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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

#131

Post by fsflover »

dalbasal wrote: post #62
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…

Idk... The EC pushes through controversial decisions, that are not controversial between states... the bar is generally something high in this regard. National Governments get a buffer between them and discontented citizens, because "it's the EU." There is also a lot of pressure to conform to EC "consensus," parties/individuals that want to be seen as government material. EC totally discounts digital privacy especial…

> There needs to be an organized, pro-freedom movement.

https://edri.org

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

#132

Post by hef19898 »

Loughla wrote: post #98
admissionsguy wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We all just want to escape this tyrannical dictatorship. Well, I actually do.

Can you expand on why, please? From the outside looking in, most European countries seem much better at most things than where I live in the US (unless you're very wealthy, I guess).

You are on forum of temporarily embarased billionaires (now coping with mass FAANG layoffs), so what do you expect?

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

#133

Post by unmole »

dalbasal wrote: post #62
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…

Idk... The EC pushes through controversial decisions, that are not controversial between states... the bar is generally something high in this regard. National Governments get a buffer between them and discontented citizens, because "it's the EU." There is also a lot of pressure to conform to EC "consensus," parties/individuals that want to be seen as government material. EC totally discounts digital privacy especial…

> recreational politics

This. Fringe parties tend to do much better in EP elections than in national elections.

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

#134

Post by zo1 »

Loughla wrote: post #98
admissionsguy wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We all just want to escape this tyrannical dictatorship. Well, I actually do.

Can you expand on why, please? From the outside looking in, most European countries seem much better at most things than where I live in the US (unless you're very wealthy, I guess).

Not OP. But some of us have seen how the life can function "just fine" even without the huge amount of control and laws that the EU has.

I'm gonna be a bit crass here to convey my point. I currently live in a "shithole" country, and I'd still not want to live in the EU in comparison. I've had this discussion with many people that came back, with family that lives there, with my wife seeing if we want to move there "for our kids future", and always it ends up being a "No", or "let's see if it looks better next year".

Sure, maybe there is a pocket here, a pocket there, or a city/state/province etc that I would want to live in, or is "Okay". But the rest looks positively horrifying.

For starters, I don't want to live in a place where I either have to be ridiculously wealthy or a slave my entire life just to own land that isn't a tiny capsule apartment in an overcrowded city. Land I probably won't be able to do what I want on exactly, anyways.

Anywho, I'm biased. I see Europe as the "pathetic" and "weak" West that is basically slowly killing itself out of some sort of collective cultural guilt for who knows what. It's killing itself in the name of some noble good, whilst the world filled with state-level bullies is destroying the world. No thank you.

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

#135

Post by throwaway9274 »

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…

European societies have more fractious populations and a far more elite-mediated society than the U.S.

As a result, their union of states is both more fractious, in that it is a confederation and not a true federal government, and more elite-mediated, in that its function depends more upon the consensus among national elites than among national populations.

Put another way, it is more important that Paris agrees with Berlin than that Bautzen agrees with Lille.

Is that anti-democratic or just a more republican (small r) form of democracy?

I am not sure. But it is different.

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

#136

Post by hef19898 »

MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #125
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…

Anyone who needs a less abstract impression, check the feed of EC Thierry Breton [0]. A painfully clear impression of how those people think about freedom of speech. [0] https://x.com/thierrybreton

Twitter and Musk do not equal free speech, not even in the US let alone Europe...

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

#137

Post by matthewdgreen »

hef19898 wrote: post #114
matthewdgreen wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 (s…

I didn't say it was some kind of dictatorship. I do note, however, that the bulk of the EU executive is selected by an organization that is maximally disconnected from the voting public. And this seems to be by design.

Consider the situation described in TFA. Let's say you, as an EU citizen, wanted to change the makeup of the Commission to rectify this. You could vote for a new MEP, but this would have relatively little impact since the Parliament doesn't select most members of the Commission. You could vote for a new national government (assuming this was your highest-priority issue!), and then hope that the heads-of-state would appoint a new President. But this would not replace the remaining 26/27 Commission members. Finally, you could hope that your new government would appoint new Ministers to the CotEU.

But the CotEU has many Ministers and a complex rotating presidency. The Council also has policy "configurations" in which different national ministers have varying degrees of influence. So in the worst case, it could take years for your new Ministers to reach a position where they could influence the composition of the Commission. Even if voters in many countries felt as you did, it might be very difficult to turn this into concrete changes the makeup of the Commission. It is hard not to see this indirection as the key design goal of this structure.

And maybe in the end that's a good thing. TFA, however, makes me worry that it can facilitate some very bad outcomes.

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

#138

Post by ur-whale »

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…

> Those who believe it's "for our own good" are out of their minds.

Very glad to see some of the sheeps aren't completely clueless over there!

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

#139

Post by hef19898 »

kypro wrote: post #95
api wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like over the past 10 years there has been a global retreat from freedom and democracy. China is returning to at least a superficially softer version of Maoism. Russia has returned to Stalinism. The Middle East never had much of a liberal tradition but it’s certainly not gained any ground. The US is flirting with populist strong man rule with Trump and RFK. South America seems to keep oscillating between aut…

> One problem might be that we teach everyone about the dangers of fanatical explosive totalitarian movements like Hitlerism and Stalinism but not enough about “softer” creeping authoritarianism that is less easy to identify or oppose. Both are a risk but the strong man cult type is easier to mobilize people against. This is entirely the problem in my opinion. When you talk to Europeans you'll notice they tend to be…

Your neighbor denying the holocaist, sticking with your example, are the people that would allow a government to become oppressive.

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

#140

Post by inglor_cz »

dmcq2 wrote: post #31
inglor_cz wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 negati…

The principle of subsidiarity was supposed to counter making laws affecting individuals like this would, this sort of stuff should be up to individual countries. The bureaucrats are trying to expand out of their remit.

"The bureaucrats are trying to expand out of their remit."

Which, to be frank, was totally expectable and the fact that the system wasn't prepared enough for this behavior constitutes a significant weakness.

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