Can someone explain how the same group of countries can simultaneously issue book-long regulations about how everyone needs to respect privacy to the nth degree, and run around the world trying to force others to do the same, yet also propose these kinds of things?
This is government 101. We tend to see governments as one big singular entity, this is rarely the case (and this especially true for a supra national organization like the EU with no real head of state). Instead you have different institutions with different goals that sometimes contradict each other. Then you have to account for multiple factions in those some institutions and you end up with what we currently have. The idea is that on the long run, if you average out the decisions/rules/regulation it is somewhat cohesive and leads to "good" governance.
Many politicians don't have a clue what the technical consequences will be. They just see that the law is meant to protect children and then they don't ask for clarification on the technical details.
Nah they just see it as good ratings and votes. Most democratic politicians are in a popularity contest, doing objectively good things doesn't matter in the slightest in a democracy.
I don't think anyone realistically believes that this helps save any children. That's just an excuse used to make it sound like there's some good intention behind it.
Probably something like: Privacy is valuable, so corporations shouldn't be freely able to trade your data for advertising purposes. But CSAM leads to unimaginable harms carried out on vulnerable people, and so is worth giving up some privacy to stop/reduce.
Sure. Most countries in the European Union have elections every 4-5 years. Thanks to these elections, the set of people composing the EU's main executive body, the European Commission, changed radically over 9 years.
The EC of yesteryear preferred issuing book-long regulations about how everyone needs to respect privacy.
The EC of today prefers burning those regulations [1] and writes legislation about how everybody should scan all private messages.
No more surprising than the In 1998 Conference of Anglican bishops rejecting any sort of homosexual practice as incompatible with Scripture, and the 2023 one approving the blessing of same-sex unions.
Simple. The former is economic warfare against the US, under pretense of the EU “parliament” giving a hoot about its constituents. The latter is plain old fascism.
Sometimes I feel community here can be a bit deliberately obtuse, but "I don't want Google and other companies reading my mail, but I'm ok with police scanning messages to catch child molesters." really isn't a rare position in the wild. Or a contradictory one.
The privacy laws you talk about all also have carveouts for governmental, intelligence and military work. No matter the hand wringing here, most EU governments (and even citizens) don't consider privacy legislation to require equivalent footing for governments and for private corporations. A lot of EU citizens are fine with laws like GDPR not holding for law enforcement and other similar institutions. Despite the risks and history.
You mean the same people running around the world wagging their fingers and lecturing about yoomun wightz and libwal demokwafee while sending arms, money, and diplomatic support to east european reject childbutchers in west asia?
