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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

#101

Post by OfSanguineFire »

logicchains wrote: post #86
OfSanguineFire wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

>Where do you see deplatforming, or the shaking of WhatsApp’s monopoly and room for a local competitor to grow? In the Middle East and North Africa (and Russia) Telegram seems to be competitive with WhatsApp in popularity, because people trust it more than the US-owned WhatsApp.

I have spent a lot of the last five years traveling the MENA region by bike, and the random local people I meet overwhelmingly want to exchange WhatsApp contact info (and are shocked to discover I don't have it, as I use only Signal). Sure, Telegram is around too, but WhatsApp's position is strong, and in any event Telegram is not a locally developed solution.

Your claim that people trust Telegram more is a stretch. I daresay the masses in the Global South think little about where their apps come from and are poorly informed about tech matters, just like in the Global North.

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

#102

Post by callalex »

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…

Yea, but the lack of world wars is pretty nice.

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

#103

Post by moffkalast »

scarface_74 wrote: post #71
moffkalast wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How has that been working out for the EU?

So far so good I guess? The Euro/single market has made trade and daily lives so much easier and grasped fiscal control out of individual states' incompetent hands, Schengen makes travel a breeze. EU funding continues to equalize development throughout so that we can function more fairly as a continent (in economic terms). Erasmus programmes letting people study across the EU are great, the food safety regulations and support for farmers are pretty good and GDPR has been fantastic so far.

The current Commission does impotently scream its fascist views, but luckily they can't do shit without the Parliament's approval, which unfortunately for them happens to be an actual democratic entity. As long as the checks and balances continue to work we'll be fine.

Obviously there hasn't been anything done in terms of a centralized military, but we'll get there eventually and NATO is a decent stand-in for now. And the train network is also still quite a train wreck when it comes to international connections which I'm also hopeful will be eventually addressed. But it won't ever be without a federal authority demanding it, because each country fundamentally only cares about itself.

And of course the EU's greatest achievement, forcing Logitech to finally drop microUSB lmao.

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

#104

Post by ulnarkressty »

dsign wrote: post #78
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…

I wonder what would happen if there were not politicians, if the parliament of Europe were the sum of all its citizens voting for laws in some sort of mega-stack-overflow consensus system. A part of me wants to believe this madness would end. Another part fears that we would try, at least for a few months, total surveillance and bisections as a form of capital punishment. But on the bright side, we would be able to c…

More targeted ad campaigns, as per the article. The interests will always be there.

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

#105

Post by logicchains »

dsign wrote: post #78
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…

I wonder what would happen if there were not politicians, if the parliament of Europe were the sum of all its citizens voting for laws in some sort of mega-stack-overflow consensus system. A part of me wants to believe this madness would end. Another part fears that we would try, at least for a few months, total surveillance and bisections as a form of capital punishment. But on the bright side, we would be able to c…

>I wonder what would happen if there were not politicians, if the parliament of Europe were the sum of all its citizens voting for laws in some sort of mega-stack-overflow consensus system

There's another way to achieve something similar less chaotically: demarchy, which was used for some things in ancient Greece. This involves electing people at random for a limited time period; if the selection is truly random, then the outcome of a couple hundred randomly selected people voting on something should usually match the outcome of the whole population voting on something. And due to it only being for a short period of time, you avoid anyone accumulating too much power.

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

#106

Post by rayiner »

malermeister wrote: post #94
rayiner wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does the US system seem like an asset to you?

No, but it's size and focused power does, which is why the EU isn't trying to copy it 1:1

Is size and power the important thing?

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

#107

Post by malermeister »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #96
hef19898 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both, the European parliament and the European Council are voted for, the first directly by EU citizens, the latter by citizens of the individual EU countries everytime a new national election, and subsequent goverment formation, happens.

And what about the Council of the EU?

The Council of the EU is a meeting of ministers of various national governments, all of them elected by their respective electorate.

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

#108

Post by Agingcoder »

owlstuffing wrote: post #89
Agingcoder wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure I understand : European Commissioners are nominated by elected National governments, and approved by parliament. How is this not democratic ? Whether you agree with these policies or not is a different matter altogether.

Perhaps the sentiment is more about how our expectations of democracy are completely out of line with the results of democracy.

Indeed, you’re most likely right.

I’ve seen around me a growing sentiment along the lines of ´ my views and candidates didn’t win so democracy doesn’t work’ coupled with ´this allows me to claim that violence / authoritarian regime with my views is ok’.

I wonder whether people are slowly realizing now that democracy has limits, whereas they used not to, and don’t like it.

Democracy essentially says that you have a say, but so does everyone else, so it’s going to be messier than expected !

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

#109

Post by kypro »

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'll add that a guy got sentenced to prison in Switzerland last week for calling someone a fat lesbian in a video that he posted two years ago. What is considered hate speech is very broad these days – Nazism would actually be on the more extreme side of what is considered an arrestable hate crime.

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

#110

Post by callalex »

Everyone here on Hacker News seems to be painting this issue as universally disliked and unwanted and obviously bad. However, that is just blatantly not the case. The “think of the children” and “all opposition are pedophiles” arguments are very powerful and effective. It is important to know your enemy if you wish to defeat them, burying your head in the sand accomplishes nothing.
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