The EU's position on privacy seems pretty consistent to me - they're against your data being monetized by private entities but not against building governmental tools to monitor private entities.

In good faith this could be summarized as "Personal data should be used for public safety but not for profit" - but that philosophy is definitely a strong contrast with the basic American philosophy towards civil liberties.

The unquestioned view in certain circles - including here - is that when the EU/UK does something that chips away at people's online privacy, there's un ulterior motive.

It's entirely possible that politicians just want to do something about CSAM and young people having their mind twisted by social media. The electorate do seem to be keen on some sort of action.

Not "access to ALL of your data". Also, as confusing as it might be, it is in the nature of EU (at least IMHO) to not have a clear position over multiple legislatures.

The thing is that according to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights privacy and the right to private communication is a basic human right. And GDPR was literally enacted to enforce this human right.

Now one basic principle of democracy is that supreme courts are superior to the people in power. Someone needs to watch the lawmakers so to say. Because it could actually be that the European commission enacts laws that are illegal. And Chat Control 2.0 could actually be illegal because it violates the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. However, somebody has to take them to The Court of Justice of the European Union to test it.

It seems fairly consistent, doesn't it? CC 2.0 is that the government must be able to access things, and GDPR has a legal basis exemption that is defacto used every time by government entities. The general idea is that private parties cannot consent to things to each other but that residents of a place consent to being governed by the government. e.g. you can't consent to having someone jail you; but you also can't opt out of jail by the government.

Personally, the politics of Europe is really not for me, but I can see why others might find it attractive. In the end, history will show us which path is adaptive.

The one that passed doesn't give them access to anything. It is different from the scary one.

Maybe big tech weren't good a lobbying bureaucrats against GDPR but got better at lobbying in the EU for this. There's also been a slight shift towards authoritarianism in the last decade, which naturally love the possibilities of stricter communication control.

Children protection and russian propaganda are the tried and tested covers at enforcing age verification, message scanning, and probably any future pan-european surveillance network.

There's no position on privacy. They make whatever laws the corporate laws and elites like, and that furthers their own bureucratic reach. GDPR is a good way to create a "compliance moat" against smaller players, and to give the EU bureucrats more power.

It is simple. GDPR is aimed at private entities misusing your data. Keyword private.

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I think the position can best be approximated as "companies should not be able to do this, but you should trust your government to do this to you". (That's a bad position that needs to be defeated every time it arises, but it's a consistent position.)