French president Hollande is visiting Lausanne, Switzerland this afternoon. His trains supposedly arrives at 3:20 at Prilly-Malley station. He will then proceed to the EPFL (Polytechnic school). [Full schedule http://files.newsnetz.ch/story/3/0/0/30072626/11/topelement.... ] Allegedly to protect the people, the object of that law is rather to decriminalize and widen the PM's surveillance capabilities. The law just ex…
French National Assembly approved Internet traffic monitoring system (French)
201–210 of 222 posts
Re: French National Assembly approved Internet traffic monitoring system (French)
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
30 out of 577?! Is there no limit on a quorum in the Assembly? Might as well have a king.
Apparently, you have to request a quorum, and even then the quorum has to be assembled in 15mins, or else it's ignored and the vote goes ahead anyway to prevent 'obstruction': http://www2.assemblee-nationale.fr/decouvrir-l-assemblee/rol... It's insane!
The 2009 reform was passed while Nicolas Sarkozy was still president, and he took great care of consolidating the power of the president while lowering the National Assembly's.
Re: French National Assembly approved Internet traffic monitoring system (French)
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, you need direct democracy. With modern communications, there is no reason to organize frequent elections on key issues, like in Switzerland.
Direct democracy only works if most of the voters have: 1) sufficient general education; 2) sufficient domain education; 3) time to read the law; 4) time to reflect on the law; 5) peers to discuss at length and with depth the law; etc. It's more efficient to have delegation systems. The problem is that both politicians and the press are corrupted delegation systems.
Re: French National Assembly approved Internet traffic monitoring system (French)
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
30 out of 577?! Is there no limit on a quorum in the Assembly? Might as well have a king.
Apparently, you have to request a quorum, and even then the quorum has to be assembled in 15mins, or else it's ignored and the vote goes ahead anyway to prevent 'obstruction': http://www2.assemblee-nationale.fr/decouvrir-l-assemblee/rol... It's insane!
Re: French National Assembly approved Internet traffic monitoring system (French)
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
That only means the french people are more socialist and open to oppressive government acts than US people are.
It's funny how "US people" (I assume you are one) tend to equate "socialist" and "oppressive", conveniently forgetting the state-sponsored torture and murders of the right-wing regimes they propped up during their history. Authoritarian regimes are authoritarian regimes, whatever block they align themselves with. Side note: I have not noticed that the NSA got dismantled or that representatives supporting this kind of…
Re: French National Assembly approved Internet traffic monitoring system (French)
#206No one of you Frenchs using HN has traslated the article to English yet? This does not help!
Really? You couldn't be bothered to put the article into google translate? https://translate.google.co.uk/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&... (Sorry for long link)
Moreover, that would also have a strong symbolical value. I find it a bit weird you're being more like "don't be lazy, couldn't you find a bad level translation yourself and be happy with it?". No. I'm not happy because you're not giving it the appropriate coverage this way. But oh well.
Re: French National Assembly approved Internet traffic monitoring system (French)
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
>It would be harder to have such a law in Germany. No, we already have this law. Companies with over 10k users need to install a black box to make easy access for the state. There is also a proposal to save communication for 8 weeks, of course just to protect against terrorists.
Do you have a source for the black box law in Germany (can be in german)?
Re: French National Assembly approved Internet traffic monitoring system (French)
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
People do not have to have an opinion on everything, do they? It doesn't really work that way today, but in an ideal world I would find it good that the 30 people who understand computers vote while the 337 others abstain. Also, I'm not sure how it works in other countries, but in France deputies usually have another job, you can't expect them to go to Paris on every wednesday to vote on things they don't even really…
It might also be 30 people who know nothing about computers but have an agenda. The way to get informed votes on technical laws is to carefully and transparently construct councils or committees whose members are technically competent. Give those councils the power to vote on technical laws, binding the main legislature to the result of such votes. You can't have a voting body without a quorum rule and say it's to al…
That might work in a US state that only has a few million inhabitants, but I can't see how an entire country could work this way.
As for the rest, I think you are very much assuming that your legislation system is the one and only way to go, even though looking at it from faraway it's not entirely obvious that it works better than the system we have, which seems to lack basic sanity, uses unenforceable principles and will be abused more often than it's used according to you.
I honestly think quorum rules have no positive impact on democracy, at worst allowing minorities to obstruct legislation by simply not showing up, and at best making clueless members or parliament show up just to vote what they were told to.
Re: French National Assembly approved Internet traffic monitoring system (French)
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's funny how "US people" (I assume you are one) tend to equate "socialist" and "oppressive", conveniently forgetting the state-sponsored torture and murders of the right-wing regimes they propped up during their history. Authoritarian regimes are authoritarian regimes, whatever block they align themselves with. Side note: I have not noticed that the NSA got dismantled or that representatives supporting this kind of…
If not by "increasing State control over the peoples lives", how would you define socialism?
"Socialism" as is commonly found in Western Europe (for instance, in the country we are talking about), is concerned with building a society where (in theory) as few people as possible are left on the side of the road. This is often correlated with high taxes (think Scandinavia), and may be linked to strong protections for workers (think France). Conservative parties are traditionally more authoritarian, and often campaign with themes of "fighting insecurity"/"limiting immigration".
In practice, "socialist" parties have been steadily sliding to the right, especially in term of economic policy. The French socialist party is a dying pachyderm, devoid of ideas and divorced from its traditional voters. It is very hard to distinguish its policies from the conservative block's. Indeed, there was a remarkable consensus regarding this particular law.
I am not aware of any ideology (not even Marxism) for which "increasing state control over the peoples lives" is a goal in itself. One thing that may confuse you is that you sound like a libertarian, and there isn't really much of a libertarian bend in Europe (even if a party like the Liberal party in Denmark is somewhat libertarian). Nobody really thinks in terms of "big government is bad", and the fact that this argument is readily used in US politics is a never-ending source of bewilderment (and amusement) here.
Re: French National Assembly approved Internet traffic monitoring system (French)
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This is how democracy dies. We need a system of government that allows scientists and thinkers to have a weighted power balancing politicians. POliticians cannot be trusted by definition
No, you need direct democracy. With modern communications, there is no reason to organize frequent elections on key issues, like in Switzerland.