Statement on the UK government’s decision to approve Julian Assange’s extradition to the US
No words can express the significance of the precedent that was set today by UK Home Secretary Priti Patel in approving Julian Assange’s extradition to the United States. It is both a violation of Julian’s human rights, and an assault on freedom of the press, freedom of expression and, ultimately, democracy itself.
After an already unconscionable three years in Belmarsh prison in London, a period in which his health has deteriorated considerably, Julian now faces up to 175 years behind bars in the US – an example to all those who may have the audacity to reveal the American government’s crimes, as he courageously did.
We are outraged, but not defeated. Even if the UK High Court confirms Patel’s decision, DiEM25, the Progressive International and all others who stand for justice and democracy will take the fight to save Assange’s life onto American soil. We will call on activists, journalists, politicians of conscience and civil society groups to shift the pressure onto the US government and justice system.
Our demand remains the same as ever: Free. Julian. Assange.
Assange’s fight against extradition from the UK isn’t over yet. Sign and send a pre-written letter to Boris Johnson now asking him to prevent Assange from being sent to the US.
Send our letter to Boris Johnson now!
Support Assange by organising an action in your local area
Julian Assange’s life is in danger and, at this crucial moment, we call on all DiEM25 local collectives to take to the streets of European cities on his birthday, Sunday July 3, to call for his freedom.
We ask you to print and use the Assange masks (PDFs provided below), take your DiEM25 banner(s) and make as much noise as you can in your town or city. If possible, we recommend you organise your action(s) in front of the UK embassy in your country.
What to do
- Print out a mask in your language. The masks can also handed out as flyers to the public. We recommend printing on DiN A4 200g paper double-sided.
- Mobilise people in your Local Collective / your local area and take your DiEM25 banner (if you have one) out to the centre of your town or city or straight to the UK embassy.
- Action Wear your mask and stand in solidarity, demanding the release of Julian Assange! Make sure to distribute the masks as flyers to passers-by, to spread the word of DiEM25 and our fight for Assange.
- Alternatively Create your own We Are Millions exhibition by printing out the following materials.
- Document Make sure to take photographs and videos and post them on your Local Collective social media using #DiEM25 and #FreeAssange, or send them to our Comms team at [email protected].
With or without Boris Johnson, real political change in the UK is far away
Whether Johnson staggers pointlessly on for another year or a few months or a few weeks, the prospect of any hypothetical replacement grasping the urgencies looks dim at best
One might be tempted to say that last Monday’s vote of confidence in Boris Johnson left the UK prime minister clinging to his role for dear life, had this sentiment not been bandied about so often in the past year or so that it has lost any real meaning.
The prime minister won by a margin of 211 to 148 MPs. While it is true that this is the most damning verdict ever delivered on a sitting prime minister by their own party, that Johnson has lost his majority support in parliament, and that this may eventually prove to be the beginning of the end for this particularly craven example of a self-serving and dishonest politician, it is difficult to draw any conclusion from the landscape of post-Partygate Britain that amounts to anything but a metaphorical shrug.
A myopic torpor hovers over the UK’s political hierarchy. At the top, Johnson’s cabinet ministers know full well that they owe their positions not to merit but to servile loyalty and will not break rank for love nor money – at least not just now. Meanwhile, Conservative MPs offer differing diagnoses and cures for the continued unravelling of the country which they have been governing for 12 years.
These include a reshuffle, a ‘more Conservative’ approach (cutting taxes), a scaling back of the culture war and a desperate attempt to show a beleaguered public, beset on multiple fronts by the cost of being alive in 21st century Britain, that they ‘get it.’ But it is not just Johnson’s cabinet and advisors – handpicked according to obedience, culture war prowess and lib-triggering points, in roughly that order – which is utterly bankrupt of relevant ideas. The wider Tory party can offer little more as salves for the ongoing wreckage of Thatcherism than yet more zombified and rebranded Thatcherism. This week, as a response to the housing crisis, is a re-dredging of George Osborne’s dead-on-arrival policy of some five years ago, which itself was a zombification of Thatcher’s housing policies in the 1980s.
Those who continue to call for Johnson’s resignation will hold out for another vote, or else pin their hopes on the findings of Parliament’s privileges committee, which will investigate whether the prime minister misled the House of Commons. If found to be the case, as they predict, Johnson may be brought down either by resignation or by a fresh confidence vote. Meanwhile, the leadership questions rumble on.
So, too, does the national unravelling. The UK’s cost-of-living crisis is crunching virtually every aspect of everyday life and expenses, and aggravated by the war in Ukraine, it will only get worse. Child poverty rates are projected to increase to 5.2 million this year. The educational and developmental (to say nothing of the economic) deficits of more than one generation crippled by COVID-19 show no sign of being addressed. Swathes of UK transport infrastructure are beset by widespread dysfunctionality, soon to be added to by a wave of strikes brought on by yet more Conservative attempts to move more and more jobs in the public sector towards the gig economy model. Harried along by Tory privatisation bills, the NHS continues to bleed money, infrastructure, and staff. And, hovering above it all, a collapsing ecology and biodiversity, helped along by years of government-sanctioned poisoning of rivers, soils, and human bodies, alongside the destabilisation of the global climate.
As a society we have never been so acutely informed of the extent to which we are sabotaging the foundations of a decent and liveable future – not a distant future, but one very close at hand. If it sounds melodramatic to regard the crumbling infrastructures and institutions of the US or the UK and term those countries ‘failed states’, surely it is fair to designate them ‘failing’.
The root of this failure, in the UK as in the US, is political. Whether Johnson staggers pointlessly on for another year or few months or few weeks, the prospect of any hypothetical replacement, to either nominal right or nominal left, grasping the urgencies of the moment looks dim at best.
The only approach that is commensurate with the tasks we face involves embracing their inherent possibilities. Neither the zombie Tory party nor the moral and ideological vacancy of the current Labour party show themselves capable of anything but stumbling or dazed, from crisis to crisis.
But another vision is possible, and is already in motion. It is led by an understanding of the public common good. This means proper support for the NHS. It means a meaningful Green New Deal to address the many-pronged ecological crisis. It means, in short, leadership appropriate to our times, leadership led by new coalitions of people working together, where our old institutions have failed us.
To find out how you can get involved in DiEM25’s campaigns, from saving the NHS to a meaningful Green New Deal, click on the aforementioned links, as well as our new manifesto which explains how we aim to get Europe as a whole on the right track.
Varoufakis: Grounded Rwanda asylum flight a win for humanism
A late ruling by the European Court of Human Rights stepped in to overrule the move, putting a halt to the UK government’s dangerous plan
The UK government’s plans to send incoming migrants to Rwanda for processing were dealt a blow at the first attempt on Wednesday, as the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) stepped in to overrule the dangerous move.
Seven asylum seekers were set to travel to Rwanda on the inaugural flight before the ruling came in from the ECHR.
DiEM25 co-founder Yanis Varoufakis was among the many who have welcomed the decision, deeming it a ‘win for humanism’.
“Proud of the European Court of Human Rights today. Few are the wins, these days, for humanism,” he tweeted.
“We must savour this one – it may be a while before another one comes along.”
Proud of the European Court of Human Rights today. Few are the wins, these days, for humanism. We must savour this one – it may be a while before another one comes along. https://t.co/vefAOyX4QN
— Yanis Varoufakis (@yanisvaroufakis) June 15, 2022
UK prime minister Boris Johnson and home secretary Priti Patel planned to send thousands of asylum seekers to the east African country in May.
The government maintained that the policy of sending UK-bound migrants to Rwanda was to prevent the dangerous crossings via small boats to the British Isles.
Activists, however, have been fiercely campaigning to put an end to the dangerous plan that will put those who are looking to escape war and other dangerous situations at further risk than they already are.
Now, the policy will now be taken to court in July where a final verdict will determine whether the UK government can move legally implement it.
Should the ruling prevail, it would send a clear message to the Boris Johnson and the rest of the UK government who sought to outsource the responsibility of welcoming those whose lives are in grave danger.
Pride Month: Corporate hypocrisy and the need for a broader LGBT movement
The DiEM25 Coordinating Collective discussed a wide range of topics regarding the current state of the LGBT movement
With Pride Month in full swing, corporations are taking to social media to signal just how ‘progressive’ they are.
But just how interested they are in creating diverse and inclusive societies is a matter of serious debate, given that they posture with rainbow logos in Western markets while failing to do so in regions where homosexuality is illegal.
The DiEM25 Coordinating Collective sat down to discuss this hypocrisy in our latest episode but, as ever, a mutli-faceted debate about the movement as a whole ensued.
Dusan Pajovic highlighted the need for the LGBT movement to be something far wider encompassing – a class issue, rather than solely focusing on gay rights.
“I think that the LGBTQ+ movement needs to go back to its roots. And that means intersectionality with class as a base for social activism,” he stated.
Regarding corporations, “they are just using this for the profits,” Dusan said. “As you can see, by not putting LGBTQ+ flag in the markets where it’s not a profitable, like in Saudi Arabia.”
Johannes Fehr concurred, saying that the aim should be “total liberation for everyone” and that “if someone is not liberated and free and [doesn’t have] the same rights as someone else then we’re not there yet.
“So this is something we are struggling for. I think, additionally, to looking at the topic superficially, I think we are trying to connect all the different issues.”
Yanis Varoufakis insists that one form of discrimination should not have precedence over another.
“It’s not bad that there are corporations that wax lyrical against racism, against homophobia, against discrimination and so on,” he said.
“I think that one of the big mistakes that the left has made is to say that discrimination on the basis of class, discrimination of labour by capital should have priority over discrimination of sexual orientation.
“That’s a big mistake because if you had a 16-year-old trans kid, you really don’t give a sh*t about the way in which capitalism treats proletarians. What they care about is that they go to school and they’re scared and they get bullied.
“So to say to them that there is a hierarchy of discriminations: first comes class discrimination, and then comes race, then come sexual orientation, then at the bottom comes discrimination on the basis of whether you’re left-handed or right-handed… that’s complete and utter rubbish to the person who’s suffering the discrimination.”
Erik Edman provided a sobering yet necessary perspective, believing that many of those with good intentions end up unknowingly harming the wider cause. Yet, as was a common theme throughout the discussion, Erik feels that a holistic approach is necessary to achieve true liberty for all.
“I’m one of these really tiresome self-hating leftists, and I’m going to use this opportunity to also lash out once again at some fellow leftists who are involved in the LGBTQI movement,” Erik began.
“Very often, people in the LGBTQI movement and in the left in general are guided by this major sense of moral superiority towards society and community and in general about their positions and the superiority of their positions, vis-a-vis the positions and their opinions of others, which very often results in the complete alienation of any possible future ally and the polarisation of debates rather than this sense of community.
“And of course there are plenty of liberals and conservatives in the LGBTQI movement. So it’s also due to them, but often instead of really aiming for true emancipation, the movement instead aims for the right to be abused on an equal footing to everybody else,” he said.
“So instead of really aiming for true freedom and true emancipation from patriarchy, from capitalism… we are simply trying to get the same rights to be abused by the capitalist system as our straight colleagues. And that’s really missing the point in to, for example, flying with Ryanair because they put a rainbow flag on their logo or because of their policy to to not discriminate who they hire while at the same time being a company that completely abuses and walks over the dead bodies, metaphorically, of its employees.
“So the point here is that, by missing this point, by watering down the goal of the movement, not only does it do the people that it tries to help an injustice by not truly emancipating and liberating them, but it also misses an opportunity to connect with a much broader ecosystem of other political movements that are also fighting for this true emancipation from different perspectives.”
Watch the full episode below
Global South activists connect social justice with climate justice
Millions of people all over the world have been marching on the streets, both in the Global South and the Global North, to raise awareness about the climate crisis and to put pressure on political leaders to act. On World Environment Day, it’s a timely reminder of the urgency for the matter at hand, and that more support is needed.
The latest IPCC report demands urgent measures to be taken. Science is very clear on this: If policies and practices follow on our current course, organised social life will collapse. Furthermore, the climate crisis and social injustice are linked. Therefore, the initiative ‘Debt for Climate!’ aims at connecting the fight for social justice with climate activism by bringing together activists from the Global South and Global North.
‘Debt for Climate!’ brings it straight to the point: “Developed countries of the global North owe an ecological debt to the countries of the global South.”Not only are the countries of the Global North by far those with the highest historical emissions of greenhouse gases and 100 multinational corporations, almost all from the Global North, are responsible for 71 percent of global emissions today, but these multinationals continue to plunder the natural resources of the Global South. At the same time, countries of the Global South are indebted to the IMF and the World Bank, which grant them credits which not only increase their debt, but force them to “restructure” their economies, often with enormous costs for humans and nature. Today, Argentina is under threat of economic strangulation of debt through a new loan of the IMF, what ‘Debt for Climate!’ calls ‘debt-trap diplomacy’. And Argentina is one example out of many.
Debt relations are mostly based on violence – invisible and often visible. As the late David Graeber put it: “If history shows anything, it is that there’s no better way to justify relations founded on violence, to make such relations seem moral, than by reframing them in the language of debt […].” While the history of debt shows us how debt was enforced illegally, without consent of the people of the debtor country, in violation of the credit organisations themselves or even at the point of a gun, debt can be a dubious process even under the most legal of ways. As the initiative concludes: “As long as countries are entangled in debt traps, there simply is no space and no money to finance a just transition.”
The debt situation has become even more dramatic over the last years. According to a recent debt report, 135 (out of 148) countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe are critically indebted. Often, states find themselves bound to pay off external debt, while cutting the public expenditure, which can be existential in order to handle crises like the pandemic or increasing costs for food.
“From Latin America we denounce the illegitimate financial debts imposed on our countries by the IMF, the World Bank and the Paris Club. We will fight to free ourselves from this financial colonialism that intends to condemn us to be territories of sacrifice and disposable population. That is why we demand the recognition of the ecological debt that the countries of the Global North have with the countries of the Global South”, states Juan Pablo Olsson, ‘Debt for Climate!’ activist from Argentina and Latin America coordinator of Progressive International. It is imperative that the Global North has to finally pay its ecological debt. One agreement, as the initiative points out, should be: Cancellation of debt and keeping the fossil fuels in the ground. Debt cancellation for the sake of climate justice will bring us a big step closer to avoiding the worst scenarios facing us and especially the people of the Global South who are deemed the most vulnerable to the climate crisis. “Cancelling the debt of the African continent will be the single biggest catalyst to renewed development for 1.3 billion Africans. Nothing else comes close in scale or impact”, says ‘Debt for Climate!’ activist Sunny Morgan from South Africa.
Crises are increasing and seem overwhelming. But crises can also be opportunities. Resistance can work and progress is possible; even though it often means two steps ahead and one step back. It is obvious that we cannot wait or rely on the “generosity” of the leaders of the Global North and especially of the G7 countries. Struggles have been always won by activism and pressure coming from the streets, by cooperation and networking. We as progressives can be inspired by and learn from the fights of the Global South for debt cancellation and to finally abolish (neo-)colonial structures and exploitative measures threatening organized social life on earth. We have to force the creditor countries and the international institutions dominated by them to cancel the debt of the indebted countries.
The accelerating climate crisis requires us to march onto the streets and connect over borders and to ultimately dismantle the fossil fuel industry. People of the Global South, from Argentina to South Africa, from Asia to Africa, are calling the people of the world to join the global action to demand debt cancellation and climate justice. How could this action look like? The upcoming G7 summit, which will be held from June 26-28 in Elmau, Germany, is a fitting opportunity to mobilize. The “Stop G7 Platform”, which includes many social, climate and anti-war activists from Germany, calls to join the demonstration which will take place in Munich on June 25, right before the summit. Prior to and during the summit, many demonstrations, workshops and talks will take place. Acts of civil disobedience are also planned.
The states of the G7 de facto govern the international financial institutions and can change their policies, if we force them to do so. No violent institution or debt system lasts forever. The climate and debt crises force us to think these matters together while urging us to action. The struggle is too serious and asks us as progressives to unite with labour unions and social movements. We have to join the voices for debt cancellation and let them be heard. We need to mobilise to raise the pressure on governments and policy makers. Esteban Servat, an Argentinian activist and promoter of this initiative, says: “If we are enough people, they will feel the pressure.”
We need to build a more just world in the face of these challenges. Through organising, cooperative efforts and global solidarity, we can win. “We can come together, if we can mobilise globally against these credit institutions for Debt for Climate!”, demands Esteban Servat, to make a just transition possible. In a post-fossil fuel and post-debt era, countries of the Global South can focus on building their infrastructure around clean energy, as it is also a necessity in Europe and the countries of the Global North. Many initiatives and movements all around the world are demanding that and presenting reasonable, necessary and sustainable programs to achieve it. Fossil fuel has to remain in the ground. DiEM25 has been advocating for a Green New Deal for years, as do progressives in the US, in the UK and elsewhere.
As DiEM25, we call our fellow Europeans to join the protests and support this grassroots and Global South-led initiative. While the leaders of the G7 countries meet in Elmau, we ask all social movements and climate movements, who demand justice from the leading climate polluters of the world, to support ‘Debt for Climate!’ Click here for more information on the initiative and ways to support it.
MeRA25 in Greece and everywhere: Head on against the oligarchy
Report from the first big congress of our Greek electoral wing MeRA25 working head on against the oligarchy. Or to say it with MeRA25’s new rallying cry: ‘Riksi’ (Ρήξη), which translates to ‘rupture’ of today’s system
MeRA25 Greece is the first electoral wing of DiEM25 to make it to parliament, setting off with our guidelines to be “Not just another political party”. The congress taking place in Athens was another example of an organisation following up with its guiding model, principles and pathway. 625 delegates and guests were participating in the congress directly and the voting took place online to ensure inclusive participation by people that could not be present in person.
The congress was held in a welcoming atmosphere made by people for people, but at the same time with a fighting spirit to take on the oligarchy and the status quo with MeRA25’s new rallying cry ‘Riksi’ (Ρήξη), which translates to ‘rupture’ today’s system. Powerful speeches were held by Maria Apatzidi and Kleon Grigoriadis, from the MeRA25 MP group in the Hellenic parliament, and many more.
Kleon Grigoriadis during his speech
The congress gives MeRA25 a clear direction and basis to achieve what we all need in order to make real change: To rupture today’s system and not refrain from calling out those whom we are working against. This is a similar stance to the one DiEM25 has taken by renewing its Manifesto to say: “Europe will be democratised, once the oligarchy is overthrown!”
MeRA25’s national direction is currently voted on by all members of DiEM25 – as it should be in a truly transnational movement – to decide about 7+1 Policies as the foundation of a Popular Front – Preconditions for participating in any government coalition in Greece. This vote will, if DiEM25 members agree, make sure that MeRA25 is working towards a broad Popular Front that challenges the oligarchy’s hold over the people of Greece and does not participate in any government coalition that the oligarchy approves and tolerates.
Alongside the congress, Yanis Varoufakis, Ece Temelkuran and Jeremy Corbyn announced a new Non Aligned Movement by presenting the Athens Declaration, a much needed new pathway to withstand the drums of war. Ece and Jeremy also presented their reasoning at the conference and proved again that MeRA25 is not just another national political party, but an integral part of DiEM25 and the Progressive International.
We had the privilege to visit the congress in Athens as representatives of MERA25 Germany and we will work hard to deliver what we promised in our speech at the congress: “We are fighting together!”
“Dear comrades,
We are Johannes and Judith and we greet you warmly from MERA25… MERA25 Germany!
Your party and your successes are a great source of inspiration for us.
Just as Greece has always been a source of inspiration for Germans. Your ancient civilisation, your democracy, your struggle for liberation. And more recently your hospitality, but also the tradition and the liveliness of the political struggle in the streets.
You know, in Germany this does not happen. Like work, we have outsourced the struggle for wages and better working conditions.
It’s in the hands of the big, very big, German unions, who negotiate with the employers’ representatives. Ordinary workers hardly enter this process any more. Does this idea sound good to you?
They often negotiate only for themselves, resulting in workers losing purchasing power every year for 15 years.
You simply can’t outsource the struggle – some people fight for the rights of all and the rest go to the beach. You need everyone to get active.
Now German workers don’t even have the right to fight anymore – demonstrations need the permission of the town hall and strikes are basically illegal. Police everywhere, justice nowhere.
In Germany, the delivery workers have failed to organise effectively. Yes, we too have delivery companies in Germany who exploit them very badly.
We too have difficulties paying for ever more expensive electricity, pensioners rummage through the rubbish and young people can’t find work. Rich foreigners are buying our houses while we are unable to afford the rent.
The problems of our time are international.
As the central banks print money and distribute it to the big corporations and oligarchs of the world, they use that money to buy both my apartment in Berlin and yours in Athens, to put them both on Airbnb. Zuckerberg and the NSA control us both.
We in Germany also have this abomination called the Energy Exchange. Not to mention climate change and the pandemic. The problems of our time are international.
That is why they require international solutions. The solutions of DiEM25, the Progressive International and MERA25 in Germany and all countries. To the new darkness we answer with light! In our city, in our country, on our planet!
From our German party, our message is that you are not alone. No one is alone and no one can outsource their struggle. Everyone is needed, at the ballot box and in the streets.
We stand together. We help each other. We will change the inhuman policies of Germany and you will change the inhuman policies of Greece.
And we will win together!
Dear comrades, we thank you!”
MeRA25 Greece opposes Greek-American defense agreement
The ratified agreement will see the US given access to three more military bases in Greece, further fueling geopolitical tensions and strengthening the war machine
MeRA25 strongly opposes the Greek-American Mutual Defense Cooperation Agreement (MDCA) which was ratified by the Greek parliament on May 13.
The approval of the agreement will see the United States gain access to three more military bases in the Mediterranean country on top of the one it already operates.
The United States has been operating a naval base in Crete since 1969, and the ratified MDCA will now allow the US military to use Georgula Barracks in Volos, the Litochoro camp in Pieria and the Yannuli barracks in Alexandroupoli.
MeRA25 founder and general secretary Yanis Varoufakis has spoken out against the agreement, stressing that the deal further fuels geopolitical tensions and war-profiteering.
“MeRA25 opposed, and voted against, the Greek-American Mutual Defense Cooperation Agreement,” he told the Anadolu news agency.
“The reason is simple: Its purpose is not to enhance mutual security but, rather, to support the United States’ strategy of fuelling, and profiting from, geopolitical tensions in the wider area from the Black Sea to the Middle East and North Africa.
“MeRA25 is committed to de-escalating all tensions, especially in the Eastern Mediterranean – a goal that is utterly inconsistent with the goals and practices of the so-called Greek-American Mutual Defense Cooperation Agreement.”
Erik Edman: For a European Union of the people, not of oligarchs
DiEM25’s political director, Erik Edman, spoke at the MeRA25 Congress in Athens where he highlighted the necessity of supporting victims of war before discussing the need for a New Non-Aligned Movement.
The talk came shortly after the presentation of the Athens Declaration which was presented by Jeremy Corbyn, Yanis Varoufakis and Ece Temelkuran.
The European Commission’s CSAM legislation poses a huge threat to personal privacy
The scale of the legislation and what it seeks to regulate is in itself alarming. It is not about publicly available content online, it is about Europeans’ private messages
The European Commission wants your messaging provider to spy on you, with their proposed new anti-encryption legislation requiring providers of messaging systems in the EU to scan messages of users after receiving a “detection order” from a European law enforcement agency. The EC argues we need this to combat the proliferation of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) online, but this comes with far wider spying concerns.
It also establishes a new EU Centre to coordinate law enforcement’s efforts in fighting child sexual abuse online. This new European centre would coordinate between European law enforcement agencies, Europol, member states, messaging providers and victims of sexual abuse. It would serve as a clearing house for known images of abusive content and assist in developing techniques for identifying it in online messaging systems. The EC suggest that this EU Centre being founded in The Hague in order to benefit from being close to Europol.
The scale of this legislation and precisely what it seeks to regulate is in itself alarming. It is not about publicly available content online, it is about Europeans’ private messages. This legislation is about sifting through people’s emails and any other messaging applications they use, services like WhatsApp, Telegram, Facebook Messenger, Twitter and others. Messaging platforms where users typically have a reasonable expectation of privacy.
The EC imagines much of the actual work of identifying messages containing child sexual abuse as being done by machines, not by humans, with the inherent assumption that artificial intelligence algorithms will deftly distinguish between what is CSAM and what is not. This in itself is pure fantasy. Worse yet, the legislation pretends that computer magic will be able to identify “grooming” of children by potential predators. Thus, not only will computers magically distinguish between parents sending a picture of their children to family and someone sending that same picture to a predator, but computers will be able to identify when an adult is grooming a child in order to engage in potential future crimes. All this when computers can’t even tell how old someone is in a photo, or reliably distinguish between a picture of a sloth and a picture of a racecar.
The way this is all supposed to work is that the EU Centre, in cooperation with other relevant EU law enforcement agencies, will send a “detection order” to a messaging service provider. This messaging service provider could be a large company, like Facebook or Twitter. Or it could be a small forum operator, or DiEM25 itself, since DiEM25 operates multiple messaging platforms.
Once received, the provider is required to implement detection technologies that are “effective in detecting the dissemination of known or new child sexual abuse material or the solicitation of children”. It is then largely up to the provider to make sure that these technologies effectively identify CSAM, do not extract more information than necessary for the detection order, and don’t infringe on their users too much. These providers are required to tell their users that they’re being spied on, but not which users are being spied on. None of this relieves the provider from other European privacy laws, including the regulations laid out in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
Since there is no way this can be reliably handled in an automated fashion, this will require intervention and content evaluation by humans, most likely by employees of the messaging providers themselves. This requires employees of messaging providers be able to read their users’ messages. This legislation is great if you’re a large messaging provider that already spies on its users, and terrible for small operators who now promise to keep their users safe from spying by storing users’ encrypted messages.
This is why in our Technology Sovereignty paper we call for strengthening privacy regulation in the EU, and restricting state-enabled corporate surveillance of the public. (Section 2.1.1) EU states should not promote spying on their citizens through corporate messaging platforms.
We should not forget that when it comes to invading our privacy law enforcement just can’t help itself. Typical of legislation designed to take away our rights, the EC has given us a victim, a bad guy, and cast themselves as the hero who saves the day. They didn’t even bother coming up with a new bad guy. The Four Horsemen of the Infocalypse lists the four typical bad guys that legislators deploy when wanting to deprive us of our rights: terrorists, drug dealers, paedophiles, and organised crime. They chose number three this time. Maybe next time they’ll choose a different one.