The Data Retention Directive was passed in 2006 by the EU. It was law of the land for almost a decade:

>According to the Data Retention Directive, EU member states had to store information on all citizens' telecommunications data (phone and internet connections) for a minimum of six months and at most twenty-four months, to be delivered on demand to police authorities.

>Under the directive, the police and security agencies would have been able to request access to details such as IP addresses and time of use of every email, phone call and text message sent or received. There was no provision in the directive that permission to access the data must be confirmed by a court. On 8 April 2014, the Court of Justice of the European Union declared the Directive invalid in response to a case brought by Digital Rights Ireland against the Irish authorities and others because blanket data collection violated the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, in particular the right of privacy enshrined in Article 8(1).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Retention_Directive

The media, owned and controlled by powerful people who benefit from the status quo, just tacked on the term 'far' to remind people not to venture outside the Overton window or think too hard. It's scary and far away. Stay the cosy middle where it's safe. Anyone against the pro-corporate status quo (for example mass immigration) is tainted having an extreme opinion; Discussion over.

There are a few nutters and poor people notice these trends first. The media tend to zoom in on those people and of course that taints all their concerns because normal people don't want to say anything that people might see as poor or nutty; they want to be seen as successful and smart. Only poor people would complain about immigration and only extremists and pedos would complain about censorship and you are not one of them right?

I believe people in tech have been making these calls decades before the far right started making noise for their political ends.

The far right may have *latched on* to these calls, but rest assured they are as eager as anyone to use state power to quash dissidents, if not more so.

It is exactly the opposite. EU is blamed for everything what is wrong and local politicians are taking credit for whatever is good.

What are you talking about. UK is the prime example of political parties being extremely critical of the EU and eventually getting exactly what they asked for.

But even if you think UK is some kind of weird one-off example - it's not. Look at Poland - PiS has been openly critical of EU for years now and held power for years, will most likely win it again in the next elections. Konfederacja straight up calls EU facist on a daily basis and they have like 20% support for some insane reason.

>>by "independent" national (state sponsored) media.

You have to explain what you mean by this - you can't be independent and state sponsored. Or do you mean unbiasased(like what the BBC or TVP are meant to be, which they are obviously not but they are not "independent")

Mate everyone in the Netherlands hates the EU. But after calculating it is still more profitable to be in it.

We can see how Trump treated Switzerland.