Fascism on the rise? Better get their list making and person finding mechanisms sorted out for them in advance.

• liberals everywhere

Ehhh.

As much as the traditition of yearly votes on some version of Chat Control sucks, it’s just two mentions (The Register missed the reference to COM (2022) 209 under “Fighting serious crimes/child sexual abuse”, because of course it’d be there) in a document with way juicier tidbits. Like

• actual enforcement of the DSA (finally some consequences for social media giants gleefully profiting from manipulation, or an affront to freedom of speech, depending on your opinion)
• overhauling Europol’s mandate to make it “a truly operational police agency”, whereas the current mandate doesn’t cover such things as “sabotage, hybrid threats or information manipulation” (cool or creepy)
• “strengthening border security”, “countering weaponised migration”, “security considerations in EU visa policy”, and “revision of the Visa Suspension Mechanism” are all probably necessary steps, but taken together paint a picture of something that shouldn’t be allowed to go too far

The DSA enforcement is something strongly opposed by social media giants, so I’d expect more denigration of the document as a whole in the future.

“the EU is a pioneer of privacy!” yeah sure.

we can only guarantee privacy if we control the software and hardware involved.

I don’t know what’s the fetish of the Nordic countries with breaking encryption at the EU level, but if they don’t want to be in it, they can be like Norway or just leave the EU altogether. Mind you that Sweden taps the internet cables that transit through them.

Also, Germany wanted to be in five eyes at one point, but they were never accepted.