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Migrating to the EU

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Re: Migrating to the EU

#561

Post by rafram »

microtonal wrote: post #178
rafram wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The baseline level of freedom of speech in the EU, in particular, is much, much worse than in the US. We’re talking about a group of countries with active, enforced blasphemy laws! Completely unthinkable for Americans.

The US is at position 57 in the world free speech index. Virtually all EU countries do better and a bunch are top 10: https://rsf.org/en/index American exceptionalism doesn’t seem to know boundaries.

It's worth reading the specific actions they cite that lower the US's ranking. They include the closure of Voice of America, a government-run propaganda outlet for foreign audiences (and I do think that closure is bad! just not relevant at all to free speech); mergers of several big media conglomerates; not to mention, bafflingly, restrictions on journalism by the Iranian government in Iran, which somehow counts against the US.

None of this says anything about Americans' right to speak freely, which is absolute, unlike in any European country.

Re: Migrating to the EU

#562

Post by jrexilius »

whiterose1214 wrote: post #549

Lot of discussion about different privacy laws across jurisdictions, and while I understand a lot of users have different approaches to privacy and opinions on political matters, realistically if your threat model is the NSA or some other three-letter agency: a) migrating to a different jurisdiction isn't realistically a massive barrier for them (related: https://www.usenix.org/system/files/1401_08-12_mickens.pdf ) b…

If your threat model is the NSA, moving to non-US providers actually lowers the barrier as they no longer have to deal with the US constitution and US citizen data. If your threat model is law enforcement (or border/customs, et al), moving to EU really doesn't cause much in the way of speed bumps.

In my opinion though, the real threat model is not the actual government, its the US corporations. The NSA wont sell your information to any bad actor with a credit card and, realistically, doesn't care about you. But there is much that can be stolen or exploited for financially-motivated bad-actors from non-extradition countries or others with differing interests than your own.

Re: Migrating to the EU

#563

Post by rafram »

dudefeliciano wrote: post #190
rafram wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The baseline level of freedom of speech in the EU, in particular, is much, much worse than in the US. We’re talking about a group of countries with active, enforced blasphemy laws! Completely unthinkable for Americans.

> freedom of speech Oh please. There's free speech without a free press (US ranks 57/190, behind Sierra Leone) people are just amplifying the same BS they heard from some ignorant influencer. I would argue even your idea of "active enforced blasphemy laws" shows that. That's worse than useless, that is detrimental to a society (case in point, the current president and his whole cabinet). https://rsf.org/en/index

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47492709

Re: Migrating to the EU

#564

Post by rafram »

messe wrote: post #558
rafram wrote: post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The far right is ascendant in Europe; obviously restrictions on speech haven't prevented that. I am Jewish, I have a strong dislike of Nazis, and yet I think Nazis legally being able to "spout Nazi ideology" is a healthy thing for our society. Criminalizing speech doesn't stop people from holding abhorrent beliefs. This is an aspect of our country that I think most Americans are proud of. Some relevant reading: https…

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It's fine if you think the American approach to free speech is bad - you don't have to live here - but please justify that rather than just name-calling.

Re: Migrating to the EU

#565

Post by IAmBroom »

thejohnconway wrote: post #303
butILoveLife wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Maybe Americans don't really get this, but the Greenland stuff was a very, very big deal. The rest of NATO was staring down the barrel of the unthinkable: war with the United States. For what? Some lib owning? A bit of fun? A real estate deal? The sense of betrayal is very strong, more than the politicians are letting on.

The sane Americans get it. We know how important NATO is, and sovereignty of nations, and so on. We get it.

We are in a state of permanent horror at what the voting majority has done, all to avoid voting a woman of color into office, to own the libs, to hate on brown-skinned people, etc., ad nauseum. Votes against today, instead of towards tomorrow. Hatred and fear as prime motivations.

Re: Migrating to the EU

#566

Post by nozzlegear »

tensor wrote: post #546
nozzlegear wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For now – the EU is one AfD win away from following in America's footsteps.

The EU governance system is vastly different than the US, and not nearly as fragile. Even if AfD gets sway in one country, it doesn't mean that suddenly they can do anything they want like you saw in the last US election. My understanding of the EU system is that it's far more proportional in representation, and a simple 51% isn't enough to have 100% control. Parties still need to work together and compromise.

> My understanding of the EU system is that it's far more proportional in representation, and a simple 51% isn't enough to have 100% control. Parties still need to work together and compromise.

We've already seen with Brexit that 100% control is not needed in a parliamentary system to destroy a country's livelihood. But my point was that AfD doesn't need something like "presidential control" of the EU, it would just need to start working with other far-right parties in the EU such as Hungary and France's RN to sow chaos from within. Is that very far-fetched? You can't tell me that most of Europe doesn't hold its collective breath at every French election, crossing their fingers that Le Pen's party doesn't win this go around.

Re: Migrating to the EU

#567

Post by verisimi »

ginko wrote: post #559
verisimi wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The actual answer as to how much you influence policy is: none at all. The European commission proposes laws. European commissioners are proposed through existing EU institutions. They are not voted in. You vote for MEPs, who discuss laws, pass them, perhaps amending them. They do not propose them. And by the way, this is not democracy, it is 'representative democracy' - you vote for one person to represent you and 1…

The European commission are appointed by the Council of the EU which is composed by elected individual member countries' heads of government. Commissioners also need to be individually approved by the European Parliament which is directly elected. Representative democracy is democracy. Basically all nation level democratic governments are representative democracies. Being a cynic doesn't make you look clever.

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Re: Migrating to the EU

#568

Post by KAMSPioneer »

mariusor wrote: post #505
littlecranky67 wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Switzerland - as well as EU based providers - have to comply with court orders. And the EU as well as Switzerland issue court orders upon request from friendly foreign states ("Rechtshilfeersuchen" in german) - such as the US.

Wasn't Proton launched as a "your data is encrypted at rest, we could never access it without your consent"? The implication being that even if they received said court orders, they didn't have anything to give. Am I misremembering that?

They encrypt your data insofar as your email, files, etc. but that doesn't mean they don't have information potentially useful to the authorities. See the recent headline where they revealed a user's payment information allowing them to be identified.

Re: Migrating to the EU

#569

Post by okanat »

akvadrako wrote: post #245
dinowars wrote: post #88

> First, I tried mailbox.org, which I can generally recommend without reservation. Unfortunately, you can’t send emails from any address on your own domain without a workaround I use mailbox for a long time, one account for 2.50EUR/month with multiple custom domains and I can send emails from any address. To send from a different address the process didn't really seem different than other providers. From Thunderbird…

I use mailbox for the past few years and I think it's the best option out there. But they have one major issue, which is that anyone can impersonate your domain: https://userforum-en.mailbox.org/topic/anti-spoofing-for-cus...

I think that is not up to date. Mailbox publishes DKIM records: https://kb.mailbox.org/en/private/custom-domains/spf-dkim-an...

SPF is here https://kb.mailbox.org/en/private/custom-domains/spf-dkim-an...

DMARC is up to the domain owner to set.

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