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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

#251

Post by blibble »

scott_w wrote: post #246
blibble wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That’s total gibberish. okay, so how can the parliament do it?

By passing new laws with the EC. You act like the British Parliament can pass law without government approval. Spoiler alert: it can’t.

> By passing new laws with the EC.

right, so it can't, thank you

> You act like the British Parliament can pass law without government approval. Spoiler alert: it can’t.

are you a time traveler from before the 1640s?

there was a civil war fought over this point, parliament won and is sovereign

the parliamentary majority and government are not the same thing

this should be obvious to anyone from the 2019-2020 mess where the government didn't have a majority

there is no government approval anywhere in the legislative process

most bills are proposed by government ministers (by the fact they also happen to be parliamentarians), but this is also not a requirement

bills can be proposed and passed into law entirely by parliament, they're called "private members bills"

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

#252

Post by concordDance »

peoplefromibiza wrote: post #127
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...

> Every citizen is free to express his opinion. you are, but if you commit a crime in doing it you go to trial. which is fair. edit: libel is a crime punishable by the law, everywhere in the west. Doesn't mean you are forbidden to say what you want. democracy without a justice system as a counter power is not democracy as we intend them in modern era.

> Doesn't mean you are forbidden to say what you want.

This confuses me.

Saying someone is "free to do X" normally means that X is allowed by law. Or else what could it possibly mean?

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

#253

Post by orwell_bruh »

alerighi wrote: post #214

What they are even trying to achieve? A criminal can always use an e2e messaging system. Even if they ban the systems (such as Signal) that don’t employ these measures, it’s just a matter of using a VPN. The excuse of reducing crime is just… an excuse

I find that people like to sooth themselves with thoughts like that. "They can never ban X", "I would just do Y".

The state can absolute ban anything. It bans certain plants! This surveilance doesnt have to be 100%.

Big nets catch many fish but never all.

However, if you find a way to defeat this on a scale that matters like if too many people started using VPN then they'd just ban VPN, too.

Goto 0.

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

#254

Post by eigenket »

hannofcart wrote: post #195
misnome wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither are government cabinets, ambassadors or generals.

Assuming that you're taking about liberal democracies, ambassadors and generals don't pass laws that the rest of us have to abide by. The government cabinet has some more democratic legitimacy in so far as that they generally comprise of elected representatives. So your statement is a non-sequitur.

> Assuming that you're taking about liberal democracies, ambassadors and generals don't pass laws that the rest of us have to abide by.

Thats fine because the EU commission also doesn't pass laws. It proposes them and the EU parliament & comittee pass them.

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

#255

Post by jezzamon »

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…

Take a look at the recent Australian referendum (disclaimer: like most young people I voted yes, but the outcome was no):

Although people were voting, there was a lot of political parties "advocating" fairly hard for different views, and the opinion of Australians flipped as a result of that. Seems like spreading FUD is effective.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2023...

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

#256

Post by concordDance »

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.

> Nobody sheds any tears over their opinions being restricted, and nobody should. Debating with pidgeons doesn't work.

Wrong, wrong and in my experience the people most similar to pigeons (e.g. shitting on the table rather than debating) are the young teens on reddit with vaguely leftist ideas with no foundation (proper communists are generally good debaters), the actual heriditarians and ethnic nationalists might be wrong, but they do try and actually debate rather than insult.

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

#257

Post by mjan22640 »

southernplaces7 wrote: post #59

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 with…

The pressure to implement this both in EU and in five eyes countries comes IMHO from the US. In the EU itself there are no structures that would profit from this.

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

#258

Post by ana_winters »

wkat4242 wrote: post #202
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…

It's nothing new for the EU. They tried to pass software patents through a meeting of agricultural ministers. The polish delegation saved us that time but later the industrials got their wish anyway.

[dead]

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

#259

Post by eigenket »

wkat4242 wrote: post #202
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…

It's nothing new for the EU. They tried to pass software patents through a meeting of agricultural ministers. The polish delegation saved us that time but later the industrials got their wish anyway.

To be fair that was just a rubber-stamping process to get the law back to the european parliament to be debated and discussed, where it was (rightfully) rejected. It had already been agreed (correctly, at a competitiveness meeting of the council) that it would go back to the parliament.

They sent it through the fisheries Commission because the board that had the responsibility for it wasn't due to meet for another 6 months.

I guess some people care deeply about the details of which commission sends the proposed legislation to the parliament to be debated & amended / rejected, but in reality I think it doesn't really matter. In either case the correct thing for the commission to do was send the legislation to the parliament.

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

#260

Post by scott_w »

blibble wrote: post #251
scott_w wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By passing new laws with the EC. You act like the British Parliament can pass law without government approval. Spoiler alert: it can’t.

> By passing new laws with the EC. right, so it can't, thank you > You act like the British Parliament can pass law without government approval. Spoiler alert: it can’t. are you a time traveler from before the 1640s? there was a civil war fought over this point, parliament won and is sovereign the parliamentary majority and government are not the same thing this should be obvious to anyone from the 2019-2020 mess whe…

You’re confusing theory and fact: in theory, private members bills can be passed. In practice, that rarely happens if the government doesn’t want it to, irrespective of what Parliament wants. Denying parliamentary time is one way, simply disregarding it (HS2) is another.

It’s interesting you cite as evidence a time where LITERALLY NO LEGISLATION WAS PASSED and think it supports your argument…

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