What others are saying
Martin Sonneborn on X
Last week, the EU laid the (undemocratic and fundamental rights-incompatible) foundations for a dystopian surveillance system with chat monitoring and mandatory age verification on the internet, both supposedly for the sake of “child protection.” Whether it is (really) a conspiracy theory that the unwarranted mass surveillance of the private communications of all EU citizens with the digital ID (European Digital Identity Wallet) and the programmable digital currency CBDC (which are also being planned for your “security” and your “convenience”) will merge into a monstrous scourge that can be used and abused at any time as an instrument of state control and oppression remains to be seen. Ahem.
Interestingly, chat control and age verification were approved at the same time and, even more interestingly, coincide with similar initiatives currently being undertaken in various parts of the “free” Western world: Australia, Canada, the UK, and the US are doing it anyway, of course – the undisputed world leaders in the violation of fundamental rights, including (as we have known since Snowden) those of their own citizens.
In Germany, the privacy of correspondence has been protected since around 1690. Anyone who violated it (at that time) faced public flogging at the pillory with a disciplinary whip and a flogging brush, as well as expulsion from the country. The fact that a pseudo-democratic bureaucratic entity such as the EU presumes to abolish the privacy of correspondence and systematically not only invade the privacy of its citizens, but also “legalize” the violation of the fundamental rights enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights (since 1950) and embed it in their daily lives is something that has never happened before in truly free constitutional states. The EU is thus placing itself in the same league as the Nazis and Erich Mielke, becoming a (cheap but exact) copy of the same authoritarian dictatorial systems that it simultaneously presents itself as the (morally) shining opposite of.
P.S.: EU officials are exempt from chat monitoring, which is quite convenient for someone like vonderLeyen. Their communications are expressly NOT to be monitored. The mere fact that those who drafted this law do not want it to apply to themselves tells you everything you need to know about it.
P.P.S.: When political decision-makers “tighten the reins,” it's time (for citizens) to throw them off. And quickly.
https://x.com/MartinSonneborn/status/1995182586612609241?t=VtGMA8CMB0fBCYyzA2Ct3w&s=19
automated translation via deepl.com
