They’ll keep trying.
Then we keep fighting them.
End of "Chat Control": EU parliament stops mass surveillance
311–320 of 324 posts
Re: End of "Chat Control": EU parliament stops mass surveillance
#312Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure about op, but as someone who agrees with their comment, yes, I absolutely am. I despise 99% of all digital """services""" that exist. Whether it's cloud, music/movies/series/whatever streaming, subscriptions of almost any kind... They're all extremely dystopian and anti-human. I sail the high seas for almost everything I consume digitally. When I want to support a creator I enjoy, I pay them directly (bu…
What prevents you from using Debian and a FOSS stack?
Not much yet, that's pretty much what I do, although I run void linux and arch on my machines.
But even Linux isn't safe; what if other countries adopt the OS-level age-verification laws that california is pursuing? very few distros will be safe.
And then all they need to do (and you can bet that's exactly what they'd do) is keep squeezing, taking away freedom gradually until most linux distros require you to submit a digital ID on install. And chances are, the few distros and maintainers that go against that would be completely cut off from the mainstream tech ecosystem (which would make them barely usable in this day and age, at least as long as you live in a city with a job and rent and all).
This may sound like a slippery slope fallacy and it may indeed be that, but I can't think of any other possibility if we just let stuff like this keep happening. It may seem like we're just giving an inch now but in 5 years you'll suddenly realize they've taken a mile.
Re: End of "Chat Control": EU parliament stops mass surveillance
#313Earlier quoted context omitted.
Read about the paradox of tolerance. I'm not saying you unalive your opposition, but you do need to make them suffer consequences if they push the boundaries to get what they want.
A cheap justification for violating one's professed ideals.
Not really. Did democratic nations violate their ideals when they fought Nazi Germany in WWII?
After all, Hitler did come to power democratically. He made it very clear what he wanted to do, and the Weimar government didn't stop him, thinking that they could just have voters see through his act. How'd that turn out?
Re: End of "Chat Control": EU parliament stops mass surveillance
#314Re: End of "Chat Control": EU parliament stops mass surveillance
#315Earlier quoted context omitted.
The EU is fundamentally flawed. There are no checks and balances, and its only democratic if you squint and look at it the right way. People need to directly elect the MPs, directly elect some kind of president. They have no accountability, no checks and balances.
I agree there is a strong democratic deficit in the current EU governance structure, but I disagree with a proposal such as > directly elect some kind of president We do not need a president with over-powers, and electing directly one does not solve anything for democracy, as the recent history in countries like the US and France shows. The point of directly electing a president is giving that role more power. The cu…
Yes please. Not make an all powerful president whose election is more about the person than about their politics.
The current US is a perfect example why this is such a bad idea.
I support a president that's more of a figurehead though like in Ireland. More like an elected head of state for ribbon cutting but not really a strong political force. More like a negotiator than a dictator.
I guess the US' dogma of the winner takes all makes this palatable for them. But I don't see it leading anywhere but destruction especially in a forever-polarised zero-sum two party system.
Re: End of "Chat Control": EU parliament stops mass surveillance
#316Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's also the DDR and Stasi as a counter example if anyone think mass surveillance is incompatible with socialism. Mass surveillance isn't really a question that projects well onto the left-right scale, and attempting to make it fit a left-right question is more likely to distract than provide a useful understanding.
Yes. I would place it on the authority–liberty axis. While your examples were on the economic left, they were clearly authoritarian.
Yes. I'm very socialist on an economic scale but very liberal on the social scale. It basically embodies what we call progressive these days.
Conservatism has redefined itself too. Capitalist on the economic scale, authoritarian on the social one. When it comes to topics like lgbt, abortion, religion, family they don't want freedom. They want to have only the freedom to think like them. That's what we call authoritarianism. A bit remarkable because freedom was traditionally the hallmark of the right. I think you still see the original freedom variety more in states like Texas but not in the midwest. But I'm not really on the ball with American politics anymore so I may be wrong.
I think this breaks the original left/right paradigms a bit but I view it more as a redefinition.
But I think progressive and conservative are better terms to use these days.
Re: End of "Chat Control": EU parliament stops mass surveillance
#317Earlier quoted context omitted.
And people who think they are strong and will solve anything. These populists thrive on anger and hate. Solve the problem and those are gone. And the problems aren't the ones they champion anyway. I have to say Labour is putting on a shit show too though. They were supposed to be new and refreshed, instead they are Tory-Lite on steroids. Worse than Blair or Miliband ever were. Really UK politics needs some sanity :'(
Have you ever stopped to wonder why ~26% of the electorate might be angry though? Personally I don't like seeing 100,000+ undocumented young men of fighting age rock up in dinghys on the Kent coastline and get free hotels, food, phones and ultimately housing. Housing is in short supply and the sight of it being reserved for unemployed economic migrants is making me pretty angry.
The housing problem has nothing to do with immigrants and everything with structural mismanagement and prioritisation of the settled middle and upper class who wants to see their house value go up and up. And also their NIMBYism concerns (again, a new housing estate nearby might drop their house value)
The amount of housing actually taken by immigrants is minimal and releasing those wouldn't fix anything. Most of them live in squalor and doing jobs regular English guys wouldn't touch, in particular for the exploitative pay. You want your 2am burger delivered for a quid. Or the puke cleaned up in the metro. Who's going to do that these days?
It's this age-old problem: https://realfiction.net/assets/careful-mate.jpg
But now it's being weaponised for political gain. They're making you mad at the wrong people. The people who are causing it all are the ones you're voting for.
Re: End of "Chat Control": EU parliament stops mass surveillance
#318Earlier quoted context omitted.
A cheap justification for violating one's professed ideals.
Not really. Did democratic nations violate their ideals when they fought Nazi Germany in WWII? After all, Hitler did come to power democratically. He made it very clear what he wanted to do, and the Weimar government didn't stop him, thinking that they could just have voters see through his act. How'd that turn out?
An empty rebuttal. If the US democratically - by popular vote - decided to annex Canada would that mean Canadians waging war against the US or allies that stepped in to help them were going against the ideals of liberalism? There's no paradox to be had there. It is entirely possible for multiple liberal parties to disagree and end up at war.
Where people like to apply that phrase is when handling domestic affairs in a blatantly hypocritical manner. Such as banning certain speech, publications, or political activities while still claiming to honor the tenants of liberalism. In that context it's nothing more than a fig leaf to cover for one's own lack of integrity.
Re: End of "Chat Control": EU parliament stops mass surveillance
#319Earlier quoted context omitted.
You have “centralised democracy”, a form of democracy where decisions, once debated and adopted, are implemented uniformly throughout an organisation. They are not debated a second time, and there’s no room for dissenting against decisions already made. It’s a double-edge sword though: if something you dislike gets votes, it’s never going away.
> They are not debated a second time, and there’s no room for dissenting against decisions already made Of course they are and of course there is. The "EU passed a temporary derogation" to the ePrivacy Directive in 2021 "called Chat Control 1.0 by critics" [1]. That is now dead [2]. > if something you dislike gets votes, it’s never going away Weird to be saying precedent is infintely binding in 2026 of all years. [1]…
The sentence which you are quoting is referencing the concept described in the previous sentence of the same paragraph. It is not describing the EU’s form of democracy.
Re: End of "Chat Control": EU parliament stops mass surveillance
#320Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Every. Single. Democracy. in this world uses a variation of system like EU so please stop bloviating about Russia and China.
Again, why do you keep lying about it?