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EU Council approves Chat Control mandate for negotiation with Parliament

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Re: EU Council approves Chat Control mandate for negotiation with Parliament

#121

Post by LudwigNagasena »

spwa4 wrote: post #110
LudwigNagasena wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU parliament and the head of states that comprise the EU council are elected by the EU citizens. Why is there such discordance between the two? Isn’t it mostly the same people from the same parties?

Because in a democracy it's the legislative assembly - parliament - that decides on laws, not the executive. The EU commission is the executive and represents the currently in power government, NOT parliament.

Sure, but I'm asking why there is a discordance between them.

Re: EU Council approves Chat Control mandate for negotiation with Parliament

#122

Post by spurgu »

concinds wrote: post #120
spurgu wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're describing is how the process in the EU works. So in essence it is "the EU". It doesn't seem to have any limits or restrictions on what it can do as an institution. It forced idiotic bottlecaps on all of us for shit's sake... and it has little consideration for privacy laws or constitutions of individuals, otherwise this proposal would've been thrown out automatically each time, if there was anything rese…

But the national governments are the ones who gave themselves that power in the first place. Because they wanted to be able to do shit like this. Hopefully the EU Parliament will stop them. But the takeaway from this shouldn't be: "screw the EU", it should be: make the EU more democratic, and give more power to the parliament and less to the backroom machinations of member states. That's exactly what the pro-EU refor…

> Or you could pass an EU Constitution that enshrines basic rights including privacy

That, and (somehow) enforce the basic principles of subsidiarity and proportionality, which they are supposed to do already. That would go a long way towards not misusing that centralized power.

I will have to read up on that 2005 event, sounds weird to me that countries would complain about there being constitutional rights at the EU level. Not sure how those rights would conflict with local ones. Unless there were positive rights, like "the right to internet" or the like, which would be ridiculous and not what I'm proposing (just basic negative rights).

Re: EU Council approves Chat Control mandate for negotiation with Parliament

#123

Post by LunaSea »

saubeidl wrote: post #118
LunaSea wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "The EU" is our elected governments Is that why the EU MEP can't propose laws? Is that why the Commission can ignore the MEP's votes? Also, many European governments have not been elected by people voting for them but by people voting against their opponent. Hardly a vote of confidence. > An extra vote on top of the election was always foolish. Yes, so foolish to ask people their opinion. If only we could have one…

The Commission is literally our elected government's representatives. It's not some outside power. It's people our governments send there. And it's exactly the same amount of democratic as a ministership is. > Yes, so foolish to ask people their opinion. The average voter doesn't know everything about everything. That's the whole point of representative democracy, to elect a representative to deal with the intricacie…

> The Commission is literally our elected government's representatives.

Oh, von der Leyen was elected?

Mertz represents 28,52% of the German people who voted. Who is he actually representing? Definitely not the German people, that's for sure.

> The average voter doesn't know everything about everything. That's the whole point of representative democracy, to elect a representative to deal with the intricacies of governance.

No, representatives are there to represent the opinions of their electorate. It has nothing to do with knowledge.

Representatives have teams of assistants that actually do have knowledge. No representative is writing laws themselves. That's why you see laws being lifted straight from industry lobby groups' legal teams.

Re: EU Council approves Chat Control mandate for negotiation with Parliament

#124

Post by spwa4 »

LudwigNagasena wrote: post #121
spwa4 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because in a democracy it's the legislative assembly - parliament - that decides on laws, not the executive. The EU commission is the executive and represents the currently in power government, NOT parliament.

Sure, but I'm asking why there is a discordance between them.

In this specific case - because Parliament has rejected this law 50 times. Yes, really that much, they've been at it since 11 May 2022. Governments really want access to people's chats, and parliament really does not want to give it to them. Not the EU parliament, not member state parliaments. Almost all of them.

The EU Commission has the power to force this law through, over the objections of all EU member state parliaments and the EU parliament and only the EU Council has the power to stop them. So by allying with the council the EU Commission is hoping to force parliament by threatening them with worse, and showing that the Council will not intervene if they do force worse through.

In general there is discordance, because the EU countries are forced into the union because of the need to compete with other large players like US and China, not because they want to. So every EU country wants to be part of the EU, but they don't want that to mean anything and don't want to give up even the slightest bit of control to the EU. And that's ignoring animosities, such as that France really does not want Germany to have any say whatsoever in what happens in France, or that Spain wants to repress Barcelona's separatism and 100 other issues.

The EU constitution disaster, and that the outcome of that effort was literally worse than the EU imagined was even possible when they started it is a good illustration of the problem.

Re: EU Council approves Chat Control mandate for negotiation with Parliament

#125

Post by sunaookami »

saubeidl wrote: post #116
sunaookami wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>All of this is disinformation and propaganda. I suggest actually looking at how the EU operates instead of accusing others of "spreading disinformation and propaganda" which is a typical response when someone critizies EU institutions. >There is parliamentary oversight A rubber stamp is oversight I guess. Laws like the DMA and DSA give the commission way too much power without being kept in check. >it's literally th…

> That's a very generous definition of "voted". As I said people can't vote for the EU commission nor can the parliament vote for the members of the commission. Remember that the EU commission is the ONLY one that can propose laws, the parliament CAN NOT do this even though it's their job. People can't vote for ministers etc either. That's how representative democracy works. > How about that German journalist that cr…

>That's how representative democracy works.

You can't compare voting ministers with how the voting for EU institution works. The votes get so watered down that its far away from representative.

>You mean a neonazi that was spreading Nazi propaganda in Germany

Ah yes everyone is a Nazi... no I'm talking about David Bendels. You may not like Deutschland-Kurier (I certainly do not, that's also not relevant) but going after a journalist because he posted a meme picture of Nancy Faeser with the text "I hate freedom of speech" is way over the top (and proves him right ironically).

>But that isn't "the EU" that's German conservatives

That was the SPD which is on the left spectrum.

You don't seem to know much about this stuff so why bother replying trying to make other readers think I were some sort of disinformation spreader? That's incredibly dishonest.

Re: EU Council approves Chat Control mandate for negotiation with Parliament

#127

Post by port11 »

bossyTeacher wrote: post #68
mrtksn wrote: post #46

>At the beginning of the month, the Danish Presidency decided to change its approach with a new compromise text that makes the chat scanning voluntary, instead. Hmm, so this will probably make the life for those who don't scan quite hard and if they experience a high profile scandal getting out of it will not be easy I assume. I'm not sure what to think of it, not being mandatory and requiring risk assessment sounds…

I feel like this will just incentivise the creation of privately run federated messaging systems. Powerful people will always be protected, any smart people will run fed messengers for their private stuff and normie tech for normie comms. This power will just turn into another form of control. As always, the only losers will be the average citizens.

And, clearly, all the mass surveillance in the USA has worked wonders to stop key political figures from engaging in pedophilia and other shenanigans. It's been 100% successful.

We must do it in Europe, lest the children be harmed. You know, instead of improving daycares and schools, the general economy, give them access to safe outdoor spaces, help families so they don't take it out on the kids…

I don't know. I've a son now, and I expected that to make me connect with this type of policy. It didn't.

Re: EU Council approves Chat Control mandate for negotiation with Parliament

#128

Post by hdgvhicv »

LunaSea wrote: post #123
saubeidl wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Commission is literally our elected government's representatives. It's not some outside power. It's people our governments send there. And it's exactly the same amount of democratic as a ministership is. > Yes, so foolish to ask people their opinion. The average voter doesn't know everything about everything. That's the whole point of representative democracy, to elect a representative to deal with the intricacie…

> The Commission is literally our elected government's representatives. Oh, von der Leyen was elected? Mertz represents 28,52% of the German people who voted. Who is he actually representing? Definitely not the German people, that's for sure. > The average voter doesn't know everything about everything. That's the whole point of representative democracy, to elect a representative to deal with the intricacies of gover…

In the U.K., Starmer won a landslide victory with 34% of the vote.

Sunak was not elected by the people. Neither was Truss, Johnson, or May

Cameron got 36% of the vote when he became PM. Brown wasn’t elected. Blair did well with 43%, but before him Major wasn’t elected.

Democracies are flawed, they’re just better than other systems we’ve had in the past.

Re: EU Council approves Chat Control mandate for negotiation with Parliament

#129

Post by jasonvorhe »

orwin wrote: post #88
jasonvorhe wrote: post #49

Good old salami tactics still work. Same goes for going way over target to then settle for your actual goal. Good old democracy at work.

Democracy worked well here. The executive wanted more power (once again), the parliament refused, twice, despite _a lot_ of lobbying and pressure from the executive branch. Good job to the tech industry for counterlobbying (i'm not saying that often i swear), good job us for mobilizing, and also la quadrature and other NGO privacy watchdog for mobilization that allowed the EU parliement to resist somewhat, and forced…

Let's see how democracy protects us from the digital id proposal. It probably won't.

Re: EU Council approves Chat Control mandate for negotiation with Parliament

#130

Post by mseri »

dang wrote: post #70
johanvts wrote: post #61

Misleading title, the council approves their mandate for negotiations with parliament. It’s still a long way to go before it turns into law and I think it’s rather unpopular in parliament.

Ok, we've put that in the title above. Thanks!

Thanks indeed!
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