“As part of our efforts to use more sovereign digital solutions, the European Commission is preparing an internal communication solution based on the Matrix protocol,” the spokesperson told Euractiv.
Matrix is an open source, community-developed messaging protocol shepherded by a non-profit that’s headquartered in London. It’s already widely used for public messengers across Europe, with the French government, German healthcare providers and European armed forces all using tools built on the protocol.
↫ Maximilian Henning at Euractiv
Right now, most government agencies and institutions in Europe are effectively entirely reliant on Microsoft for their digital infrastructure, and that’s not a tenable situation going forward with the Americans being openly hostile towards Europe, up to and including threatening to invade European countries. Europe needs its own digital infrastructure, and opting to build those around open source tools is the obvious way to go.
Of course, this isn’t an easy process, but two platitudes apply here: Rome wasn’t built in a day, and every journey begins with a first step. By opting to use existing open source tools, though, these efforts will have a massive head start, and will hopefully lead to a flurry of increased activity for the open source projects in question. In this particular case it’s Matrix, which can surely need some additional work and eyeballs, if my use of the protocol is any indication.
I set up Dendrite server on a home lab and gave every member of my family Element Classic.
It’s not perfect, but it’s good enough for chatting and voice calling. I highly recommend trying it out yourself.
I did. Then I installed ejabberd and conversations.im and felt a lot better.
Serafean,
After being away from college for so many years… Dendrite and ejabberd sound like gibbesrish.
You could as well say Yggdrasil, Gentoo, GIMP, or Apache. Without context, most “normal” computer users will have no idea. And this is probably some Old European Epic.
Jokes aside…
And that might be a real blocker for adoption of open source technologies. Somehow many of them stay obscure, compared to the value they bring.
This is what we use for all public agents in France (300 000 users), federated by agencies and with a single sso. Works great but you sometimes have to revalidate your device encryption key with a code or through a second device. It is cutoff from non government matrix servers for security reasons. Tchap
The Americans will hack any alternative software Europe decides to use to force them back into the US-controlled digital framework. U.S. Big Tech are an extension of the state. Full stop.
The US has been in a war with the world for digital control of their resources for the last couple of decades and they didn’t even know.
bill,
I am sure it might seem that way.
But wasn’t UK the country that forced encryption backdoors?
https://www.internetsociety.org/blog/2025/05/encryption-under-threat-the-uks-backdoor-mandate-and-its-impact-on-online-safety/
Which famously caused some services to remove their offerings in that country.
Or EU mandating “Chat Control” or Child Sexual Abuse (CSA) Regulation to similar effect. They are forced to take some steps back after years of massive pushback form the public and rights groups. But they really wanted to tap in civilian communications. (And I’m pretty sure some bureaucrats in Brussels waiting for the next turn to push this again)
In any case, I’m not saying US is better. But at least currently we are not outlawing civilian encryption or preventing people to build their own privacy centric platforms.
We have strong First Amendment protections. Code is speech, and our constitution makes it illegal for government to intervene. For all our faults that still means something.
Or in other words: “We will spy on what we can access, and companies will harvest data, but we generally will not outlaw the mathematics required for you to protect yourself.”
sukru,
It’s not clear to me if you are aware that the US has done exactly that, passing laws that weaken and backdoor nascent security technologies. The US government mandated the clipper chip with backdoors in the 90s, legally required weakened encryption in browsers/operating systems/wifi/etc. Classified crypto as “munitions” and forced companies to implement crackable crypto, at least for export. And thanks to Snowden’s leaks, several secret spy programs implicating the big service providers became public too.
The US really did try to weaken crypto but it usually didn’t work out as it was virtually impossible to stop criminals from getting their hands on strong crypto and meanwhile normal users were harmed the most. I don’t believe that any of these risks have truly gone away. With the simultaneous rise of walled gardens and authoritarianism the ability for governments to impose new restrictions has gotten stronger and so is their will to become more draconian.
I for one am not so confident of that. I suspect that in most of our lifetimes we’re going to see western governments increasingly betraying more of our freedoms to tighten control over the public.
Alfman,
I’m keenly aware of that. All governments would like to do evil, if not bound by checks. And many would do backroom deals with large commercial providers.
But that does not change the main point…
Which is…
This was defeated by that very First Amendment.
It was Phil Zimmermann (of PGP fame) that wrote the secrets to strong RSA encryption in a book “PGP Source Code and Internals”. And courts sided with him telling government cannot stop publication of that.
And once the genie was out of the bottle, RSA became fully public.
Not only that, we recently had a discussion on whether there were any truly banned books in the USA.
Someone came with “The Anarchist Cookbook”. It is freely available. Another speculation was about the details of making an atomic bomb. That was available for sale on Amazon. The most vilest books? Also there.
(Though this might put us on some “lists”, so I won’t share the links)
They will most definitely try to.
However USA is nowhere near what Europe does in this regard.
Just last year they kidnapped the CEO of Telegram, and held him hostage until whatever “software changes” they deemed was sufficient to release him back. Just last week they raided the offices of Twitter in France (I refuse to call it “X”)
In both cases, people cheered the crackdown. It was truly shocking for me.
Unlike the cases here, where ACLU would send a Jewish lawyer to protect the freedom of assembly for literal flag carrying Nazis. (Skokie Case)
We are different, and we should cherish and protect that.
sukru,
I am glad that courts ruled that source code itself could not be censored, but to be clear they did pass the laws restricting strong encryption and it was the law of the land, which got implemented in several technologies…even those built with FOSS were subject to the laws.
In other words, I don’t just care about the right to have source code but also about the right to use it in an embodied product.
Edit: In addition, given the highly political makeup of the supreme court these days and an increasing disregard for established case law, there’s no guarantee they would exempt source code in future cases.
I’m not sure about books, but the FBI does do take downs for some websites. Ironically there’s probably a lot more being banned on copyright grounds.
The US has political captives as well. I recall the extradition of a Huawei chairperson that was largely seen as an escalation in a political trade war created by the US.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extradition_case_of_Meng_Wanzhou
Meng was never actually charged with anything and as we know all too well these days authorities will use whatever excuse is convenient at the time to justify their actions.
In any case my opinion was not about the US being better or worse than Europe, but rather that the rise in authoritarianism encroaches on our freedoms around the world. It’s a folly to believe it cannot happen in the US. I would have once thought it extremely unlikely, but my eyes have been opened to how it could happen.
Alfman,
I would suggest the current makeup is an even stronger relief for Americans for 1A cases. The court is very strong on 1A protections and have almost never rules against them in their current tenure.
For example they ruled government officials cannot block people on social media, even on personal accounts if they use it for any official reason. This came up when the President (among others) were blocking critics.
And a recent (2023 203 Creative v. Elenis) case tells they still specifically see “code as speech”
The only time we might say they had an anti-1A ruling was when the prior government forced social media companies to control COVID speech. Frankly, even if those could be considered harmful, or misinformation, this is the case I would not agree with them.
That is true, we are seeing a “repeat” of the early 20th century (even with a pandemic). And I hope we will continue to protect our basic freedoms.
sukru,
The people who need protections most (such as those under students visas) are the ones who are being afforded the least protections. Many don’t care when it’s not them, but we’re all supposed to have free speech protections under the 1st amendment. Yet we are seeing those critical of US policy, such as the treatment of Palestinians, have been deprived of the freedom of speech. Without enough people in government to actually defend the constitution, we end up loosing the rights enshrined in it. Given current events I think it’s very dangerous to just take it for granted that the government will always provide adequate checks.
Alfman,
This is an entirely different discussion isn’t it?
(I can say there have been a lot of questionable actions, However)…
“What are the rights and responsibilities of a guest who is subject to State Department rules and on a temporary, restricted visa”
vs
“Is code protected free speech?”
I would love to discuss the nuances of the other one… However we would spend days back and forth and can’t make much progress. Also we would be entirely derailing the main topic.
In any case.
I’m glad US of A has 1A enshrined in the constitution, and protected by 250 years of court doctrine. We are much less likely to be subject to free speech restrictions, or worse “compelled speech” (speaking something against your beliefs by force), which is unfortunately a more European thing.
(Not only it was a big thing in WWII, it is still true today. EU and UK are forcing companies to adopt backdoors openly with new laws. At least in the USA they are challenged and ultimately put down)
sukru,
I am too, but you do seem to have more confidence than I do that it can’t be trampled. Much like ICE are sidestepping constitutionally protected due process rights for thousands of people every week, the constitution is only as good as those who uphold it.
I agree with you in principal but the constitution is at great risk if we don’t get the system of checks and balances back in order soon.
I’m against authoritarian practices everywhere including EU and US. I’m really trying to make it less about whose better between the US and the EU and instead make the case that “woa, hold the horses, this can turn out to be a big problem for all of us”.
Alfman,
True…
We are being tested.
But my concern with EU/UK is, that is how US governments have historically used their counterparts on the other side of the pond to implement these “features”: “international standards”, “trade obligations”, “mutual accords”
Anyway…
Without an open and free Internet, our future as the whole human society is no longer as bright.
lol, and the closed source crap that US sells is better?
Nah, this is the move. FOSS FTW.
colinstu,
I agree, this is a very strong argument for FOSS. However the problem is that average consumers aren’t promoting FOSS adoption. It’s obvious to me how important FOSS is in protecting our rights, however the public apathy of ordinary consumers keeps us marginalized. The vast majority of customers still buy products despite anti-owner control built into them. Look at apple’s success with IOS in spite of leading the fight against owner control. We were so close to google ending sideloading on android too.
If we take our freedoms for granted, they will get taken away.
Alfman,
Signal might be a good choice then.
It is a “household” name. Open Source, and has very strong encryption fundamentals.
It’s great that they’re exploring an FOSS, decentralised alternative to Big Tech products. But is the EU aware that Matrix offers end-to-end encryption – which they are planning to ban at the same time (cf. Chat Control)?