alt Hacker News> So far, the European citizens are very privacy senstive.
In some areas, sure - like GDPR.
In other areas, absolutely not - like chat control.
As another commenter pointed out, it seems as if government mandated privacy intrusion is OK, while violations by corporations are quickly shutdown. It’s like the opposite of how it works here in the US.
Replies
> chat control
The Danish proposal for indiscriminate chat control did not receive enough support and was retracted last autumn. Similar proposals have been put forward regularly over the past 30 years and have so far come to nothing just as regularly.
>it seems as if government mandated privacy intrusion is OK
Once you give people an outside boogieman(Putin, Trump, Covids, etc) or a self inflicted false flag crisis(surge in violent crime rates for example) to shake them up to their core and put the fear in them, you can then easily sell your intrusion of privacy in their lives and extension of the police state, as the necessary solution that protects them.
When you start lose control of your people because their standard of living has been going downhill for 2 decades and they realize the future prospects aren't any better so they hate you even more, you can regain control of them by rallying them up on your side in a us-versus-them type of game against external or internal aggressors that you paint as "the enemy". The media is your friend here. /s
This isn't an EU or US exclusive issue, it's everywhere with a government issue. The difference as to why the EU people seem to be more OK with government intrusion compared to the US, is that EU always has external aggressors the government can point to as justification for invasiveness and control, while the US has been and still is the unchallenged global superpower so it has no real external threats ATM, meaning division must be manufactured internally (left vs right, red vs blue, woke vs maga, skin color vs skin color, gender vs gender, etc) so that the ruling class can assert control in peace.
Either way, we all seem to be heading towards the same destination.
> chat control
The Danish proposal for indiscriminate chat control did not receive enough support and was retracted last autumn. Similar proposals have been put forward regularly over the past 30 years and have so far come to nothing just as regularly.
For the conservative (and sometimes not so conservative) non-experts things like this sound like an easy win. So every new generation of politicians has to be educated about it again.