indiscriminate chat control did not receive enough support and was retracted last autumn. Similar proposals have been put forward regularly over the past 30 years and have so far come to nothing just as regularly.
For the conservative (and sometimes not so conservative) non-experts things like this sound like an easy win. So every new generation of politicians has to be educated about it again.
That has never been passed in any form.
> the opposite of how it works here in the US.
It appears that you have conveniently forgotten about FISA, EARN IT, CLOUD act, PATRIOT act, LAED, etc, etc.
It always boggles my mind that most Europeans are absolutely convinced that nothing like that could ever happen again. Meanwhile, many people in the US are convinced that the government will be coming for them any minute now.
Very few of the cases they present will have involved citizens being murdered in the streets by the government for exercising their absolute right to free speech.
{1}https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/wales-englan... {2}https://pa.media/blogs/fact-check/fact-check-international-d... {3}https://www.standard.co.uk/news/tommy-robinson-uk-speech-cla...
Most of the erroneous conclusions come from a cursory interpretation of a Times article from last year:
{4} https://www.thetimes.com/uk/crime/article/police-make-30-arr...
In 2023, UK police forces made around 12,000 arrests under the Communications Act 2003 and the Malicious Communications Act 1988. These laws cover sending messages that are "grossly offensive, threatening, indecent, or menacing over communications networks" (which includes social media). Prosecutions resulting tend to come from a small subset of serious crimes - stalking, incitement to hatred, endangering minors etc...
This was gleefully misinterpreted by Musk, Steven Forbes and the rest of the right-wing braintrust as "12,000 people were arrested for saying politically incorrect things."
Germany at third highest is equally in the realm of complete fantasy. The Tagesschau debunked it and concluded that the German numbers make no sense. There is no statistic in Germany for the number of arrests, but the number of people investigated is lower for the period claimed and not all led to arrests so the number is simply a fabrication.
https://www.tagesschau.de/faktenfinder/grafik-festnahmen-onl...
Finally, the notion that China or Russia would self-report less cases than the UK and expect the figure to be believed is farcical. There isn't even something comparable to the anti-activism laws or the HK47 in the UK.
At the same time, most European countries are also way more resilient against authoritarian takeover.
It’s not that it cannot happen again. It’s that the EU is explicitly built against that and if it happens it will come from the national governments (see Hungary), not the EU.
what's the difference? The EU relies on national gov't to enforce rules. Until the EU becomes a sovereign entity with standalone enforcement mechanisms, it's no more able to ensure things can't happen than the UN.
It's not the same. EU will cut your funding if you don't follow their rules. UN is not finding any EU countries, but the opposite, we all pay to fund the UN.
So to prevent individual EU nations ever becoming authoritarian, like Hungary, we have to cede sovereignty and authority to the EU & EC unelected bureaucrats like Ursula VDL who take over as the main executive leaders, ensuring we'll no longer have the danger of national-level authoritarianism.
Hell of a solution.
Surely the better solution to issues like Hungary is ensuring we get more democracy to Hungarian people, not giving authority over Hungary to someone else the Hungarian people can't elect.
Not really, and the example of Hungary shows that it would not be that effective for that purpose.
The EU is a union of nations, not really of people. It was built so that nations play nice with each other. Each member state still does more or less what it wants within its borders, as long as it does not jeopardise the union.
In that way it’s not perfectly democratic, because there are layers of indirection between the citizens and the institutions.
Commissioners are nominated by member states and approved by parliament. So they are generally aligned with the politics dominant at the national level and palatable to MEPs. Von der Leyen is there because she had support from the German government and was from the dominant block in parliament. It’s not direct democracy, but it is not a faceless blob either.
It's a bit ironic that most of those people voted for Trump, who is now doing exactly that. But I guess they think it's ok as long as the government is coming for others, not for them (at least not yet)...
There's a divide between generations and geographies to start with. Younger vs. older generations see things differently. Westerners vs. Easterners (especially those who remember the communist times) see things differently.
It's very hard to say what many and most people are doing on either side of the Atlantic. Until a few short years ago you wouldn't have imagined enough Americans would vote for the leader they did, knowing exactly what they're getting, and yet they did. So people aren't always forthcoming about their views and beliefs.
In Europe for anyone who can't remember the "hard times" it's easy to fall into the trap of believing things will stay good forever. The US hasn't had equivalent "hard times" relative to the rest of the world for as long as any person in the US has been alive and a few generations more. So they too can easily believe things can't turn sour, which is why this recent and swift downturn caused so much shock and consternation. But the US also always had a lot of preppers and people "ready to fight the Government" (that's why so many have guns, they say). It's a big place so you expect to have "many" people like this.
Their reaction and opposition to ChatControl (or near complete lack of both) would indicate otherwise? They could hardly care less about privacy.
National governments which have openly declared that believe they have the right to unlimited access to any private communication hardly lost any popularity or faced real consequences.
Now imagine being debanked by your own government because they don't like what you're saying and becoming unemployed, homeless and dead. I don't think they're remotely comparable.
For example, a few years ago, a power tripping gov bureaucrat turned off my unemployment payments over a technicality. Luckily, I had enough money to pay a lawyer to sue them and won, but it was tight. What if I hadn't had the money to hire a lawyer? Since I was in a foreign country, with no family or close friends to fall back on. I was exclusively relying on the welfare state I paid into for years, that then turn its back on me for shits and giggles.
So I don't think you understand just how bad it can be for you if your government decides to turn on you and fuck with you, if you're comparing this to losing access to your work email account.
See the famous case of UK postal workers that got fucked by their government trying to hide their mistakes.
Of course in this judge's case there might still be some banks who are willing to work with him even at the risk of getting sanctioned as there weren't language in the news that he was completely debanked which I assume they would highlight if it was the case.
It is a right in the EU
It is not unreasonable for governments to pursue avenues for laundering money. I recognize that you likely don't believe governments should prosecute money laundering, but that view is not aligned with the majority of citizens in your country.
The government can prosecute money laundering and all the other crimes, but it's not an excuse to impose extrajudicial punishment. Until they stop, having some cash and crypto is your only means of defense.
I'm unsure about your reference to extrajudicial punishment, is it referring to de-banking associated with AML and KYC regimes in the US? If so, I agree that unjust things are unjust. I believe we should seek to fix those injustices directly through lobbying lawmakers, rather than rejecting an entire system that has significant security benefits.
I am sympathetic to people who have a fatalistic attitude when it comes to political reforms. Having other financial instruments as a backup is a good practice.
It's not entirely hopeless I guess. For what it's worth, the US government recently issued an EO that purportedly stops banks from debanking you for political reasons. Hopefully a future administration would take care of the other part.
How is this comparable to your government debanking you meaning that no bank, landlord, layer or job will touch you?
It's as close as you get to a complete shunning from modern society. You're reset to the cash you hold on you and keep custody of. And yes. In the U.S., the list that manages who can and cannot transact is centralized under OFAC. So it is at the whims of Executive whether or not any financial activity can be done with you.
Luckily in most European countries renters are protected and they cannot just kick you out of your home for missing one rent payment (IANAL, but in NL it requires 3 months of no pay and a judge has to approve). Most likely they wouldn't approve if you missed a payment because you were locked out of your banking account.
In 2025, North Korea managed to steal from the world over 10% of its GDP worth in cryptocurrency.
They lost access to everything american, including Visa and Mastercard. It's in french and maybe not the best source but it's not paywalled :
https://www.tf1info.fr/international/nous-sommes-attaques-le...
> "Payments are mostly cancelled," he continued, "as almost all cards issued by banking institutions in Europe are either Visa or Mastercard, which are American companies."
They are not completely debanked since they can go to the bank and withdraw cash, but it's a crippling situation to be in.
You don't have to imagine it.
Alina Lipp, Thomas Röper, Xavier Moreau, Col Jacques Baud, Nathalie Yamb. The last two are Swiss nationals. The Baud case is interesting because he's a Belgian resident who now can not even buy food or pay his bills while living in his own home.
What are the odds that once shut down "chat control" will come up under a new name?
Right now, it's more like US corpos are try to twist the arm of EU governments [1][2], pushing heavy propaganda to manipulate our elections [3], allying with the US government to do so. And the US government has been threatening EU govts with invasion [4], leveraging US corpos to harm lawful individuals doing their jobs in the EU [5], and sanctioning elected officials for performing their duties [6], or threatened to [7].
Sure, there's an hypothetical risk of the EU turning sour. On the other hand, when it comes to US corpos, the risk has materialized.
[1]: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly930y90lro [2]: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0589g0dqq7o [3]: https://www.politico.eu/article/twitter-faces-renewed-scruti... [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland_crisis [5]: https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2025/11/19/n... [6]: https://www.brusselstimes.com/1931733/eu-parliament-blasts-u... [7]: https://www.politico.eu/article/us-accused-threats-eu-diplom...
European citizens getting sanctioned by the EU (basically a death sentence), is not hypothetical, IT'S REAL.[1]
Jacques BAUD and Xavier MOREAU, Swiss and French nationals respectively, were sanctioned by the EU along with a laundry list of Russian nationals, on the accusation of being russian mouthpieces, with no due process or public trial where the EU could show their evidence and they could plead their case and defend themselves, but no, the EU just acted as judge, jury and executioner on the spot just because it didn't like what those people, that nobody has ever heard of, were saying about Ukraine and Russia in public.
I kind of get it if they only did it to russian citizens living in Russia in the current geopolitical context, but doing this to your own citizens living here is an unaccountable excessive use of force without democratic or humanitarian checks and bounds. This is far more dangerous than what any US tech company could do to us here.
[1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELE...
Is he not still a French born citizen deserving of a fair trial? Or should getting a dual citizenship of a foreign passport, of a nation that later becomes an adversary, become an automatic death sentence? US should then put all it citizens with Cuban and Iranian passports in jail with that logic.
And then what about Jacques BAUD who's Swiss living in Belgium? He doesn't deserve a fair trial either? On what grounds? With what evidence?
How can you justify dishing out death sentences without trial? Remember that blindly supporting the authoritarian hand waving of due process with no trial or evidence, just to easily get rid of undesirable people, can always be used against you too, if what you say becomes undesirable when politics shifts.
Being sanctioned means no bank will touch you, meaning no employer and landlord will touch you, meaning you don't get a national insurance health card to receive healthcare, and you'll be homeless and begging for food.
How is taking away all of someone's means to survive NOT a death sentence?
How does being sanctioned by the EU *while living in Russia* do that?
Since when does Russia care?
(Assuming of course that the claim you responded to was in fact correct, that he has been living in Russia since 2013).
Because Jacques BAUD is NOT living in Russia but is living in Belgium like I said 3 times already.
Has reading comprehension gotten THAT bad?
Assuming of course that the claim you responded to was in fact correct, that he has been living in Russia since 2013
You seem to be invested in trying to stitch together flimsy arguments based on specious reasoning.
Your so-called victims are Russian agents with Russian nationality which have been engaged directly with a totalitarian regime that is engaged in war across Europe, both cold and hot.
You don't even try to argue for innocence. You know they are agents and guilty, but somehow opt to shift focus to technicalities. Why?
WHere's the proof that they are? Would you be OK is someone accused you of being a russian agent because you criticized the EU too much, and sanction you with no opportunity to defend yourself in court?
>You don't even try to argue for innocence.
Why would I? I don't know if they are innocent, that's why I want a public trial.
>You know they are agents and guilty
I Don't know that. That's just what the EU told us. That's why I want a public trial.
I think you are discussing topics you are not familiar with, or you're being disingenuous.
In case you live under a rock and chose to comment on issues that you know nothing about, you can start reading up on this.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46973777
> Would you be OK is someone accused you of being a russian agent because you criticized the EU too much, and sanction you with no opportunity to defend yourself in court?
If I'm ever assigned Russian nationality and collaborate as a Russian observer on russia's sham elections on occupied territories, be my guest. Do you think you'd be wrong?
> Why would I? I don't know if they are innocent, that's why I want a public trial.
Yeah, you have been claiming ignorance on the topic. Willful or not, that is to be determined.
It's weird, however, how you invest so little effort to educate yourself on the topic but still feel compelled such strong opinions on doubts and technicalities and turning blind eye to foreign interference.
If this is the best example you can muster, you don't have much of a case.
They are Russian nationals pushing propaganda for a totalitarian regime which has been engaging in wars of annexation throughout Europe and whose threats of nuclear war against Europe are pushed on almost on a daily basis.
https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2025/12/18/who-are-the-we...
> I would get it if they only did this to russian citizens living in Russia in the current geopolitical context, (...)
They are. Nevertheless, it's stupid to even consider the idea that only foreign nationals can be foreign agents.
Where's the proof beyond reasonable doubt resulting from a trial, that those European citizens have done the things you say?
Or is Euro News propaganda supposed to be the only proof on which EU gets to throw people in jail without trial?
Shouldn't you get a trial where you get a chance to defend yourself before being sanctioned? I swear you people are cheering for 1984 authoritarianism to buttfuck you.
>Nevertheless, it's stupid to even consider the idea that only foreign nationals can be foreign agents.
As long as they are EU citizens, they deserve a fair EU trial and not just get sanctioned because EU says "trust me bro" about people they want to see disappeared.
Are you nuts? Not only does the guy run a company dedicated exclusively to push Kremlin propaganda, he literally presents propaganda program's in Kremlin's RT.
Are you living under a rock?
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/pixels/article/2023/12/15/the-web-...
At this point it's evident you are either playing the role of wilful ignorant, or heavily invested in being contrarian.
And if they refuse to return to the EU for this trial? That means they could do whatever they want with no consequences?
It's totally not the "ministry of truth".
That's an amusingly naïve perspective. The US government absolutely can harm you, via a multitude of ways.
China's government has strategic goals to destabilise and weaken the EU, and data-farming will be part of their strategy.
What part of the cellphone manufacturer being based overseas makes you think the government can't track you via it?
Even leaving asides 5-eyes style data-sharing agreements, your US/Chinese smartphone still connects through a domestic cellphone carrier, using a domestic number. That's enough to have at a minimum fine-grained location tracking, call logs, and data usage.
One only needs a few looks at what the EU Commission has been doing lately to see that if left unchecked their plan is a UK-like total surveillance state.
Attestation in on itself isn't unwarranted which (to me) is an important security measure. Attestation as commonly implemented on Android via Play Integrity (the way banking apps are known to do) is restrictive, sure: https://grapheneos.org/articles/attestation-compatibility-gu... / https://archive.is/snGEu
It's a security measure against the owner of the device, in other words, an attack. Would you be okay with me using a remote control to forcibly slow down your car so I can merge? Using attestation this way is fundamentally incompatible with ownership. If the bank wants some assurance about a device, they need to sell or issue one to me, like credit cards or point of sale machines, which are explicitly not your property.
The fact that the assurance is provided by a third party you have little recourse against just adds insult to injury.
In this example, a banking app is not making the entire Android device non functional when it refuses to work when remote attestation like Play Integrity fails.
Like I said, I'd be fine if they offer a viable alternative, like a card or a physical authentication dongle (which doesn't require spyware to use).
Would you consider MFA to be a measure against you, the owner of the device, because it makes it harder for you to login?
>If the bank wants some assurance about a device, they need to sell or issue one to me
They are offering you free software and are operating under a security model tied to these specific devices. You're still free to walk into their branches, or use their physical cards, if you prefer not use their limited selection of devices.
>Would you be okay with me using a remote control to forcibly slow down your car
Car manufacturers do this as well though. Some of this is for the benefit of their customers (preventing theft from easily cloned keys). Some of this is not for customer benefit, like locking down infotainment systems.
Banks however are only interested in preventing fraud.
Not really, unless the MFA involves the same type of attestation involved in the process. TOTP is fine, and you can put it in your password manager to avoid phones, and can be done without consenting to any spying. And I don't really own the account anyway.
> use their physical cards
The premise of this discussion is these will get replaced by the hostile phone app, since the Europeans are too lazy to make a proper replacement.
> locking down infotainment systems
I don't agree with that either, but you can presumably buy a car without one, and you'd still be allowed to drive. What if the government says, you can't drive anymore UNLESS you use the locked down infotainment system and consent to all the ads/spying that comes with it?
In theory - of course, it shouldn't make it any harder for _me_ to login, it's just that in practice the friction is inevitable since it can't distinguish between me and someone else without it.
> You're still free to walk into their branches, or use their physical cards, if you prefer not use their limited selection of devices.
The point is that this freedom is going away. I'd absolutely want to use their physical cards (there are smartcards with e-ink displays which would be a great thing for confirming payments), but no, they're slowly taking this away, starting by limiting transfers done without their mobile app.
And _their_ mobile app needs to invade __my__ property by locking down the system. I understand this might be neccessary to ensure the UI can be trusted, but this shouldn't happen on my device as it restricts my ability to do completely unrelated things.
If it's an important safety measure _for me_, shouldn't I get to decide whether I need it based on context?
I think it's fair for banks to apply different risk scores based on the signals they have available (including attestation state), but I also don't want the financial system, government & big tech platforms to have a hard veto on what devices I compute with.
Sure, banks could probably build a mechanism that lets some users opt out of this, just as they could add a Klingon localization to their apps. There just isn't enough demand.
I don't think a good security engineer would rely on atty as "front line" anti brute force control since bypasses are not that rare. But yeah you might incorporate it into the flow. Just like captchas, rate limiting, fingerprints etc and all the other controls you need for web, anyway.
I know I'm quibbling. My concern is that future where banks can "trust the client" is a future of total big tech capture of computing platforms, and I know banks and government don't really care, but I do.
Correct. And the end of ownership, privacy, and truth too. If something can betray you on someone else's orders, it's not yours in the first place. You'll own nothing and if you aren't happy, good luck living in the woods.
Hm, Play Integrity isn't that slow on Android, from my experience.
> don't think a good security engineer would rely on atty as "front line" anti brute force control since bypasses are not that rare
I'm not privy to device-wide bypasses of Play Integrity that ship with Trusted Execution Environment (which is pretty much all ARM based Androids), Secure Element, and/or Hardware Root of Trust, but I'd appreciate if you have some significant exploit writeups (on Pixels, preferably) for me to look at?
> My concern is that future where banks can "trust the client" is a future of total big tech capture of computing platforms
A valid concern. In the case of smart & personal devices like Androids though, the security is warranted due to the nature of the workloads it tends to support (think Pacemaker / Insulin monitoring apps; government-issued IDs; financial instruments like credit cards; etc) and the ubiquity & proliferation of the OS (more than half of all humanity) itself.
Hi, you don't have the break the control on the strongest device. You only have to break it on the weakest device that's not blacklisted.
The situation is getting better as you note, but in the past the problem was that a lot of customers have potatos and you get a lot of support calls when you lock them out.
> think Pacemaker / Insulin monitoring apps; government-issued IDs; financial instruments like credit cards; etc
I agree with you on the need for trustworthy computing. I mainly disagree on who should ultimately control the trust roots.
A monitoring app doesn't even interact with systems you don't own. Just put a liability disclaimer for running modified versions.
> warranted
Decided by whom? And why is Google trusted, not me? At minimum, I shouldn't face undue hardship with the government due to refusing to deal with a third party, unless we first remove most of Google's rights to set the terms.
This is unserious when Insulin overdose can be fatal.
> And why is Google trusted, not me?
(Hardware-assisted) Attestation on Android doesn't require apps to "trust Google".
Funny that you say that, but the so far best artificial pancreas that is completely free and open source will soon be much harder to install to any Android phone without every user getting a valid key from Google.
In Germany, doctors even recommend these tools if they work. Because they make patients who know what they are doing healthier and more safe.
Naturally me and hundreds of other diabetics have already contacted our EU representative due to the changes Google is planning to make in their platform.
https://androidaps.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
This tool has literally saved my life.
The usual first victims are sex workers, not political minorities.