Contrary to headlines suggesting the EU has “backed away” from Chat Control, the negotiating mandate endorsed today by EU ambassadors in a close split vote paves the way for a permanent infrastructure of mass surveillance.
While the Council removed the obligation for scanning, the agreed text creates a toxic legal framework that incentivizes US tech giants to scan private communications indiscriminately, introduces mandatory age checks for all internet users, and threatens to exclude teenagers from digital life.
The article is non-paywalled, freely readable on the link --^
This is like the 15th time they’ve tried to implement this. The fact that it came up, they were told his is a bad idea, it was shot down, and they STILL want to keep pushing and keep pushing it; what it really aught to tell you is that it’s time to re-evaluate your diagnosis of the EU and its tendencies.
Authoritarianism is on the rise everywhere, because opportunists see vectors to power available everywhere in technology, now that it has firmly propagated among everyday people. They can spread lies and misinformation, and a huge swath of people just fucking buy it. Consent can be manufactured at the drop of a hat.
They can’t allow dissenting opinions or pesky truth tellers to get in the way of their petrofortunes, of their pedo rings, their yachts, their security blankets.