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Comment by furi | Hacker News Reader

Perhaps I'm out of the loop, but the EU attempting to make it illegal to distribute web browsers that don't include certain features is unexpected (and deeply worrying) to me.

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The EU has been attacking encryption for years. To attack the browser's root certificates does not seem out of character.

Deeply worrying, yes, but not unexpected.

Where do you find the information that it will be illegal?

The position paper linked in the article above says:

> This is because through Article 45.2, the legislative proposal, in effect, mandates that browsers automatically include Trust Service Providers (TSPs) in their browser root programs.

I haven't read the law in question but I would take "mandates" to imply that doing the opposite is somehow prohibited by the proposed law.

They are protecting their interest

Why should a foreign country have control over my interests?

Why should Mozilla DECIDE what I should and shouldn't trust?

I am very glad that the public opinion decided to not trust Firefox at all (3% market share today)

Mozilla doesn’t decide that. Mozilla is an option _you_ can chose to use. It’s one of N options.

But all large browsers happens to be American. It makes sense that EU wants to regulate this rather than hand over all decisions related to trust to USA.

For example, imagine if all big browsers everyone uses where made in China, and mostly just trusted Chinese CA. Do you think that would be a problem? Do you think the rest of the world would just let that happen instead of starting to regulate it? That is the situation EU faces right now with American browsers.

I never asked EU to do this for me, and don't want it. No government should have this power. Who did? I don't remember a single party having this in their program.

If you don't like it then you can ask your country representatives to block it for your country, EU doesn't have the power to enforce anything locally. And if all of EU doesn't like it then you can vote out the people who did it and they will give new recommendations next cycle.

EU is safe in that way since the people making the legally binding laws to enforce them aren't the same people making the EU laws, so everything has to go through at least two levels of elected representatives to actually take effect. This means that if EU wants to spy on you then your country can block it, and if your country wants to spy via this system on you then they have to get approval from EU at least. Either way EU is an improvement over just having your local representatives.

Wrong since at least 2009. The EU has the right to force regulations and directives - if the country doesn't implement EU law correctly, the EU can sue the state, stop the flow of donations and place sanctions...

The EU itself says so:

- https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-making-process/applying-eu...

Why should the EU? Mozilla doesn't decide that, it gives you the option while suggesting a standard to make surfing the web feasible, but you can revoke that trust at any time. The EU wants to change that.

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