When I say Left, I mean Vänsterpartiet, not some nebulous coalition. See their stance here.

Chat control was a proposal on an EU level which meant that applications and social media platforms would be forced to scan all of their users messages. The proposal has been put forth by the EU comission as a part of a larger package with the purpose of protecting children against exploitation on the internet. The Left Party considers that the part specifically about chat control wouldn’t contribute to the end goals. There are more effective measures that need to be taken in order to protect children.

After significant criticism from us and many others the EU parliament has significantly improved the proposal. They have among other things removed all parts regarding automatic scanning. This has meant that all parties now are in support of the EU-parliament position. The proposal is now on hold among the member states and instead another, temporary law has been extended to counter sexual abuse of children on the internet.

Overall the Left (Vänsterpartiet) campaigns on a position of being against surveillance and the like. The Social Democrats (part of the Left coalition) however is in favour of it, because of course they fucking are. My issue here is obviously that they’re lying to our faces.

On a much greater scale I have a lot of issues. For the most part I align mostly with V and MP, but we’re talking on a level of like 60-70%, so they don’t actually represent my views particularly well. In the grand scheme of things that’s also not something I’d expect; I’m rather extreme but I also realise that there’s only so much we can do when operating within the system we currently have. Thus I align with the parties that align the closest with the core beliefs I have, V and MP.

One of my biggest icks when it comes to politics is hiding behind children. It infuriates me because it’s never genuine. It’s never about the fucking children, they’re just a convenient excuse because the moment someone criticises a suggestion, you can turn around and say “Oh so you hate children? Are you a paedophile? Why do you support children being harmed?”

Left or right is an economic stance

What about the social stance?

Check out the political compass, which is an interesting way to conceptualize political leanings. I don’t think the test is particularly good (I have issues with a few of the questions), but the answer I get is pretty close to where I think I should be placed, so maybe there’s some merit to it.

I’m consistently in the bottom half near the center line, and the two major parties in my country are in the top right. I guess that just demonstrates why I fail to see much difference in what I care about in the two major parties, since moving toward either direction is a move away from me.

Anyway, I hope this is a decent demonstration of how the left/right divide doesn’t tell the whole story.

Not exactly orthogonal, left right could be viewed as an Principal Component Analysis reduced to only one axis. So there are correlations between stances but so much dimensions lost that it’s nearly useless

Left or right is an economic stance, and is orthogonal to beliefs surrounding government rights Vs population rights.

Left or right is political stance. The closest you can get it to economy is by saying “left prioritizes political freedoms, while right economic”.

it reappears as an attachment to a fishing quota law or a law defining sizes for underwear

Sounds very Putin.

Idk about the EU(there have been cases that were exactly this, an example would be Article 13), but I can say to you, that this devinetively happens in Germany. Our conservatives party wants to pass a law, that would track and save all your online activity(Vorratsdatenspeicherung/ data preservation) to fight “paedophiles and terrorists” they bring it up once in a while, even tho, our federal court already said, that its illegal.

As much I like the EU, politicians are politicians …

You’ve gotta defend for an infinite amount of time, but they’ve only gotta succeed once.

And “Chat Control” isn’t even the only thing like this in the pipeline. There’s the so-called “security by design” bullshit (which does the opposite of what then name implies) that’s actually even worse than Chat Control and has also been worked on in secret, and which’d include mass scale surveillance of not just photos but pretty much everything, and is much more likely to pass than Chat Control.

2001 especially.

What they could do is create a law that protects the integrity of E2EE. At least in this case.

But I guess that will never happen… Well, a girl can dream.

We got lucky this time. Won’t be the case next time.

Also, even if it’s entire governments voting, there must be a way to find politicians who are pro and against this, yes? Pretty sure governments had an internal vote and they came up with their decision based on said vote

All the more reason to find the friendly neighbourhood blackhat gang

Hungary will have the presidency, not the total control. They propose discussions but the vote in the Council is still majority based.

It’s quite possible that they are simply doing all their stuff the old-fashioned way - talking in person with electronics off, exchanging paper notes and burning them, something like that.

I have zero doubt that many core proponents of anti-privacy laws are pedophiles — that’s why they always add measures to ensure it’s illegal to invade their own privacy.

I hate dishonest titles and URLs. In reality, this shit has nothing to do with “child sex content.”