Undermining Democracy: The EU Commission's Controversial Push for Surveillance • Hacker News Board

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

#261

Post by blibble » Sat, Oct 14, 2023, 7:14 PM UTC

scott_w wrote: post #260

blibble wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By passing new laws with the EC. right, so it can't, thank you > You act like the British Parliament can pass law without government approval. Spoiler alert: it can’t. are you a time traveler from before the 1640s? there was a civil war fought over this point, parliament won and is sovereign the parliamentary majority and government are not the same thing this should be obvious to anyone from the 2019-2020 mess whe…

You’re confusing theory and fact: in theory, private members bills can be passed. In practice, that rarely happens if the government doesn’t want it to, irrespective of what Parliament wants. Denying parliamentary time is one way, simply disregarding it (HS2) is another. It’s interesting you cite as evidence a time where LITERALLY NO LEGISLATION WAS PASSED and think it supports your argument…

> You’re confusing theory and fact: in theory, private members bills can be passed. In practice, that rarely happens if the government doesn’t want it to

right, so your previous statement: "it can’t." has now changed to "that rarely happens"

I'm done here

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

#262

Post by scott_w » Sat, Oct 14, 2023, 7:22 PM UTC

blibble wrote: post #261

scott_w wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re confusing theory and fact: in theory, private members bills can be passed. In practice, that rarely happens if the government doesn’t want it to, irrespective of what Parliament wants. Denying parliamentary time is one way, simply disregarding it (HS2) is another. It’s interesting you cite as evidence a time where LITERALLY NO LEGISLATION WAS PASSED and think it supports your argument…

> You’re confusing theory and fact: in theory, private members bills can be passed. In practice, that rarely happens if the government doesn’t want it to right, so your previous statement: "it can’t." has now changed to "that rarely happens" I'm done here

No, I pointed out that they ABSOLUTELY DO NOT PASS if government doesn’t want them to. They RARELY pass most of the time anyway.

But you think a time that Parliament couldn’t do anything is evidence Parliament is able to overrule government in practice. I’m not holding out hope for your critical thinking so just take your victory where you can: in your imagination.

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

#263

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Oct 14, 2023, 7:31 PM UTC

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…

[deleted]

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

#264

Post by zorrolovsky » Sat, Oct 14, 2023, 7:34 PM UTC

scott_w wrote: post #226

bondarchuk wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The law is bad but spouting off incorrect nonsense like this only makes you look unhinged. Everything you said is just completely made up.

To me, it's your thinking that's unhinged. You seem blind to the reality we live in. In your country, Nigel Farage had his banking account cancelled because of having the wrong ideology. What you qualify as impossible is already happening. People are already getting economically punished for opposing ideas imposed by the state and elites. Don't trust me? Go right now to your linkedin and make a post saying: "I dislike homosexuality and I oppose LGTB rights." That's a completely legal statement, but if you have a typical employer (ie Fortune 500 corp) you're going to be out of a job pretty quickly. For the record: I disagree with Farage and support LGTB rights. However it's messed up to impose ideologies through economic sanctions. And in western democracies this is already happening.

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

#265

Post by alexpotato » Sat, Oct 14, 2023, 7:37 PM UTC

I recently discovered that US Congressional votes used to be "anonymous" in the sense that the vote COUNTS would be public but who voted for what was kept secret.

The voting was then changed so that actual votes where made public in favor of more transparency. While it did indeed make the vote more open and visible to the public, it had the effect of showing lobbyists exactly which members of Congress were voting for and against the lobbyists' interests. This in turn led to funding going to the pro-lobby Congress members and the vicious cycle accelerates.

This video lecture goes into much more detail about the process and the impact that this had: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qz27n1tNNMg

As a post script, I forget if it's in the video or somewhere else but experiments in real political bodies (I believe it was the Italian parliament) with both a public and secret vote for the same legal bill led to two completely different outcomes.

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

#266

Post by 3seashells » Sat, Oct 14, 2023, 7:42 PM UTC

amelius wrote: post #191

logicchains wrote: post #105

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 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.

Democratic Politics is not there to be efficient. It's there so sociopaths can backstab one another civilized.

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

#267

Post by sesm » Sat, Oct 14, 2023, 7:43 PM UTC

tomatotomato37 wrote: post #177

Loughla wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

The big desirable thing about the EU is it's strong social net and relatively modern urban infrastructure. If you like the city or don't have a safety net from some other auxiliary source such as family or church it's superior. Otherwise the US wins out in factors such as an overall more vibrant economy, more personal freedoms, not having a major landwar on its borders, etc. Also all this just applies to the actual g…

Have you ever been to Serbia? I’ve been living there for the past year and to me it looks like a great place in terms of value for the money.

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

#268

Post by hfuyf65 » Sat, Oct 14, 2023, 7:45 PM UTC

layer8 wrote: post #118

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…

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.

[dead]

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

#269

Post by jscipione » Sat, Oct 14, 2023, 7:57 PM UTC

There is no Democracy in Europe. In order to have a Democracy you have to have free speech so that ideas can be freely exchanged with the good ideas beating out the bad ones at the ballot box. In Europe, speech is controlled by hate speech laws and government censorship thus the vote is also controlled and thus elections are not free thus there is no Democracy in Europe. This lack of Democracy is coming to a head in Germany where the rising AfD party is being spied on and physically assaulted by the German secret police controlled by the ruling coalition lead by the SPD.

America is also experiencing similar problems of censorship and hate speech laws, the difference is in America censorship and hate speech laws are banned by the First Amendment and thus there's at least a chance that the Supreme Court can restore Democracy. In Europe, there is no hope of Democracy being restored because there is no legal protection of the freedom of speech.

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

#270

Post by patrickmay » Sat, Oct 14, 2023, 8:03 PM UTC

jokethrowaway wrote: post #170

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…

That's exactly why we need to STOP taxation and DECENTRALIZE power away from a central goverment. Of course, they'll always have an interest in enriching themselves and their friends

Exactly. The problem isn't the specific abuses of power, it's the power itself. The EU (and the US federal government) simply shouldn't be able to do most of what they do.