Somebody coming across this and briefly checking out the context section could think this is just a regular old mass surveillance law, but when you look at the High Level Group advice EU is citing as a key source you’ll see the full image.

The craziest thing is that when a German MEP Patrick Breyer asked the EU to release the names of the people who were a part of the so called High Level Group that wrote this proposal, they replied with a list with all names blacked out. Here is Patrick Breyer’s own blog post on the subject

According to Edri ”The HLG has kept its work sessions closed, by strictly controlling which stakeholders got invited and effectively shutting down civil society participation.”. Very nice.

You can read the full High Level Group proposal here.TL;DR

they want to sanction unlicensed messaging apps, hosting services and websites that don’t spy on users (and impose criminal penalties)

mandatory data retention, all your online activity must be tied to your identity

end of privacy friendly VPN’s and other services

cooperate with hardware manufacturers to ensure lawful access by design (backdoors for phones and computers)

And much, much more. And this law isn’t aimed towards big companies, all communication service providers are explicitly in scope no matter how small or open source.

A mass surveillance law being written by unknown lobbyists behind closed doors, demanding that the EU should monitor the internet more than Russia, being pushed by the EU commission. Should be the biggest news of the decade, but isn’t.

Also, EU commission (Ursula, Virkkunen, Brunner as the key players) are using the same high level group as a key source in their ProtectEU plan, which is their strategy for 2029 and includes restricting encryption. Politico article on the subject