It seems like a lot of these proposals are coming out of Europe—assuming I’m not mistaken (and I may well be), why is Europe cracking down so much on privacy?
The military of Sweden seems to get it at least, they "write in a letter to the government that the proposal cannot be realized "without introducing vulnerabilities and backdoors that can be exploited by third parties"". The military also recently advocated for more use of Signal, so clearly they've reviewed it and find the current security good enough.
Most of this is being done to address the increasing terrorism threat we now face on a daily basis. Freedoms really only work in societies where people broadly share the same values and cooperate, but European societies are fragmenting and increasingly becoming less safe and less tolerant. If we want to do something about this then restricting freedoms is probably going to be required to some extent.
Another theory I have is that this could just be a symptom of an older and more female voter base. As women become more politically active and as older generations make up a larger share of total voters if we assume these demographics are more safety orientated on average then perhaps we should assume that safety concerns will begin to trump the desire for freedom. It's just a theory though.
Or you could undo the changes that have caused that decline in social cohesion. People don't share the same values because our governments have been non-stop importing people with radically different values. Values which see it as a positive to end the lives of those who don't agree.
> Another theory I have is that this could just be a symptom of an older and more female voter base.
That voter base does vote more for the established parties and their policies that have gotten us into this compared to the population at large, yes.
> Since the revelation of ‘Chatcontrol-Gate,’ we know that the EU’s chat control proposal is ultimately a product of lobbying by an international surveillance-industrial complex. To ensure this never happens again, the surveillance lobbying swamp must be drained.”
Step 2: Sweden becomes the gun crime capital of Europe.
Step 3: Change your society to a low trust society, dismantling all the wonderful things social services and liberal institutions.
I'd agree with you if you just put "bureaucrats" instead of European bureaucrats, what country isn't currently led by a bunch of bureaucrats who don't seem to understand even the basics of the technology they legislate about?
I've yet to seen a country to lead the way, no wonder the rest of the countries don't seem to know what to do and just throwing stuff at the wall.
I assume it’s just one of those things that Swedish society is having to grapple with abruptly and that they will adapt the appropriate institutions. I have more faith in Sweden than my own country lately.
So does Sweden, and have had strong privacy advocates for a long time. Remember that The Pirate Bay came from Sweden? It spawned a political and ideological movement (Piratbyrån & Copyleft/Kopimi) that still has some presence in Sweden and EU although doesn't seem as strong as it used to be, except for Iceland I think.
> I have more faith in Sweden than my own country lately.
Not sure what your own country is, but assuming it's US, they're pretty much equal in many ways (but not all obviously) and Sweden basically copy-pastes US political policy for the last decades, for better or worse.
Gangs would find another communication channel before the law is put into effect. Yet backdoor would be there forever.
Those themes keep recurring both on EU as well as national levels. Including nations that ain't EU members.
As a citizen of EU member, I’d love to change this discourse. But there seems to be very few options to vote for. And then such BS happens at levels that are practically out of reach of democratical process.
Under a benign government (as arguably we have in most of Europe), we can have a reasonable assumption that the state will act in the interests of the population. The public sector workers who have chosen that line of work probably believe in what they're doing and want to do it well.
The government has always had the ability to steam letters open, and they will always need to, in order to fulfill their duties to the population.
Of course, requests such as adding a back door to end-to-end encryption are unnecessary when they could take control of one of the devices in some fashion...
I'm sure some of the politicians advocating for this have ulterior motives, but I hope we won't get in a position where we find out what those motives are.
In some European countries public money has turned into a pretty transparent way of buying votes. These votes are used to make sure nothing ever changes.