I’m not in the US, and glad to no longer be in the EU.
My point is that there is zero chance of this unpopular legislation being repealed once the EU have forced it through.
I would rather take my chances in a sovereign parliamentary democracy. I know the UK has draconian anti privacy laws on the statute books and have retained a lot of EU rules by default. But we still cling to the belief that parliaments cannot bind the hands of future parliaments, and we expect manifestos to be published and debated prior to elections. A lot of this has been pushed to the background while the UK has been governed by incompetent untrustworthy technocrats cut from the same cloth as the Eurocrats they yearn to be, but a political tsunami is on the way. You can feel it. The globalist establishment will rage against it as ghastly Populism, but I see it as a renaissance of Democracy. It gives me hope that unpopular laws can be amended or repealed.
I do know how it works, I also know about U-turns, backbench revolts, opinion poll panic, doorstep canvassing hostility, and voter backlashes. All ways in which the electorate can have an impact.
Good luck getting your EU Commission to change their mind about something they really want. The "right" voting buttons will be pushed eventually.
But I suspect you already know that.
The widely discussed "Chat control" proposal has already been withdrawn. What remains is much narrower in scope. For instance, it no longer includes mandatory client-side scanning.
Over time, these kinds of proposals usually get watered down further until they either respect individual rights fully or fade away entirely, as has consistently happened with privacy-invasive initiatives in the past.
The only exception I can think of was the "Data Retention Directive" that was (eventually!) rejected by the ECJ - only for the UK to reimplement it after Brexit...
> For instance, it no longer includes mandatory client-side scanning.
It's still unclear whether it really is removed. They turned scanning into something voluntary, and then said big chat providers must do _something_ to monitor abuse. It seems _very_ likely that the regulatory bodies/courts will decide that the bar they must clear to meet this "something" is client-side scanning.
And I agree that the regulation still has a lot of hoops to jump through to be implemented, and will likely be further tweaked. But it's _very_ important to keep raising our concerns, otherwise there will be no pressure to change the currently problematic legislation.
EVERYTHING is unclear, because they have literally only just received a negotiating mandate to discuss the idea. This isn't even a proposal that will reach parliament in its current form - its undergone near zero scrutiny because it simply hasn't progressed far enough to be scrutinised.
> It seems _very_ likely... client-side scanning
Actually, it seems almost completely UNLIKELY due to the protections afforded EU citizens. The last time legislation was passed that eroded privacy it was repealed by the ECJ (albeit many years later).
> it's _very_ important to keep raising our concerns
My point is that there is zero chance of this unpopular legislation being repealed once the EU have forced it through.
I would rather take my chances in a sovereign parliamentary democracy. I know the UK has draconian anti privacy laws on the statute books and have retained a lot of EU rules by default. But we still cling to the belief that parliaments cannot bind the hands of future parliaments, and we expect manifestos to be published and debated prior to elections. A lot of this has been pushed to the background while the UK has been governed by incompetent untrustworthy technocrats cut from the same cloth as the Eurocrats they yearn to be, but a political tsunami is on the way. You can feel it. The globalist establishment will rage against it as ghastly Populism, but I see it as a renaissance of Democracy. It gives me hope that unpopular laws can be amended or repealed.