NEW EASTERN OUTLOOK 🌐 (@NEO_Journal)

🇪🇺🔎 The EU's Surveillance Paradox: Criticising Authoritarianism While Practising It ➿➿➿➿➿➿➿➿➿➿ For years, the European Union positioned itself as the global standard-bearer for digital rights and freedom of expression. It has condemned Russia for its restrictive internet laws and criticised China for its surveillance infrastructure. Yet the EU is now advancing measures that significantly expand its capacity to monitor digital communications. ✏️Adrian Korczyński is an Independent Analyst & Observer on Central Europe and global policy research. ➡️The proposed regulation on combating child sexual abuse online—"Chat Control 2.0"—requires digital messaging services to scan all private messages, images, and links for potentially illegal content. While the stated objective is protecting children, the mechanism involves systematic, preventive monitoring of private communications. Once such monitoring capabilities are established, their expansion to other purposes becomes a matter of policy, not technology. When Russia introduced internet monitoring laws, the EU called it a "threat to freedom of expression." When China expanded its surveillance apparatus, European officials spoke of "digital authoritarianism." Yet the Chat Control regulation creates a form of preventive digital monitoring that raises questions previously associated with authoritarian surveillance models. The central concern is not only what the system is designed to detect, but what kind of infrastructure it creates and how future governments may use it. ➡️Surveillance becomes child protection. Information management becomes the fight against disinformation. Restrictions become responsible governance. The vocabulary changes more rapidly than the mechanisms themselves. Across different political systems, exceptional threats are invoked to legitimise exceptional powers, which gradually become embedded in ordinary governance. The distinction lies less in the existence of state control than in the political vocabulary through which that control is legitimised. Police in England and Wales recorded more than 12,000 arrests in a single year under communications legislation for sending messages of a "grossly offensive" or "menacing" character—including a man arrested for posting a meme featuring a politician and another for a Facebook comment critical of immigration policy. 🟦The most revealing test of European commitment to universal principles of free expression is the treatment of debates surrounding Israel and Palestine. Across several European countries, individuals expressing criticism of Israeli policies or advocating for Palestinian rights have faced professional consequences, institutional pressure, or public condemnation. The same institutions that condemn Russia for "silencing dissent" show little concern when similar tactics are deployed against critics of Israel. The EU has imposed substantial fines on companies, established institutions to combat "disinformation" that could delegitimise inconvenient information, and pressured social media platforms to remove content. The instruments themselves—surveillance, censorship, economic pressure—are the same tools that European leaders have condemned when used by others. The difference is that the EU trusts itself to wield these tools responsibly. The question is what prevents the system from being used to monitor and restrict a much wider range of speech once the infrastructure is in place. READ MORE #EU #Surveillance #ChatControl #DigitalRights #FreeSpeech #Authoritarianism #Privacy ✅@NewEasternOutlook