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The chat control proposal does not belong in democratic societies

mullvad.net

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Re: The chat control proposal does not belong in democratic societies

#321

Post by zirgs »

revelio wrote: post #301
zirgs wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A leaving country could keep using the Euro while working on the transition back to their own currency. When the USSR collapsed - its former members continued to use Soviet rubles for some time until they transitioned to their own currencies. So yeah - if a country really wanted to leave - a shared currency would not stop it.

It depends on how much cooperation the EU would extend (assume zero). For example paying other companies in euros requires transactions with the central bank. If the EU don't want you to leave they can just say, well, the moment you declare you're out we cut you off from the banking system and you can't settle your government debts anymore because you can't make euro transactions. For example.

Yeah, but I don't think that they would do it. We already had Brexit and the UK was allowed to leave. Had they not colonised Northern Ireland - the leaving process would have been even easier.

Re: The chat control proposal does not belong in democratic societies

#322

Post by carapace »

rsync wrote: post #94
TOMDM wrote: post #2

This is especially important in the age of LLM's. Large scale surveillance while abusive and harmful has historically been limited in scale by the ability of those in control to trawl through data. Automated "moderation" of dragnet communications collection with modern AI holds the potential for a scale of abusive privacy invasion at unprecedented scales.

Interesting… I was thinking the opposite… My personal ability to generate millions of real-looking messages has now exploded and I wonder how these proposed structures will function if everyone sends each other 1k suspicious messages every minute of every day ? Maybe attach a zip-bomb to every message just for good measure?

The problem isn't really that it works or doesn't work. The problem is that once we accept digital "evidence" then we're on course to push-button corruption.

Remember "Hacking Team" that got busted a few years back? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacking_Team One of the services they sold was the ability to plant incriminating data on a victim's computer.

Re: The chat control proposal does not belong in democratic societies

#323

Post by Kretinsky »

yreg wrote: post #127
revelio wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The MEPs don't have the right to change EU law. So it doesn't matter even if they were all voted out and replaced. The commission does what it wants, it's not really a democratic system.

The commission needs a passing vote of approval from the parliament and its president is elected by the parliament. It is a democratic system.

The fact that there's a vote at some point of the system doesn't make it democratic. Most authoritarian regimes require some people to vote, but they're not democratic.

Moreover, even at the universal suffrage, “democracy” doesn't mean electing a dictator with no popular oversight every x years.

In the case of the European commission:

- No EU citizen gave them the explicit mandate to enforce chat control

- If the initiative is repelled, and they continue to force freedom-reducing initiatives, they'll face 0 consequences.

- At most, the parliament can do is strike down a law. There is of course a very unbalanced distribution of power – the elected people have no initiative.

- The EC is corrupt: many commissioners cash fat checks from the private sector after their term, with 0 consequences.[0],[1]

- Lobbyism is everywhere. Corporations with unlimited money bribe officials, harass them, and push their agenda. Anyone close to the EU will tell you that it's much worse than you think.

“Democracy” is not the power of the corporations, and citizens, maybe, if we have time for it and if it doesn't eat into our profits.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/15/european-commi...

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/jul/10/former-eu-digit...

Re: The chat control proposal does not belong in democratic societies

#324

Post by moffkalast »

maxilevi wrote: post #7

Why every 12 months the European Commission comes up with a total dumb and authoritarian proposal and we have to actively fight it? It’s just tiring

Because of the person who's currently the president of the Commission, that's why. Ask any German about von der Leyen.

Re: The chat control proposal does not belong in democratic societies

#325

Post by geysersam »

anonyfox wrote: post #227
geysersam wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who elected those guys anyway? I sure never had the chance to vote for any of them. I'd be more fine with that if they only regulated narrowly defined inter-state issues in the EU. But stuff like this... There's no mandate. And there's no reason this couldn't be done locally in every member state where the population wants that.

Well, we actually vote for the EU parliament every 5 (?) years here in Germany. Where are you from that you didn't have to option to vote?

I vote. I just think the distance between us voters and the people who end up in the EU "government" is too big.

Democracy gets diluted when the electorate becomes too large and too diverse. It's important that decisions stay as local as possible.

Re: The chat control proposal does not belong in democratic societies

#326

Post by Clubber »

lib-dev wrote: post #290
BurningFrog wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you mean Trump, a lot of people think the results were great.

A lot of people are brainwashed.

>A lot of people are brainwashed.

On both sides. It's all theater like WWE. You have the good guy and you have the heel. Each side has their own story with this format.

Re: The chat control proposal does not belong in democratic societies

#327

Post by maxilevi »

mikrotikker wrote: post #272
maxilevi wrote: post #7

Why every 12 months the European Commission comes up with a total dumb and authoritarian proposal and we have to actively fight it? It’s just tiring

Remember the "Brexit was just about racism" folks?

To be fair it’s not like the UK lags behind in randomly proposing authoritarian stuff.

Re: The chat control proposal does not belong in democratic societies

#328

Post by bombcar »

orbisvicis wrote: post #40
ShroudedNight wrote: post #9

This is so awful that it strikes me as likely being a door-in-the-face[1] proposal designed to make a more 'reasonable' proposal that is still vile on its own merits seem palatable. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Door-in-the-face_technique

Don't you think it'd be better to ratify the most vile proposal while the ideals of freedom still have majority reign? To create a fiasco so enduring it won't soon be forgotten? And before tools of mass manipulation become any more technologically sophisticated? If I'm reading [1] correctly, we're just picking up momentum down a decades-long slippery slope. 1. https://freedomhouse.org/sites/default/files/2022-02/FIW_…

The law of large numbers means that the vast majority won’t be prosecuted so nobody will really care. See: patriot act.

Re: The chat control proposal does not belong in democratic societies

#329

Post by peoplefromibiza »

cardosof wrote: post #318
peoplefromibiza wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if the EU is anti democratic, then there's no democracy on this planet. Show me another place where 27 countries live peacefully together and jointly govern an entire sub continent, by collaborating together and discussing publicly about their political proposals. Of course it has its problems, of course it takes a lot of effort to bring 27 countries together on a subject, of course there will be controversial opinio…

The price of democracy in a region or organization is the minority of votes not getting the result they want and only that. Nothing to do with privacy. Not having privacy is a consequence of authoritarianism, be it for a greater good (to find child abusers) or not (to find dissidents).

> The price of democracy in a region or organization is the minority of votes not getting the result they want and only that.

The price is having to make compromises every day.

It means putting together and listening to the people who say "immigration must be stopped" and "countries should have no borders" and everything in between, but no side tries to silent the others using violence.

What you're talking about is the tyranny of the majority, which is not democratic and is not categorized as democracy, in a democracy the effect of the majority taking it all is moderated by a carefully balanced separation of powers.

For example in a democracy the justice system is usually independent from the government.

> Not having privacy is a consequence of authoritarianism, be it for a greater good (to find child abusers) or not (to find dissidents).

But we have privacy in Europe, unlike most places in the World.

Blindly repeating that EU is authoritarian doesn't make it true.

Re: The chat control proposal does not belong in democratic societies

#330

Post by geysersam »

anonyfox wrote: post #231
geysersam wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course. I always vote in the EP election. I just find it incredible that when the results are in the people at the top are some guys I've never heard or seen before. And I don't believe I'm uncommonly ill-infomed. Moving power further away from the electorate should be a last resort for issues that can simply not be handled on the local level.

> I just find it incredible that when the results are in the people at the top are some guys I've never heard or seen before. And I don't believe I'm uncommonly ill-infomed. that may happen when many separate countries merge their candidate pools to form a single parliament, and its up to the parties to distribute their seats - I would think that an exact representation of members from all countries within the availa…

> because once you get in competitive mode, its a race to the bottom for everyone.

I don't understand / buy that argument. I find it quite neo-liberal in the sense that it assumes countries will deterministically mindlessly engage in a race to the bottom.

The "prisoners dilemma" is a problem of course. But people and countries can and do cooperate despite that.

For this reason, it's not clear to me that EU countries would automatically slash their environment regulations and corruption prevention efforts in a "race to the bottom" if the EU wasn't there stopping them.

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