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European Commission Revives Push for Encryption Backdoors in ProtectEU Strategy

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Re: European Commission Revives Push for Encryption Backdoors in ProtectEU Strategy

#121
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europe has learned the lesson that extremists are bad, but it has not learned the lesson that the tools shouldn't exist.

There will always be extremists on both sides of the political spectrum. The problem is quite simple: people swing more to one side or another if their voices are not heard. The current boogeyman is the growth of the far-right in Europe. But that could have been prevented if the EU did not have an open-doors migration policy to start with. And to have listened to the people on other issues too.

Far-right mostly uses migrants as an easy scapegoats for any problem. In many countries I have seen migrants taken advantage of (worse work condition, employers not paying taxes, no healthcare provided, children have worse education, no insurance, etc).

I wouldn't even mind if they would be honest about what they claim (being nationalist), but I don't see any right wing party talking seriously about programs to encourage natality, reduce poverty or improve education. Blaming a generic category for your problems rarely solves said problems.

So, for me the boogeyman is talking about superfluous generic topics rather than solutions to problems I see: education, natality, energy, industry.

Re: European Commission Revives Push for Encryption Backdoors in ProtectEU Strategy

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There will always be extremists on both sides of the political spectrum. The problem is quite simple: people swing more to one side or another if their voices are not heard. The current boogeyman is the growth of the far-right in Europe. But that could have been prevented if the EU did not have an open-doors migration policy to start with. And to have listened to the people on other issues too.

> But that could have been prevented if the EU did not have an open-doors migration policy to start with. And to have listened to the people on other issues too. I believe there are more nuances to this, then simply blaming it on immigration policies. There are a lot of variables in place for why far right movements are and have been on the rise in the EU. And I certainly believe the issues could've been handled bett…

To be honest immigration happened forever because people look for a better place to live. The able, hard working and entrepreneurial ones bring a lot to the countries they immigrate to. So, I do not see immigration as "a problem".

Additionally Europe's natality is not great, it needs people working. So many enterprises in Europe are happy with that.

Why is immigration presented as a problem? Because it is easy, does not affect directly any potential voter (I mean, if you say "rich are to blame", around half of the voters will not vote you, if you say "the poor are to blame" the other half will not vote you, but immigrants? No problem they generally don't vote) and because Europe has a tradition to seeing itself "above others". So if there are problems and you see dark people around, must be there fault, no? I really think they are (many) people that think like that (and I also met a couple)...

Re: European Commission Revives Push for Encryption Backdoors in ProtectEU Strategy

#123
post #45

Oh man I will never let them read my private comms. So what are they going to do to me? I’m afraid that I, as a good person and father, am going to be punished for not letting them read my private messages. I’m afraid for my future in the EU.

The problem is that we keep on voting in politicians (left and right) that do not fight for freedom and privacy. The EC in the end is only an extension of national governments (through the European Council) and the European Parliament (in the sense that they propose and vote for EC members). There are parties that truly care about these values, but populists, corporate influence campaigns, and foreign interference su…

While I don't mind privacy, I care much more about other topics, like, for example, education. The right wing party in the country I vote in, when it got into power (not for long thankfully) managed to slash 1 billion of education!

The next generation must understand how stuff works. If we have privacy and no education, we might get burnt on stakes because any invented stupid reasons, no matter if someone read or not your communications.

Re: European Commission Revives Push for Encryption Backdoors in ProtectEU Strategy

#124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The dictators part is false, the EU is not a structure you can easily dictate. But this encryption backdoor thing is somebody's pet project and extremely alarming. The UK has a similar bend they've already put in place with IPA and TCNs. The US is way gone on decrypted stored data and metadata, but not on encryption backdoors yet, though legislators have tried.

Can you please explain to me why you think this is the case? Can parliament make law or not? Why is the commission the only body that can make law? Its staffed with people that appear to serve special interests. I saw this during the Stop Killing Games Where the EU commission meet with the game industry privately in EU before the decision on the Stop Destroying Video games Initiative. If there is no way to challenge…

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/topics/en/article/20240524STO...

Re: European Commission Revives Push for Encryption Backdoors in ProtectEU Strategy

#125

This is from 2025. I don't know why someone has seen fit to repost it again in 2026.... I'm guessing they didn't look at the date. And lots of people here are spouting FUD. In the ensuing period, the EU took expert advice later in 2025, and as they say in an update a few months later in June 2025[1]: The High-Level Group recommended taking a cautious approach to designing solutions for lawful access to systems, where…

The OP/submitter's history basically looks what I expect coming from a US or Russian propaganda bot.

Re: European Commission Revives Push for Encryption Backdoors in ProtectEU Strategy

#126
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are peer to peer (or otherwise decentralised, e.g. multiple servers operated by many different people) alternatives to Signal. I haven't tried any of them, nor do I know which ones have been audited. But if the worst comes to the worst, there are alternatives that are hard to block. In particular I remember reading about DeltaChat which piggiebacks on normal email infrastructure, making it really hard to block…

Been using matrix for years now. Even operating a server for a small community. It is slightly more involved for regular users though so that is not the best but otherwise works. Setting up your own federated instance is quite simple, there is an Ansible playbook around to make it even easier. You could even isolate it and have it only for your org. From what I know there is some traction to get it adopted in a bunch…

Huh, I guess that works. I never considered it as a Signal replacement. It always seemed closer to an IRC (and I guess Discord and maybe Slack) replacement to me. But yeah I do believe it has end to end encryption for individual communication as well.

Re: European Commission Revives Push for Encryption Backdoors in ProtectEU Strategy

#127
post #35

Stuff like that make people want to leave EU, not some "enemy propaganda" which is real unfortunate in current times.

There is a reason why the popularity of far right is all time high everywhere in the EU.

Like far right isn't going to vote in mass surveillance the moment they have any chance. (Not disputing that there are other frustrations that are fuelling the rise of far right, correct or not. But isn't one of those)

Re: European Commission Revives Push for Encryption Backdoors in ProtectEU Strategy

#128
Very European move.

Politicians are quick to criticize when Russia does it, but I guess it's okay because it's Europe. They have magic cheese that can only be bought from one island in Greece........

I'm still mourning the pre gdpr Internet. Now productivity took a hit for cookie theater.

Re: European Commission Revives Push for Encryption Backdoors in ProtectEU Strategy

#129

The European Commission has far too much power, and answers far too little to the populace. In reality, they want to be dictators. If you don't know, the unfortunate way thf EU is structured, the Parliament cannot initiate legislation. They can only vote on whatever the Commission puts in front of them. If the Parliament votes "wrong", the Commission just repackages the idea in a new bill, pulls a couple of dirty tri…

The wild part is that both the United States and China will get the decryption. There's too much money and corruption in the world.

Maybe local(European states) won't care as long as they can use it against their people in their feifdom.

Re: European Commission Revives Push for Encryption Backdoors in ProtectEU Strategy

#130

The European Commission has far too much power, and answers far too little to the populace. In reality, they want to be dictators. If you don't know, the unfortunate way thf EU is structured, the Parliament cannot initiate legislation. They can only vote on whatever the Commission puts in front of them. If the Parliament votes "wrong", the Commission just repackages the idea in a new bill, pulls a couple of dirty tri…

Given the almost religious attention the term limit of sitting presidents of the US has it is interesting that so very little attention is given to the fact that the EU structure has no effectual limit at all; if the current EU President were to be nominated by the European Council in a circular manner she will effectually serve for perpetuity (while the Parliament can in principle say no they are only ever given one…

The United States is religious against kings and genuinely thinks they have a holy mission of humans right, freedom, democracy, and liberalism.

Obviously this doesn't always happen, but there's only an extremely small minority that think otherwise.

Maybe put me in the otherwise camp. Disappointed democracy produced Trump. Maybe we need a technocracy to defend the world from China.

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