The Patriot Act isn't on equal footing as these Chat Control-esque laws we're seeing. The US government spies on people, sure, but they're not mandating encryption backdoors or trying to outlaw VPNs.
From a recent EFF post[0], it appears they've backed off the scanning and encryption demands so that's good, I guess. Hopefully that sticks and they don't propose something similar in the future.
0: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/12/after-years-controvers...
People read this and think that US government had unhindered access to all data in major providers.
According to Edward Snowden, PRISM allowed the government to compel internet companies to turn over any data that matched specific court-approved search terms. such as email addresses, all under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008.
At least some parts of it were likely unconstitutional as it could target U.S. persons, but it was not free for all as "straight access" indicates. It was straight access after FISA court approval.
NSA runs much more invasive MUSCULAR program in the UK without FISA or other type warrant.
[1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/photos-of-an-nsa...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_EC_DRBG#Weakness:_a_poten...
This came after previous attempts such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip
So in my opinion, it’s a band-aid to more deep seated problems that more often than not creates new problems. I don’t know enough about how EU intends to do. I guess even eventual mandatory declassification (like a reasonable 5 yrs delay) would deter bad actors/politicians that aren’t well meaning from misusing it.
It's certainly not compatible with privacy.
The US conducts mass surveillance at a planetary scale, as an "Empire". It was implemented secretly by its 3 letter agencies with the help of various actors.
Europe is doing it in the open with laws and regulations and only targets the people in its territories. One simple reason they would have to do this way is they simply have no equivalent in capabilities to the NSA, CIA, etc. or big tech.
There's also lobbying from "security" companies who are pressuring governments to purchase and install their systems, but they require realtime spying of everyone.
It’s a win-win for the politicians and the pensioners that vote them, that believe any nonsense about children safety.
Governments are never perfect. They are always in a precarious position where they can turn quite harsh quite quickly. I can't speak to each EU nations politics but things have been turning towards the right for a while and they are finally in positions where they can make these demands and get them passed.
- So called "Far left" and "Far right" MEPs were declared "Opposed"
- The "Center" MEPs were "Unknown", what means "Support" I guess.
I believe we have been programmed not to notice how radical the "center" is...
That has been going on for decades, actually. What has changed is that people are looking at it.
The massive shift of communications to digital channels has put mountains of data right there for the grabs, which is extremely attractive for people who want access to all that data.
German here, look how fucking often our politicians tried to push stuff like the Vorratsdatenspeicherung.
With recent AI advancements, an orwellian hell is all but inevitable. If you (by which i mean the powers that be not you specifically) don't build it then some competing faction will and they'll be in control of it. Its the classic prisoner dilemma.
Something I realized recently is how low the approval ratings of European leaders are:
- Macron and Starmer are about 18%
- Mertz is 25% (only 6 months in)
- Von Leyen is 23%
This is ridiculous.
We often perceive Trump as highly unpopular but he is cruising between 40 and 50%, that's double.
So those leaders, according to the numbers, are becoming illegitimate or the system is broken. So we are just waiting for a spark to put the house on fire.
Mass surveillance within your territory is really a weapon against your own population, it is not to catch spies (they are trained to evade them).
I didn't know the approval ratings were this low.
Because they look at what happened US, at the rise of popularity of fascism throughout the world (which is mostly perpetuated by key media players under the mask of being "anti-woke"), and basically decide that the people can no longer be trusted.
And they are fully correct.
Ive said this before on here, but the whole idea of privacy from surveillance is not applicable anymore in todays world.
The standard line of arguing is that people should be able to speak the truth free from government knowing about it and trying to silence them. The problem with this
* Most of the "truth" that these people refer to has been literally false propaganda, or ability to say slurs on social media.
* Despite that fact, not a single public media person speaking these lies has been silenced in any way by the government, despite things like patriot act existing in US or equivalent things in EU. The only time people have been silenced in places like UK is when posting extremely out of pocket stuff.
Furthermore people also say that you don't want to give the government the power to do this now because a government that you may not like will want to do this. Well, to no one surprise, the people with this libertarian mindset (and the so called "centrists") overwhelmingly vote right wing, and consequently, right wing runs on a platform of freedom, but when those people get in power, they not only actively tries to silence actual truth and free speech, but also they just don't give a fuck about the law and do what they want anyways.
So as unfortunate as it is, its a much better outcome for the current state of administration in EU to take a more invasive role in policing the populace, because economic growth and stability over long term is worth way more than some idealistic approach based on above. Historically this has shown to be true over and over again, while the latter has shown to result in economic decline. So its wortwhile to sacrifice some personal rights in return for a better future - we already do this to a large extent so this is nothing new.
In terms of applicability to the regular person, please understand that the privacy ship for you has already long sailed. You already can be tracked and analyzed in extreme detail, by really any person or company that is willing to buy advertising data and do correlation. There are companies that literally do this and contract out to the government. Also, you aren't that important enough to care about.
Also if you are of that mindset, I hope you are also for abolishing police completely.