The hope (as always) is that every opponent can be painted as pro child abuse. It is a dirty political trick to introduce complete surveillance on all digital communications.

They of course (also as always) swear high and low that this is really ONLY to be used to prevent child abuse. And that it must be done NOW. We all know what happens next. It will be used for whatever they want.

It is already quite far in the trilogue process, and so far ONLY the green party in EU Parl is opposed to it. All other parties agree this is acceptable.

So. Contact your MEP. Inform yourself. Here's a collection of arguments and information about the progress of this legislation:
https://www.patrick-breyer.de/?page_id=594160&lang=en

In case it isn't clear: All of this thread is my very own personal opinion. As a citizen. As a father. As someone who deeply believes in democracy and transparency.

@jwildeboer Amen!
Thanks for the clear statement. Consider me a 100% supporter.

@jwildeboer reading the text, it would allow the providers to spy on the communications of their users for this purpose, but not force them to, right? So i.e. Signal could just choose to ignore it? Or did I miss something?

@methyltheobromine Apart from the obvious issues of principle, one of the big problems with all this is the built-in assumption that the service provider also provides the client software. See https://www.politico.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/SKM_C45820090717470-1_new.pdf (h/t @echo_pbreyer ) which doesn't seem to understand that different software can be used (despite the obvious counter example of email), let alone that there might not be a service provider distinct from the sender or receiver.

@thomas @jwildeboer