Earlier quoted context omitted.
> we vote on who to send to EU parliament. You are describing a representative democracy, the parent pointed out the lack of direct democracy in the process. And I would tend to agree that there needs to be more direct democracy involved at some point in the policy making process to accommodate just such a scenario where it's clear the vast majority are not happy with the result. Representative democracy has it's pla…
Even a representative democracy is a far fetched idea with the EU. Nobody really understand how the EU works, except for a few bureaucrats. There are too many proxies. You vote for a local party, then you find out they go into a coalition because the parliament is huge: over 700 seats. And those parties in one coalition have very different agenda's. Then you look deeper, and the parliament's power is very limited, an…
Messaging and chat control
181–190 of 336 posts
Re: Messaging and chat control
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
> on the grounds of a single piece of legislation. No, I said "when you realize", not that it is the "single piece of legislation". There are many other reasons for that stance, such as the fact that nation's people can influence and check their government's laws with more success than it can do that to a supernational undemocratic bureaucratic organization. > The EU is top-tier in a wide range of areas spanning from…
>almost all EU governments act in direct violation and EU has no real power/wish to stop them. This would seem to contradict your original post, no?
Re: Messaging and chat control
#183I'm wondering how long until inconvenient people(or people with inconvenient opinions) are targeted for blackmailing material with a system like this.
[1] https://www.asktheeu.org/en/request/list_of_meps_and_their_o... )
Re: Messaging and chat control
#184Quick search for "Chatkontrolle" on the websites of some of the biggest German newspapers confirms this suspicion:
- spon.de: 2 articles
- sueddeutsche.de: 1 article
- welt.de: 0 articles
- faz.net: 1 article
Re: Messaging and chat control
#185Perfect timing, the EU can ask now Apple to search their phones.
The paranoid part of me would also entertain the idea of a singular force pushing both developments forward, but I don't have any evidence for this.
Re: Messaging and chat control
#186The scary thing about this is that many people have images that look like child porn at home: Family photos of naked grandchildren playing at the sea or in the mud, as well as sexting between consenting teenagers. There is no way automatic classification can distinguish these from real child porn, because they look almost identical and thus many private pictures will be shared with the government. This not only infri…
It's not a dream, and it's really happening, right now.
Re: Messaging and chat control
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right on. Looking into ways of stopping this from happening has given me a very real feeling of desperation. There's no real way for an EU citizen to stop laws like these from getting accepted. No option for a referendum, no option for a veto, the best bet is getting the EU court to annul it, but that takes decades.
EU citizens CAN block this! Make your representative in the Council of the EU accountable. If 4 members veto this the legislation will not pass. If you can't move your country representative to veto the bill, then the issue is not the EU: it's your government. As Europeans we have to stop this very sneaky campaign of "citizens can't do anything" - it's a self fulfilling prophecy and the sharpest tool the lobbies have…
How would I do that? He is already in that position, I have zero influence on his decisions.
Re: Messaging and chat control
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
> we vote on who to send to EU parliament. You are describing a representative democracy, the parent pointed out the lack of direct democracy in the process. And I would tend to agree that there needs to be more direct democracy involved at some point in the policy making process to accommodate just such a scenario where it's clear the vast majority are not happy with the result. Representative democracy has it's pla…
Even a representative democracy is a far fetched idea with the EU. Nobody really understand how the EU works, except for a few bureaucrats. There are too many proxies. You vote for a local party, then you find out they go into a coalition because the parliament is huge: over 700 seats. And those parties in one coalition have very different agenda's. Then you look deeper, and the parliament's power is very limited, an…
They've been very careful to not let the curtain slip too far, and preserve the appearance that popular opinion can change policy. But there's no legislative connection.
This kind of legislation is an interesting case in point. Who wants this? Who benefits from this? Is it actually going to make a dent in child abuse? Generally the EU is keen on privacy, so what changed that for this? Are there any states really pushing for this so they can read their citizens' mail (Poland, maybe, I guess, but they're not having a great time in the EU at the moment so probably not)? As TFA says, this is not a popular move, and there's no popular wave of anti-pedo sentiment at the moment, so why now?
The suspicion of palm-greasing (sorry, "lobbying") remains. Reading our messages means more data for the AI, means better ad targeting.
Re: Messaging and chat control
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think that the fatal error is not going and vote for the European Parliament elections [0]. You don't get to complain when you decide not to participate in the democratic process. Even if this was passed by the Council of the EU [1] it would be passed by ministers representing over 55% of the states - and over 65% of the EU population - and could be blocked by 4 countries. Now - we can discuss if a government is a…
> You don't get to complain when you decide not to participate in the democratic process. You can complain either way. Not participating means you are not participating, and is a kind of a vote too. If <50% people vote, then the vote is arguably illegitimate.
In the EU Parliament elections it's just people deciding not to vote. As you yourself said: "is a kind of a vote too".
Let me make a practical example: we are having a pizza party and we have a vote for what pizza to order, you say: "I don't care - you guys decide!". When the pizzas show up you may say: "Dang, you got the anchovies pizza - I don't like anchovies!", but not "Why did you guys get anchovies? I don't like anchovies, you shouldn't have ordered that pizza!". They seem closely related, but they are not.
Re: Messaging and chat control
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
[flagged]
> some in the millions Sources? From what I have seen, marches of 100k max.
For an example of underrepresentation, "160k" was the "official" figure for the totality of France recently in the few mainstream media reports. Most "official" figures, if they report at all, are multiple factors low, or in same cases orders of magnitude too low.
Eg, just the single public square in Paris (place de la concorde) protestors have occupied in most protests, easily holds much more than 160k, on its own. That was just one square in one (albeit the biggest) city that day.
Find drone shots or timelapses to make estimates, for example: odysee.com/@alltheworldsastage:0/Aug-7th-Paris---Montpellier-France-Massive-Anti-Vaccine-Passport-Protests-Libert%C3%A9-Manifestations:2?
(Absolutely don't endorse this channel or anything - but this bit of content in this case is largely unedited or editorialised, and is sourced.)
If you find a good visual source, use one of various free crowd estimator tools to see for yourself. Draw lines on the map and drag a slider for crowd density - eg the above-mentioned square in Paris is 50k for a light crowd, up to 200k+ for a packed crowd - and the protests meet the definition of packed.
There are no easily-accessible, centralised and vetted sources of indisputable information during times of widespread censorship - you simply have to go look and do the work of vetting it yourself. Beware sometimes it's mislabelled/misinformation, eg, actually shots of a world cup celebration (likely intended to discredit). It's not hard to be discerning however - if absolutely everyone is holding the countries flag and there are no signs, it's likely a sports or other national celebration. If some are holding flags and others are holding signs saying "liberte" it's a protest. You need to learn the foreign words for freedom and vaccine passport at least.
In Italy it's easy as the word for "no" is the same as English and the word for vaccine passport is "green pass": so "no green pass", as various members of parliament ambushed the center of a parliament session and held up signs saying so recently.
You can bet if multiple members of parliament are flooding the central chamber of government of a major European country with protest signs, then protests are at least in the millions.