At first glance, the proposed regulation might appear to be just another flawed attempt to balance security and privacy. But a closer look, especially at the High-Level Group (HLG) advice the EU cites as a foundational source, reveals something far more dangerous.
Start with this: when German MEP Patrick Breyer requested the names of the individuals behind the so-called High-Level Group that drafted this sweeping proposal, the EU responded with a list where every single name was blacked out. A law that would introduce unprecedented surveillance powers across Europe is being built on recommendations from an anonymous and unaccountable group. In any democracy, this would be a scandal. In the European Union, it is an outright betrayal of public trust.
According to digital rights organization EDRi, âThe HLG has kept its work sessions closed, by strictly controlling which stakeholders got invited and effectively shutting down civil society participation.â In short, the process was deliberately closed off to public scrutiny, democratic debate, and expert dissent. Civil society was excluded while powerful lobbyists shaped one of the most consequential digital laws of our time behind closed doors.
A blunt overreach of state power:
Universal identification and data retention, every click, message, and connection must be logged under your legal name, turning the entire population into perpetual suspects.
Encryption smashed: providers must supply data âin an intelligible wayâ (Rec 27.iii), forcing them to weaken or bypass end-to-end encryption whenever asked.
Backdoors by design: hardware and software makers are ordered to bake permanent law-enforcement access points into phones, laptops, cars, and IoT devices (Rec 22, 25, 26).
Privacy shields outlawed: VPNs and other anonymity tools must start logging users or shut down.
Criminalized resistance: services or developers who refuse to spy on their users face fines, market bans, or prison (Rec 34).
No one exempt: the rules cover every âelectronic communication serviceâ, from open-source chat servers to encrypted messengers to vehicle comms systems (Rec 17, 18, 27.ii).
A mass surveillance law, drafted in secrecy by unknown actors, with provisions that go beyond what we see in many authoritarian regimes. And yet, the European Commission is advancing it as if itâs routine policy work.
The European Commission must halt this process immediately. No law that enables this scale of surveillance, especially one built in the shadows, should ever be allowed to pass. Europe must not become a place where privacy dies quietly behind closed doors.
This threatens the fundamental rights of every citizen in the Union.
Itâs only a matter of time before the EU becomes the bastion of mass surveillance, where everything will be controlled, monitored and spied on, whether in the public or private sector, and the only solution will be to stay, accept being silenced or leave.
I think that in 5 years at the most, the EU will become the famous bastion Iâm talking about.
In the HLG reccomendations they abstain from using the word âbackdoorâ and instead state âaccess to data âen clairâ and the use of vulnerabilities for non-cooperative providersâ. This is legal jargon for backdoor without explicitly stating it and is a huge issue on E2EE. They further emphasis on lawful access by design and heavily implies embedding access capabilities into systems.
This is quite unpragmatic to say. The only reason to accept defeat is because youâve already accepted defeat, which is circular. If youâve truly given up personally, then donât spread it around like some sort of ideology. Attitudes like this are part of the reason how privacy advocacy fails.
As long as there are people who know that itâs possible to change things, then change is possible. But once they adopt this attitude, then change becomes impossible. Get what I mean?
I totally understand what you mean but I think that the fight for privacy in Europe is doomed to disappear sooner or later, Europe has been trying for years and by all means to impose mass surveillance and inevitably at some point it will pass, whether itâs with the Digital Euro for finance and Chat Control which will come back again and again until the law passes.
For the people on this forum or in tech, no problem, weâre pretty resourceful and weâll find solutions, but if a law like Chat Control passes, I canât see my non-tech friends and family doing anything to prevent governments from spying on their conversations, and at some point weâll be forced to use the same tools as them to be able to communicate, after all, people have ânothing to hideâ.
Iâm sorry to be so pragmatic and perhaps to create a bad atmosphere, but I sincerely believe that sooner or later our finances, research, conversations and movements will be monitored and analysed in the future.
Youâre not being pragmatic, youâre being pessimistic which is completely different and frankly an unhelpful attitude. By being pessimistic you only seal your fate rather than speaking out while you still have a fighting chance.
At least from historical record, the EU has always been leaning more towards the paternalistic side of things. Yes, The EU will protect your right to manage and delete your data with the GDPR. However, some lawmakers also want exclusive backdoors that somehow wonât affect specific government officials. Or to scan messages for illegal content. I am not concerned why some lawmakers may propose laws that claim to promote the âsecurityâ and âwellbeingâ of their residents.
Itâs a huge governing body, so we should probably wait and see until some movement has been made on this proposal.
seriously the next thing you want is me wanting to scramble to move to something like Japan then perhaps history repeat itself, itâs crazy to think about.
I half understand the defeatist attitude but I also think this is not the way to go indeed.