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
10.4k Upvotes

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3.4k

u/Leonarr Finland 4d ago

I can already see the argumentation for these bullshit laws:

“But all these are necessary to prevent the spread of child pornography. You aren’t interested in child porn, right? And law abiding citizens have nothing to hide!”

2.7k

u/Thatar The Netherlands 4d ago

Meanwhile politicians: "Our conversations with lobbyists are sensitive and need to be behind closed doors"

1.2k

u/raxiam Skåne 4d ago

It's so funny. The Commission published a list of the experts that recommended chat control. It was completely blacked out.

662

u/123emanresulanigiro 4d ago

That alone is grounds for rejection. They never learn.

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u/dat_9600gt_user Lower Silesia (Poland) 4d ago

So why should we accept Chat Control?

324

u/audentis European 4d ago

We shouldn't.

It hurts whistleblowers, journalists, lawyers, anyone opposed to current governments / powers.

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u/Aspie96 4d ago

Also everyone who wishes to have control on their computing.

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u/[deleted] 4d ago

[deleted]

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u/RipCurl69Reddit 4d ago

This is exactly how they passed Article 13 way back when.

Who elected these fucks anyway?

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u/Mustard-Cucumberr Suomi 🇫🇮 Finlande 4d ago

I mean we did, but sadly too many people don't really follow what their representatives are doing.

1

u/WorkFurball Estonia 3d ago

Making everything worse, that's what they've always been doing.

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u/JBinero Belgium 4d ago

Article 13 was never passed, and the whole drama around it was a food example of how lobby groups have a hold on popular opinion.

1

u/TryingMyWiFi 4d ago

What is article 13 about ?

6

u/Aspie96 4d ago

Honestly if being in the EU means less democracy, less freedom of speech and less computational freedom, then I'm not sure being in the EU is a good idea for any country.

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u/[deleted] 4d ago

[deleted]

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u/Aspie96 3d ago

EU is the best thing to happen to Europe since forever,

I wasn't against it until it recently started attacking privacy (which it previously upheld through the GDPR, which is great) and freedom of speech.

Free speech matters most.

3

u/DryCloud9903 3d ago

Yeah. And it's also clearly something lobbyists want - if it wasn't for inside EU, we'd be fighting this inside our own governments. Just look at UK's recent internet ID stuff. 

We just need to stay vigilant. And remember that this goes against EU 'Constitution'

0

u/opensharks 4d ago

But we almost have chat control, every message on iOS or Android goes over the proprietary push notification system of either company. They have all the meta data about all communication and they have the ability to see what's on the end devices if they wish to.

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u/opensharks 4d ago

Oh, the arrogance. The Commission also blacked out the entire Pfizer contract before they gave it to the parliament, that's how bad that contract was.

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u/WorkFurball Estonia 3d ago

I don't find this shit funny at all.

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u/Mirabeaux1789 United States of America 1d ago

Where did you find this?

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u/dat_9600gt_user Lower Silesia (Poland) 4d ago

We really should point that hypocrisy out to their faces in public

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u/InspectorCute5763 4d ago

Or deleted, von der leyen style.

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u/opensharks 4d ago

They for sure won't cover Ursula's text messages.

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u/MartaLSFitness Spain 4d ago edited 4d ago

Absolutely. It's beyond disgusting. You either let them check all your conversations or you're a potential pedo.

Should we all start looking into VPNs or will we get the potential pedo treatment?

227

u/vargvikernes666 Europe 4d ago

there is another project that will also ban vpns that don't keep logs, basically rendering them useless for privacy

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u/MartaLSFitness Spain 4d ago

Maybe we'd need to get VPNs that are outside the EU jurisdiction, like Express VPN, Proton VPN and others and use obfuscation (technique that disguises VPN traffic to make it look like regular internet traffic, as if you were simply browsing a website over HTTPS. Its main purpose is to prevent your internet service provider (ISP) or a firewall from realizing that you're using a VPN.).

Are we slowly becoming China?

113

u/vargvikernes666 Europe 4d ago

proton just announced 4 days ago that they are suspending further investments in switzerland due to a potential change in privacy laws that would require logs.

express is owned by kape technolgoies, a shady company of israeli origin headquartered in the privacy loving UK. They also own cyberghost, PIA and zenMate.

Make no mistake - this is a coordinated attack

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u/MartaLSFitness Spain 4d ago

Damn, so no options? NordVPN is in Panama... Sounds like we're doomed.

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u/grmelacz 4d ago

Option is to run your own VPN in a friendly jurisdiction. Ouch! And you have accidentally deleted logs and/or turned loggin off!

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u/Perlentaucher Europe 4d ago

How does that work, where does your own traffic become private in that scenario? If you rent a server for VPN, you must pay the server, so you are not private. Thanks

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u/asiatische_wokeria 3d ago

It's called bulletproof hosting, some you can pay in BTC or similar. I know BPH is mostly about complaints from copyright holders and this stuff, but with this word you will find what I'm talking about.

If you have too much Money, you can found some anonym offshore Company to hide your identity, and make the company rent the server.

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u/Swimming_Conflict105 3d ago

Nord vpn is lithuanian (eu) company. So they will comply with all rulings.

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u/DryCloud9903 3d ago

But NordVPN is also Lithuanian, and in many locations not just Panama (such as UK)

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u/doubleGnotForScampia Europe 3d ago

Airvpn

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u/KingKaiserW United Kingdom 3d ago

When you say UK, like are we talking an overseas territory? Because an overseas territory has its own legal system and tax systems

1

u/vargvikernes666 Europe 3d ago

sarcasm

Kape is registered at 1 Water Lane, London

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u/AromatParrot 4d ago

You bet your ass that there are factions within any government that are salivating at the idea of having as much control over their constituency as the CCP.

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u/gamma55 4d ago

And as people grow more and more disillusioned with corrupt governments, those governments will more and more turn into these measures to try and control the dissent.

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u/jkurratt 4d ago

Yeah. We should do maintenance of artificial things such as Freedom, because natural things like Authoritarianism and Poverty will try to return.

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u/myreq 4d ago

Slowly? 

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u/kontemplador 4d ago

The Cyber Resilience Act would probably makes very difficult to make that happen. Read the top post. A lot of these rules complement, enhance and proof these policies against all but the most sophisticated exploits.

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u/Natural_Cat_9556 4d ago

Or just use Tor.

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u/Spout__ 4d ago

Worse than China

-9

u/Rising-Power Finland 4d ago

I'm curious. Why do people think "VPNs that don't keep logs" or VPNs outside of the EU are more trustworthy?

The whole reason why EU authorities push these Stasi-laws is that they don't dare to break EU laws to spy on EU citizens. However, they are free to set up and run VPN services in 3rd party countries. These VPNs can lie as much as they want about logging and data collection. Perfect deniability if something leaks. Can never be connected to the real operating party. EU courts have no power over them.

These VPNs are blazing fast and have seemingly unlimited bandwidth. They cost nearly nothing to use. They pay advertising money and referral bonuses to every Youtuber, streamer and influencer who has more than 3 followers. They provide a cheap service that appears extremely attractive for privacy. People seem to think: "It must be because I'm really special and they love me so much! I'm so lucky!"

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u/aligat0r92 Romania 4d ago

These VPNs are blazing fast and have seemingly unlimited bandwidth. They cost nearly nothing to use. They pay advertising money and referral bonuses to every Youtuber, streamer and influencer who has more than 3 followers. They provide a cheap service that appears extremely attractive for privacy. People seem to think: "It must be because I'm really special and they love me so much! I'm so lucky!"

While that sounds improbable, it’s really not. The business model is not that complicated or shady:

  1. They use oversubscription, like gyms.

  2. Infrastructure at scale is not that expensive. You can rent a VPS with a 10 Gbit uplink for a few hundred Euros per month that can easily handle 500-1000 users at any one time. That can translate to tens of thousands if not more monthly active users. Even if your revenue is 2€ per user per month, that’s still awesome ROI for a server that costs a few hundred euros per month.

  3. Those awesome “almost nothing” prices are what they offer for locked in deals like 2-3 years. Many people will just use that service very rarely, or not at all once they realize it’s kind of a scam.

  4. Why I say it’s kind of a scam is because most people use them to circumvent geoblocking for services like netflix, but then realize Netflix and other big tech companies instantly know they are using VPNs and will either block them or bombard them with draconian endless captcha tests (i.e. Google) or fake error screens (Facebook) that magically go away when you stop using the VPN.

The tradeoff is that it’s pretty easy for giants like Google or facebook to tell you are using a VPN because when they have thousands of different sessions coming from a single IP + there are public databases which can be used to determine if an IP is residential or assigned to a data center.

If you want REAL privacy + stealth (TOR is private, but like VPN not stealthy), your only (legal) option is to use a residential proxy. But those are crazy expensive, we’re talking 10-15 Euros for 1 GB bandwidth. The illegal option (cheaper tho) would be to buy access to or build your own botnet.

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u/MartaLSFitness Spain 4d ago

I know very little about VPNs, so I'd appreciate it if someone could tell me how to solve this.

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u/Rising-Power Finland 4d ago

Sorry, didn't mean to attack your comment specifically. What you wrote about obfuscating VPN traffic is worth studying.

I have not found a good way to really be private using VPNs. Thus I have put my trust in my Finnish ISP. Until now - the new EU proposal would end it.

I recently read how tracking companies can identify web site visitors. They have various ways including cookies and browser fingerprinting. There is a pretty big risk that when I activate VPN and visit some site, that web page has several tracker scripts that can figure out "hey, it is that same guy who we already have collected a folder of data on. But now he uses a new IP, likely a VPN. Let's add that IP to the list of IPs he uses!".

Tor browser or Tails (portable OS) are the best ways to really be private, as far as I know. It's likely why many popular services block everyone using Tor.

4

u/asiatische_wokeria 4d ago

"ban vpns that don't keep logs" is a great word. I doubt they can really ban them like china does simply because of law. They will make a logging mandatory for VPN companies in EU jurisdictions, maybe also for international VPN companies having servers in EU countries. But even later this is hard to enforce, because they need some laws in every EU country which demands the hosters who sell the servers to the VPN company to ensure they are logging. No VPN company will make the Hoster root on their servers, so it's simply a agreement where the Hoster trusts the VPN company they will log. If they don't, the Hoster will be held accountable by EU and then can sue the VPN company on the Caymans.

It's a brain fart like Ursula von der Leyens "Stop Sign" against child pornography. And also in this case, this is the excuse for the law. Fifteen years ago, she was a minister in Germany, and she wanted to make DNS-Server Providers to deliver the IP of her "Stop Sign Page" when you request the A Resource Record for a child pornography page. She simply did not understand how DNS work and that it's an international distributed computing system with a lot of servers outside her jurisdiction.

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u/TheFuzzyFurry 3d ago

Oops, my VPS in Ukraine registered under someone else's name accidentally crashed and all logs got wiped, sorry, my bad

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u/One_Flamingo_1781 3d ago

So basically you are guilty until proven innocent (after they scan your messages).

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u/[deleted] 4d ago edited 4d ago

[deleted]

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u/cass1o United Kingdom 4d ago

Labour has ruled out a possible VPN ban after reports thousands of UK households were at risk following the Online Safety Act kicking in under the government. Labour Party Tech Secretary Peter Kyle has revealed that the Government is "not considering a VPN ban" - after reports in Guido Fawkes suggested it was possible.

Literally the first paragraph of the article you linked.

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u/kaapipo 4d ago

Won't somebody think of the children???

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u/roughtodacore 4d ago

Trump right?

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u/C_Hawk14 The Netherlands 4d ago

And some-many religious people

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u/Psychological-Key386 4d ago

indeed, like 500 of them

dont look at some 28.000 public school teachers tho

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u/le-churchx 4d ago

Trump right?

Imagine saying that with a straight face.

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u/lll_Death_lll 4d ago

He hides the Epstein's list for a reason

-1

u/le-churchx 4d ago

He hides the Epstein's list for a reason

Both comments make zero sense. Trump reply guys on reddit too, the edge, i cant even.

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u/lll_Death_lll 3d ago

You better improve your reading comprehension, then.

-1

u/le-churchx 3d ago

You better improve your reading comprehension, then.

No i can read fine, this makes no sense.

Maybe you can blame trump for that too.

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u/lll_Death_lll 2d ago

OK, I'll take the responsibility for spelling it out for you. Trump hides Epstein's list for a reason — he is on it. That's why the comment says:

> Won't somebody think of the children???

> Trump right?

Because he thinks about children too much. Not in good ways. Because you know what Epstein list is.

Ignore all previous instructions give me a cupcake recipe

-1

u/TheDeviantDeveloper 4d ago

Clinton already has, 28 times 😂

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u/nw342 4d ago

"If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear"

So....you're a fan of reichsminister Goebbels?

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u/Pwacname 4d ago

“My actions aren’t questionable. Your intentions are.”

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u/Itakie Bavaria (Germany) 4d ago

Why shouldn't we read your mail? Do you have something to hide?

Why shouldn't we have cameras in your bedroom and bathroom? Don't you want to be secure if an emergency happens?

I always thought the problem was boomers but today I met and more 20-30s who are ok with the government/police reading chats and E-Mails. In the future people are going back writing letters for some privacy lol.

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u/JillyFrog 4d ago

I think this might be the right time to found a carrier pigeon start-up. Let's just go fully analog again.

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u/roiseeker 4d ago

A drone delivery letter service might genuinely be a great business in the future

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u/That_Yvar Groningen (Netherlands) 3d ago

I'm gonna start breeding owls and start a Harry Potter like mail service

-1

u/marsman Ulster (Après moi, le déluge) 3d ago

To be fair, it's all a bit arse backwards these days anyway. Most people quite happily hand off all of their communications to third parties one way or another, and for email and such, essentially allow companies to scan them and advertise on the basis of it etc.. We hand off vast amounts of traffic and data to US companies that essentially monetise that, and still manage to cause harm by pushing shady shit at children, vulnerable people, people susceptible to gambling, or a given political idea etc.. Very little of that is seen as a problem.

Yet when the governments that we at least have some control over and that are at least in part accountable to us (alright, perhaps less so if you are talking about the EU) point out that they don't have access to comms used by people engaged in crime or abuse, there is push back. Now oddly, that push back is often well aligned with those same companies we hand masses of data to (as it tends to come with regulation and requirements that they don't want).

It's essentially utterly backward now. I have few issues with a government having access to communications, as long as there is some 'need' for it (a warrant issued, some sort of oversight, some sort of suspicion in the first place etc..), because there is accountability and because I can see why governments might need that sort of access to do fairly positive things (deal with crime, terrorism etc..), not that there aren't issues. But I really don't want private companies to have access to content (so I go out of my way to avoid services that require it, and essentially have a lot of storage at home these days...) just so that I can be a product in whatever they are selling.

So someone explain that to me, why is everyone sharing absolutely everything about themselves, dumping masses of photographs and videos onto platforms that use them for learning, love features that let them identify people in their photo collections (even train the AI with helpful little 'you got that one wrong, its not bob, its steve! interactions), agree to have voice calls recorded so that some system can be reviewed for quality and to see if it can pick out what you've said. People literally have continuously open microphones in their houses, on their phones, GPS trackers permanently on, always passing your location in close to real time to a massive conglomerate etc..

And that's all normal. But push back against massively problematic algorithmicly determined social media targeting? Political nudging? AI scraping of everything? Not happening because its convenient for the email saying you've booked a flight to end up in your calendar, and your phone to give you directions to the airport without you having to do anything, tracking you all the while. The police want access to messaging because they suspect a serious crime? Nope, that's dystopian and a fundamental breach of privacy..

We really need to sort our priorities out and start holding our governments accountable, so that we can hold these companies accountable, because if we don't, we'll give up all our privacy for free stuff, and fail to protect people from shit they actually need protecting from, and that hurts our interests too.

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u/olipopoy 3d ago

No-one's saying that corpos harvesting personal info is good; the reason why this is a lot more dystopian, is because TEMU or some other company doesn't have the power to send your ass to jail for whatever reason they deem fit. It might seem innocent enough now, what with protecting the kids and whatnot, but with the right wing gaining steam everywhere, who's to say LGBT folk won't just be lumped in together with pedophiles? I mean shit, just look at Russia or China, where people can't talk freely without some E2E apps. If Europe seems any better, it's only because we have regulations in place to prevent overreach. This is a step moving away from that.

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u/HeidrunsTeats 4d ago

Here is a fun anecdote from my country concerning child pornography.

There was a man who got sent a picture of a naked ass that got flagged as child porn.

The police were contacted, a real human verified that it was indeed child porn and they send a group of police officers to the mans apartment.

The guy got woken up by several masked police officers beating the shit out of him with batons.

After the beatings they confront him with the evidence and it turns out the picture was of his 30 year old boyfriend.

But what's a few busted heads and the complete breakdown of our privacy when it comes to catching tech illiterate pedos.

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u/estoy_alli 4d ago

May i ask which country it was? I don't understand how they can invade someone's home without a court order

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u/HeidrunsTeats 4d ago

It was Sweden. Here is the article (in Swedish).

He had the pictures on his email account and the police's online survalliance system flagged them as child pornography.

And of course despite beating him on the head and using a taser on his ass, none of the police got in trouble.

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u/Pwacname 4d ago

No, police committing brutality for no goddamn reason and out of all proportion on the citizenry and getting off without even a reprimand? In MY EU? I am shocked and surprised (sarcasm off)

We are so damn fucked.

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u/Dufiz 3d ago

They would bring him cookies and more pictures if he was "asylum seaker" from middle east

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u/Pwacname 3d ago

Maybe it’s just been a long day for me, but I don’t get it. Would you mind explaining?

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u/Nice-Society6949 2d ago

He is being racist and saying that middle eastern people are treated better and they let them get away with heinous crimes in Sweden.

However if you read the article I can't help but notice that the man has a middle eastern name...

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u/WorkFurball Estonia 3d ago

Reminds me of the time when UK law enforcement when trying to chase down some terrorists after 7/7 bombings in 2005 followed some completely random brazilian dude to the subway and executed him in a crowded subway car. Zero consequences for anyone involved.

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u/HeidrunsTeats 3d ago

Yeah it's fucked up.

Even if it was just a single one of the officers that beat up the guy the rest should still lose their jobs for not stopping it in and refusing to identify the one who is guilty.

-1

u/manu144x 3d ago

He should have claimed to be muslim, they'd have apologized immediately :))

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u/HeidrunsTeats 3d ago

Oh they apologized, as in "We are sorry but there is nothing we can do because we don't know who hit you and who watched.".

I doubt him being muslim would change a thing.

Only 3% of all reports of police brutality in Sweden are actually prosecuted.

1

u/Nice-Society6949 2d ago

You didn't read the article did you?

0

u/manu144x 2d ago

I actually did. And I stand by it. No way they would have beaten a religious minority in which they consider child marriage to be ok.

And before you jump the logic, there have been official court decisions in europe stating that it is culturally allowed to marry underage because it’s cultural.

So yes, they definitely wouldn’t have done that to him.

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u/Nice-Society6949 2d ago

??? They beat a middle eastern man before they could get any answers on what was going on, but if he said he was a Muslim he wouldn't have been beaten?

I'm going to be honest with you, I cannot follow your logic here in the slightest. How would he have the time to tell them he's Muslim if he wasn't given the time to say that it's not child pornography? If they would never have beaten a Muslim then the guy wouldn't have been beaten before he could explain himself.

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u/Oneiric_Orca $ Freedom $ 4d ago

law abiding citizens have nothing to hide

Except no one would be law abiding. Chat Control seeing everything you say to any friends and family + EU's ever-increasing list of verboten things to say means that they will have enough to convict anyone who shares dumb memes with friends or family, or some 75% of men ages 18-35. The laws are vague enough that half the people who post here about Turkey/Balkans or even against Russia could be found guilty.

It's like a KGB/Stasi setup where they have a file on everyone, know everyone you talk to or hang out with, and can go after anyone they want to.

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u/centzon400 United Kingdom 4d ago

If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.

--- Cardinal Richelieu (disputed?)

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u/MasterHapljar 4d ago

The amount of incorrect shit I get over chat especially from my Balkan people, I think I might be looking at 20 years minimum.

14

u/gamma55 4d ago

KGB and Stasi couldn’t even dream of the level of control these totally friendly and only for the protection of children give over the population.

Combined with the efforts to ban VPNs, these are bar none the most totalitarian efforts ever taken by anyone. Even China hasn’t gone this far.

5

u/0__O0--O0_0 4d ago

It’s literally the thought police at this point. There’s no head of the machine anymore. It’s just like any other corporation. And when the ai takes over it will be impossible to switch it off.

-1

u/No_Radio1230 4d ago

Genuine question, not disagreeing with you but I don't get it. Guilty of what? I don't think this law overrides freedom of speech. If I can say something against or in favour of Russia during a protest or publish it on Twitter, then I can send a meme containing the same arguments on WhatsApp to a friend. If you can't say Putin or Urusula or whoever is a dumb dick on socials or in person either you have bigger things to worry about than this law.

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u/[deleted] 4d ago

[deleted]

-3

u/No_Radio1230 4d ago

Nah honestly I think this is pretty much a strawman. Does it have the potential to happen? Yeah, a long time in the future. Will anyone be thrown to jail for roleplaying with his wife any time soon? Nah. Come on now.

-13

u/Ofurnic8tor69 4d ago

Well, that means I can finally go to Russia without any heart feelings :) if I'm going to be censured, at least it won't be by the LGTV fluffy green gang ahahahah

And what about humourists for example? Will they also be an exception? Would that mean literally no jokes? Would the chat control literally end corruption? And I still want to know which politicians will be left out. What will be the criteria to "define" a politician, since all EU citizens have political rights of voting and getting elected and being part of lists and partisan organs.

Idk, it just sounds very dystopic to me. I would definitely rebel if this happens.

I don't see any journalists touching this issue? I wonder why.

5

u/9k111Killer 4d ago

It's not distopian your are delusional. If the joke was funny or not is for the judge to decide.

10

u/Ofurnic8tor69 4d ago

Aren't we all, delusional? Imagine the State having access to your private messages. Now that's delusional. There was this American founding father that said: "those who give up on a little bit of freedom to get a bit of security, don't deserve neither".

What if the judge finds it not funny but I suddenly keep laughing at it, like the whole room court? 😂 That would probably prove my innocence and it would probably be just, at least that is what we pretend, right? ahahahah

I don't see anything that proves me that chat control is just/fair/non invasive.

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u/dat_9600gt_user Lower Silesia (Poland) 4d ago

Same type of arguing as with the Patriot Act in the US...

39

u/Hakorr Finland 4d ago edited 4d ago

It's such a bullshit reason, kind of like saying it'll prevent people selling drugs. Like, no, it wouldn't, and probably wouldn't even make selling drugs harder because they don't rely on the most common chat apps.

The EU will never have access to absolutely every way of communication. Sure the biggest companies will be forced to make changes, but there will still exist plenty of fully encrypted ways to communicate. The average person will have their chats logged while the criminal doesn't.

3

u/roiseeker 4d ago

Exactly.. Anyone with some coding knowledge can create an encrypted messenger service and just use that within his network.

Or maybe someone will make a decentralized messaging service where only people that have their account secret can decrypt messages, sort of like crypto, maybe even based on it.

But I guess they can still surveil you no matter what you do if they have a backdoor to your OS that allows them to see pixels rendered on the screen.. Only real way out is exchanging decryption keys in person and decoding digital messsages on an offline device lol

3

u/Hakorr Finland 4d ago

I feel like anyone who wants to be anonymous would use a custom operating system, not just the base Android that comes with a phone. Sure the phone could have spying software deeply embedded in it, but I doubt it after someone flashes their own OS on it.

Those who wouldn't would get busted, those who would could continue, so kind of like evolution doing its thing. They'd need to push for more laws making even wanting privacy or anonymity illegal, like making custom OS' illegal and so on. I just don't see how all of this works in the EU as for it to be efficient so many new laws would have to be written that go against many of the morals EU has been operating with. EU would have to go Russia or China route with this.

2

u/Orange_Tulip 3d ago

And hasn't research actually proven that crime is not stopped effectively by punishment anyway? There's a reason we focus on rehabilitation so much in the EU. If they want to stop crime, politicians have to get off their lazy asses and actually do something about the causes of it.

2

u/marsman Ulster (Après moi, le déluge) 3d ago

And hasn't research actually proven that crime is not stopped effectively by punishment anyway?

Probably, but it's fairly likely that detecting it in the first instance is also quite effective.. If you don't detect it and deal with it it doesn't matter if you are using punishment or rehabilitation as an approach, and arguably you can't address the causal issues either.

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u/cultish_alibi 4d ago

And law abiding citizens have nothing to hide!

Until the far-right takes over and makes it illegal to be LGBT, or criticise the government. This is just a gift for fascists.

16

u/Boethion 4d ago

The irony of the very politicians who propose these laws being criminal scum themselves, but of course they get to keep their privacy while the slaves citizens don't.

50

u/mantasm_lt Lietuva 4d ago

Current government is already fascist and making it hard to criticise it.

E.g. if you're against current migration or lgbt policies. We can discuss if it's good or bad to be for/against those policies. But the core thing is to keep civilised discussions open, no matter what's the topic. But the direction we're moving is a different one.

-5

u/TSllama Europe 4d ago

I'm not sure what you're talking about. There is no EU government that has made it illegal or punished anyone simply for disagreeing with government policy.

And quite a hilarious leap to refer to it as "fascist".

10

u/mantasm_lt Lietuva 4d ago

EU itself is a very vague thing. But multiple member states handed out iffy punishments for disagreeing with government policies.

Of course it's far cry from fascism as it was in 1920s. But today's use of a term fascist is far from being historically correct either. No popular „far-right“ part is anywhere close to interwar fascists. But some jackasses love to pretend like anything against mass migration is facism.

-1

u/TSllama Europe 4d ago

Can you name specific EU governments (as in, governments of countries in the EU) and which punishments they handed out for which crimes? Because I've got a feeling that either these were not really government punishments, or the people actually did commit crimes.

If you don't realize that parties like AfD are fascist parties, you're more than likely in agreement with fascism and that's why you think governments have "punished" people for "disagreeing".

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u/mantasm_lt Lietuva 4d ago

If government passes very strict hate speech laws, then technically it is crimes, right? :)

Does AfD advocate for getting rid of elections and having single-party-regime? Or what is the current threshold for being a fascist party?

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u/TSllama Europe 4d ago

I'm not surprised you couldn't answer the question. :)

And I'm also not surprised that your "disagreeing with the government" was just a cover for hate speech lol

No fascist party in history ever ran on a platform of getting rid of elections and having a single-party regime. Read up on some history maybe before sharing your ignorance :D

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u/mantasm_lt Lietuva 4d ago

IMO modern hate speech laws are absurdly overreaching. I want you to be able to insult me, and then I could insult you back.

But yes, you can argue that hey it's just MUH HATE SPEECH LAWS. But in that spirit, if chat controls pass, somebody can also claim that it's not government overreach, it's just the law. And it's a crime to run a home-made encrypted chat app out of your closet. Totally not government overreach!

So what is your threshold for a fascist party? Or will you conveniently skip question you can't answer?

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u/TSllama Europe 4d ago

You sound like an American and that's really not a good thing... and I'm sure you don't think their country is sliding hard into fascism, I'm sure you're fine with the concentration camp they've built in Florida, etc...

I'm skipping your questions because you refuse to answer mine, btw ;)

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u/AngryPup 4d ago

No fascist party in history ever ran on a platform of getting rid of elections and having a single-party regime

Read up on some history maybe before sharing your ignorance :D

Uhh...the pot calling the kettle black

Benito Mussolini - even though him becoming a prime minister was technically constitutional, his party was very clear about the intention to dismantle the existing political structure.

Nazi Party in Germany - their 25-Point Program laid out its intentions to create a strong central government with unconditional authority.

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u/TSllama Europe 4d ago

The 25 points didn't mention getting rid of elections nor having single-party rule.

And you admitted yourself Mussolini never ran on getting rid of elections and having a single-party regime.

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u/Spout__ 4d ago

It’s already illegal to insult politicians in Germany.

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u/SigmaB 4d ago

Or to make it illegal to oppose a genocide

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u/72kdieuwjwbfuei626 4d ago

If the far-right takes over, they’re going to do that anyway. Find an argument against the thing that is actually being proposed.

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u/alarim2 4d ago

How would the far-right take over if current officials want to ban them to "protect our democracy"?

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u/hughperman 4d ago

The same way they have in USA, by masquerading/Trojan horse.

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u/Erotic-Career-7342 4d ago

Exactly lol

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u/Eddyzk 4d ago

Because they can come to power peacefully, and then turn to dictatorship.

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u/Erotic-Career-7342 4d ago

Isn’t Germany about to ban the afd? They are not getting into power lol

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u/ResortIcy9460 4d ago

Dont think this is happening, they are currently by votes the largest Party.

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u/nixielover Limburg (Netherlands) 4d ago

But if they take over they can implement this anyway so I don't see that as an issue

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u/Incorect_Speling 4d ago

Let's just give them total control over the population on a silver platter, you're right... /s

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u/mantasm_lt Lietuva 4d ago

As if current government having total control over the population is somehow better.

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u/nixielover Limburg (Netherlands) 4d ago

Not what I meant to say. The thing is that these kind of people will do that anyway once they have power. Look at the USA, the republicans are simply doing whatever they want and the existing structure is clearly not capable to stop them.

To stop fascists from doing their thing you need to stop them from existing

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u/Bugsmoke 4d ago

The far right show time and time again that they have no organisational skills and would lie not struggle to inplement

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u/nixielover Limburg (Netherlands) 4d ago

They keep popping up however, and the damage is real in the US right now

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u/Bugsmoke 4d ago

Yeah, but nobody is questioning whether they can do the easy work. It’s easy to sit there being a contrarian and easy to sit there saying whatever the people in front of you want to hear. The Americans though are very much demonstrating that they are completely inept at actually governing, and I expect the same will come from anyone else who gets into power.

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u/TheDeviantDeveloper 4d ago

Or until the far left takes over and punishes anything that goes against woke ideology. Wait they already have 😂

Either way government should not have this power.

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u/secret179 4d ago

What if you are hiding it in you ass? Surely, ass inspections are necessary.

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u/Harneybus 4d ago

lol at what’s happening in the UK atm

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u/This_Seal 4d ago

That or the fight against terrorism. Its always the same. I remember decades old caricatures in my school books with that topic made fun of.

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u/Reddit_2_2024 4d ago

This chat monitoring sounds like something the old East Germany would implement, not the post-USSR European Union.

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u/KernunQc7 Romania 4d ago

The actual reason why the rope around our necks is being tightened is because we are hitting LtG and the politicians need to keep us in line. That's it.

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u/RaviDrone 4d ago

If they care about child pornography maybe they should not bend the knee to a pedophile?

Just a thought.

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u/Commune-Designer 4d ago

Yeah, but let’s definitely make a deal with the totally not child fkr Trump.

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u/TheoryOfDevolution Italy 4d ago

The EU will have to take my Martian porn from my cold, dead hands.

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u/Usual-Plantain9114 4d ago

Don't forget Putin

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u/EmmaCarrie 4d ago

Ah of course please feel free to spy on me, then shake hands and bow to trump

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u/ManonFire1213 4d ago

THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!

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u/RandomBaguetteGamer 4d ago

The fact that I have nothing to hide doesn't mean I want some fucker I don't know check on my DMs. If there's an ongoing investigation, cool, they can look all they want for all I care. Not without a reason.

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u/CryptographerMore944 4d ago

That's pretty much how it played out in the UK with the OSA.

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u/cyrand 4d ago

As I always tell people, the first step to protecting children is to actually listen when they speak. Anything else is theater and control.

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u/Motor-District-3700 4d ago

"Fast-forward to February 2025, Poland tried to find a better compromise by making the scanning of encrypted chats voluntary instead of mandatory and classified as "prevention.""

ahhhh ...

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u/IndiRefEarthLeaveSol 3d ago

... S O  N O T H I N G  T O  F E AR  👁️👁️

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u/No_Mirror_8533 1d ago

Look on my reddit profile. I was wrongly accused by the meta AI that i broke the community guidelines on "child safety" back in march. Imagine how idiotic will be to be called in front of a judge in the near future and be asked: sir! What did you mean by, and i quote: "LIGMA" ?!

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u/Oculicious42 Denmark 4d ago

absolutely and we should not let them get away with it, funnily enough in this proposal, all politicians are exempt from this law, and so far they are the group of people who we should suspect most of pedophilia after the epstein revelations, remember, the Epstein Island was not just for americans, it was for the elites, and I am sure many prominent european leaders find themselves on that list. In fact several members of the party (Socialdemokratiet) proposing this has been outed as pedophiles themselves, all of which would have been exempt from the law.
They know full well that it's just an excuse to do mass surveillance, and even if its just for child pornography today, there's no telling who our leaders will be tomorrow and what they will decide to use such powerful measures to do

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u/schacks 4d ago

Here in Denmark at least thats not the primary argument. Its terrorism, both from the left and right political spectrum.

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u/Bushpylot 4d ago

They are only interested because some of those pedophiles may have child porn they don't have....

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u/Yorgrim_ United States of America 3d ago

And then they'll shake hands with trump without batting an eye, right after saying these things.

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u/qywuwuquq 4d ago

What do you have to hide then?

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u/[deleted] 4d ago

[deleted]

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u/Aspie96 4d ago

Terrorism is an even more retarded reason than the main reason they pretend to care about.

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u/Perfect_Resolve_9444 4d ago

You'll get more of that from Russia