Two years ago, I warned in City AM that the UK's Online Safety Bill risked undermining privacy and paving the way for government overreach into our digital lives. Today, that concern feels more urgent than ever. Last month, the EU Commission released its ProtectEU roadmap, outlining plans to provide law enforcement with access to encrypted data by 2030. This is not about targeting specific suspects. It is about building the legal and technical infrastructure for mass surveillance. Big Brother Watch have revealed that live facial recognition systems deployed in UK cities are wrong nearly 9 out of 10 times, scanning innocent people without their knowledge or consent. This is already happening in our streets, at stations, even at protests. Now imagine that biometric surveillance linked to a centralised digital currency. Imagine every payment, location, contact and movement tracked, stored and correlated. This is not theoretical. We risk building a society where privacy is gone, autonomy is restricted, and control is centralised in the name of convenience and safety. The combination of decrypted messaging, facial recognition, CBDCs, and mandatory ID checks and full KYC creates a full spectrum surveillance regime. A system where dissent is not crushed by force, but quietly discouraged through constant surveillance. What’s at stake is freedom of thought, movement and expression. We should be defending them, not trading them for the illusion of safety. Once this infrastructure is in place, it is rarely rolled back.

Migration and Home Affairs

Commission presents Roadmap for effective and lawful access to data for law enforcement

On 24 June, the Commission presented a Roadmap setting out the way forward to ensure law enforcement authorities in the EU have effective and lawfu...