> If the software cannot be deployed remotely, the law authorizes officers to secretly enter a person’s home to gain access.
Clear Das Leben der Anderen vibes. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lives_of_Others)
However: As usual, the devil is in the details. How much suspicion is required, what's the process, etc. (I assume that a judge needs to sign off.)
Secret access to plant bugs is how the FBI beat the mafia in the US in many cases in the 80s and 90s. But there were strict rules.
Europeans can no longer afford to be the idealists that they were in the 2000s. Every country is runnng influence ops across Europe to a degree that hasn't been seen since the Cold War.
That said, as an American, it's fine for me if Germans and Europeans remain naive. An allied Europe is good, but a naive but controlled Europe is equally as good. For every Atlanticist, we have people who can push our interests in an illiberal manner like Dominik Andrzejczuk.
[0] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-04-25/berlin-ki...
[1] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-11-18/vietnam-p...
Even more important: The cost of surveillance this way is very high. It's not practical to perform massive surveillance this way, so it requires a reason for targeted surveillance.
In 2025-26, the threat profile that most European countries face is comparable in scale to what was the norm during the Cold War, except now most Western European intelligence and law enforcement agencies are not allowed to use the same tools they used to use barely 15 years ago.
As an American, it's fine for me if Germans and Europeans remain naive. An allied Europe is good, but a naive but controlled Europe is equally as good. For every Atlanticist, we have people who can push our interests in an illiberal manner like Dominik Andrzejczuk.
For every Vance, we got a Nuland, and American views on Europe began shifting all the way back in 2011 [0] (for all you guys who will spew the "Politico is Axel Springer" crap, this article is from 2011 - 13 years before the acquisition): "Europeans should be particularly concerned that a strong majority of Americans under the age of 45 now see Asia as more important than Europe" in 2011.
> The cost of surveillance this way is very high. It's not practical to perform massive surveillance this way, so it requires a reason for targeted surveillance
Not really. Data warehousing with cold/hot storage along with basic statistical analysis and inference has become cheap. And even local police departments can afford a $50k-$100k annual contract to work with red teams on bespoke exploit development.
[0] - https://www.politico.eu/article/americans-turn-their-backs-o...
Always the arguments of the enemies of freedom and dignity - they are fanciful ideals, not necessities and the whole point, and the foundations of the freeest, most secure, most prosperous societies in history. Maybe the rest of Europe wants to live more like Russia?
How do you get free, prosperous, safe people to give all that up for what you offer? It sounds almost impossible. You manufacture fear and division - look at terrorism, or the uses of demonization in many places - and then they may be willing to change.
Remember that Eisenhower said, 'the only thing we have to fear is fear itself'. Eisenhower, who led the militaries of West through arguably the greatest crisis in their history, who was leading the West through the Cold War. He knew crisis, and that is what he said. That's what genuine leaders do.
Those who use spread fear and radicalization are not after security and freedom, but after power.
We in the US are using free speech and privacy absolutism as a hammer against the EU's Digital Services Act, which they are using as a hammer against our dominance in the tech industry and our trade barriers against European exports.
For most European nations today, the degree of greyzone warfare is startling, and multiple near accidents have happened. And even with expanded police and intelligence powers like those used in Europe in the 2000s, most European nations would remain significantly freer than Russia ever was or is.
That's a strawperson, not a serious argument. The idea that the US is absolutist about privacy is laughable, even more when compared to Europe. Free speech is falling apart rapidly. Europe is the central advocate of human rights currently.
The European definition of human rights doesn't include a maximalist approach to privacy. The primacy of state powers is a core bedrock in mainstream European thought, as can be seen with EU Charter Article 8.
Hybrid warfare tactics such as those being used by Russia within the EU [0] along with other sorts of offensive intelligence operations would fall under the remit of an expansion of state enforcement and coexist with the EU Charter.
Furthermore, as I previously stated, this kind of empowerment of law enforcement and intelligence agencies was the norm across much of the EU (and still is in Southern and Eastern European member states) until the 2010s.
[0] - https://acleddata.com/report/testing-waters-suspected-russia...
You missed the point. The cost of physically entering the places that the government wants to surveil is much much higher than the cost to Warehouse the data.
It's impractical to perform mass surveillance when you have to physically enter every person's domicile and or workplace who you want to surveill.