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.