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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

#291

Post by dalbasal »

fsflover wrote: post #131
dalbasal wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

They seem to have the right idea. Do you know much about them? Are they good/effective?

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

#292

Post by throwaway50662 »

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…

Heads of states and the ministers very often don't represent the populations of their states, only a very small part of it.

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

#293

Post by throwaway50662 »

mrtksn wrote: post #54
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…

>The UK and EU felt like an exception but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Both are trending toward undemocratic bureaucracies in service to either the bureaucracy itself or the powerful. The whole public opinion shifted towards security over everything, unfortunately. As a result, the institutions follow.

No, not the whole. There are entire states in the EU that are against that. Unfortunately these are the smaller ones so they can't do anything about it and it's being forced upon their populations, regardless of what anyone says about how sovereign they are.

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

#294

Post by dTal »

jjtheblunt wrote: post #68

Language confusion question: aren’t democracy (people voting?) and surveillance conflating different topics? What correlation is implied?

In the balance of power between citizens and the government they somewhat begrudgingly delegate control of their lives to, democracy and surveillance are directly opposite.

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

#295

Post by eigenket »

patrickmay wrote: post #270
jokethrowaway wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> The EU (and the US federal government) simply shouldn't be able to do most of what they do

In my opinion this sentence straight up does not make sense. The EU and the US federal government are dramatically different, you can't even really compare their roles meaningfully. The EU is, and behaves like, a club of seperate individual nations. The US federal government is a real national government in ways the EU simply isn't.

Even restricting attention to the EU it doesn't even really make sense. Which part of the EU are you complaining about? You're writing this in response to a proposal from the EU commission, so I guess you're pissed with them, but the commission can't make its proposals into law without parliament voting on it and the European Council agreeing. The EU parliament is (overwhelmingly) unlikely to pass this proposal into law and the European Council also has big problems with it.

This proposal is essentially one country (Sweden) sending a particuarly idiotic comissioner (Ylva Johansson), and the rest of the EU apparatus resisting the shit she is trying to push.

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

#296

Post by roenxi »

jltsiren wrote: post #282
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 would be chaos, and the real power would shift to the administrators. If you select people at random, they will have even less understanding of the issues they vote on than career politicians. They don't have established networks of experts they believe they can trust. They lack the skills to have effective meetings between more than a handful of people, to negotiate, and to make collective decisions. Administrato…

There'd need to be some filtering before people take office. I like the idea of randomly selecting a small pool of candidates then voting within that pool. Maybe people elect and elector who's job it is to sit for 12 months just assessing people to hold actual power.

Career politicians are better than monarchs or aristocrats, but the fact is that making governance decisions is technically easy. Anyone can do it in principle. Politicians literally don't understand what they are voting on because the breadth of topics is too large and famously the US Congress can go from proposing to voting on complex trillion-dollar spending bills [0] in 48 hours. There is literally no way a random pool of people can do worse than that.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consolidated_Appropriations_Ac...

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

#297

Post by Longhanks »

4bpp wrote: post #288
bboygravity wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the main reason that direct democracy is a better system: you can lobby all you want, but it ain't going to happen unless the people want it too.

People tend to approve of direct democracies up until the point that they vote for something they don't like (in European settings, this will nowadays most likely be some anti-immigration measure like the Swiss minaret ban). Then all the talking points about dangerous populism and how politics is better left to professionals who can dedicate time to understanding what is actually good policy and are not swayed by bas…

Which is exactly proving the point of direct democracy; the current model enables politicians that blatantly ignore that the majority of people in Europe do not want any more migrants.

The minaret ban is popular within the actual Swiss population.

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

#298

Post by fsflover »

dalbasal wrote: post #291
fsflover wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There needs to be an organized, pro-freedom movement. https://edri.org

They seem to have the right idea. Do you know much about them? Are they good/effective?

As of October 2022, EDRi is made of more than 40 NGOs, as well as experts, advocates and academics from all across Europe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Digital_Rights

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

#299

Post by kmlx »

masswerk wrote: post #287
throwaway50662 wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Targeted advertising isn't the problem. Governmental organisations buying advertisement is the real culprit. They would find a way to do it even without targeted advertising, so let's cut it out completely.

I think, targeted advertising is the major (and single) incentive for what we have become to call echo chambers. Governmental institutions eventually chiming in into what is looking more and more like the predominant mode of discourse is just a consequence.

if i want to buy slippers and i get shown slipper ads, that’s great.

but we’re not discussing slippers. we’re discussing democracy. the EU should be forbidden from targeted advertising because of their democratic mandate.

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

#300

Post by jltsiren »

roenxi wrote: post #296
jltsiren wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be chaos, and the real power would shift to the administrators. If you select people at random, they will have even less understanding of the issues they vote on than career politicians. They don't have established networks of experts they believe they can trust. They lack the skills to have effective meetings between more than a handful of people, to negotiate, and to make collective decisions. Administrato…

There'd need to be some filtering before people take office. I like the idea of randomly selecting a small pool of candidates then voting within that pool. Maybe people elect and elector who's job it is to sit for 12 months just assessing people to hold actual power. Career politicians are better than monarchs or aristocrats, but the fact is that making governance decisions is technically easy. Anyone can do it in pr…

The two-party system in the US probably works in a different way than the multi-party system in the EU.

In the EU, and especially in national parliaments, political parties are the primary actors. While individual politicians are often ignorant of the topics they vote on, the parties usually have the relevant expertise, though they are not always willing to take advantage of it. After all, one of the primary functions of a political party is to provide a pool of resources and trusted expertise that is independent both from the government and lobbyists.

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