Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

European Commission Revives Push for Encryption Backdoors in ProtectEU Strategy

reclaimthenet.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 205 posts

Re: European Commission Revives Push for Encryption Backdoors in ProtectEU Strategy

#81

Post by Xelbair »

p_l wrote: post #44
bradley13 wrote: post #19

The European Commission has far too much power, and answers far too little to the populace. In reality, they want to be dictators. If you don't know, the unfortunate way thf EU is structured, the Parliament cannot initiate legislation. They can only vote on whatever the Commission puts in front of them. If the Parliament votes "wrong", the Commission just repackages the idea in a new bill, pulls a couple of dirty tri…

Unfortunately every attempt at reforming it is blocked with "but my sovereignty!" - as EC and Council of Ministers are very much controlled and steered by member nations' governments . Not to mention it makes for perfect scapegoat

because it is a perfect tool for all governments to 'wash' unpopular political bills that would be a political suicide in local politics.

You're asking the group profiting from current arrangement to change it.

Re: European Commission Revives Push for Encryption Backdoors in ProtectEU Strategy

#82

Post by Xelbair »

LaurensBER wrote: post #76
shevy-java wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is also true - national countries sabotage any reform. Basically the EU would have to be designed anew from the get go, but lobbyists will prevent this from ever happening.

I have many concerns about the rise of populism in Europe but the (few/very few) good things that might come out of this is that there will finally be (enough?) pressure on the EU to reform. Despite all their talk about being pro human-rights and pro democracy in practice the voter turnout percentages for the EU elections are extremely low. As an EU citizen I almost never meet someone who's interested or who feel rep…

EU and EC have been made as a resistant to populism by design, the end result is that we citizens can't change anything, and decisions are arbitrarily made behind closed doors.

The amount of layers between your vote, and the elected official that matters is just too big to have any form of accountability, especially when you couple it with national issues.

I'm frankly less concerned about populism, but more concerned about sheer disregard of opinions of citizens.

Re: European Commission Revives Push for Encryption Backdoors in ProtectEU Strategy

#83

Post by plufz »

MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #61
bartleeanderson wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very funny if it weren't so true!

I‘m not being ironic. With a dictator you have full responsibility concentrated in a single person. Bureaucracies are the opposite: they’re intentionally setup to diffuse responsibility as much as possible and hold no one accountable. Instead of a single guy, you now have to fight something resembling a fungus. This is much harder: instead of a decapitation strike, you face an enemy that is more resilient and resista…

Are you saying that historically very bureaucratic countries have been worse to live in than dictatorships? Not sure I follow actually. It sounds very strange to me. Isn’t also the first move of all dictators to take over all institutions with their own people?

Re: European Commission Revives Push for Encryption Backdoors in ProtectEU Strategy

#84

Post by b112 »

written-beyond wrote: post #70
inigyou wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is the structure of the EU. Wannabe fascists propose all kinds of laws, then a democracy chooses which ones it wants.

Secret Hitler(the boardgame) fan?

Wait, Hilter made a boardgame? I'm... curious. (Looks around with apprehension)

Re: European Commission Revives Push for Encryption Backdoors in ProtectEU Strategy

#86

Post by watwut »

qwytw wrote: post #56
watwut wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has nothing to with EU itseld and a lot of to do with far right trying to turn people against EU. EU in general is the last hope for democracy and it is kinda at risk. They want to push it over the line and break down. Just a few months ago, there was push to call European countries vasals of USA - exactly when they said "no". Somehow Venezuela is not a vassal state and somehow Saudi completely dependent on USA we…

> EU in general is the last hope for democracy and it is kinda at risk Funny given it's not and was never supposed to be a "democracy" or a federation for that matter. > That disappeard, now EU is fascist Not necessarily? Mass surveillance is something integral to totalitarian states of any leaning.

Yes, European countries are supposed to be democratic.

> Not necessarily?

I dont think it is fascist, but yes people on HN call it fascist more often then is reasonable.

Re: European Commission Revives Push for Encryption Backdoors in ProtectEU Strategy

#87

Post by vlyan »

rdm_blackhole wrote: post #40
tonis2 wrote: post #35

Stuff like that make people want to leave EU, not some "enemy propaganda" which is real unfortunate in current times.

If you read /r/europe, you would be convinced that the reason that some people are against the EU is only because of: - Russian trolls - US trolls - Chinese trolls Its never the EU's fault. Never is there a sense of saying, maybe we should try to understand why people do not agree with us. It's my way or the highway and if you don't agree or criticize the EU in any way shape or form then you are just a far-right extr…

r/europe represents Europeans about as accurately as r/politics represents Americans. it's a heavily curated consent manufacturing outlet. what you see there is what its political commissars allow to be seen.

Re: European Commission Revives Push for Encryption Backdoors in ProtectEU Strategy

#88

Post by [deleted] »

betteryet wrote: post #57
bradley13 wrote: post #19

The European Commission has far too much power, and answers far too little to the populace. In reality, they want to be dictators. If you don't know, the unfortunate way thf EU is structured, the Parliament cannot initiate legislation. They can only vote on whatever the Commission puts in front of them. If the Parliament votes "wrong", the Commission just repackages the idea in a new bill, pulls a couple of dirty tri…

The dictators part is false, the EU is not a structure you can easily dictate. But this encryption backdoor thing is somebody's pet project and extremely alarming. The UK has a similar bend they've already put in place with IPA and TCNs. The US is way gone on decrypted stored data and metadata, but not on encryption backdoors yet, though legislators have tried.

[deleted]

Re: European Commission Revives Push for Encryption Backdoors in ProtectEU Strategy

#90

Post by ajb »

p_l wrote: post #44
bradley13 wrote: post #19

The European Commission has far too much power, and answers far too little to the populace. In reality, they want to be dictators. If you don't know, the unfortunate way thf EU is structured, the Parliament cannot initiate legislation. They can only vote on whatever the Commission puts in front of them. If the Parliament votes "wrong", the Commission just repackages the idea in a new bill, pulls a couple of dirty tri…

Unfortunately every attempt at reforming it is blocked with "but my sovereignty!" - as EC and Council of Ministers are very much controlled and steered by member nations' governments . Not to mention it makes for perfect scapegoat

This is true. However there's a potential way to fix it, and it would only take one member state, no matter how small to start the landslide. And it's basically the same thing that happened to the US Senate.

The Senate, like the Council of Ministers, was intended to represent the member states. Originally, Senators were appointed by state legislatures. A few states started to have direct primaries, with the legislative appointment amounting to ratification of the popular choice. Then this was made the way for every senator by the 17th amendment. (It took until 1913!)

The same thing could happen to the EU council of ministers. It's a little more obfuscated because the representative to the council of ministers is formally a delegate of the government of the EU member state. But, since the process is under the control of the member state, there's nothing stopping them being directly elected by the public of that EU country. They can simply decide that that's who they want to send. Unlike any other democratic reform of the EU, this doesn't require consensus among all member states (which in practice, means the political elites).

There would have to be some kind of groundswell of support for it in several nations, as otherwise the government of bigger nations would do everything to make an individual small nation regret it; unless they would pay some political cost. But if there is a movement to democratise the EU, this is the one move that doesn't need the permission of the incumbents.

Post reply on HN