Digital privacy is demonstrably being eroded on many fronts, all over the world. The EU currently has tenuous protections that are in danger of being superceded by concerns that are perceived as higher precedence. The article does seem to be doing a reasonable job of highlighting one such process and sets it in context with the bigger issue.
> The pirate party is desperate for attention among EU electors, it only has a total of 4 members [...]
Just because a political opinion has almost no supporters doesn't mean it's wrong. Historically, privacy alarmists got it right more often than not. None of the scenarios outlined in the article seem particularly over the top to me.
> Moreover: data retention is Breyer's pet peeve, he built a career around it so he obviously talk constantly about it.
I don't know this person, if you say they're untrustworthy I'll take your word for it. But being against data retention seems a reasonably stance in my opinion.
> If some of you here ever spent time in the environment of the EU elected representatives, you'd know how much each of them the lobby for their agenda, all the time, non-stop.
I'm not sure what to make of this sentence. I have no doubt that EU officials are lobbying for their agendas. But the debacle behind the upload filter / copyright directives has shown to me that those agendas either don't include digital rights (in which case they apparently default to deferring to industry lobbyists) or their agendas are not particularly well aligned with citizens' interests.