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EU Chat Control: Germany's position has been reverted to undecided

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Re: EU Chat Control: Germany's position has been reverted to undecided

#151
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She was elected by the European parliament. As an EU citizen, you elect that one.

after how many layers of voting does democracy just becomes plain oligarchy?

Fair question. I'm personally a big fan of what I believe is called direct democracy - getting the populace to vote on a more fine-grained level and individual issues. Not just generic representatives with a bucket list of stuff they say they do and what you suspect they'll actually do. I admit that the EU level feels quite indirect, but I would still carefully call it democratic.

Re: EU Chat Control: Germany's position has been reverted to undecided

#152
It should be implemented for politicians:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pfizergate

"Von der Leyen previously used her phone to award contracts worth several hundred million euros while acting as defense minister of Germany, effectively bypassing public procurement processes. She subsequently deleted all messages from her phone when investigators probed her. While awarding the COVID-19 vaccine contracts worth billions of euros as head of EU commission, she similarly bypassed procurement processes via her phone and withheld messages on it."

Re: EU Chat Control: Germany's position has been reverted to undecided

#153

One interesting line in the proposal: > Detection will not apply to accounts used by the State for national security purposes, maintaining law and order or military purposes; If it's all very safe and accurate, why is this exception necessary? Doesn't this say either that it's not secure, or that there is a likely hood that there will be false positives that will be reviewed? If they have it all figured out, this exc…

[flagged]

Re: EU Chat Control: Germany's position has been reverted to undecided

#154
post #93
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here’s some data. Skepticism is pretty low and approval is pretty high https://www.statista.com/statistics/1360333/euroscepticism-e...

Do those numbers include the UK when it was in the EU? Obviously removing a large pool of sceptics would shift the numbers. The "positive" number has recovered from a low in the wake of the Eurozone crisis but is still fallen significantly from the pre-crisis level of around 50%. It would be interesting to see a breakdown by country - The EU's own report suggests very big variations between countries: https://op.euro…

Did you already forget that Brexit went through on a razor thin margin?

Re: EU Chat Control: Germany's position has been reverted to undecided

#155
post #99
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It hasn't been resubmitted yet, has it? The proponents keep it alive without putting it to an actual vote, AIUI. They try to wait until they think they have a majority, and keep their proposal ready for a vote on short order before their majority dissipates. Which is many things, I' might call it cynical, but it doesn't seem undemocratic.

This is at least 3rd time similar measure has been tried in EU parliament, form my memory.

And the fact that it didn't pass tells you something didn't it?

Re: EU Chat Control: Germany's position has been reverted to undecided

#156
post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By this logic, most of EU governments are not democratic bodies either.

In my country I vote for a person and that person gets a seat in parliament. That is democratic according to this definition.

The EU Commission is a group of permanent employees who sit in an office and write reports, administer projects and draft legislation. They have no voting rights. They are organised into departments, each headed by a politically appointed Commissioner.

Your country has an identical group of people with a similar role who you also do not vote for, organised in just the same way.

For some reason it's only "undemocratic" when the EU does it, even though literally every country in the world has some kind of permanent establishment of administrators and no country could function without them.

Re: EU Chat Control: Germany's position has been reverted to undecided

#157
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Endeavour like these make people vote for extremists Maybe it's time to start considering the current individuals in power as extremists? Just because their speech is more 'peaceful' doesn't mean their actions aren't extremist in nature.

> Maybe it's time to start considering the current individuals in power as extremists? And what would this change?

Usually, calling things by their proper name helps change perceptions, which often triggers other reactions. Language is very powerful.

Re: EU Chat Control: Germany's position has been reverted to undecided

#158

People are so emotive about this issue and the online safety act in the UK. They jump to conclusions that applied to any other issue would be conspiratorial. It's not about "control" and "spying". The fact is it is policing that has been made extremely hard due to technology. silk road was only busted because the guy had his http proxy responding on the VPS's IP and not just the tor eth. Silly mistake and unfathomabl…

Yeah, nonsense, bullshit, whatever you want to call it. Actual pedos will trivially bypass Chat Control by switching to a messaging service that doesn't enforce it, or even by sending encrypted ZIP files via any ordinary messaging service.

> silk road was only busted because the guy had his http proxy responding on the VPS's IP and not just the tor eth

Does this justify every browser reporting every URL you visit to the government, and implementing a government-controlled blocklist of URLs on the off chance that a criminal might use Chrome for their criminal activity?

Re: EU Chat Control: Germany's position has been reverted to undecided

#159

This chat control topic is undemocratic, allegedly illegal in many jurisdictions (such as Germany), yet, keeps coming up ever and ever again, and the politicians face no consequences whatsoever. Endeavour like these make people vote for extremists, distrust the EU and democracies, or just give up on politics for good. These EU politicians endangering freedom, justice and democracy must be held accountable, with the m…

I think the result of a referendum that would pose a question

"Do you want law enforcement to be allowed access to your private messages when investigating child molesters or would you like to listen to folks who put furry teen girls in front of their websites?"

would have results that you certanly wouldn't like. And they'd be democratic.

So perhaps before calling something undemocratic, first make sure that the majority of voters actually agree with you.

Re: EU Chat Control: Germany's position has been reverted to undecided

#160
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't think this was even possible. Can EU laws actually override the constitutional rights of member states? I was under the impression that the principle of supremacy isn't absolute and doesn't extend to overriding a country's fundamental constitutional rights. If that's not the case, the danger isn't limited to just Germany. With authoritarian regimes gaining power everywhere, it would only take a few of them w…

No. The EU isn't a federation, there's no supremacy class. The member countries are sovereign and obviously can't go against their constitutions or basic laws.

I'm completely out of my depth but this is not what I understand after reading here: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/EN/legal-content/glossary/primacy-...
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