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

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

#61

Post by greatgib »

The European parlement is probably the best thing that we have in Europe, most good things and new rights come from there.

At the opposite, the European Commission is probably the worse that we can have. It is totally corrupted (see the vice president with bags of cash given by the Qatar and co) or at least morally corrupted by lobbies. And no one elected this persons with so much power by the way.

Good things to wonder is why America got shared access to all financial transactions of European citizens but the opposite is not true.

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

#62

Post by dalbasal »

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…

Idk...

The EC pushes through controversial decisions, that are not controversial between states... the bar is generally something high in this regard.

National Governments get a buffer between them and discontented citizens, because "it's the EU." There is also a lot of pressure to conform to EC "consensus," parties/individuals that want to be seen as government material.

EC totally discounts digital privacy especially privacy from state actors and there is corruption, carve out a and such. I disagree with a lot of their agreements. I agree that they make far too many laws and are way too bureaucratic but....

EP is a shitshow on another level. It's literally the star wars senate. Endless factions, recreational politics. No about to act in a way that might result in anything but show. It's trump, but boring.

National governments also don't lack in corruption. Politics sucks.

IMO, what is badly missing is an active electorate. Civil society. There needs to be an organized, pro-freedom movement. ATM, EC is taking advice from tech industry,dirty insiders and spooks. No one speaks for "The Cause" because, to paraphrase americans... "When I need to speak to Europe's digital freedom people, who do I call?"

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

#63

Post by hackandthink »

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.

I would not discuss with Nazis. If they are criminal they should be prosecuted. Otherwise I ignore them.

Noam Chomsky - Should Neo-Nazis Be Allowed Free Speech?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ui1vmS9Yz5M

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

#64

Post by rjzzleep »

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…

The fascinating thing to me is that the EPP(European peoples party) which ironically is the strongest party in the EU and seems to be the one least representative of the people spans across almost all EU nations.

I find it very disturbing how the EU party system works above country party systems, where the EPP often overrides what the people in their own respective countries voted for.

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

#65

Post by barrysteve »

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…

It's pretty trivial to list reasons why you'd want a local chat app over a US created one.

It is just too difficult to make.

I don't think many people admit how differently we all think about software creation, all the tools that currently exist are shaped 100% around American big tech needs (cool i guess) and the American personality.

It is incredibly difficult to go off-piste and create a different paradigm on computing like Xerox did (which Jobs and Gates 'borrowed from').

The existing eco-system constantly updates/changes itself according to an American clock, so you get isolated and disconnected (from knowledge bases and relationships) if you try to go for a 'long shot'.

Even making small changes have to fit in with the existing eco-system.

99% of all the new ideas that could be made require radically different tooling and that is deeply expensive, constantly contentious with existing powers and disruptive to current services.

Sinply changing Google maps to list street names even when fully zoomed out OR to suggest vocaly three-moves-in-advance when driving.. is basically impossible.

Tech has clamped itself down and has no desire to allow anyone to tinker or tailor their own solutions.

It is deeply deeply frustrating to see what could be made better and to be arbitrarily locked out.

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

#66

Post by spencerflem »

layer8 wrote: post #60
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.

Take the money out of politics as much as possible and there will be less incentive for politicians to sell out their people

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

#67

Post by mistrial9 »

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…

where are your details? specifics? references to issues or particular documents..

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

#69

Post by Agingcoder »

inglor_cz wrote: post #19
kubb wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha, sure, it’s real invigilation terror over here in Europe. We all just want to escape this tyrannical dictatorship. But, the European Parliament is against this legislation, and for the moment it’s not passing.

"Haha, sure, it’s real invigilation terror over here in Europe. " More like slow addition of smothering layers of bureaucracy upon bureaucracy until your breathing space is severely limited. Combined with our ghastly demographics, I think our growth is a thing of the past. In many individual EU countries including mine, something like Chat Control 2.0 would not fly and the attention of the public would be very negati…

Hungary and Poland don’t strike me as very lax governments, so it’s not obvious to me that people in Eastern Europe would actively fight that kind of legislation.

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

#70

Post by pavlov »

rjzzleep wrote: post #64
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…

The fascinating thing to me is that the EPP(European peoples party) which ironically is the strongest party in the EU and seems to be the one least representative of the people spans across almost all EU nations. I find it very disturbing how the EU party system works above country party systems, where the EPP often overrides what the people in their own respective countries voted for.

> “I find it very disturbing how the EU party system works above country party systems, where the EPP often overrides what the people in their own respective countries voted for.”

How else could it work? Within the larger group, the majority rule means that someone gets voted down. Requiring unanimous support for all initiatives means nothing gets done most of the time.

In the US, the national Democratic Party doesn’t support everything that the Vermont Democratic Party wants. That’s just political reality.

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