As the old saying goes, the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

And the willingness and ability to enforce it. The current iteration of ChatControl is pushed by Denmark, which is at present the President of the Council of the European Union. The Danish Constitution itself enshrines the right to privacy of communication [0], but this is not stopping Denmark from wanting to ratify ChatControl anyway.

[0]: https://danskelove.dk/grundloven/72

In the charter, the protection of personal data and privacy is a recognized right. So chat control is also probably against the EU law.

For example, in the EU you technically have the right to freedom of expression, but you can also be arrested if you say something that could offend someone.

Similarly rights to privacy are often ignored whenever a justification can be made that it's appropriate to do so.

I don't know about elsewhere in the world, but here in the UK you don't even have a right to remain silent because the government added a loophole so that if you're arrested in a UK airport they can arbitrarily force you to answer their questions and provide passwords for any private devices. For this reason you often here reports of people being randomly arrested in UK airports, and the government does this deliberately so they can violate your rights.

The issue is what is the European Commission willing to do in order to guarantee that fat contract check goes to Palantir or Thorn or whoever has the best quid pro quo of the day.

This is not Stasi this is Tech billionaires playing kings and buying the EC and Europol for pennies on the dollar and with it the privacy of virtually every citizen of zero interest for law enforcement or agencies.

Constitutions don't enforce themselves. The US constitution has a crystal clear right to bear arms but multiple jurisdictions ignore it and multiple supreme court rulings and make firearm ownership functionally impossible anyway. Free speech regulations have, thankfully, been more robust.

The only thing that stops bad things happening is a critical mass of people who believe in the values the constitution memorializes and who have enough veto power to stop attempts to erode these values.

The US has such a critical mass, the gun debate notwithstanding. Does the EU have enough people who still believe in freedom?

Yes, it would lower such barriers for countries that are commonly seen today as Europe's adversaries. But in this case, the U.S. (or rather, U.S. organisations and corporations) might be the primary bad actor pushing for ChatControl. See e.g.:

Thorn (organization) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorn_(organization)

"Thorn works with a group of technology partners who serve the organization as members of the Technology Task Force. The goal of the program includes developing technological barriers and initiatives to ensure the safety of children online and deter sexual predators on the Internet. Various corporate members of the task force include Facebook, Google, Irdeto, Microsoft, Mozilla, Palantir, Salesforce Foundation, Symantec, and Twitter.[7] ... Netzpolitik.org and the investigative platform Follow the Money criticize that "Thorn has blurred the line between advocacy for children’s rights and its own interest as a vendor of scanning software."[11][12] The possible conflict of interest has also been picked up by Balkan Insight,[13] Le Monde,[14] and El Diario.[15] A documentary by the German public-service television broadcaster ZDF criticizes Thorn’s influence on the legislative process of the European Union for a law from which Thorn would profit financially.[16][17] A move of a former member of Europol to Thorn has been found to be maladministration by the European Ombudsman Emily O'Reilly.[18][19]"

Additionally, it would not surprise me at all if Palantir is lobbying for this either. Many EU countries, like Germany and Denmark, have already integrated Palantir's software into the intelligence, defence, and policing arms of their governments.

But at the end of the day, while it is convenient to blame external actors like U.S. corporations, ultimately the blame lies solely on the shoulders of European politicians. People in positions of power will tend to seek more, and I'm sure European politicians are more than happy to wield these tools for their own gain regardless of whether Palantir or Thorn is lobbying them.

Hitler knew if he had lost, he would have been executed. Didn't stop him from going war.

Maybe a less extreme version of this is that if you become president you are stripped of all property and become the ward of the state after your term is over, enter a monastery sort of situation, for the rest of your life.

We can. This has already happened with the fairly recent SALT TYPHOON hacks. China (ostensibly) abused lawful wiretapping mechanisms to spy on American (and other) citizens and politicians. The news at the time wasn't always explicit about the mechanism, but that's what happened.

China wouldn't have been able to do this if those mechanisms didn't exist in the first place.

[1] - https://irssi.org/documentation/help/otr/

> the proposed legislation includes exemptions for government accounts used for “national security purposes, maintaining law and order or military purposes”. Convenient.