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Undermining Democracy: The EU Commission's Controversial Push for Surveillance

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Re: Undermining Democracy: The EU Commission's Controversial Push for Surveillance

#11

Post by csomar »

The EU and the West are over-playing their hands with this in my opinion. They'll get burned by this at some point, at which point it'll be too late; and maybe then they'll recognize that the reason they have had such control was just the fact they were first. Not some universal physics law that such companies can only exist in the Western sphere.

The recent Middle-East events had some troubling intervention (in Twitter/Meta). The "other side" wanting to voice its opinion is now being pushed more to other platforms. There aren't many (mainly Telegram and Tiktok) but nothing creates a market than sequestration. China did this to create a local market. The EU is forcing this on the global south.

What's next? De-platform such sites/apps from the major PaaS (AWS/Azure/etc...)? This might slow things down but it'll create a market for alternative hosting platforms. Then what's next? Ban hardware? This will boil down to chips. Maybe the US is ahead on this and realizes this is the only frontier that's left.

Re: Undermining Democracy: The EU Commission's Controversial Push for Surveillance

#14

Post by admissionsguy »

kubb wrote: post #8
TacticalCoder wrote: post #7

The title should be shortened from "Undermining Democracy: The European Commission's Controversial Push for Digital Surveillance" simply to: "Undermining Democracy: The European Commission" . The EC is sheer horror. The thousands of years old saying: "The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the state" has never been truer. I've done a short consulting gig at the European Parliament, which at least tries to be th…

Haha, sure, it’s real invigilation terror over here in Europe. We all just want to escape this tyrannical dictatorship. But, the European Parliament is against this legislation, and for the moment it’s not passing.

> We all just want to escape this tyrannical dictatorship.

Well, I actually do.

Re: Undermining Democracy: The EU Commission's Controversial Push for Surveillance

#15

Post by eigenket »

tekla wrote: post #2

How are there not riots in the EU right now?

Because the EU doesn't really have much actual power to do anything that impacts normal citizens. Like the EU doesn't start criminal prosecutions or anything against people. If there is some crime you're being prosecuted for it's going to be your country's government that prosecutes you.

No one is really worried about the EU becoming some sort of Orwellian state because it isn't a state, it doesn't operate like that.

Edit: I should say that this shit also isn't going to pass the European Parliament, its just a proposal which is going to get voted down.

Re: Undermining Democracy: The EU Commission's Controversial Push for Surveillance

#16

Post by seydor »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #7

The title should be shortened from "Undermining Democracy: The European Commission's Controversial Push for Digital Surveillance" simply to: "Undermining Democracy: The European Commission" . The EC is sheer horror. The thousands of years old saying: "The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the state" has never been truer. I've done a short consulting gig at the European Parliament, which at least tries to be th…

The Eurocrats are only accountable to other eurocrats and it shows. The EU also has a very large publicity budget.

The EP s vice president for Blockchain and AI was found to take bribes from qatar last year.

Re: Undermining Democracy: The EU Commission's Controversial Push for Surveillance

#17

Post by RandomLensman »

hackandthink wrote: post #9

These bureaucrats overwhelm citizens with enormous amounts of text. Expression of opinion is regulated here. A few principles should be enough. The most important one should be: Every citizen is free to express his opinion. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...

Some (most?) countries in Europe have a criminal offense of "insult", so this just isn't how things work (or worked as that is nothing new).

Re: Undermining Democracy: The EU Commission's Controversial Push for Surveillance

#18

Post by sofixa »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #7

The title should be shortened from "Undermining Democracy: The European Commission's Controversial Push for Digital Surveillance" simply to: "Undermining Democracy: The European Commission" . The EC is sheer horror. The thousands of years old saying: "The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the state" has never been truer. I've done a short consulting gig at the European Parliament, which at least tries to be th…

> The thousands of years old saying: "The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the state" has never been truer

Can you tell me what is the correct number of laws? What's your threshold? And what happens when a new thing appears / enters the mainstream, do you have to remove an old law first before creating a new one?

As a concrete example, LLMs and how they relate to copyright and image rights. Should we have to remove e.g. the rail packages to be able to legislate on them? Or screw it, anarchy?

> But the EP is tiny compared to the EC and the EC is pulling the strings: the EP is supposed to bring some kind of democracy but there's none.

You know that the European Parliament has to vote on EC proposals, right? And if they refuse them, they don't pass.

Re: Undermining Democracy: The EU Commission's Controversial Push for Surveillance

#19

Post by inglor_cz »

kubb wrote: post #8
TacticalCoder wrote: post #7

The title should be shortened from "Undermining Democracy: The European Commission's Controversial Push for Digital Surveillance" simply to: "Undermining Democracy: The European Commission" . The EC is sheer horror. The thousands of years old saying: "The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the state" has never been truer. I've done a short consulting gig at the European Parliament, which at least tries to be th…

Haha, sure, it’s real invigilation terror over here in Europe. We all just want to escape this tyrannical dictatorship. But, the European Parliament is against this legislation, and for the moment it’s not passing.

"Haha, sure, it’s real invigilation terror over here in Europe. "

More like slow addition of smothering layers of bureaucracy upon bureaucracy until your breathing space is severely limited. Combined with our ghastly demographics, I think our growth is a thing of the past.

In many individual EU countries including mine, something like Chat Control 2.0 would not fly and the attention of the public would be very negative; especially east of the Iron Curtain, memories of authoritarian regimes are too strong for people to trust their politicians with this kind of power.

Brussels is distant enough that EU politicians can pull off such legislation without the general public being aware of it.

The distance between the EC and a random European is way too big. Even bigger than the distance between the Feds and a random American in USA.

Re: Undermining Democracy: The EU Commission's Controversial Push for Surveillance

#20

Post by sofixa »

hackandthink wrote: post #9

These bureaucrats overwhelm citizens with enormous amounts of text. Expression of opinion is regulated here. A few principles should be enough. The most important one should be: Every citizen is free to express his opinion. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...

> The most important one should be: Every citizen is free to express his opinion.

And if their opinion is that, all Jews are subhuman and have to be exterminated? (real life example)

Most EU countries have "hate speech" laws explicitly banning hate speech such as Nazis and Anti-Semites. Nobody sheds any tears over their opinions being restricted, and nobody should. Debating with pidgeons doesn't work.

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