I was reading through Mullvad’s blog today and stumbled over this post introducing “And Then?”, a short film visualizing the slippery slope of mass surveillance. The concrete context is the recent pushes to ratify Chat Control.

And then?

And then politicians in Brussels wanted to exempt themselves from the scanning.

And then?

And then the European Parliament, in an almost historic consensus, voted against the proposal and called Chat Control nothing but mass surveillance. As one of the members of the parliament said: “The Commission wasn’t focusing on protecting children but wanted mass surveillance.”

It seems to me that with laws like this, even the strongest “No” is temporary - governments keep the drafts in the drawer and pull them out when the time seems good. Then a (however slight) “Yes” is forever.

We need to stay alert and keep fighting back every head this hydra shows.

Back in May last year, the European Commission proposed what security maven Matthew Green described as “the most terrifying thing I’ve ever seen”
[…]
Experts and activists alike say this is impossible without severely compromising privacy and opening the door for abuse by future authoritarian regimes. (via)

Well d’uh.

While Europe slides / lets itself be pushed all too easily towards right and authoritarian politics, the current (already authoritarian) governments seem eager to roll out the red carpet and prepare all the tools so the incoming tyrants have an easy time.

As has been repeatedly pointed out over the years, there’s no middle ground here.

Update 2026-02-05: Jacques Mattheij’s “If you’ve got nothing to hide…” about how the Nazis used the Netherland’s central citizen register to find and kill is a strong example and argument for the “post privacy” crowd. Privacy is a universal, fundamental human right (UDHR article 12) for a reason - don’t give it up lightly.