EU Commission refuses to disclose authors behind its mass surveillance proposal

When German MEP Patrick Breyer requested the names of the individuals involved in the High-Level Group on Access to Data for Effective Law Enforcement —the group behind the EU’s latest mass surveillance proposal—the EU Commission responded with a document where all names were blacked out. According to digital rights group EDRi:

“The HLG has kept its work sessions closed, strictly controlled which stakeholders got invited, and effectively shut down civil society participation.”

Their plan includes restrictions on encryption, surveillance mandates, sanctioning messaging apps and more. By the way Chat Control isn’t dead and is also being pushed in such a secrecy EU ombudsman has concluded it maladministration.. Chat Control would, in addition to also banning secure encryption, force people to register on social media with their own identities. Good thing there isn’t an EU-wide digital identity incoming, right?

Despite this secrecy and the dystopian proposal itself, the group’s recommendations are now being used as a primary source for the EU Commission’s “ProtectEU” strategy for 2029. On top of those proposals the commission wants to make Europol the ”FBI or Europe”, while Europol’s boss says Big Tech has ‘responsibility’ to unlock encrypted messages to protect democracy. The same Europol that has been criticized by EU ombudsman for their ties with a chat control tech service provider Thorn

Anyway since every paragraph halves the amount of people making it to the end, here’s what you can do

Contact your MEP

Give EU your feedback on their new GDPR destroying data retention proposal

And spread the news, on social media and in real life.