Freedom will not ever be finally settled in this life. Laws can be changed, constitutions amended, and of course the law is only as good as willingness to enforce it. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, as nice as it would be if that wasn't so.
Speech is restricted the world over for things (fraud, threats, libel/slander, secrets, and more), and we're almost universally in favour of that.
It's a balancing act, and the point where we set the balance is difficult, and constantly changing (should we allow speech that encourages the persecution of other people, sometimes called "hate speech" or should people be allowed to advocate for the murder/rape/extermination of other human beings because of the way they look)
I'm not sure that's relevant to Chat Control. What's at stake here is not a definition of 'acceptable communication' in public, but the possibility of all private communication being scanned.
That's not to say that private communication can't already be illegal; mere 'conspiracy' is a crime in many places. Yet the level of surveillance that would be enabled by legislation like Chat Control is greater than any other in history. Even notorious agencies like the Stasi had to pick and choose their targets based on prior suspicion, simply because of the logistics involved in traditional surveillance.
We don't fully know what effects this kind of unceasing, universal monitoring would have on society, and what little historical precedent exists doesn't bode well. Restrictions on public speech however are pretty well understood; we've had censorship in various forms pretty much everywhere in the world at one point or another. We can look to history for lessons about what happens, and can properly discuss (even if not agree!) about when censorship is good or bad for society.
My comment is 100% relevant to the comment I was replying to. (Sometimes I do wish people who down vote were forced to comment why they were making such erroneous decisions)
And again with the passive aggressive "downvote because you have no ability to explain your disagreement"
Edit: To anyone reading and thinking of joining in to any of the discussions, the message is clear - Facebook or Reddit level of inanity is all you will find here.
I don't think that this is really relevant to my point. My point is not that the proposed EU laws are good or bad (frankly, I don't know anything about them and I'm not in the EU so it's not my business), but that this topic can't be definitely settled for all time. No matter what resolution is reached in the EU today, in 5 years' time someone will be fighting to change it. That's just how it goes.
