I love The Internet, it came into my life as I became an adult, I’ve watched it change the world, and I find attempts to lock it down to be abhorrent.

I also grew up in a world where intelligence fieldcraft was an in-person activity where it was just about possible for one side to keep track of the other side, or at least hold some kind of leverage, counter-leverage, and counter-counter-leverage to stop the Cold War getting out of control.

The internet, as well as giving us all this freedom to communicate, also gave the Controls of this world — high level intelligence officers based in their home countries but directing operations overseas — a wonderful new lever to influence, harass, and sabotage. Why burn an agent when you can find a useful idiot in a foreign country to agitate on your behalf?

I sympathize with nation states’ urge to be able to see what’s going on online, but I hate the way they’re going about it. How do we balance a free Internet against a need to crack down on foreign influence?

>I sympathize with nation states’ urge to be able to see what’s going on online, but I hate the way they’re going about it. How do we balance a free Internet against a need to crack down on foreign influence?

and more importantly - whose influence? how do we pick whom do we ally ourselves with and who we go against? How do we prevent such system from being abused to just entrench current powers that be, and stifle genuine opposition?

If it is done behind closed doors, there's not much difference in EU becoming like Russia or China, with a coat of liberal paint instead.