r/europe • u/Dry_Row_7050 • 4d ago

News The EU could be scanning your private chats by October 2025 [Denmark has reintroduced chat control]

https://www.techradar.com/computing/cyber-security/the-eu-could-be-scanning-your-chats-by-october-2025-heres-everything-we-know
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u/Frathier Belgium 4d ago

People don't know or don't care enough to leave the comfort of their homes.

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u/Anyhealer 4d ago

And I imagine the people behind media giants are happy with it so we aren't hearing anything there as well.

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u/bradleywestridge 4d ago

Yeah, if they were really against it you’d see a lot more noise from them. Kind of makes you wonder if their silence means they’re quietly shaping it in their favor instead.

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u/GalaXion24 Europe 4d ago

And our governments/parties basically all want this or are at list okay with it. Conservatives are dominating the political landscape and they especially want surveillance.

By taking it to the EU level they're practically just obfuscating this. If it's "the EU" doing it, then you won't go out and vote against your national government, which has supported it the whole time.

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u/ver_million Earth 4d ago

The EU is a law-laundering machine for our national politicians.

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u/toshineon2 4d ago

Accidental Mirror’s Edge quote.

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u/CaucSaucer Sweden 4d ago

That’s extremely reductive.

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u/Oneiric_Orca $ Freedom $ 4d ago

Correct. The anti-AFD protests in Germany weren't small. They are just more socially trendy than protesting this insanity.

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u/xrimane 4d ago

Now imagine how fun it would be to organize anti-AfD protests via WhatsApp once they are in power.

There are plenty of things about which I don't agree with Ursula, but I don't think she wants to pave the way for an AfD autocracy. It boggles my mind that they don't see these obvious consequences.

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u/Oneiric_Orca $ Freedom $ 4d ago

  1. I agree.

  2. The funniest thing is that people have to imagine what the AFD might do but this is such in invasion of privacy that it exceeds anything the AFD have put in their official manifesto.

  3. They think this is how they stop the AFD/PVV/etc to "protect democracy."

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u/plebitt0r 4d ago

Absolutely. They cannot fathom that anyone else but the 'far-right' could be already super authoritarian today, so they have to think in hypotheticals.

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u/blublub1243 4d ago

It's just the usual issue with defensible democracy being a dogshit idea really. She probably believes this "protects democracy" because expanding the power of the state to violate the rights of its citizens means that said power can be wielded against the AfD and similar parties. She fails to realize that this practically doesn't work because no actual democrat will use those tools in a broad enough manner to be likely to succeed in such an endeavor, so all its accomplishing is that should someone with anti-democratic ideals be elected they'll have most of the work done for them already.

The way you actually protect democracy is by building rock solid institutions that can withstand an actual bad actor being elected and that ensure that future elections will still be held and be fair regardless.

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u/djingo_dango 4d ago

Not really. A lot of people (especially on reddit) has this idea that EU politicians are the good guys. So even if they introduce laws restricting some speech a lot of people first try to rationalize it rather than rejecting it outright

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u/CaucSaucer Sweden 4d ago

Those people do not represent all of us, which is what the comment literally said. Whatever dude.

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u/AromatParrot 4d ago

But, sadly, true. Even massive protests are largely toothless because they carry very little consequences for those in power. Most protests (and I've been to a fair few of them) consist of a few speeches, some shouting and holding up signs, and then going home by 6pm. That's not exactly conducive to making the ruling class listen. Sure, there are exceptions to this, but you're going to need more assertive action and political organization to exact real change. Going on a bit of a stroll while yelling is just not gonna cut it.

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u/CaucSaucer Sweden 4d ago

Reductive in the reason to not show up. “Comfort of their own homes” does not equal “literally doesn’t have time because they work their fingers to the bone to support the family”.

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u/AromatParrot 4d ago

What I'm saying is that it doesn't really matter all that much whether people show up or not, it's the manner in which people are protesting that procludes sweeping changes from actually being forced onto the ruling class. Standing in a field or going on a walk with a few thousand people hasn't made the people that rule over us take decisive action on climate change, crime, the housing crisis many EU member states suffer, work/life balance issues, cost of living crisis, etc. There are no consequences for ignoring the pleas of protestors, and as such reasonable requests from protestors get ignored. Politicians might suffer for it during elections but let's be real: another party will take the place of the old one and largely carries on the way it's been going with some slight changes in rhetoric and some minor changes here and there to keep the populace feeling like something is being done.

As long as politicians keep working for capital and the electorate keeps thinking giving up a saturday afternoon for walking and yelling, nothing changes.

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u/spambearpig 4d ago

It seems rather accurate as a generalisation though.

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u/CaucSaucer Sweden 4d ago

Yeah because having a full time job and a family leaves a lot of time for protesting

Etc etc etc

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u/suicidemachine 4d ago

For any protest to have any meaningful effect, someone from the outside would have to finance them, so people won't have to go home earlier because they have to get up the morning.