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Belgian Police exposed using botnets to manipulate EU data law impact assessment

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Re: Belgian Police exposed using botnets to manipulate EU data law impact assessment

#11

Post by saubeidl »

p-e-w wrote: post #10
saubeidl wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not unless there is political pressure for it. We are not bystanders in some scheme played out by others. We're the protagonists. Our (in-) action determines how things play out.

Please describe a concrete action by private individuals that would lead to this incident being properly investigated.

There's many ways, from benign organizing of protests or involving the media all the way down to armed insurrection or terrorist threats. Again, you're a protagonist - choose your own story!

Re: Belgian Police exposed using botnets to manipulate EU data law impact assessment

#12

Post by dash2 »

p-e-w wrote: post #5
ajb wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As ones of the comments says, you can go to https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-sa... and search by "invasive" to see that several responses are the same, some identified as police. But I don't think that's evidence of a botnet. Seems more likely a conventional letter writing campaign where people are invited to paste the same response. Could easily be within the police,which is dubious, but ind…

It doesn’t really matter whether it’s a botnet or a coordinated campaign by police officers. The fact that police is interfering with the political process is somewhere between a breakdown of the rule of law, and an attempted coup. Voting isn’t going to fix stuff like this, that’s for sure.

This is a wildly hysterical comment.

Re: Belgian Police exposed using botnets to manipulate EU data law impact assessment

#13

Post by p-e-w »

saubeidl wrote: post #11
p-e-w wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please describe a concrete action by private individuals that would lead to this incident being properly investigated.

There's many ways, from benign organizing of protests or involving the media all the way down to armed insurrection or terrorist threats. Again, you're a protagonist - choose your own story!

7 million people protested against Donald Trump on October 18th, one of the largest protests in human history.

It meant Jack Shit.

If they had brought arms, they would have been gunned down by people with more powerful arms, and it would still mean Jack Shit.

Re: Belgian Police exposed using botnets to manipulate EU data law impact assessment

#14

Post by saubeidl »

p-e-w wrote: post #13
saubeidl wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's many ways, from benign organizing of protests or involving the media all the way down to armed insurrection or terrorist threats. Again, you're a protagonist - choose your own story!

7 million people protested against Donald Trump on October 18th, one of the largest protests in human history. It meant Jack Shit. If they had brought arms, they would have been gunned down by people with more powerful arms, and it would still mean Jack Shit.

Sure, that's one example of it going one way.

Then there's Ghandi, the Arab Spring, Milošević, the Iranian Shah as examples of things going the other way - and those are just the ones that immediately came to mind.

Again, don't be a bystander believing in foregone conclusions - that way you make them self-fulfilling prophecies. Be part of writing the story instead!

Re: Belgian Police exposed using botnets to manipulate EU data law impact assessment

#15

Post by [deleted] »

dash2 wrote: post #12
p-e-w wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn’t really matter whether it’s a botnet or a coordinated campaign by police officers. The fact that police is interfering with the political process is somewhere between a breakdown of the rule of law, and an attempted coup. Voting isn’t going to fix stuff like this, that’s for sure.

This is a wildly hysterical comment.

[deleted]

Re: Belgian Police exposed using botnets to manipulate EU data law impact assessment

#16

Post by coolbean »

The "Organization" field is provided by the submitter themselves. It is not based on an IP (geo)location feed. I have deduced this based on a comment where the organization field is "federal police" in lower case [1].

There are a total of 19 comments with the same content. The claim that they were submitted by a botnet is easily dismissable. Especially given the fact that a "botnet"/troll farm would likely use different IP addresses, names, organizations and comment content ...

What remains open is whether these 19 commenters were instructed to submit these comments or if they did so on their own. If they did do it on their own, was it in their free time? If so, is it okay to do so under their employers name?

[1] https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-sa...

Re: Belgian Police exposed using botnets to manipulate EU data law impact assessment

#17

Post by p-e-w »

saubeidl wrote: post #14
p-e-w wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

7 million people protested against Donald Trump on October 18th, one of the largest protests in human history. It meant Jack Shit. If they had brought arms, they would have been gunned down by people with more powerful arms, and it would still mean Jack Shit.

Sure, that's one example of it going one way. Then there's Ghandi, the Arab Spring, Milošević, the Iranian Shah as examples of things going the other way - and those are just the ones that immediately came to mind. Again, don't be a bystander believing in foregone conclusions - that way you make them self-fulfilling prophecies. Be part of writing the story instead!

All of those happened in underdeveloped, weak countries with decades of violent infighting preceding those events.

If something similar were attempted in any Western country, the people involved would be murdered and things would be back to normal the next day.

There’s a reason European countries maintain twice as many police officers per capita as the “police state” China.

Re: Belgian Police exposed using botnets to manipulate EU data law impact assessment

#18

Post by cluckindan »

p2detar wrote: post #7
ajb wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As ones of the comments says, you can go to https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-sa... and search by "invasive" to see that several responses are the same, some identified as police. But I don't think that's evidence of a botnet. Seems more likely a conventional letter writing campaign where people are invited to paste the same response. Could easily be within the police,which is dubious, but ind…

Yeah, I saw this comment [0] and I'm very confused as to how one concludes there is a botnet in play, let alone by a public institution. Most likely it is an employee in the police, which is totally fine. They're not forbidden to express opinion. 0 - https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-sa...

”Go to this website and copy-paste this text there, or you will never see a promotion and may even be fired”

Re: Belgian Police exposed using botnets to manipulate EU data law impact assessment

#19

Post by saubeidl »

p-e-w wrote: post #17
saubeidl wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, that's one example of it going one way. Then there's Ghandi, the Arab Spring, Milošević, the Iranian Shah as examples of things going the other way - and those are just the ones that immediately came to mind. Again, don't be a bystander believing in foregone conclusions - that way you make them self-fulfilling prophecies. Be part of writing the story instead!

All of those happened in underdeveloped, weak countries with decades of violent infighting preceding those events. If something similar were attempted in any Western country, the people involved would be murdered and things would be back to normal the next day. There’s a reason European countries maintain twice as many police officers per capita as the “police state” China.

Decades of violent infighting don't come out of nowhere, they were somebody's conscious decision.

Again, you can be a bystander or a protagonist.

Re: Belgian Police exposed using botnets to manipulate EU data law impact assessment

#20

Post by aleatorianator »

saubeidl wrote: post #6
p-e-w wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn’t really matter whether it’s a botnet or a coordinated campaign by police officers. The fact that police is interfering with the political process is somewhere between a breakdown of the rule of law, and an attempted coup. Voting isn’t going to fix stuff like this, that’s for sure.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

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