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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

#191

Post by amelius »

logicchains wrote: post #105
dsign wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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 There's another way to achieve something similar less chaotically: demarchy, which was used for some things in ancient Greece. This involves electing people at random for a limited time period; if the selection is truly random, the…

It's nice in theory but politicians will never allow themselves to be replaced by random people, so good luck getting this implemented.

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

#192

Post by bondarchuk »

scott_w wrote: post #157
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 EU does not set freedom of speech laws beyond requiring signatory nations protect a weaker freedom of expression. Any nation can have stronger free speech protections if it chooses to and the EU bodies can’t prevent it. Your argument is nonsense.

The proposal in question does regulate freedom of expression, as the gp said, because it proposes monitoring all communications of citizens. So their argument is not nonsense at all.

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

#193

Post by api »

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…

Here’s an analogy:

Populist demagogues becoming dictators or the rise of fanatical cult ideologies are like hurricanes and tornadoes. They can start quickly, hit hard, and do a ton of damage. They are also easy to spot and there are known ways to respond to them.

Creeping bureaucratic authoritarianism and the slow erosion of democracy is like climate change. It ebbs and flows but mostly flows, but the trend is slow and on any given day it feels like everything is fine. By the time it gets bad enough to really hurt your democratic institutions are pretty far gone and the situation may not be easily recoverable.

They’re also not mutually exclusive problems. As climate change progresses you can get more and stronger hurricanes. In the same way the erosion of democracy and the growth of unchecked autocracy creates a situation that is ripe for the rise of demagogues.

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

#195

Post by hannofcart »

misnome wrote: post #172
t0bia_s wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eurpean Commison is not elected by citizens of EU. They are nominated by the European Council and confirmed by the European Parliament. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Commission Similar system is for WHO. They are not elected organisations, yet shape our laws. This bother quite a lot of people and don't bring a trust in system.

Neither are government cabinets, ambassadors or generals.

Assuming that you're taking about liberal democracies, ambassadors and generals don't pass laws that the rest of us have to abide by.

The government cabinet has some more democratic legitimacy in so far as that they generally comprise of elected representatives.

So your statement is a non-sequitur.

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

#196

Post by tgv »

EMCymatics wrote: post #100

I would love it for Europeans to end Lèse-majesté laws but I have little faith of that happening.

You really want to insult the monarch (who -BTW- is rather powerless in the member states of the EU)? Those kind of antics rarely have any influence.

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

#197

Post by rasur »

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…

They could adopt the Swiss Direct-Democracy model. But, they wouldn't.

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

#198

Post by alexvoda »

t0bia_s wrote: post #165
layer8 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What alternative do you propose? The politicians are elected representatives of and by the people.

Eurpean Commison is not elected by citizens of EU. They are nominated by the European Council and confirmed by the European Parliament. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Commission Similar system is for WHO. They are not elected organisations, yet shape our laws. This bother quite a lot of people and don't bring a trust in system.

The commission is still democratically representative even if indirectly as long as member states are democracies.

If you want all European institutions to be directly elected you essentially want the EU to no longer be a confederation and instead be a federation.

National governments having power in EU affairs is by design because otherwise the EU would never have formed.

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

#199

Post by bondarchuk »

scott_w wrote: post #163
logicchains wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't have democracy if people are persecuted for their voting preferences, and with total surveillance a bad government could identify ahead of time people who planned to vote against it and punish them.

This is a nonsense slippery slope argument. Voting systems are entirely for individual nations to determine, not the EU.

No, the point is that a system of total surveillance, as proposed here by the EU, could be used by the EU to influence voting behaviour regardless of any individual voting systems. E.g. someone whatsapps their mom "I'm gonna vote for the anti-EU party", subsequently their secret "not a pedophile" score gets adjusted and next thing you know they can't get a mortgage anymore.

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

#200

Post by cscurmudgeon »

greatgib wrote: post #61

The European parlement is probably the best thing that we have in Europe, most good things and new rights come from there. At the opposite, the European Commission is probably the worse that we can have. It is totally corrupted (see the vice president with bags of cash given by the Qatar and co) or at least morally corrupted by lobbies. And no one elected this persons with so much power by the way. Good things to won…

> Good things to wonder is why America got shared access to all financial transactions of European citizens but the opposite is not true.

A lot of things are unequal between US and Europe. Eg., US bearing most of the cost of Europe's defense.

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