Undermining Democracy: The EU Commission's Controversial Push for Surveillance • Hacker News Board

Re: Undermining Democracy: The EU Commission's Controversial Push for Surveillance

#51

Post by mrtksn » Sat, Oct 14, 2023, 4:05 PM UTC

TacticalCoder wrote: post #7

The title should be shortened from "Undermining Democracy: The European Commission's Controversial Push for Digital Surveillance" simply to: "Undermining Democracy: The European Commission" . The EC is sheer horror. The thousands of years old saying: "The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the state" has never been truer. I've done a short consulting gig at the European Parliament, which at least tries to be th…

>It's all about control. Complete, total and utter control over every single aspect of EU citizens' lives. They want to know everything about everyone: nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.

Notice that similar law attempts were made by UK or pretty much any state. UK is trying real hard to make encryption illegal.

This trend is not something European, EU based or about bureaucracy or anything like that.

Governments by default want to know and control as much as they can and now the technology is advanced enough to actually let them do that. It's everyones desire to know and control everything.

We are in an era where we have to fight that back and make that unfeasible again. IMHO that would be through encryption.

Re: Undermining Democracy: The EU Commission's Controversial Push for Surveillance

#52

Post by moffkalast » Sat, Oct 14, 2023, 4:06 PM UTC

TacticalCoder wrote: post #7

The title should be shortened from "Undermining Democracy: The European Commission's Controversial Push for Digital Surveillance" simply to: "Undermining Democracy: The European Commission" . The EC is sheer horror. The thousands of years old saying: "The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the state" has never been truer. I've done a short consulting gig at the European Parliament, which at least tries to be th…

As much as the Commission is undemocratic in nature and should be curbed, from what I understand the recent privacy fiascos are largely the fault of von der Leyen for allowing this nonsense to be presented and voted on. We just have to hold out until next year when their term is over and the witch is gone. I mean how much do you have to suck to make people think that Juncker was good in comparison.

Re: Undermining Democracy: The EU Commission's Controversial Push for Surveillance

#53

Post by rolisz » Sat, Oct 14, 2023, 4:06 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #33

TacticalCoder wrote: post #7

The title should be shortened from "Undermining Democracy: The European Commission's Controversial Push for Digital Surveillance" simply to: "Undermining Democracy: The European Commission" . The EC is sheer horror. The thousands of years old saying: "The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the state" has never been truer. I've done a short consulting gig at the European Parliament, which at least tries to be th…

[flagged]

Romanian here: the progress this country has made in every single aspect is huge in the 15 years since we joined the EU. Are there downsides? Sure. But yes, the progress for now is massive.

Re: Undermining Democracy: The EU Commission's Controversial Push for Surveillance

#54

Post by mrtksn » Sat, Oct 14, 2023, 4:08 PM UTC

api wrote: post #22

TacticalCoder wrote: post #7

The title should be shortened from "Undermining Democracy: The European Commission's Controversial Push for Digital Surveillance" simply to: "Undermining Democracy: The European Commission" . The EC is sheer horror. The thousands of years old saying: "The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the state" has never been truer. I've done a short consulting gig at the European Parliament, which at least tries to be th…

It seems like over the past 10 years there has been a global retreat from freedom and democracy. China is returning to at least a superficially softer version of Maoism. Russia has returned to Stalinism. The Middle East never had much of a liberal tradition but it’s certainly not gained any ground. The US is flirting with populist strong man rule with Trump and RFK. South America seems to keep oscillating between aut…

>The UK and EU felt like an exception but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Both are trending toward undemocratic bureaucracies in service to either the bureaucracy itself or the powerful.

The whole public opinion shifted towards security over everything, unfortunately. As a result, the institutions follow.

Re: Undermining Democracy: The EU Commission's Controversial Push for Surveillance

#55

Post by LocalH » Sat, Oct 14, 2023, 4:08 PM UTC

notafalseflag wrote: post #43

TacticalCoder wrote: post #7

The title should be shortened from "Undermining Democracy: The European Commission's Controversial Push for Digital Surveillance" simply to: "Undermining Democracy: The European Commission" . The EC is sheer horror. The thousands of years old saying: "The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the state" has never been truer. I've done a short consulting gig at the European Parliament, which at least tries to be th…

Some keywords for this: "Bin Laden. Bin Laden. Bin Laden" And now the competition gets a copy of their competitors' communications. Is there a one word phrase that exfiltrates and obscures sensitive communications when there is state censorship? That's a critical vulnerability for secure operations.

probably "overthrow"

Re: Undermining Democracy: The EU Commission's Controversial Push for Surveillance

#56

Post by baaaaaah » Sat, Oct 14, 2023, 4:09 PM UTC

sofixa wrote: post #20

hackandthink wrote: post #9

These bureaucrats overwhelm citizens with enormous amounts of text. Expression of opinion is regulated here. A few principles should be enough. The most important one should be: Every citizen is free to express his opinion. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...

> The most important one should be: Every citizen is free to express his opinion. And if their opinion is that, all Jews are subhuman and have to be exterminated? (real life example) Most EU countries have "hate speech" laws explicitly banning hate speech such as Nazis and Anti-Semites. Nobody sheds any tears over their opinions being restricted, and nobody should. Debating with pidgeons doesn't work.

The same people making these laws get to determine what hate speech is defined as. You can be charged with a hate crime in Louisiana for resisting arrest at a peaceful protest, for instance. In Ireland you can run afoul of blasphemy laws, which is in the same spirit as hate speech laws (in my religion it's a blasphemy to discuss any other religion, and since Ireland won't enforce my ideas of blasphemy on anyone else, their enforcement is selective for their favorite religions).

Once you make it a crime to express certain opinions, all opinions are up for negotiation. It's not hard to imagine an ultra conservative getting elected and what that would do to discussion around LGBT, for instance.

Re: Undermining Democracy: The EU Commission's Controversial Push for Surveillance

#57

Post by OfSanguineFire » Sat, Oct 14, 2023, 4:10 PM UTC

csomar wrote: post #47

barrysteve wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They want to overplay their hand. An oppressive internet that they can bully, works for them. An internet that withdraws into itself and the EU returns to pen and paper + dumb phones works for them. The US is all on this. As long as the US owns the internet and big tech, they are happy to let other countries do the dirty work of setting boundaries. The long term solution is to 'manualize' tech. Make all tech we touch…

They are under-estimating the level of development in tech in the "global south" which has a differing agenda. There is now enough talent and capital in the global south to kick-start tech companies and actually it's cheaper there. The problem is that they need time to catch up to the Western big tech. Why would anyone use a local chat/social app if Twitter and Instagram exists. Now, if they are being deplatformed, i…

The Global South is overwhelmingly fond of WhatsApp, to the point that it has basically replaced the PSTN in some countries. And if this EU legislation passed, Meta would almost certainly get on board in order to not lose the European market. Where do you see deplatforming, or the shaking of WhatsApp’s monopoly and room for a local competitor to grow?

Re: Undermining Democracy: The EU Commission's Controversial Push for Surveillance

#58

Post by moffkalast » Sat, Oct 14, 2023, 4:10 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #33

TacticalCoder wrote: post #7

The title should be shortened from "Undermining Democracy: The European Commission's Controversial Push for Digital Surveillance" simply to: "Undermining Democracy: The European Commission" . The EC is sheer horror. The thousands of years old saying: "The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the state" has never been truer. I've done a short consulting gig at the European Parliament, which at least tries to be th…

[flagged]

You mean the very thing that made the USA the single world superpower by allowing it to act as a unified block instead of a pile of constantly bickering and sometimes warring states? Yeah gee why would we think that.

Re: Undermining Democracy: The EU Commission's Controversial Push for Surveillance

#59

Post by southernplaces7 » Sat, Oct 14, 2023, 4:11 PM UTC

To those of you on this site who get so sanctimonious about how wonderful GDPR is at mitigating the surveillance conducted by the big tech giants (most of them American), here's a wonderful example of how your cherished EU government uses both carrots and sticks. It's apparently not so much that the EU fights for individual privacy, it just doesn't like to have external competitors surveil the shit out of people without its say-so.

Re: Undermining Democracy: The EU Commission's Controversial Push for Surveillance

#60

Post by layer8 » Sat, Oct 14, 2023, 4:11 PM UTC

irusensei wrote: post #23

Its just me that thinks there is something really wrong with the way politicians try to pass such controversial laws? Politicians bring up something controversial. Most of the time influenced by some lobby with very little interest in public benefit. To combat this lots of people need to do activism. Those people need to devote your time and energy to prevent such thing. So far it sounds good but after the dust settl…

What alternative do you propose? The politicians are elected representatives of and by the people.