The parent comment was most likely referring to the idea that someone else should compel you to give away the replica to an organization, in perpetuity, without compensation or rights. I don't think anybody is against a digital replica used privately where you can be sure you control the data and any derived income.
I have a hard time trusting that this is for environmental or user friendly reasons. Those may certainly be outcomes, barring better battery tech that obviates needing to care about a removable battery once batteries last decades, but I don't think they're the intended reason for this. I think it's just what they're saying to make it sound more appealing to the end user who may not realize what's actually happening.
The reason I'm skeptical is because this is not happening in isolation from other related things happening in Europe. Consider how France is pushing for authorities to have unprecedented direct access to people's devices in this dystopian push:
This reminds me of when I visited France not long ago. At the airport they started opening my laptop to check it out. I never had that happen at any other airport before. They took it out in front of me and opened it up to look inside it. It was a bizarre experience because that held up the entire flight's departure for no reason. It was an unpleasant and uncomfortable experience. Their general tendency towards authoritarian dystopian types of ideas since then is palpable.
So all of this suggests to me they want to have easy access to consumer hardware for interdiction reasons. It'll be way easier for them to get into devices that are otherwise behind proprietary or less common enclosure mechanisms. It's strange how with the EU it's one step forward for protecting users (I like the spirit of GDPR for example) and then just a giant step backwards with these types of moves. Unless the EU adopts strict user privacy laws at the constitutional level, I don't see why this confluence of variables isn't suggesting an anti user mindset.
If someone with an expertise in these things can offer guidance on why interdiction doesn't work this way and what I'm missing about the risks here, I'd greatly appreciate it!
This is just baseless speculation mixed with personal anecdotes (as if there weren't countless anecdotes about the United States TSA requesting access to personal computing devices). Europe is a big place and it should be no surprise that there are multiple things happening at once.
The push for user replaceable batteries has been ongoing for years now and is not related to whatever Macron's trying to do unilaterally in his own country, which is only one member state of the EU.
Battery replacement for surveillance reasons only makes sense if someone manages to put some kind of tracker in a battery.
Airport authorities can certainly have the tools to open up computers especially, as you mention, because they have the power to delay people's flights. They certainly don't need to do that "without proprietary tools" or in a rush.
On that note, airport security simply opening a computer is usually not a way to hack it, it happens more likely if they want to double check for explosives or other hidden compartments they cannot see on X-Ray (because heavy metals turn black on X-Ray and you can't see what's on the other side).
If the authorities wanted to actually get the contents on your phone or computer, they can (in some places) simply take the phone or computer from you, ask you to give them the password or passcode and then give back the device when they're done cloning it. This has actually happened multiple times in the US (example: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/ill-never-bring-my-phone-o...).
Having access to the hardware without you knowing it only makes sense if the government had to rely on a secret hardware backdoor, but there are easier ways to track you via software, ISP data or simply by forcing you to hand over your device and revealing your password.
On the other hand, this battery replacement argument follows a long history of courts and regulatory authorities around the world slapping vendors for doing what they have been doing for the last decade or so: proprietary connectors, non-replaceable batteries, and so on.
It's not just a European thing. Last year, a Brazilian court fined Apple 19 million USD because they sell phones without chargers, especially given that Apple uses non-standard connectors.
