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Stop the proposal on mass surveillance of the EU

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Re: Stop the proposal on mass surveillance of the EU

#161

Post by alex_young »

purututu wrote: post #97
mach1ne wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even though something has a benevolent rationalization, it doesn’t mean the true motives are benevolent. It doesn’t need any New World Order conspiracy either. People in ruling positions often enjoy power, and they may be clueless as to how this desire is affecting their decisionmaking.

> It doesn’t need any New World Order conspiracy either. NWO is not a conspiracy theory any longer. This exact terminology is openly used by many politicians now, demanding for a NWO. Depending which bubble you live in, you have not seen any or only too little such speeches.

The term New World Order has been used for over a century by politicians. It’s hardly believable that Woodrow Wilson was using a secret code word to communicate a plan to do evil things in the 21st century when he was advocating for the League of Nations.

Re: Stop the proposal on mass surveillance of the EU

#162

Post by brookst »

rojobuffalo wrote: post #136
Hizonner wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the idea is not that they hide their motives, but that they hide from their motives. May or may not be true, but still...

I think hide implies intent to deceive. It's often more like conscious and sub-conscious reasoning. We constantly tell a story to ourselves about our motives. We're impulsive and wrong a lot of the time. And nobody is the bad guy in their own story. Maybe it's willful ignorance. Ignorance of the misuse and harm of mass surveillance.

Maybe. Are you as open to the idea that those who oppose surveillance (that’s me) also have secret motives and engage in willful ignorance, so you can’t trust my anti-surveillance arguments? Because, the theory goes, even I don’t know the dark motives that are making me say those things?

Do you see how impossible any dialog becomes in that model?

Re: Stop the proposal on mass surveillance of the EU

#163

Post by r3trohack3r »

throwrqX wrote: post #133

Every time this comes up people talk about protecting privacy and anonymity and what not and while luckily for us most of the time the laws die out they still do pass on occasion. The fundamental issue to me is that society still wants to protect against pedophiles or drug dealers or whatever other group more than protect privacy. As an example, how many people here could go on television onto some talk program or ne…

> The fundamental issue to me is that society still wants to protect against pedophiles or drug dealers or whatever other group more than protect privacy.

Speaking from a U.S. perspective here.

A pedophile with a cameraphone is terrible. But law enforcement without the 4th amendment is worse.

A racist with a social media account is terrible. But a president without the 1st amendment is worse.

There are people who do terrible things in this world. Unfortunately people who do terrible things can run for government and be appointed to positions of power.

There are darker things down the path of eroding our protections from our government than whatever evil they’re asking us to yield for.

Re: Stop the proposal on mass surveillance of the EU

#164

Post by zx85wes »

dijit wrote: post #26
DoingIsLearning wrote: post #20

As a pro-EU citizen I feel more and more inclined to agree on some of the Brexit rhetoric. Commissioners have shown multiple times that they are too permeable to lobbying, too willing to water down tough environmental regulation, and too keen on 'security' surveillance. So far the EU parliament members have balanced the act with some sanity. But the power and lack of transparency of the EC both with regards to lobbyi…

EU Parliament has nothing to do with this proposal. It's proposed by the EU Commission, and such things have been struck down by the Parliament before. Also: Britain hardly has any leg to stand on regarding privacy (which is something the EU usually has a focus on[0]). Did you forget the Snoopers Charter[1]? That isn't a proposal. That's law. [0]: https://gdpr.eu [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investigatory_Power…

They've voted in favour of mass surveillance too. https://www.euractiv.com/section/data-protection/news/new-eu...

Re: Stop the proposal on mass surveillance of the EU

#165

Post by jokethrowaway »

monkeynotes wrote: post #121
DoingIsLearning wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am making the point that the parliament votes, and _rejects_ proposals that overreach. My point is not Britain as an example, but that one of the Brexit rhetoric points was the rah rah 'unelected officials'. Arguably we both know that EC comissioners are appointed by democratic governments but we see multiple times how permeable EC commisioners are: 1. Surveillance proposals such as posted in this thread 2. Net Neu…

* 'unelected officials' The UK has had 4 unelected PMs since 1990, and dozens before that. And as pointed out before, the UK is ahead of the EU in terms of surveillance. You even have to opt in with your ISP to watch porn. The UK has hundreds of thousands of government CCTV cameras and they can comprehensively track your movements through the entire country. The Brexit rhetoric was more about nationalism than anythin…

Absolutely, every government is absolutely a bunch of corrupted criminals.

Totally onboard. The thing is the more layers of corrupted politicians you put on top of people, the more theft and harassment you'll get from the aforementioned politicians and - surprise! - less accountability or ways to complain / protest.

Brexit actually damaged me personally, but I'm glad for the British people that they won't be subjected to the extra EU rules. The UK government is bad enough, they don't need EU bureaucrats on top.

I wouldn't wish it to my worst enemy.

Re: Stop the proposal on mass surveillance of the EU

#166

Post by UncleEntity »

ImHereToVote wrote: post #117
feanaro wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There doesn’t have to be a secret agenda. There doesn't have to be, but there totally can be.

Nonsense. Government organizations never do things in secret. The very idea is patently absurd. I mean, how would that even happen in practice, someone does something without blasting it on Twitter, as I said, absurd.

Maybe the things that get blasted on twitter are formally secret things that government agencies do that someone blew the whistle on?

Which means there could be an untold number of things which they do which are currently secret.

I heard once that things, sometimes shady things, exist outside of the twitterverse.

Re: Stop the proposal on mass surveillance of the EU

#168

Post by notepalf »

can16358p wrote: post #10

We certainly need decentralized systems that cannot be controlled by EU, US, or any government/entity. Privacy is a human right. We probably all know that they will show reasons like "fighting terrorism", "preventing national threats" or "hunting down child pornography" etc, whereas the real motivation is to control people's freedom of speech and communication even though they will 100% deny it. Anyone who is really…

> We certainly need decentralized systems

Matrix and XMPP exists, what should we do to make this more popular?

Re: Stop the proposal on mass surveillance of the EU

#169

Post by _vertigo »

guy98238710 wrote: post #74
ivan_gammel wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that is wrong. It is the purpose of the laws to protect privacy, which is our right to protect ourselves by prevention of sharing sensitive information with bad actors. Our privacy means that others cannot exploit our weaknesses to get our money or to bully us. It means that rogue cop cannot blackmail us by exposing details of our private life to public. There are many scenarios when too much data landed in the w…

It's not just a few bad cops. No matter how well the law is written and executed, it is always bad from the point of view of some people. There is no universal agreement about what should be illegal. People who lose the fight over laws can use privacy as a refuge.

Framing privacy in this light is a surefire way to lose it.

Re: Stop the proposal on mass surveillance of the EU

#170

Post by Xelbair »

ethbr0 wrote: post #41
can16358p wrote: post #10

We certainly need decentralized systems that cannot be controlled by EU, US, or any government/entity. Privacy is a human right. We probably all know that they will show reasons like "fighting terrorism", "preventing national threats" or "hunting down child pornography" etc, whereas the real motivation is to control people's freedom of speech and communication even though they will 100% deny it. Anyone who is really…

> We probably all know that they will show reasons [...], whereas the real motivation is to control people's freedom of speech and communication even though they will 100% deny it. I don't think this is how it works, absent an already existent police state. In democracies, it really is pushed for {good reasons}. Once built, it's then used by law enforcement, because it exists and gets the job done. Pretending there's…

no matter the reasons, even if current politicians and institutions are 100% trustworthy, no such law should be made.

you cannot guarantee that future institutions, and governments will be benevolent, and with such laws you give them easy access to tools of oppression.

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