> Yesterday, this revised version was quietly greenlit by Coreper, essentially paving the way for the text’s adoption by the Council, possibly as early as December.
It hasn't been passed yet. We'll see.
Europe's New War on Privacy
41–50 of 83 posts
Re: Europe's New War on Privacy
#42They will literally use the christmas holidays to pass this while people are spending time with their families and won't notice it.
It will be challenged in the Tribunal if it passes, and will lose as it is incompatible with baseline EU laws.
Specifically, the charter: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/treaty/char_2012/oj/eng
Article 8 point 2. They're missing the provisions of data retrieval. If available, that would immediately take down the whole monitoring system as a full message history request would have to be available since they don't know which data is private or personally identifying.
Additionally, this falls under GDPR legitimate concern category so must be possible to reject by the user. Otherwise it's an involuntary measure making the law contradictory.
With this in mind, it's toothless if corrected.
Re: Europe's New War on Privacy
#43Re: Europe's New War on Privacy
#44As a liberal person, I have an unpopular opinion, but I’m a national who’s country is at war. These are adequate reactions and preparations before war. The West should be done with its rosy glasses. There’s still almost religious rejection of the possibility of war in their territory. We are on the brink of a fierce war with Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, and a few traitors you are not aware of. They have more res…
If your country’s intelligence community can’t work in information-scarce environment such as privacy enabled online communications, I don’t know what to tell you.
Re: Europe's New War on Privacy
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even if they did, what are they going to do about it?
True, it's sad to see activists needs to be on duty 24/7/365 and yet it's useless if they can't get normal people to follow them and spam the inbox of every single EU employee just to delay more whatever chains they're trying to pass.
24/7/365
That's the equation for Liberty In Extremis.
Real Liberty requires time dilation, eternal vigilance, adequate provigil, and plasma rifles.
Re: Europe's New War on Privacy
#46As a liberal person, I have an unpopular opinion, but I’m a national who’s country is at war. These are adequate reactions and preparations before war. The West should be done with its rosy glasses. There’s still almost religious rejection of the possibility of war in their territory. We are on the brink of a fierce war with Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, and a few traitors you are not aware of. They have more res…
No, adequate reactions and preparations before war are building up the industrial base, securing energy and primary production, stockpiling arms, planes, subs, drones, recruiting and training military, building fortifications to defend invasion routes, building up air defenses around critical infrastructure.
Spending 2% of GDP on the military and locking people up for hurting feelings on with facebook posts, while buying Russian gas and trying to sell China EUV chip technology, and groveling to sell their yachts and football clubs and mansions to Russian and other oligarchs is not preparation for war.
Russia and China are threats, and the European ruling class are not taking those threats seriously. Quite the opposite actually they had been enabling and appeasing them and selling out their countries to help their friends and themselves get rich. While also peddling their lies about how those threats require these draconian domestic policies.
If there was real serious concern for such threats and real action taken, it would have been foremost to try to prevent real or perceived need for strong alliances between Russia and China. Instead, all actions of the past 5-10 years have been to drive those two countries closer together, making the threat much bigger. The common people do not need to be spied on and monitored and censored, it's not that there is exactly zero threat that could be mitigated or intelligence that could be gathered from doing such things, it is that it is such a minuscule non-issue compared to the gargantuan one next to it of treasonous politicians, intelligence agencies, bureaucrats, corporate bosses - "the ruling class" when it comes to dealings with adversaries.
Re: Europe's New War on Privacy
#47As a liberal person, I have an unpopular opinion, but I’m a national who’s country is at war. These are adequate reactions and preparations before war. The West should be done with its rosy glasses. There’s still almost religious rejection of the possibility of war in their territory. We are on the brink of a fierce war with Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, and a few traitors you are not aware of. They have more res…
No, adequate reactions and preparations before war are building up the industrial base, securing energy and primary production, stockpiling arms, planes, subs, drones, recruiting and training military, building fortifications to defend invasion routes, building up air defenses around critical infrastructure. Spending 2% of GDP on the military and locking people up for hurting feelings on with facebook posts, while bu…
> adequate reactions and preparations before war are building up the industrial base, securing energy and primary production, stockpiling arms, planes, subs, drones, recruiting and training military, building fortifications to defend invasion routes, building up air defenses around critical infrastructure
Which most European states are doing and have been doing since 2014 (eg. Poland, Romania).
But counterespionage is equally critical.
> trying to sell China EUV chip technology
1. Said EUV technology is develoepd and manufactured by a US DoE JV which ASML only has nominal control over
2. It was recently alleged that ASML offered to sell EUV tech to China while trojaning offered tech to give western intel visibility [0]
> While also peddling their lies about how those threats require these draconian domestic policies.
A Kantian-esque rules based order only works when all players choose to operate under said rules. Weaponizing asylum seeking, exit visas, criminal networks, and wanton sabotage require a level of visibility that will be viewed as draconian.
And to be brutally honest, this "rules based" status quo is only came to fruition in the 2000s. Western European (and it's only soft Gen X and Millenial techie Western Europeans who are complaining) intelligence agencies were much more draconian until the late 2000s.
> would have been foremost to try to prevent real or perceived need for strong alliances between Russia and China. Instead, all actions of the past 5-10 years have been to drive those two countries closer together, making the threat much bigger
If forced to choose between the entirety of the EU (which is a loose confederation with individual nation states continuing to hold soverignity) or a nuclear armed neighbor with significant resources and technology exports, China would always choose the latter - even for the simple fact that it gives China a pressure point against Vietnam, North Korea, and India, all of whom try to leverage Russian ties against China to develop strategic autonomy.
> The common people do not need to be spied on and monitored and censored, it's not that there is exactly zero threat that could be mitigated or intelligence that could be gathered from doing such things, it is that it is such a minuscule non-issue compared to the gargantuan one next to it of treasonous politicians, intelligence agencies, bureaucrats, corporate bosses - "the ruling class" when it comes to dealings with adversaries.
Legally speaking in European countries, there is no difference between "common people" and "the ruling class". The only way to dragnet the "ruling class" is through such measures.
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Frankly, this is a return to the pre-2010s norms around national security within most European states. And techies on HN and Reddit do not matter. Most of you Western Europeans would desert your home countries the moment s### got real, just like a significant portion of Ukrainian and Russian techies.
Techies who earn significantly more than most other citizens of their countries acting as if they are not part of the "capital class" is just class fetishization.
[0] - https://nltimes.nl/2025/11/20/asml-offered-spy-us-breaking-e...
Re: Europe's New War on Privacy
#48So is GDPR the "good" part of it and we should just reject Chat Control? Or is GDPR also some sort of trojan horse that sounds great, but has downsides
The GDPR is not a trojan horse. Rather, it did too little, too late. There are no negatives to it that I am aware of.
GDPR et. al favor, and entrench, larger business firms and (relatively) handicap smaller firms.
I’m not in full opposition but people should understand that there is a downside.
Re: Europe's New War on Privacy
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, adequate reactions and preparations before war are building up the industrial base, securing energy and primary production, stockpiling arms, planes, subs, drones, recruiting and training military, building fortifications to defend invasion routes, building up air defenses around critical infrastructure. Spending 2% of GDP on the military and locking people up for hurting feelings on with facebook posts, while bu…
> adequate reactions and preparations before war are building up the industrial base, securing energy and primary production, stockpiling arms, planes, subs, drones, recruiting and training military, building fortifications to defend invasion routes, building up air defenses around critical infrastructure Which most European states are doing and have been doing since 2014 (eg. Poland, Romania). But counterespionage i…
> Which most European states are doing and have been doing since 2014 (eg. Poland, Romania).
No they haven't. It's just not what the build up to to war looks like. At all.
> But counterespionage is equally critical.
No, probably not equally critical once you have decided there is likely to be war. Important sure, but:
1. Broadly spying on your own citizens is not "counterespionage".
2. Spying on your own citizens without any real military or economic preparation for war is proof that the former was not motivated by threat of war.
Re: Europe's New War on Privacy
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
> adequate reactions and preparations before war are building up the industrial base, securing energy and primary production, stockpiling arms, planes, subs, drones, recruiting and training military, building fortifications to defend invasion routes, building up air defenses around critical infrastructure Which most European states are doing and have been doing since 2014 (eg. Poland, Romania). But counterespionage i…
> Which most European states are doing and have been doing since 2014 (eg. Poland, Romania). No they haven't. It's just not what the build up to to war looks like. At all. > But counterespionage is equally critical. No, probably not equally critical once you have decided there is likely to be war. Important sure, but: 1. Broadly spying on your own citizens is not "counterespionage". 2. Spying on your own citizens wit…
> No they haven't. It's just not what the build up to to war looks like. At all
Depends European state to state. For example in 2018 [0][1], most Eastern states were spending close enough to what was needed.
The biggest laggard remained Germany due to constitutional issues, but even they along with other Western European nations have gotten back on track following the 2022 escalation by Russia [2]
> Broadly spying on your own citizens is not "counterespionage"
Dragnets absolutely are. Every piece of intelligence matters.
> Spying on your own citizens without any real military or economic preparation for war is proof that the former was not motivated by threat of war
Yet the dramatic rise in defense expenditures across Europe after 2022 and my own personal experience working with people in this space has shown a mixture of both.
I am a major critic of Western Europe's failure of preparation, but the changes that have happened in the past 3 years are massive. And every major and regional power is in the midst of a massive rearmament.
A major conventional war will happen in the next 5 years, and everyone is in the midst of preparation for that.
[0] - https://www.iiss.org/online-analysis/military-balance/2019/0...
[1] - https://www.sipri.org/sites/default/files/2019-04/fs_1904_mi...
[2] - https://www.sipri.org/media/press-release/2025/unprecedented...