On Thursday October 26th, MEPs in the European Parliament held press conferences outlining the compromises reached within the EU Parliament negotiators on the controversial Chat Control proposal.
Thankfully it appears that progress is being made in the fight to preserve privacy. According to MEPs, Parliamentarians have agreed to remove the clauses that would give law enforcement the power to demand end-to-end encrypted platforms hand over users messages, emails, and files as part of criminal investigations.
Capitalism and Democracy.
Capitalism because for many corporations there is monetary value in removing the privacy of citizens, this is in fact the main business model for corporate groups like Alphabet and Meta.
Democracy because it’s easier to get votes by telling people that you want to protect them from the bad ones and need to find the bad ones and that the people with nothing to hide have nothing to fear, than to tell them the truth: Control is an illusion, there can be no absolute safety, existing in a free nation will always be a balance act between protecting citizens versus protecting citizens rights and there are no easy answers to complex problems like crime or terrorism.