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End of "Chat Control": EU parliament stops mass surveillance

patrick-breyer.de

151–160 of 324 posts

Re: End of "Chat Control": EU parliament stops mass surveillance

#151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How badly would you say the council or commission have to mess things up before they saw any voter-initiated repercussions what so ever with a system of accountability that requires voters to consider punishing the council or comission more important than their own national elections? If accountability is to work, it has to be more than an abstract theoretical possibility.

It isn't abstract. Your government sends representatives to represent its platform and priorities. If you don't agree with the reps you need to elect a different government.

It's a abstract because you will never ever see a situation where voters neglect national elections to adjust the EU council or commission. Maybe it's what needs to happen, but the way thing are arranged it just won't.

Re: End of "Chat Control": EU parliament stops mass surveillance

#152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perfect name. Who in their right mind would ever vote against the Regulation to Prevent and Combat Child Sexual Abuse? Imagine if your voters heard that

What's perfect is the marketing campaign to call it by what it actually wanted to do, ie Chat Control. Whoever did this was so successful that we didn't even know the bill's official name, instead knowing it by what it actually wanted to achieve. Good thing the EU didn't take a page out of the US' book, because things like the PATRIOT act are already pithy and hard to outmarket. If RPCCSA were actually called PROTECT…

It's just a HN thing though.

Ask a European who isn't in tech, and they won't know what you're talking about. Maybe they will today specifically, this vote is bound to get some press, but in general, mainstream media doesn't care much about this bill.

Even Europeans in tech who aren't in the "tech equivalent of gun nuts" culture that HN seems to exemplify are 50/50.

Re: End of "Chat Control": EU parliament stops mass surveillance

#153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the parliament. What about the council and the commission? Am I not allowed to hold them accountable? Does my power as a citizen only extend to a fourth of the balance of power? They keep getting away with these attrition tactics with regards to implementing near Stasi levels communication surveillance. What about the day they're pushing to give the council unlimited powers, or to abolish voting rights, or to…

The council is made up of heads of state, so no more undemocratic than your own countries executive, and the commission is selected by the Council and approved by the EU parliament.

Russia and China has elections too, they are a necessary but not sufficient criteria for democracy. Just because there are elections doesn't mean the people can actually hold the government accountable.

Re: End of "Chat Control": EU parliament stops mass surveillance

#154
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nice to see that democracy can work Did it work? One political party (EPP) didn't like the result of the previous vote and so they forced a re-vote. > After the European Parliament had already rejected the indiscriminate and blanket Chat Control by US tech companies on 13 March, conservative forces attempted a democratically highly questionable maneuver yesterday to force a repeat vote to extend the law anyway. htt…

EPP is appalling and I'm revolted that many large so-called "moderate, centre-right, liberal-conservative" parties are happily part of it and indeed actively pushing extremely anti-citizen, anti-human agendas with the help of the far right. (Edit: word choice)

> with the help of the far right.

S&D voted even more for this than the conservatives themselves. ESN the least.

Re: End of "Chat Control": EU parliament stops mass surveillance

#156

It seems like an almost never ending hamster wheel of chat control being introduced, voted down, then introduced again in the next session.

That's the problem with modern democracies (it happens in the USA too). They only have to win once and it's law. We have to win every time.

Re: End of "Chat Control": EU parliament stops mass surveillance

#157
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The EU is fundamentally flawed. There are no checks and balances You're missing a [citation needed] on that.

Non-elected representatives from my country keep pushing for chat control via the council. How do I, as a citizen, hold them accountable?

> Non-elected representatives from my country keep pushing for chat control via the council. How do I, as a citizen, hold them accountable?

How is that an EU problem? Without the EU, like here in the UK, we had non-elected lobbyists pressuring our elected government to implement age checks, message scanning, etc. And it is still continuing.

You're fighting the wrong fight by blaming the EU for this.

Re: End of "Chat Control": EU parliament stops mass surveillance

#158
post #29

[flagged]

So in summary: because the law was avoided today, the EU needs to be abolished? Weird take. You can see it the other way around, without the EU, Denmark and others would have already implemented ChatControl in their country. This is driven by member states (Denmark), not the parliament, after all.

There are advantages to "government by evolution", as opposed to "government by monoculture"

With the former approach, every country is allowed to try different things, some amazing, some dumb, and learn from the amazing and dumb things that others have done.

In the latter, there's only one governing body, and whatever that body said, goes. There's no science or statistics, just sides shouting their arguments at each other, calling people names.

Both the EU and the US used to heavily lean towards the former approach, but they're slowly but inexorably moving towards the latter.

Re: End of "Chat Control": EU parliament stops mass surveillance

#159

It seems like an almost never ending hamster wheel of chat control being introduced, voted down, then introduced again in the next session.

The US really, really wants it implemented, and several national police institutions in the EU does too. Plus the politicians that start to drool a little at the prospect.

Re: End of "Chat Control": EU parliament stops mass surveillance

#160

[flagged]

We already don't have free speech. There's nothing protecting it (and many laws already to the contrary.) There aren't really any such constitutional protections from what I can tell.

Once laws are passed they aren't revoked. So it's just a matter of political climate. Just wait for people to get a little more negative, a little more paranoid (which has historically been "helped along" in various ways)-- a law only needs to pass once, and then we're stuck with some stupid bullshit forever.

It doesn't really seem like how you'd want to design it.

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