[walterbell]

  The draft law makes it clear that chat control is a surveillance tool: Non-public communication services are to be exempted, for example if they are "used for national security purposes." This is to protect "confidential information, including classified information." States do not want chat control for their own communications to avoid surveillance .. Poland demanded that only chats of "people under concrete suspicion" should be scanned .. Netherlands and Germany want to exempt audio telephony, while Sweden wants to exempt communications over mobile networks.

https://newsfromuncibal.substack.com/p/the-death-of-the-rule...

> The making and enforcement of rules – abstract, general, binding and enforceable; ‘thou shalt not steal’ – were once considered to be the essence of government. But rules are, in modern governance circles, considered to be about as outmoded and silly a tool of governing as there can possibly be ... The focus is on institutional architecture and the relationships among private and public actors, rather than on the substantive prescription of state legislation, rules, and judicial decisions ... Global governance has become deeply impatient and dissatisfied with the wearisome business of rule-making and especially rule enforcement. Rules are rigid; rules are boring; rules are annoyingly transparent in respect of their breach.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37479001

> This article explains a phenomenon I've been observing with growing uneasiness that I couldn't quite put my finger on till now ... this trend towards delegating power and decision making to an individual office or committee is an abandonment of this [rule of law] principle in favor of a return to rule by individuals who decide at their whim whether to allow or prohibit a thing, where by simply being in favor with certain bureaucrats one can be immune from accountability where politically unpopular targets can be harassed by the state without end simply because they are not politically favored.