I can understand why governments would push for something like this after 9/11, though it of course goes without saying that this is a totally unacceptable violation of someone’s basic rights. It also goes without saying that governments always want more control over their citizens, but what exactly are they so worried might happen, right now, in 2025 or the near future?

  • eleitl@lemmy.zip
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    7 days ago

    EU is fasttracking the Fourth Reich. Can’t have totaliarism without complete communication control.

  • Soot [any]@hexbear.net
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    9 days ago

    As a European, it’s been a long time coming. I would say tide turned in favour of it and both Ukraine and Israel-Gaza have been important factors - Most countries suddenly decided they didn’t have enough sway over public support for Western imperialism. And the big part of that has been the internet.

  • ClownFiesta@sh.itjust.works
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    9 days ago

    Centralization tends be self-reinforcing. Social unrest might cause the public to demand more safety measures, which usually come at the expense of freedoms. I’d also wager that the lower the level of trust in government is, the more they want to impose control and authority.

    And in the EU specifically it is because lobbyists have been working overtime to try and pass chat control: https://borncity.com/win/2023/09/27/european-union-which-lobby-organizations-are-behind-the-plans-for-chat-control/

  • herseycokguzelolacak@lemmy.ml
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    9 days ago

    European elites are worried about losing control, and they are responding by restricting freedoms.

    The Palestine/Gaza issue is one concrete example: European elites are very pro-Israel and pro-Genocide. But they have completely failed to control the narrative and European populations are not as pro-Israel as their elites.

    • sunzu2@thebrainbin.org
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      8 days ago

      They might also be getting cocerned about people finding out that elites routine participate in sexual abuse of children.

      I don’t see how any regime can maintain legitimacy if normies finally grasp the scope of the issue.

      They are prepping to rule by force, fuck your consent.

      They will rape children and jack shit you can do about it.

      • WhatGodIsMadeOf@feddit.org
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        9 days ago

        Look around at your friends and family. It should be them on the fuck NWO side… If it’s not them then blame them OR understand their naivety. …or worse realize their evil.

  • Prove_your_argument@piefed.social
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    9 days ago

    This is not solely a european problem, and it’s not new.

    A faction of conservatives will scream up and down that they’re protecting the children. Most people will generally side with privacy.

    My suspicion is that the end goal is to classify people to target your opponents, even the ones who don’t have much of a platform.

    Once you can identify all the anonymous people on the internet and build profiles of all their communications with ML, you can easily generate a list of people who are against your policies and target them. I’m pretty sure you could find other subsets of data linking these people so you can then target them indirectly without too much friendly fire against your supporters.

    In the US, One easy target I haven’t seen any actions for is Marijuana. All those medical patients are in a database somewhere. All the debit card transactions in stores are in a database somewhere. It’s still federally illegal and the punishments are nuts if prosecuted. Take your communications list, and the MJ list, target the ones on both and ignore the rest. You get to legally enslave your opponents under the guise of weed.

  • Gravitywell@sh.itjust.works
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    9 days ago

    It’s nothing new, They try to pull some bullshit at least once every decade. In the USA it was the Clipper Chip in the 90s where they said “trust the government with a backdoor” and then it got cracked and they tried very hard to prosecute one of the inventors of PGP… in the 2010s it was SOPA and other bills they tried to pass.

  • wildbus8979@sh.itjust.works
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    9 days ago

    A lot of good points here, but I’d also like to bring forward another hypothesis which partially explain the incredible speed at which this is moving forward in the last few months (even though things have been brewing back and forth for years, decades).

    The US has become a hostile state. For Five Eyes, Six Eyed, Nine Eyes, and Forty Yes that means much less domestic intel since all the Eyes were sharing domestic intelligence to circumvent stronger protections on their own citizens. Canada would spy for the US and the UK, and vice versa, which was a neat way of getting rid of pesky rights afforded to citizens.

    • birdwing@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      8 days ago

      Hmm, that actually sounds pretty plausible. I think it’s also being propped up and bought (read: corruption) by Thiel’s fascist company.

  • pathos@lemmy.ml
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    9 days ago

    It’s due to Palantir and co, lobbying various European governments in recent years. Look at which EU governments are Palantir’s clients.

  • Melvin_Ferd@lemmy.world
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    9 days ago

    I feel it’s the same vibe with return to office policy in Canada.

    These things seem like they come from absolutely no where with no legitimate reason and then all of these executives are on board making it happen.

    Like what the fuck is going on

    • HiddenLayer555@lemmy.ml
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      9 days ago

      If you’re talking about Toronto and Ottawa, as far as I heard, a huge part of the reason is Downtown businesses are struggling now that way fewer people are commuting Downtown.

      But the solution to this is not RTO. If your DOWNTOWN of all places isn’t self sufficient I don’t know what to tell you other than your municipal policies are failing. Just let people live in the office buildings. “Oh they’re too wide and you’ll have to make the units narrow strips that only have a tiny sliver of window on one side” Do that then. Tons of people would still live in those because Downtown should be the most desirable place to live.

      • Melvin_Ferd@lemmy.world
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        9 days ago

        Ok so how exactly have all these companies all agreed to do this at the same time. That’s not strange to you?

          • Melvin_Ferd@lemmy.world
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            8 days ago

            I don’t want to just dismiss this as “business as usual.” What stands out to me is how coordinated the return-to-work push was. Sure, we know there’s a “big club” of elites who share similar goals. But sharing goals isn’t the same as acting in lockstep.

            Think about it: I can join a fitness club, but that doesn’t mean all of us show up on Wednesday wearing the same outfit. There’s a difference between belonging to a group and receiving instructions that lead everyone to move together.

            That’s why I think this deserves more attention. The inference here isn’t just that the wealthy share values or face the same incentives it’s that they communicate and coordinate globally in ways that go far beyond coincidence. And that, to me, is a much bigger story than just “rich people doing rich people stuff.”

            • WoodScientist@lemmy.world
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              8 days ago

              Do you think the ultra wealthy don’t associate and communicate with each other? Why wouldn’t there be private Signal chats composed only of billionaires? It’s not about shared incentives. The “club” part is very literal.

      • WoodScientist@lemmy.world
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        9 days ago

        “Oh they’re too wide and you’ll have to make the units narrow strips that only have a tiny sliver of window on one side” Do that then.

        Some people would be willing to live like that. But the rents per ft^2 or m^2 would be abysmally low. And renovating the buildings would still be very expensive. It may be physically possible to turn those deep floor plate cube farm skyscrapers into housing, but it isn’t financially possible. The money would be better spent tearing the buildings down entirely and just building entirely new residential buildings from scratch.

      • Melvin_Ferd@lemmy.world
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        9 days ago

        We always use to like say it but holy fuck it seems like a whole new thing. The way these things spread it is freaky.

  • daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    8 days ago

    Totalitarianism.

    People outside Europe doesn’t understand how our governments are speed running getting a totalitarian government. More and more aspects of anyone’s everyday life are getting controlled everyday.

    Here they are already starting a system of garbage bags with nfc tags to have our garbage controlled.

    At the end of the day they are thirsty for power and control.

  • plyth@feddit.org
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    9 days ago

    The USA will go to war with China to keep them in line. My assumption is that like Afghanistan it will be presented as an attack on NATO so the EU will be involved.

    People may question the validity of that war which is ok as long as the sentiment doesn’t spread. With age verification those critical voices can be silenced easily.