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Why are all European countries interested in surveillance all of a sudden in the last 3-4 years? WW3 preparations, just in case? They realized they are harborin
by mikelitoris 10mo ago
Why are all European countries interested in surveillance all of a sudden in the last 3-4 years? WW3 preparations, just in case? They realized they are harboring a lot of foreign agents? Good ol’ power grab under false pretenses (ala patriot act)? Or all of the above? I hoped Switzerland would never do this, being the “perfect” country they think they are and are so proud(smug?) of being; alas here we are.
- Lapsa 10mo agoI reckon gang stalking and politicians receiving death threats got something to do with it.
- HSO 10mo ago[flagged]
- mschuster91 10mo ago> Why are all European countries interested in surveillance all of a sudden in the last 3-4 years? That has been going on for decades, actually. What has changed is that people are looking at it.
- seydor 10mo agoNo it has not. europeans have been pro-privacy and very wary of spying until ~2015? Trump 1 was a point when privacy stopped being a priority
- roelschroeven 10mo agoLots of politicians haven been pro-spying for quite a long time. Lots of people are quite indifferent about it. The massive shift of communications to digital channels has put mountains of data right there for the grabs, which is extremely attractive for people who want access to all that data.
- mschuster91 10mo ago> No it has not. europeans have been pro-privacy and very wary of spying until ~2015? German here, look how fucking often our politicians tried to push stuff like the Vorratsdatenspeicherung.
- Diti 10mo agoMy headcannon is that it’s a money thing, and that there must be intense lobbying by the internet surveillance manufacturers (like Thales).
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- hypeatei 10mo agoI'm not European, but it's probably a mix of intelligence services advocating for it and government regulation as a solution to everything. If you believe that every problem can be solved by a regulator, then the logical endgame is the regulator needing a window into every aspect of your life so they can make sure you're not violating regulations. The Patriot Act isn't on equal footing as these Chat Control-esque laws we're seeing. The US government spies on people, sure, but they're not mandating encryption backdoors or trying to outlaw VPNs.
- gastonmorixe 10mo agoyou sure? https://www.apple.com/customer-letter/ https://www.apple.com/customer-letter/ (2016)
- hypeatei 10mo agoFair, the US government is not a saint in this respect. I will say that a three letter agency getting upset and requesting a backdoor does seem different than a legislative (executive?) commission proposing laws to backdoor communications. From a recent EFF post[0], it appears they've backed off the scanning and encryption demands so that's good, I guess. Hopefully that sticks and they don't propose something similar in the future. 0: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/12/after-years-controversy-eus-chat-control-nears-its-final-hurdle-what-know https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/12/after-years-controvers...
- timschmidt 10mo agoIn the US, the laws permitting mass surveillance are, at least in part, secret: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillance_Court#Secret_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intellig...
- drawfloat 10mo agoSnowden revealed PRISM meant the US government just had straight access to servers of major providers, so they didn’t need any of this. I would be shocked if the NSA hadn’t stepped up its data collection efforts in the last decade in secret.
- stefantalpalaru 10mo ago[dead]
- zem 10mo agoI feel like over time governments and government agencies naturally attract and retain people inclined towards overreach, especially if they live in a bubble where there are always good and valid reasons for said overreach. you need a branch of the government explicitly combatting this tendency for it not to happen.
- seydor 10mo agoCertain countries like Greece use surveillance against political opponents. In this case, the PM himself oversaw the spying of the current opposition leader, journalists and others. There's also lobbying from "security" companies who are pressuring governments to purchase and install their systems, but they require realtime spying of everyone.
- paradox460 10mo agoTwo sitting US presidents have used the intelligence apparatus to spy on political opponents. One was impeached over it
- tclover 10mo agowake up, EU is turning into the dictatorship
- snickerbockers 10mo agoIts not just Europe. america is too, it just seems less egregious because the American people are used to seeing the government contract out constitutional violations to private corporations which have incestuous links to the government. With recent AI advancements, an orwellian hell is all but inevitable. If you (by which i mean the powers that be not you specifically) don't build it then some competing faction will and they'll be in control of it. Its the classic prisoner dilemma.
- retinaros 10mo agomost of the laws voted against terrorism in europe were aimed at removing freedom and track people while they freely imported millions of people from the countries that they deemed dangerous without any background check, without even helping those people from totally different cultures to integrate within european society
- bubbasugga 10mo agothere is no plan or vision, integration strategy, mechanism to control migrant influx, no truthful evaluation of mass migration over last 10 years. just millions of migrants abusing welfare, deteriorating trust and eroding social cohesion. it's depressing, when you go to the city and have to look hard for another familiar face. it's not subtle and unfortunately it's not just all in my head.
- jajuuka 10mo agoI think it might be opportunism. Many western societies have struggled with post covid reintegration and the amount of social media kids are involved with. Not to mention rising nationalism and far right orgs. So it makes a solid catalyst to launch these mass surveillance programs in the name of protecting children and natives. Governments are never perfect. They are always in a precarious position where they can turn quite harsh quite quickly. I can't speak to each EU nations politics but things have been turning towards the right for a while and they are finally in positions where they can make these demands and get them passed.
- krunck 10mo agoThe left plays their part too.
- sunshine-o 10mo agoBrowsing the MEP positions on fightchatcontrol.eu it was very clear to me that: - So called "Far left" and "Far right" MEPs were declared "Opposed" - The "Center" MEPs were "Unknown", what means "Support" I guess. I believe we have been programmed not to notice how radical the "center" is... - [0] https://fightchatcontrol.eu https://fightchatcontrol.eu
- derelicta 10mo agoEuropean States are vassals of America. They probably just reminded us poor helvetes that our neutrality and sovereignty was on paper only, and that if we opposed them, we would end up like Venezuela or Lybia.
- sph 10mo agoThe State must grow, and this is the lowest hanging fruit. What are they gonna do, try to fix the economy? Housing? Youth prospects? It’s a win-win for the politicians and the pensioners that vote them, that believe any nonsense about children safety.
- sunshine-o 10mo ago> Why are all European countries interested in surveillance all of a sudden in the last 3-4 years? Something I realized recently is how low the approval ratings of European leaders are: - Macron and Starmer are about 18% - Mertz is 25% (only 6 months in) - Von Leyen is 23% This is ridiculous. We often perceive Trump as highly unpopular but he is cruising between 40 and 50%, that's double. So those leaders, according to the numbers, are becoming illegitimate or the system is broken. So we are just waiting for a spark to put the house on fire. Mass surveillance within your territory is really a weapon against your own population, it is not to catch spies (they are trained to evade them).
- impossiblefork 10mo agoI've observed that one path to becoming ridiculously authoritarian is to be unpopular and about to be thrown out of office, so I think you've the nail on the head with this remark. I didn't know the approval ratings were this low.
- ActorNightly 10mo ago>Why are all European countries interested in surveillance all of a sudden in the last 3-4 years? Because they look at what happened US, at the rise of popularity of fascism throughout the world (which is mostly perpetuated by key media players under the mask of being "anti-woke"), and basically decide that the people can no longer be trusted. And they are fully correct. Ive said this before on here, but the whole idea of privacy from surveillance is not applicable anymore in todays world. The standard line of arguing is that people should be able to speak the truth free from government knowing about it and trying to silence them. The problem with this * Most of the "truth" that these people refer to has been literally false propaganda, or ability to say slurs on social media. * Despite that fact, not a single public media person speaking these lies has been silenced in any way by the government, despite things like patriot act existing in US or equivalent things in EU. The only time people have been silenced in places like UK is when posting extremely out of pocket stuff. Furthermore people also say that you don't want to give the government the power to do this now because a government that you may not like will want to do this. Well, to no one surprise, the people with this libertarian mindset (and the so called "centrists") overwhelmingly vote right wing, and consequently, right wing runs on a platform of freedom, but when those people get in power, they not only actively tries to silence actual truth and free speech, but also they just don't give a fuck about the law and do what they want anyways. So as unfortunate as it is, its a much better outcome for the current state of administration in EU to take a more invasive role in policing the populace, because economic growth and stability over long term is worth way more than some idealistic approach based on above. Historically this has shown to be true over and over again, while the latter has shown to result in economic decline. So its wortwhile to sacrifice some personal rights in return for a better future - we already do this to a large extent so this is nothing new. In terms of applicability to the regular person, please understand that the privacy ship for you has already long sailed. You already can be tracked and analyzed in extreme detail, by really any person or company that is willing to buy advertising data and do correlation. There are companies that literally do this and contract out to the government. Also, you aren't that important enough to care about.
- poisonborz 10mo ago"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety..."
- layer8 10mo agoIt’s “all of a sudden” because E2EE messaging has become mainstream, and the telephone and email tapping abilities of old aren’t effective anymore.
- bubbasugga 10mo agoit had become mainstream about 15 years ago