Well, the EU has a consultation period on new regulations, but I don't know if that's open for this specifically.

Generally, I would say organizations on each country are often the ones with the infrastructure in place to issue a recommendation on these things. Consumer support orgs, unions, privacy groups and so on. Political parties if your country has one with a definite stance on the issue. If you can get those involved and they can get the press involved now you have an avenue for mainstream awareness, which frankly is more likely to do something than a purely online-driven signature or email campaign.

The rest may differ per country and even per party. It depends on what participation mechanisms you can deploy for each.

To be clear, I'm not against also reaching out to MEPs, but given how in many places they act as a collective blob representing national partisan interests and how electorally they don't have a particular incentive to engage with individual voters I don't know that it'd work best in isolation. I'm not particularly against that, either. "Contact your representative" is a staple of small district, majoritarian, first-past-the-post nonsense and I have no particular desire to move in that direction. I'm way more comfortable with a party-heavy system than with that weirdness.

EU is a regulation superpower.

And how much energy will be spent on this... power for the sake of even more power, right?

They need control for the sake of control, there is nothing higher than absolute power.

Dear Jack, where and why were you going to send photos of a child's genitals? Are you a pedophile? And you can't prove that this organ is yours and not a child's without shame...

Thoughtcrime is near...

It's only assumed the Netherlands opposes it because of the now fallen governments stance on it before. We all know that their campaign promises and 'regeerakkoord' are completly meaningless. So I'm still trying to call and emailing the dutch MEP's

Yeah, I'm not confident either. There are definitely parties in our government that don't actually oppose this (like the VVD)

I'm currently reading 1984 and already seeing references to it a bit everywhere. Same happened when I read hitchiker's guide to the galaxy.

Maybe if politicians did what the people wanted, they wouldn't have to be afraid of an uprising against them... and if religious cunts would just stay in their churches and mind their own business...

Exactly. And that is why i always feel like these "contact your representative" calls are useless. I will still do it, but it will happen. Maybe not now. Maybe not next time they try. But they will get it through.

It might be worth making a bid for legislation that requires that the public give up privacy to the government, those in government must make the same information public.

If they can read my messages, I should be able to read theirs.

Educate friends and family on government surveillance, use privacy tools like Signal, VPN, Tor, etc. Help them set it up. You can do everyday actions to push back far more useful than signing a petition.

The last time I contacted a representative they started relentlessly blowing up my phone begging for donations, so I don't even do that anymore.

I was relieved when I learned NL is opposing, but to be fair I was also a bit surprised. Don't think there is a good reason to be in favour of chat control, but kind of expect it from VVD, PVV and BBB anyway. They might even already want to expand it beyond child abuse to also include money launderers, immigrants and climate change protesters.

Maybe I should reread hitchikers guide to the galaxy then

I'm a religious cunt, a Christian cunt if you want to be specific, and this bullshit about controlling the population is NOT part of my faith. As a matter of fact, it goes entirely against my faith, and is extremely detrimental to every single Christian.

Having said that, this is simple. Religious people that support all this are the same so because it adheres to their end game, not because of their faith.

What really stands out in all this is the following (it'll be long-winded, so feel free to skip to the next one) :

1.- The vast majority of the politicians in those countries are pushing to make this happen, and it seems that in every new try there's more of them supporting this.

2.- Every single one of those politicians were put there by the population.

3.- The population pushes against it (at least it seems to be most of the people being against this). But the corrupt politicians THEY put in power don't give a damn (made abundantly evident in point 1).

4.- The people start calling or emailing the same politicians, or signing "petitions" (which should be "orders" instead, since they are supposed to work for you).

5.- Let's say it doesn't pass again this year. They will try again next year, and then the next if it doesn't pass, until they get away with what they want to.

6.- 1 year passes and you're back on point 1.

My confusion is: Why would any of you think calling them, emailing them or signing stuff in the internet is going to make any difference? As we are all aware of the disgust everyone (not in power) hates this as much as we do, you can bank on the fact that every single one of those criminals in power are aware as well, and yet they keep pushing it.

You will NOT stop this by calls, emails and signatures, it's that simple. Look at Australia, the UK, the US, etc. The governments keep pushing their agenda every single time, effectively telling the population to fuck off.

I have yet to see any country where the will of the people is actually what happens, unless there is a civil war, which will lead to lots of bloodshed and it's a lose - lose situation. They know nobody wants violence, so they believe they have the right to use violence against the people. They use the police and even the military if it comes to that, all with the intent of not losing the power, nothing else.

If the Europeans don't rise against this, they're utterly fucked, because now the ones in power will be able to pinpoint everyone that might spell dissent, and make their lives a living hell. And the worst part is that this is a cancer, first it was China, Russia, North Korea and many other totalitarian countries, now it's spread to the "democratic" countries as well, and then it'll come to our pseudo-democratic 3rd world countries, until the whole world population is under constant surveillance.

How much worse do you think it will be then? So you really think you will get to keep ANY of your freedoms?

I, for one, if this happens in my country (and I'm sure it will at some point) will be in deep shit, because I flat-out refuse to give up my privacy, even if it means losing my life.

What Europe and the UK are living is a dictatorship supported by the peaceful population. Why do you think you have (had?) the right to "peaceful protest"? It's because that way law enforcement has the upper-hand because they get to be "not-so-peaceful", and then you have no way to defend yourself.

I'm not an American, but I certainly understand the need for the population to have the right to bear arms. In a country of almost 400 million people, the military and law enforcement together cannot fight against that (short of nuking a few towns, maybe).

Do I like the idea of having everyone armed to the teeth? Absolutely not, but that is an actual deterrent to bullshit like this. As much as the US surveil their population, they have a way better chance to hold their powerful people accountable for extreme shit like this.

Wao, that actually felt good.

The European Union has begun to cross the border. I think they were inspired by United States and Signal and etc.