We should. The problem is that politics is messy and with lots of opposing views. See the GDPR versus this Chat Control absurdity. But _principles_ are those that stick, and I think that the principle that communication should be private _always_ should become sort of constitutional within the EU. We are the ones that vote, we are the ones that need to signal that we don't want to give up privacy for whatever "security" some, completely uninformed, want to promise.
You'd be surprised how easily people give up their rights for the made up security promises, without putting up a fight.
Let's go through a short list I experienced during my lifetime in my country, off the top of my head.
-2001 Invasive airport checks after 911
-2015 mandatory registration with ID of prepaid SIM cards after islamist terrorist attacks
-2020-2022 mandatory COVID vaccine ID, to be able travel and enter establishments
Sure there was the famous trucker protests in Canada against mandatory COVID pass, but the government cracked down on that, so your protests against systems of control are irelevant. Chat control is inevitably gonna happen with or without your approval.
As for corona, it's more or less common knowledge by now that unless you're 60+ a common cold is more dangerous.
That's a lie. The reality is that Covid-19 is massively more fatal than the ordinary flu [1]:
> We take the comparison between Covid-19 and flu seriously by asking how many years of influenza and pneumonia deaths are needed for cumulative deaths to those two causes to equal the cumulative toll of the Covid-19 pandemic between March 2020 and February 2023—that is, three years of pandemic deaths. We find that in one state alone—Hawaii—three years of Covid-19 mortality is equivalent to influenza and pneumonia mortality in the three years preceding the Covid-19 pandemic. For all other states, at least nine years of flu and pneumonia are needed to match Covid-19; for the United States as a whole, seventeen years are needed; and for four states, more than 21 years (the maximum observable) are needed.
The reduction in CFR since 2022-ish can mostly be attributed to vaccines [2], but unfortunately it turns out that said vaccine protection only lasts for about 6 months - that is why we are seeing COVID "summer waves" [3] which hasn't been a thing for influenza... people get vaccinated in autumn and winter, which lessens the impact of Covid during the winter time, but once that partial immunity expires cases go up again.
[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10168500/
[2] https://www.rsm.ac.uk/media-releases/2023/risk-of-death-redu...
[3] https://www.npr.org/2025/07/22/nx-s1-5453516/summer-surge-in...
None of your links address the OP's claim. You'd need to consider < 60 mortality, not total. Replies like yours are not trust-building.
But even if, who are you to decide the 60+ don’t need protection?
And what about the people with Long COVID?
So your exampled don’t quite fit.
Try passing a law with daily house searches for security and you‘ll see the difference.
That one makes sense for any government valuing the lives of its citizens. COVID was one hell of a nasty bug for healthy people, and for those not in good health it often meant death.
COVID cost the lives of at least 7 million people worldwide, of which 1.2 million were in the USA. "The cost of <<freedom>>" one might say if one were absolutely cynical, simply because of the massive difference in deaths per capita to just about every other large developed country [1].
And that doesn't include the cost of lost productivity due to people being out sick, struck by Long COVID/MECFS or having to be caretaker for affected people.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_death_rates_...
The US is mid-way down that list, below most of Eastern Europe. Sweden, with notably lax mask/distancing approach, is better than EU average.
That's why I specifically mentioned large and developed countries, of which the US is leading. Not to front Eastern Europe too much, I'm half Croat myself, but you can't expect the former USSR and Yugoslavian countries to be up to par with Western healthcare systems or with Western economies - even in Western countries, the socio-economic status has had a measurable effect on patient outcome during Covid [1] so it's reasonable to assume that the effect is just as pronounced if not worse comparing whole blocks of countries.
> Sweden, with notably lax mask/distancing approach, is better than EU average.
I'd rather say "notorious" instead of "notably". During the early pandemic phase, Sweden had 5x the mortality than Denmark [2], explained as follows:
> Behavioural data (Fig. 1b,c) suggest that the major difference between Sweden, the UK, and Denmark was the rapidity with which population contact rates were reduced, rather than the extent of this reduction
The study also mentions the UK as being similarly bad but I'm choosing to exclude the UK given the widespread reports of NHS being on the verge of collapse [3][4], which makes it harder to attribute deaths to Covid itself vs deaths that would have been preventable had the NHS not been in shambles even before Covid hit (as evidenced by polling showing NHS issues a greater pressure point than Brexit woes just right before Covid appeared on the global stage [6]).
Other evaluations of Sweden against other countries come to a similar conclusion, blaming lax policies for marked increases in excess deaths and the acute crisis duration [5]:
> Sweden is an interesting case because the country never introduced a formal lockdown. Excess mortality peaked at 49.2 percent and remained high for 12 weeks, i.e. longer than in Italy, which had much higher excess mortality. Looking at the figures for Sweden in comparison to especially Italy and Switzerland, it seems that the lockdown in the latter two countries did have a major impact, both as concerns the level of excess mortality and the duration of the recovery period.
[1] https://www.local.gov.uk/health-inequalities-deprivation-and...
[2] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8358009/
[3] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c78dl0xv7y2o
[4] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/mar/23/nhs-co...
[5] https://www.efta.int/media-resources/news/covid-19-excess-mo...
[6] https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/nhs-replaces-brexit-most-importa...
Imo this one was slightly different, because it was (at least where I live) a temporary emergency measure with an end date as a response to an active crisis.
But I agree that people can get blinded by security theater.
This never existed, you could also prove that have already been sick.
That does not sound like an unfixable problem. :-)
> You still had to exists in a "papers please" society.
I agree and I didn't like that. This was far too fast to enact such a fundamentally change, even if it was an emergency.
The issue with these types of battles, is that each side tends to resort to extreme hyperbole.
That basically gives the other side ammunition for wholesale dismissal.
It’s important (IMNSHO) to have reasonable, sane discussions, and avoid falling into the “screeching monkey” trap.
Do you think that message somehow magically don't have a size? Phones aren't able to receive messages when they have no storage for that. I have been regularly deleting messages for that reason.
Say that when your phone refuses to receive text message due to full storage.
> A few seconds of video
The storage for video and for SMS don't need to be identical. Also not every phone is even capable of storing arbitrary files.
Montesquieu warned about the seperation of powers between the legislator and the executive, but it seems that it is still not the case at the EU level.
I suspect that in the halls of power they would rather interpret "digital sovereignty" as a state where they, the sovereigns, have power in the digital world to mess with EU citizens online lives. It seems very optimistic to think that the EU is suddenly going to get interested in supporting software companies. Even philosophically, why bother changing suddenly just to do something they can ask the Americans to do? Economies require specialisation, everyone can't do everything.
It isn't even a bad thing that the EU doesn't have a thriving software ecosystem but for the fact it appears to be driven by governmental hostility to freedom. Good companies can come from the US. Bad companies can come from the EU. They already have a good FOSS ecosystem. The only problem is the EU seems to be more likely to bring in something like chat control and beat down anyone who achieves enormous success.
Could you expand on that? Is there something inherent about the tech industry that makes large companies desirable?
That applies less in the physical world because distance is a factor. If there is some hairdresser in Silicon Valley who does amazing haircuts I'm still not going to go there to get my hair done. But I'm happy to watch YouTube which is ultimately being coordinated from nearby to that hairdresser.
The issue is, based on how things have actually played out, the EU is not the place to be if you're a hyper-efficient company serving a huge number of people with huge capital reserves. I assume the tax system is the root cause.
I think the main distinguishing feature is that big IT companies are new, so the bad outcomes of tech monopolies are only now being recognised and so competition authorities have been slow to act.
All unregulated markets over time tend to strive for monopoly, as it takes just a short period in which a dominant faction emerges - which kills the capitalist system. Your statement is pure tautology.
EU is hostile to tech and innovation due to top-down approach and working against market forces for sure, but market forces aren't morally good, they just exist - there's no virtue in them.
What needs to change is a shift from top-down approach to one where they setup a framework for competitive AND profitable industry. But this will never happen - EU is too rife with internal conflicts of interest between countries as they are also competing with each other.
It is stuck in-between trade union and federation, and reaps downsides of both.
That last part is certainly true, and the big tech companies in the US and their constant abuse of customers show why we don't want it. We just need a different type of market here. We should lock out the American companies more. We can't play on the same field because we have very different values. The US care only about money, we care more about ethics.
If the market wants to go there the market is wrong and we need to curtail it. Having unrestricted capitalism isn't a European value.
True, the EU has not shown such an interest in the past. But that was when it could mostly trust that the US would, y'know, act like a sane and vaguely reasonable nation. It's been less than a year since the orange menace was re-elected, and the wheels often take a while to turn.
We did. Cookie banners have persisted for well over a decade, so that's a proven track record.
For the vast majority of cases, it's malicious compliance by websites to make people believe the issue of the banner when the problem is the data collection.
Now, if I was cynical, I would point out that most parliamentarians - regardless on where they sit - have a background in legal professions. I would then suggest that there is a 'make a bad law' -> 'make cash suing over it' pipeline.
But that would be cynical. Instead, I'll end with Tacitus: Corruptissima republica, plurimae leges.
Desired by whom? At this point the desire of EU legislators is to make sure that EU never gets any chance of success in the tech field. Cookie banners do serve this goal well.
We build robust encryption, then comes the naive-ignorant wave of "why do we need this? let's remove it" because policymakers don't grasp the extent of it, nor have any clue how it works and why.
Anyone who has a "tech" industry besides US has it thanks to trade barriers and embargoes because otherwise doesn't make sense to have it. The product doesn't have a considerable marginal cost to distribute, doesn't make sense to have it made in more than one place. 50 US states don't have EU regulations and yet everything is still happening in SV only, the rest of the "tech" in US is about as developed as in the rest of the world and they all feed into SV one way or another. Also, there's no way for competition as the capital in US(which can come from Europe, Arabs etc. too) can provide the services at loss for 10-20 years until drives everyone out of business.
EU tried to be open for business and have sovereignty through things like privacy and data control laws but the end result was that whoever is worth their salt goes to SV and sell it in EU from there and when tangental industries like VW or Mercedes need top talent for their software there's no one left or those who are still in EU are not doing things that transfers well into their niche.
ChatControl, IMHO is just some career move of some politicians from the ultra low corruption small northern countries where people trust the government way too much. They appear to believe that they can solve some issues with it. Not that different from all the governments who want control and each one wants as much control as possible.
I think the age control attempts are much more interesting and consequential. Why? Because bots don't have age. If implemented in a way that preserves anonymity while ensuring that the things are written by a real person(or at least has someone responsible for it even if its AI written) it can actually solve the bot problem and social manipulation problems like people from other countries pushing an agenda that doesn't actually have organic roots in the society.
Anyway, the issues are real and the risk are real and I think its a good idea to seek methods to mitigate the risks while keeping in mind that even if you currently like the government in few years the people who you don't like might be in power so, be careful.
It's even simpler - EU does not foster any form of framework for growing any industry, they incentivize things that were already successful elsewhere and were found necessary to have in EU. It's all top-down in form of EU grants/benefits/whatevers.
And even then - those grants are are tied up with basically pre-planned prince2 style project management that makes deviating from them hard, and sometimes impossible. Purchases have to be pre-planned, for almost anything.
>ChatControl, IMHO is just some career move of some politicians from the ultra low corruption small northern countries where people trust the government way too much. They appear to believe that they can solve some issues with it. Not that different from all the governments who want control and each one wants as much control as possible.
Yes but no - it comes from Denmark, which has a lot of issues with overstepping legal bounds when it comes to data gathering and privacy. It seems more like attempt to legalize those using excuse of "EU forced us to adopt it :)".
>I think the age control attempts are much more interesting and consequential. Why? Because bots don't have age. If implemented in a way that preserves anonymity while ensuring that the things are written by a real person(or at least has someone responsible for it even if its AI written) it can actually solve the bot problem and social manipulation problems like people from other countries pushing an agenda that doesn't actually have organic roots in the society.
I think it's quite the opposite - identity fraud will become more profitable, while "open" internet will be infantilized into child-safe zone. Full of bots, but now any real form of communication will have your full doxx attached to it - doesn't matter if visible or not, just possiblity of it is enough. You will self censor yourself just in case.
Also all of those systems do not preserve anonymity, and basically are another mass surveillance tool.
It is just another step towards ChatControl, one surveils, other forces self-censorship.
While reverse would make sense - make children only internet that's actively monitored, accessible only via government issued smartcard/e-sim/thingy, while leaving it up to parents if their child should or should not access real internet.
EU doesn't have the capacity to plan stuff, even under grave danger from the war in Ukraine EU barely coordinates building some bombs. EU is able to bite only when each country is coordinated well enough to implement some laws, i.e. GDPR thing bites through the regulators of each country and not through EU. If EU eventually becomes a state then thing can change but thats not the case at the moment.
EU is not a communist state and doesn't have a top down planning, its a coordination centre for 27 free market countries and its up to the EU capitalist and engineers to come up with technology and investment. They actually do, that's why EU is huge exporter of stuff. Believe it or not, there's more in this world than coding, there are all kinds of engineers that deal with atoms and electricity. However the "tech" doesn't flourish in Europe because doesn't make economic sense. US has full access to EU markets, they already have the know how and capital concentration, so why bother to re-invent the wheel in EU? Just go do it in US or do work for the US companies cementing their position even further.
US can afford not to have much regulations over the "tech" because they have the HQs and all the important people in SV. The moment some company that's not from US becomes big they take it down. TikTok for example, they forced a sale to fking Oracle, US doesn't allow foreign communications on its land. Its a semi-open knowledge that US government is working with those "tech" companies to control its own population and interests.
I don't know, if the US way of doing this is the better one, maybe EU should just force all the US "tech" companies to sell to EU owners just like with TikTok. Then get rid of all these regulations and just summon the local people when things go bad, like the "wrong" ideas spread like the way it happened on TikTik with Israel-Palestine conflict. The US way is like, oh you are not cooperating and not pushing the right agenda? Oh that's fine but too bad the new employment rules will hurt you and you can forget about this datacenter permit thing.
I'm saying they are trying top-down initiatives - the difference is subtle but important.
This is about attitude and how attempts are made - not how successful they are at it. This isn't central planning - this is just plan ineptitude that's sabotaged by inter-country conflicts of interests, with extremely bloated beaurocracy - sometimes just to have enough representation from each party.
EU is stuck between worst of both worlds, and i don't see anything changing for better in here without a shift - either towards more looser union akin to trade union(original idea) or a federation.
also look at energy and AI initiatives for examples of top down initiatives.
In most non-western EU countries the only realistic way to get a tech startup going is via EU grant process which is extremely top down with keywords they want for specific year, and basically prevents any form of pivoting as a business.
It's not some top brass of party, soviet style, making top-down decisions. Its the whole system that's designed to operate that way - bureaucrats here and there incentivized to do so, committee here and there setting up guidelines for results.
what they should do is to setup a framework in which results emerge.
Currently everything is too patchy, the currency the passport the agencies like ESA, the trade barriers within itself - everything needs a re-do in the integration or scaling down the scope.
You are right. Pharma, automotive, financial in EU all come from the US. Companies like Nokia, Siemens, Bosch, BMW... all american names.
On top of that, traditional European industries like Automotive have not kept up with challengers, the financial industry across Europe itself is morose in comparison to similar markets in the US or China, and European Pharma itself is overwhelmingly clustered in Switzerland which is not an EU member.
Nokia itself was at the brink of collapse in the early 2010s, and Siemens and Bosch have faced increasing stress at the bottom market from Chinese players and at the upper market by American players, plus states like the US and India required significant firewalls between those companies operations in their countries and Europe.
Long story short, while individual European states may have been able to build innovative companies, that muscle has largely atrophied over the past 20 years.
All these EU companies are all private enterprises and they are %100 from a country in EU because there's no such thing as EU as a country, EU doesn't have companies(beyond entities created to fulfill certain functions). This too may change soon because they are looking into introducing a 28th regime which would be like virtual EU member.
I think there's huge confusion on what is EU.
BTW, EU has roots in "European Coal and Steel Community" and role in forming the Airbus but even in these ase it was just a facilitator.
All these expectation that are based on imaginary things(don't take it personally please, I see these things all the time) shows that EU desperately needs to become a country by its own right. Its so confusing to understand what EU can and can't do, what organization is under EU control and how much.
Most industries in the US developed due to state and federal government subsidizes and industrial strategy.
You can see this with the development of semiconductor clusters in Oregon, Arizona, and New York in the 1990s-2010s because of state level industrial policy, the development of the telecom hub in Dallas TX in the 90s becuase of Texas's state level industrial policy to leverage the telco boom, and historically Michigan and now South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and TN's industrial policy for automotive manufacturing.
Furthermore, this ignores the impact that the IRA and IIJA subsidizes and investment promotion had in bringing European manufacturing industries to the US at the expense of their European operations - so much so that both France and Germany lobbied at all levels of the US during the Biden admin to try and kneecap the policy.
> All these EU companies are all private enterprises and they are %100 from a country
Absolutely, as are companies in the US yet our states have been open to leveraging industrial policy where possible in order to attract and retain investments.
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I am under no illusion that the EU is a country. Heck, if you re-read my initial comment that is my point.
I know that it is Germany, France, Netherlands, etc who are setting policies, but the EU at a macro-level can help solve the coordination problem that exists amongst individual EU member states to develop industrious policies.
That said the current status quo needs to end - either member states need to admit the EU as a central body is powerless and return to the pre-2000s vision of the European Union, or admit that a unified Europe is ideal and centralize.
The current status quo is the worst of both worlds, because the delimitation of power is wonky, and leads to nation state-EU clashes.
Financial central was mostly London due to favorable local laws.
Nokia fills very small niche now, basically services backbone
Bosch and Siemens predate EU
BWM also, but i wouldn't put it at forefront of innovation with how automotive industry is going.
did you notice that not even a single company you've mentioned is something new, and all of them basically come from "western" side of EU or are already established industries sometimes predating WW1?
> EU does not foster any form of framework for growing any industry
Also you:
> did you notice that not even a single company you've mentioned is something new
K, but that was not your point since they did indeed "grow as an industry". Aren't you saying that auotomotive hasn't grown as an industry in the EU, I hope. Also,
> Pharma is miles behind US,
Source?
> Financial central was mostly London due to favorable local laws.
You mean like Paribas, MPS, Allianz... none of which are in the UK?
Exactly. The age verification and the "human identification" problem are the same problem. Anyone who thinks this tech/policy ends with identifying 16-year olds is out of their depth. Everyone, including governments and adtech firms, is planning for a world post-AI whether they're smart enough to realize it or not. I'm just worried about the details of that world.
I don’t assume malice where stupidity suffices though.
demarq•6h ago
Otherwise you’re just choosing who misuses their privilege to your data.
SiempreViernes•4h ago
If you set the sovereignty at the lowest hardware level, it doesn't seem right to call it a space: what you are postulating is a set of unconnected nodes. To a get a network you will need individuals to give up some of their sovereignty to a shared entity that decides things like what protocol to use.