European Commission Revives Push for Encryption Backdoors in ProtectEU Strategy • Hacker News Board

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

#181

Post by ExoticPearTree » Mon, Aug 31, 2026, 7:43 AM UTC

vladms wrote: post #122

BonerWiener wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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".

You allow onky the highly skilled ones who cannot reach their potential from where they come from.

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

False. No need for outside workers. There are about 500mm europeans, abs not all of them are old. You remove the benefits and all of a sudden you get a few tens of millions of able bodied people looking for work. Problem solved without importing people from other places.

> 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)...

Turn on the TV or read a newspaper to see how much crime is caused by wanton unchecked migrants invading Europe.

Even for places where we import migrant workers it does not take long until they start creating drug trafficking rings and resort to violence.

I am not blaming the poor. Europe has plenty of thise too. But at least we have cultural similarities and don’t resort to violence unlike the migrants that wash up on the shores of Europe, which conviniently all have smartphones ready to be used.

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

#182

Post by vladms » Mon, Aug 31, 2026, 8:29 AM UTC

ExoticPearTree wrote: post #181

vladms wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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". You allow onky the highly skilled ones who cannot reach their potential from where they come from. > Additionally Europe's natality is not great, it needs people working. So many enterpri…

> Turn on the TV or read a newspaper to see how much crime ...

Amazingly on TV in Europe (watching 3 countries) I see how many women are killed by their partners (nicely born here), how politicians are (occasionally, mostly rarely) arrested for building mobster like organizations, how large enterprises (own by locals) avoid paying taxes.

The poor don't resort to violence? I wonder what blessed country are you in for the poor to afford to be nice. 30 years ago in the quite poor Eastern Europe (now part of EU, not that poor anymore) there was direct violence (sure, not concentrated like a terrorist attack) like mugging or rapes or just people beating others on the street because they "did not like how you look". All that without immigrants. So yeah, kind of hard for me to blame so much immigrants for all the violence.

And on that, 70s and 80s the was perfectly calm no? No terrorist attack IRA, ETA (found easy a reference https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ETA_attacks - 829 deaths), Italian mob and the like were "freedom fighters" probably...

I am definitely not for completely open borders. And immigration should be controlled. And some people should be deported. I just do not think it is the "largest" problem that it is presented, and I find discussing it avoiding other thorny, complex issues (energy, climate, education, etc.).

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

#183

Post by port11 » Mon, Aug 31, 2026, 8:54 AM UTC

dmix wrote: post #132

trinsic2 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

EU is less of a dictatorship and more of a technocracy. Where they rely heavily on experts to define policy rather than a democratic system. As you said: > Where the EU commission meet with the game industry privately in EU before the decision on the Stop Destroying Video games Initiative The experts they choose can just be anyone with a bit of authority whom the bureaucrats can find to support what they already want…

“Experts.” Sorry, but they aren’t. I know enough people advising policy, working for external agencies, staffed on projects on a “who’s available to work on this?”-basis without any relation to their expertise.

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

#184

Post by port11 » Mon, Aug 31, 2026, 8:55 AM UTC

trinsic2 wrote: post #149

petre wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's linked in the second paragraph of article. More effective tools for law enforcement and stronger JHA agencies Law enforcement needs the right tools to be effective. And with 85% of criminal investigations relying on digital information, this includes lawful access to data: … · A Roadmap on lawful and effective access to data for law enforcement, · A Technology Roadmap on encryption, and an impact assessment with…

> lawful access I have heard this term used before. I think in the chat control stuff. Its a red herring term. More like unlawful access and they don't want people to suspect that they are trying to illegally break and harm communications

They could literally have lawful access to data. You know, like they used to, with courts and oversight and… democratic processes at play.

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

#185

Post by modo_mario » Mon, Aug 31, 2026, 9:09 AM UTC

marcus_holmes wrote: post #166

ExoticPearTree wrote: post #101

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.

The far right are picking wedge issues not from principle, but from political expediency. In the UK they've switched from attacking immigrants to attacking disability benefits, because the clampdown on immigration was effective (though they obviously are continuing to shout about immigration and immigrants). So if the "open-door" immigration policy didn't exist, they would have picked something else as the wedge issu…

>because the clampdown on immigration was effective (though they obviously are continuing to shout about immigration and immigrants

They still have 2-3 times the amount of migration they did in the 90's and that is assuming they're not masively underestimating again?

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

#186

Post by raxxorraxor » Mon, Aug 31, 2026, 9:35 AM UTC

bradley13 wrote: post #19

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…

Some argue the commission still has democratic legitimacy through national governments. In my opinion that is simply not the case for several reasons.

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

#187

Post by Xelbair » Mon, Aug 31, 2026, 9:47 AM UTC

vladms wrote: post #116

Xelbair wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EU and EC have been made as a resistant to populism by design, the end result is that we citizens can't change anything, and decisions are arbitrarily made behind closed doors. The amount of layers between your vote, and the elected official that matters is just too big to have any form of accountability, especially when you couple it with national issues. I'm frankly less concerned about populism, but more concerned…

Not that they don't disregard some of my opinions too, but I am quite worried about the opinions of some of the other citizens. The worst thing might be that it is kind (or close to) a best possible average (can't assess honestly). When I talk with many (mostly opinionated) people, at various ends of various positions (left, right, ecology, industry, security, etc.) I can't imagine any leadership that would make a si…

Or maybe it's impossible to satisfy desires of such culturally diverse populace as EU citizens.

Which makes current model, and federated model impossible and/or prone to crumbling. Problems of Germany are different than one Spain faces, and France, and Poland etc.

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

#188

Post by ajb » Mon, Aug 31, 2026, 9:47 AM UTC

trinsic2 wrote: post #145

ajb wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a dilemma, but I don't think it's loss of legitimacy so much as authority. They are quite similar but not the same; an institution that loses authority but is still legitimate, and there is potential for it to regain authority (like the strategic concept of a "fleet in being"). But for many states, they have significantly greater power by virtue of being in the EU than they would without. Arguably, even the…

>But for many states, they have significantly greater power by virtue of being in the EU than they would without. Arguably, even the UK lost power by leaving. What kind of loss of power are you referring to?

The UK was one of the largest members of the EU, and as such had a substantial say over it's direction and policies; and as the EU is a major economic power, consequently that is power in the world as well.

That is, it's government had this, as an "inside the room" participant. Power is often exercised by that means; in fact one definition of power is your having the means to sway others. For example, in the 90s the EU was debating whether to "deepen or widen", i e. to become more like a single state, or to admit more members. Germany and France led the faction that wanted to deepen, the UK, along with smaller allies, preferred to widen and admit more members from Eastern Europe. The UK's preference prevailed.

Because this mostly happened in diplomatic negotiations, it's not so well known, the press thought that EU bureurocracy was a better story.

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

#189

Post by idoubtit » Mon, Aug 31, 2026, 10:21 AM UTC

woodruffw wrote: post #133

whatsThisBtn4 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don’t think the average American voter “genuinely” thinks that they’re on a Blues Brothers-style mission from god to deliver liberalism and freedom to the world. I would be surprised if that’s even a minority view among voters.

The average American voter does think the USA play a positive role for the world, while the average non-American think otherwise. In details, a 2026 study from the Pew Research Center states that:

- 57% of A. think the USA contribute to peace in the world a great or a fair amount.

- Republicans and supporter think so at 82%.

- Outside of the USA, the median is at 35%.

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

#190

Post by Schmerika » Mon, Aug 31, 2026, 10:38 AM UTC

idoubtit wrote: post #189

woodruffw wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think the average American voter “genuinely” thinks that they’re on a Blues Brothers-style mission from god to deliver liberalism and freedom to the world. I would be surprised if that’s even a minority view among voters.

The average American voter does think the USA play a positive role for the world, while the average non-American think otherwise. In details, a 2026 study from the Pew Research Center states that: - 57% of A. think the USA contribute to peace in the world a great or a fair amount. - Republicans and supporter think so at 82%. - Outside of the USA, the median is at 35%.

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