Today, 17 April, EDRi, in a coalition with 48 civil society organisations and 26 individual experts, call on Member State representatives not to agree to the proposed EU Council position on the Child Sexual Abuse (CSA) Regulation whilst so many critical issues remain.
I think what ultimately made me realise how fucked up things had truly gotten, was an article I read a few years ago.
A man had been assaulted by masked police in his sleep, beaten, and then taken to interrogation, where he sat for hours without really knowing what the hell was going on, until they finally started giving him information. When they finally showed him evidence, it turned out that they had gotten it completely wrong.
This "evidence" in question were pictures of him shagging his boyfriend. The police had gotten it from some American organisation, and then just acted on it, believing that he was holding a minor hostage and raping him. He wasn't; his boyfriend, the "minor" in question is in his 30s.
Some American organisation skimmed through his Yahoo mail, sent the photos to Swedish law enforcement, who promptly sent out a group of masked thugs they later weren't able to identify or punish, assaulted an innocent man, and essentially kidnapped him, all legally. No justice was ever meted out for this either, the man, his mother, and the boyfriend no longer felt safe in Sweden, and they've all moved abroad.
Does all this privacy infringement lead to criminals getting punished? Oh yeah I'm positive they do it does, just like stop and frisk probably caught some criminals too, but not without violating over 80% of the people stopped that were completely innocent regular people.
The thing is, the politicians working against us have been voted to be there. They convinced enough people that what they're doing is good for them. Also, there are also politicians that are working for our rights, there's a reason this has been on the table for so long without actually being implemented.
Honestly i think as citizens we should start setting up guillotines outside parliaments. That should remind them that they may feel invulnerable but we can always get them.
Bonus: to really scare them, set up a little cooker thing with a table next to it. The phrase "eat the rich" comes to mind, though in this context it would be more like eat the powerful
The encryption itself isn't outlawed. The law would force all app and service providers (signal and proton for example are mentioned as high risk entities) to implement backdoors. The user to user communication stays encrypted.