> They are prohibited to spy on you, unless they have been authorized by the law. > That's the spirit. Don't turn things upside down! The spirit is that they

> They are prohibited to spy on you, unless they have been authorized by the law. > That's the spirit. Don't turn things upside down! The spirit is that they are now REQUIRED to spy on all their customers. Before that they where not allowed to do it any more as there were no exceptions to the new e-privacy laws. So the companies stopped spying on people as it became illegal. That caused mayor panic in the EU government as they couldn't use those company's data for mass surveillance any more (law enforcement has access to that data; by now even secretly without court warrants! Before that they had "general warrants" for secret services, "national security" interests, and such). First thing the EU did was giving the companies an "emergency allowance" to do mass surveillance again. This law now turn that "emergency allowance" into proper rules, which not only allow mass surveillance, but make it mandatory. The story (like I told) up until the current point can be read here (frankly in German, by the biggest IT online-media there): https://www.heise.de/news/EU-Parlament-erlaubt-flaechendeckende-Scans-nach-Kinderpornografie-6130267.html https://www.heise.de/news/EU-Parlament-erlaubt-flaechendecke... (There you can also see how "powerful" the EU parliament is, and that they again pass laws that are obviously against the constitution. Laws that than must be fought for many years in front the EU courts before those laws get eventually declared illegal; at this point the EU just passes a new illegal law; they're using this "trick" since inception by the way. It worked fine locally in the countries for decades now. At least it's like that in Germany, but I don't think the other countries are an exception as the EU does it also like that since day one). Don't get me wrong with this last aside: I'm a big fan of the idea behind the EU. But the execution of this idea is more and more turning into a nightmare. Everything that would not be possible locally is cheated thru the EU institutions; than they claim locally "The EU wants it so. We must obey!". But the truth is, the EU is ruled by the governments of the countries, not by the people of said countries, so "the EU" actually does what the governments tell them — the obvious trick being here to "blame the EU" afterwards, pointing away form themself.