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Chat Control passed first round in EU Parliament

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Re: Chat Control passed first round in EU Parliament

#161

Post by dgellow »

vslira wrote: post #154
dgellow wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s the council. We have to be clear which institution we are talking about within the EU, otherwise that doesn’t make any sense. The European Parliament already pushed back that proposal. The EU is made of a lot of different actors with their own agenda. Here the council, with the help of the EPP party is doing that undemocratic maneuvering: They made it on purpose so that the parliament is unlikely to be able to p…

If the EU as a system has an undemocratic backdoor it's descriptively correct to call it undemocratic. Not to play too hard on the HN user stereotype, but you wouldn't call a computer system that is mostly secure other than a known privilege escalation exploit secure, would you?

Every single democratic system relies on norms at some level. Democratic isn’t a boolean flag. When the French prime minister is using the 49-3 rule to bypass the parliament that’s undemocratic, that doesn’t make the system itself undemocratic. When a US president is using an executive order to pass a law that’s undemocratic, that doesn’t make the system itself undemocratic. Here the maneuver goes against the spirit of democracy and against the expected norms, however the EU itself is democratic

Re: Chat Control passed first round in EU Parliament

#162

Post by pigpop »

iknowstuff wrote: post #84
pigpop wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given a choice between China and the EU at this point I would choose to live in China.

ok lol objectively poor choice but go right ahead

They have lower crime rates, more modern infrastructure, plentiful housing, lower cost of living (especially electricity), they're the place to be if you want to manufacture anything, affordable childcare, incredibly well educated doctors, many of the most incredible leisure and entertainment events in the world and they don't ban air conditioning.

So yeah, if I had to choose to live in a country where I had to toe the party line and bite my tongue when it came to political expression it would be China. At least they would be providing a high quality of life and a secure and peaceful society in exchange even if I had to deal with the negatives of being a minority in their country.

Re: Chat Control passed first round in EU Parliament

#163

Post by layer8 »

mosselman wrote: post #112
jmward01 wrote: post #109

All new laws should be given a trial period where the lawmakers are forced to live with them for 90 days before the public is subjected to them. At any time during that period lawmakers can change their vote.

This is an incredibly good idea. 90 days is too short to feel the effects of some things though. Better make it a year. The downside is "lets try giving everyone basic income of $100k/week". But apart from that great!

The other downside is that even good laws would not pass, because it would mean for MEPs having to constantly identify themselves as such.

Re: Chat Control passed first round in EU Parliament

#164

Post by dgellow »

jerkstate wrote: post #129
mikestorrent wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's mostly a lack of properly descriptive words in the language. I think "totalitarian liberalism" or the "managerial state" is probably closer to what we're talking about here. Power is not concentrated in one individual; responsibility and accountability are diffused so far that it is impossible to find someone who actually can do or change anything. "Rational systems" of business process and rigour serve to remov…

> In some ways, the concentration of power in a dictatorship might be better, if the dictator was well morally aligned with the people. This is pretty much the exact argument that Hayek makes - socialism leads to fascism through political gridlock.

Did you mean to say liberalism?

Re: Chat Control passed first round in EU Parliament

#165

Post by throwaway27448 »

soco wrote: post #30
iamnothere wrote: post #2

From a post on Mastodon: > democracy is when you repeatedly push for unpopular laws until they pass, and the more times you do it the more democratic it is It is unlikely that 60 additional “no” votes can be found by Thursday to stop this.

So basically the people we elected will vote yes. How's that undemocratic? Because the majority doesn't vote the way I like it? I'm not even ironic, I truly don't understand those comments. You get what you voted for, garbage in garbage out.

> How's that undemocratic?

Because they're not representing the needs of their constituents? Democracy is more than just voting—and if it wasn't, most states we think of as authoritarian would also be democratic.

Re: Chat Control passed first round in EU Parliament

#166

Post by layer8 »

osigurdson wrote: post #26
nekusar wrote: post #9

The cypherpunks were right. Rights to encryption are only a part of what we need. The other part is steganography, or hiding real messages within a innocuous anodyne message stream. And encryption can be used in conjunction as part of hiding said messages. It can be within pictures with the lowest bit values. It can be constructed punctuation and spaces. Lots of things. But hidden and plausibly deniable messaging is…

What I don't understand is, what kind of legitimate criminal would not use such techniques? Are bank robbers planning things out on iMessage? If so, presumably they won't be criminals for very long. Therefore these types of initiatives only impact the innocent and inept but still active criminals.

The past has shown that “legitimate” criminals tend to be more careless and have a poorer technical understanding than you’d think.

This is not a defense of surveillance, just that your argument doesn’t hold as well as you might believe.

Re: Chat Control passed first round in EU Parliament

#167

Post by sensanaty »

Hilarious that the politicians, the very people who are pretty much always ousted as some form of degenerate pedophile the world over, are the ones pushing for this bullshit and explicitly carving out enclaves where their messages don't get scanned.

Absolute fucking joke

Re: Chat Control passed first round in EU Parliament

#169

Post by dgellow »

isodev wrote: post #52
belowavgiq wrote: post #3

"The procedure now chosen gives the proponents of Chat Control a significant tactical advantage. Since the law is in its second reading, an absolute majority of 361 votes of all parliament members is required for amendments or a renewed rejection on Thursday. In contrast, a simple majority of the MEPs present is sufficient for the other side. As many parliamentarians have historically already departed by the last day…

> how democratic of the EU Well, these are the MEPs elected by member states. We don’t like the outcome but this means chat control is well supported within the government of each country.

The parliament rejected the proposal twice. Yes the governments support it, but not the people of European countries

Re: Chat Control passed first round in EU Parliament

#170

Post by dgellow »

afh1 wrote: post #90
isodev wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how democratic of the EU Well, these are the MEPs elected by member states. We don’t like the outcome but this means chat control is well supported within the government of each country.

Is it really supported by the people, or just the politicians? If the former, the EU is an autocratic democracy. If the later, an autocratic oligarchy. Either way bad. Only true democracy in Europe is Switzerland where the people actually get to vote on laws.

We have representatives in Switzerland, please don’t misrepresent our political system to push your anti-EU agenda. We do not vote on every single laws. It’s a semi-direct democracy. A representative democracy is the most common instantiation of democratic systems.
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