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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

#161

Post by noman-land »

logicchains wrote: post #105
dsign wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, the…

I think you're basically describing the Byzantine fault tolerant consensus mechanisms used by blockchains.

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

#162

Post by stevarino »

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…

California Prop 22 comes to mind, unfortunately: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_California_Proposition_...

There was so much uncertainty around it and who wanted what that a lot of people voted against their best interests. I'm still meeting people who thought they were voting against Uber and Lyft with that proposition.

The ads were constant and incredibly misleading. And that was one issue. Every time these propositions come up, I can usually find 3 or 4 that are not what they seem (the Diveta props are similar but very different tactics afaict).

If all state business was done this way it would be overwhelming to filter through it all.

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

#163

Post by scott_w »

logicchains wrote: post #91
jjtheblunt wrote: post #68

Language confusion question: aren’t democracy (people voting?) and surveillance conflating different topics? What correlation is implied?

You can't have democracy if people are persecuted for their voting preferences, and with total surveillance a bad government could identify ahead of time people who planned to vote against it and punish them.

This is a nonsense slippery slope argument. Voting systems are entirely for individual nations to determine, not the EU.

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

#164

Post by greatgib »

peoplefromibiza wrote: post #123
greatgib wrote: post #61

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 won…

> And no one elected this persons with so much power by the way. this is a very tired meme, they have been nominated and scrutinized by the people elected in what you called probably the best thing that we have in Europe i.e. the EU Parliament edit: elections solve none of the problems people think they solve. proof is governments are corrupt even though they are elected by the people. if the objections is "we can't…

They are directly nominated by the government of the European states. So no, they are not nominated by the parliament.

The idea that they would be legitimate because of being nominated by someone elected by proxy looks like to be a broken model in my opinion.

Especially, because, never an European had to vote for someone that had in their program or proposal anything said about the person's that will be nominated at this position. So this is different, in my opinion, of a model like US.

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

#165

Post by t0bia_s »

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.

Eurpean Commison is not elected by citizens of EU. They are nominated by the European Council and confirmed by the European Parliament.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Commission

Similar system is for WHO. They are not elected organisations, yet shape our laws. This bother quite a lot of people and don't bring a trust in system.

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

#166

Post by [deleted] »

csomar wrote: post #11

The EU and the West are over-playing their hands with this in my opinion. They'll get burned by this at some point, at which point it'll be too late; and maybe then they'll recognize that the reason they have had such control was just the fact they were first. Not some universal physics law that such companies can only exist in the Western sphere. The recent Middle-East events had some troubling intervention (in Twit…

[deleted]

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

#167

Post by lock-the-spock »

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…

Problem is that in that system the people able to shape opinion (= corporate media and the rich) will steer any debate in their direction.

Second trouble is the dictatorship of the majority - you'll never get minority rights or issues of the disenfranchised addressed.

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

#168

Post by raincom »

layer8 wrote: post #85
spencerflem wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

What do you mean by that? There’s already anti-corruption laws, and corruption is actually being prosecuted. To have less incentives, you’d actually have to pay politicians more, which would constitute putting more money into politics.

Anti-corruption laws don't deal with collusions much, as there is no tangible proof of "pay for play" in such situations. Look at the US Senator Menedez case of late: he and his wife are stupid to accept cash, gold bars, Benz cars, etc. Sophisticated players in the beltway don't accept such "play for cash", because these colluders trust each other beyond the term limits.

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

#169

Post by blibble »

scott_w wrote: post #147
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…

Oh man, I’m so glad my country (the U.K.) left the E.U. and no longer have to worry about all that government corrupti- oh…

there's a major difference

with the EU system is is not possible for the parliament to modify or remove previously passed legislation, once you have a bad law it's essentially permanent

this is not true of the UK system (see what happened to the Identity Cards Act 2006)

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

#170

Post by jokethrowaway »

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…

That's exactly why we need to STOP taxation and DECENTRALIZE power away from a central goverment.

Of course, they'll always have an interest in enriching themselves and their friends

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