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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

#111

Post by OfSanguineFire »

barrysteve wrote: post #65
csomar wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are under-estimating the level of development in tech in the "global south" which has a differing agenda. There is now enough talent and capital in the global south to kick-start tech companies and actually it's cheaper there. The problem is that they need time to catch up to the Western big tech. Why would anyone use a local chat/social app if Twitter and Instagram exists. Now, if they are being deplatformed, i…

It's pretty trivial to list reasons why you'd want a local chat app over a US created one. It is just too difficult to make. I don't think many people admit how differently we all think about software creation, all the tools that currently exist are shaped 100% around American big tech needs (cool i guess) and the American personality. It is incredibly difficult to go off-piste and create a different paradigm on comp…

Maps are actually a case where non-American solutions have succeeded to some degree: in the travel community outside North America, OSM-based apps like Komoot, Maps.me, and the Maps.me successor Organic Maps are very popular. Indeed, someone complaining about how Google Maps sucks is often a case of "spot the American/Canadian".

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

#112

Post by freeopinion »

I would be interested in learning the thoughts of those who have thought deeply about the role of anonymity in democracy.

I am intrigued how often people with the attitude that if you aren't don't anything wrong you shouldn't mind being observed apply that philosophy in only one direction. I see people who are upset that Snowden would leak and provide visibility into government actions, but don't blink that the revealed actions were actually the government spying on its own citizens. So governments are entitled to privacy, but their citizens are not?

My interest is not one sided. I have an intuition that personal privacy is important in maintaining democracy. But I also have an intuition that institutional privacy for a government is harmful to democracy. I think most would argue that a reasonable amount of governmental privacy is important to national security. I tend to favor the bare minimum. Most people I know disagree with me on that. I enjoy exploring both sides and trying to move beyond intuition for my position.

Any links or references to reasoned arguments on all sides are appreciated.

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

#113

Post by csomar »

OfSanguineFire wrote: post #101
logicchains wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Where do you see deplatforming, or the shaking of WhatsApp’s monopoly and room for a local competitor to grow? In the Middle East and North Africa (and Russia) Telegram seems to be competitive with WhatsApp in popularity, because people trust it more than the US-owned WhatsApp.

I have spent a lot of the last five years traveling the MENA region by bike, and the random local people I meet overwhelmingly want to exchange WhatsApp contact info (and are shocked to discover I don't have it, as I use only Signal). Sure, Telegram is around too, but WhatsApp's position is strong, and in any event Telegram is not a locally developed solution. Your claim that people trust Telegram more is a stretch.…

Telegram is now based in Dubai.

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

#114

Post by hef19898 »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #96
hef19898 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both, the European parliament and the European Council are voted for, the first directly by EU citizens, the latter by citizens of the individual EU countries everytime a new national election, and subsequent goverment formation, happens.

And what about the Council of the EU?

Just checked, it is made up of the respective ministers / secretaries of the memebwr states (foreign affairs, interior,...). So, also democratic as, as those ministers are nominated by the national governments after elections.

EDIT: There seven institutions of the EU:

Parliament (elected directly), European Council (assembly of democratically elected head of state / government of memeber states), Council of the EU (see above, only for ministers), European Commission (nominated by the European Council, approved by EU parliament and thus democratic), Court of Justice (not voted for, but who votes for judges?), Central Bank and Court of Auditors. All in all, pretty democratic and taking into account the fact that EU is compossed of souvereign nations with their own democracies.

Complex, sure, but no idea why people think that it is some kind of dictatorship.

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

#115

Post by riedel »

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.

As long as the parliament is against a very specific clause chances are low that legislation passes. However, recent EU acts are therefore a mixed bag of incoherent clauses: Comission, council and parliament all push there parts through with lobbying all over the place. In the end it seems that hardly anyone understands the overall mechanics anymore.

I would even argue that we sometimes even have too much democracy (well rather too many levels I guess). We would actually need better legislative techniques and a more coherent vision. The EC and their DGs are often understaffed and underqualified IMHO.

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

#116

Post by OfSanguineFire »

csomar wrote: post #113
OfSanguineFire wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have spent a lot of the last five years traveling the MENA region by bike, and the random local people I meet overwhelmingly want to exchange WhatsApp contact info (and are shocked to discover I don't have it, as I use only Signal). Sure, Telegram is around too, but WhatsApp's position is strong, and in any event Telegram is not a locally developed solution. Your claim that people trust Telegram more is a stretch.…

Telegram is now based in Dubai.

As a legal formality. A journalist who visited the registered address in Dubai fairly recently found no one at home. The app is honestly regarded as a Russian product.

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

#117

Post by logicchains »

layer8 wrote: post #93
logicchains wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something like "There are only X laws allowed. Every time you want to add a new law and already have X laws, you must remove one existing law". Then we'd get laws covering the most important things without a bunch of bureaucracy on top of that.

How do you define “number of laws”? Laws usually consist of many individual rules, and one can just make the law “bigger” to reduce the nominal number of laws without actually reducing the contents. In addition, I don’t see how this would cause the laws to become more in the interest of the citizens than of the legislators.

>How do you define “number of laws”

It's not an easy thing to do but that doesn't mean it couldn't be done. Maybe something like defining it as a limit on the total sum amount of text in all laws?

A limit on the amount of new laws that could be passed would make it much easier for citizens to keep up with the proposed changes and oppose any they disagreed with; they couldn't be ddossed by the legislators.

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

#118

Post by layer8 »

dsign wrote: post #78
irusensei wrote: post #23

Its just me that thinks there is something really wrong with the way politicians try to pass such controversial laws? Politicians bring up something controversial. Most of the time influenced by some lobby with very little interest in public benefit. To combat this lots of people need to do activism. Those people need to devote your time and energy to prevent such thing. So far it sounds good but after the dust settl…

I wonder what would happen if there were not politicians, if the parliament of Europe were the sum of all its citizens voting for laws in some sort of mega-stack-overflow consensus system. A part of me wants to believe this madness would end. Another part fears that we would try, at least for a few months, total surveillance and bisections as a form of capital punishment. But on the bright side, we would be able to c…

It would be much worse, witch-hunt style. Propaganda would run rampant. Also, many wouldn’t trust the voting system, because they won’t believe many actual outcomes to possibly be representative. Instead of blaming politicians, they would increasingly blame the voting system to be rigged by whoever is running it.

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

#119

Post by malermeister »

southernplaces7 wrote: post #59

To those of you on this site who get so sanctimonious about how wonderful GDPR is at mitigating the surveillance conducted by the big tech giants (most of them American), here's a wonderful example of how your cherished EU government uses both carrots and sticks. It's apparently not so much that the EU fights for individual privacy, it just doesn't like to have external competitors surveil the shit out of people with…

GDPR is good for protecting us from surveillance capitalism. This proposal is bad for trying to establish another form of capitalism.

Those two are not conflicting statements.

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

#120

Post by logicchains »

OfSanguineFire wrote: post #101
logicchains wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Where do you see deplatforming, or the shaking of WhatsApp’s monopoly and room for a local competitor to grow? In the Middle East and North Africa (and Russia) Telegram seems to be competitive with WhatsApp in popularity, because people trust it more than the US-owned WhatsApp.

I have spent a lot of the last five years traveling the MENA region by bike, and the random local people I meet overwhelmingly want to exchange WhatsApp contact info (and are shocked to discover I don't have it, as I use only Signal). Sure, Telegram is around too, but WhatsApp's position is strong, and in any event Telegram is not a locally developed solution. Your claim that people trust Telegram more is a stretch.…

WhatsApp hasn't currently given them any reason to switch. If Meta decided to censor text supporting Palestine on WhatsApp, as it has just decided to do on Instagram and Facebook, you can bet most of them would ditch it for Telegram.
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