The EU’s Plan To Ban Private Messaging Could Have a Global Impact (Plus: What To Do About It)

It’s always an interesting moment when a government announces it’s going to protect your privacy by finding new ways to destroy it. That’s the high-wire act currently underway in Brussels, where EU officials have unveiled a roadmap that reads like a blueprint for turning digital locks into decorative suggestions.

The plan, part of the Commission’s upliftingly titled ProtectEU agenda, promises to give police the tools they need to decrypt your private communications, legally of course, by the end of the decade. Nothing says modern European values like borderless surveillance and continent-wide data taps.