The EU still wants to scan your private messages and photos(fightchatcontrol.eu) |
The EU still wants to scan your private messages and photos(fightchatcontrol.eu) |
Hypocrisy par supreme
The dark forces behind all this set to gain a lot of profits once it passes :(
You can find how present MEPs voted
There are 10 votings (not only one), some adopted and some rejected, I am not sure what that means, maybe someone can elaborate.
keep voting until you get the right answer
at least EU are voting I suppose. some governments just go ahead and mass-surveil illegally
Gym teachers are also the largest group of people convicted for pedophilia. So you can be sure they are keeping their priorities straight. States, and the monopoly telco's are also protected from paying even the tiniest amount of money for companies to do these scans, all costs are entirely offloaded to app developers.
So the priorities are clear:
1) protecting the state from even the tiniest amount of responsibility, even at the cost of children getting abused
2) keeping some 50 foreign states from the same
3) keeping a whole list of organizations safe from inspections
4) keeping the state safe from actually spending any amount of money on these scans
...
n) protecting children
I realize I am just recapitulating the modus operandi of Five Eyes here...
"Save the kids", is just a ploy to run scams.
oh no, they had to resign from their government jobs and in a year will work in the private sector as consultants for double the salary, those poor souls :'(
prison, fines, mental asylum, whatever would be an actual consequence.
a bit hyperbolic and reactionary from my side, maybe. but you get the gist.
I wonder if they would support that every of paper mail would be opened and checked. I strongly doubt that.
So they feel they must turn to the state for protection.
Y'all are bunch of hypocrites
The longer I live I think US citizens just have the highest standards for both morals and life expectations.
Meanwhile Europe is happy to get anything.
There’d be bunch of fat fucks who will write screeds on the internet but won’t get off their fat ass to do anything about it?
It is the Conservatives attempt. The EU parliament is the entity that shot it down last time.
Second. Who gave you the right to define antieuropean union propaganda as a sin.
Some people may hate it, some people may love it, other want to change it.
It was created by vote, surely it can be whatever the fuck the way the people want by vote.
So, in my view this is not really a "left" or "right" thing, but something that is pushed by people you could call "the establishment".
The site is conflating mandatory scanning with voluntary scanning (status quo). The upcoming vote is about continuing the voluntary scanning (which would otherwise expire).
> The Conservatives (EPP) are attempting to force a new vote on Thursday (26th), seeking to reverse Parliament's NO on indiscriminate scanning.
The vote itself is being forced by the EPP. This article by an MEP has more info: https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/the-battle-over-chat-contro...
The Council, which is headed by the government of each member state in equal measure - similar to the Senate in the US
And Parliament, which are directly elected by the people, with each member state having representitives in proportion to their population, so Germany has far more than Ireland. This is similar to Congress.
Now this site says Germany supports it, but then says that MEPS
> 49 oppose, 47 in favor (45 confirmed, 2 presumed based on government stance)
I would thus infer that the "most member states" refer to the national governments (that were elected by their population) position and not the direct MEP position.
However a quick look at the json it's loading and I can't see
Now as the parliament has blocked it, a grouping, the "EPP" (Think Ronald Reagan type republicans) is trying to use their influence to bring it back to a vote.
> "The Conservatives (EPP) are attempting to force a new vote on Thursday (26th), seeking to reverse Parliament's NO on indiscriminate scanning. This is a direct attack on democracy and blatant disregard for your right to privacy."
For various, and unclear, reasons, there is substantial backing to change this.
(not shown on the chat control website as far as I can tell)
Don’t put your shit in the cloud and use proper E2E secure messaging.
For me the entire idea of the cloud is dead due to exposure like this.
Criminals in question: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Trojan_Shield
>2. This Regulation does not apply to the processing of personal data:
>by competent authorities for the purposes of the prevention, investigation, detection or prosecution of criminal offences or the execution of criminal penalties, including the safeguarding against and the prevention of threats to public security.
Trump Derangement Syndrome is widespread in Europe. Quality of life has gotten so bad and continuous to decline except for mainly Poland and Hungary.
And what do systems cling to especially in situations like these? Surveillance.
Another massive not so funny joke once again hit Germany the week ago - a smear campaign and hit piece to justify even more censorship.
Germany is going down the drain - and the elite is trying to silence freedom of speech massively while ignoring doing what’s important and what’s right.
Have fun migrating your app to the EU. No one is coming to save you especially not your shitty infrastructure. Energy crisis, and devs think it is a good idea to go for 2% uptime in the near future.
It is so ridiculous.
Let's all take this person extremely seriously, as they are advocating for free speech.
A shame the EU is just simulation of democracy.
Best case in point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qatar_corruption_scandal_at_th...
United Kingdom, Norway, Switzerland, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus, Russia, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Kosovo, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan
Politics is about understanding things in a historical context, not about the last flashy headline and 2-line tweets.
And other all-time big brain ideas like Upload-Filters for copyright enforcement, or privatising the water sector also came from them.
The Council is the representation of the countries. The Parliament of the people.
Or is the idea that the Council is sufficient to achieve this?
Parliament is the unit which represent the people
Council (which is 1 country 1 vote) is what represents the countries.
Hungary, a country of 9M people, keeps vetoing stuff the rest of the Union wants to do. 450M people, held back by the despot ruling over a tiny fraction of them.
That said, California is generating more GDP so obviously I'm not arguing that they should be completely equally represented 1:1
Thank you for sharing. It is unfortunately, once again, needed.
The recent events have been rather dumbfounding. On March 11, the Parliament surprisingly voted to replace blanket mass surveillance with targeted monitoring of suspects following judicial involvement [0]. As Council refused to compromise, the trilogue negotiations were set to fail, thus allowing the Commission's current indiscriminate "Chat Control 1.0" to lapse [1]. This would have been the ideal outcome.
In an unprecedented move, the EPP is attempting to force a repeat vote tomorrow, seeking to overturn the otherwise principled March 11 decision and instead favouring indiscriminate mass surveillance [1, 2]. In an attempt to avoid this, the Greens earlier today tried to remove the repeat vote from the agenda tomorrow, but this was voted down [3].
As such, tomorrow, the Parliament will once again vote on Chat Control. And unlike March 11, multiple groups are split on the vote, including S&D and Renew. The EPP remains unified in its support for Chat Control. If you are a European citizen, I urge you to contact your MEPs by e-mail and, if you have time, by calling. We really are in the final stretch here and every action counts. I have just updated the website to reflect the votes today, allowing a more targeted approach.
Happy to answer any questions.
[0] https://mepwatch.eu/10/vote.html?v=188578
[1] https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/the-battle-over-chat-contro...
[2] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/OJQ-10-2026-03...
[3] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/PV-10-2026-03-...
It's really surprising to me that this issue keeps coming up time and time again, until I realised that it's non-voted in parties actually trying to pass this stuff!
I didn't realise that the EU parliament simply says yes or no to bills and doesn't actually propose new laws, whilst the EU Commission are appointed and decide on what bills to push through.
In fact what is described as "Parliament surprisingly voted to replace blanket mass surveillance with targeted monitoring of suspects following judicial involvement" is exactly the EP voting to amend the Commission proposal on an extension of existing itermim rules with text that explicitly limits the scope.
Why? Why has your approach not been toward passing active legislation that protects these rights going forward? Genuinely curious. I understand that finding and pressing the “don’t ask again” button is always harder, but I don’t understand why “we punted on this decision!” is a celebratory moment.
Maybe a movement could match a lobbyist in terms of money. I hope so.
Maybe because the Commission holds the true power and the commissioners aren't directly elected by the people so you don't have any leverage against the commissioners. You can't just say "behave nicely or we won't support you at the next elections".
That's not something the "legislators" in the EU parliament can do. It's effectively a consultative body which can either approve or send back the legislation provided to them so the council and commision can find sufficient workarounds...
What would actually help is if a government of a country where this type of Stasi/KGB style surveillance is constitutionally illegal like Germany to speak out and tell the EU (and Denmark which keeps pushing this) that they can go fuck themselves and that they will prosecute any company which is trying to comply with these regulations. (which would be perfectly legal since constitution/basic laws still supersede any type of EU treaty obligations in most countries.
The story is tragically illustrative of the maxim that you can oppose terrible legislation a hundred times but they only have to pass it once.
>rejected
>let's vote on it again!
Is it still a democracy if you just keep redoing the vote until you get the outcome you want? The politicians involved in this should be ashamed of themselves.
I think the website is missing a dark pattern here, spray-and-pray, which is throwing as many reincarnations of the same thing as possible, hoping one eventually sticks.
But they are first-class in acting like a victim
It's the same thing as with your republicans.
Chat Controls fulfil the definition of terrorism wholly.
We keep seeing the establishment resurfacing and imposing this blanket surveillance globally. What's happening in Brazil, the UK, EU, and has already happened in the US with no legislation or via the 5-eyes is scary.
Who are these people pressuring elected politicians and unelected bureaucrats to legislate against their constituents? Who are these lobbyists?
I get that there is a large constituency that wants to control dissidents and the narrative in the name of child abuse - see what's happening in the UK where people get arrested in the thousands for posting comments online.
Abolishing privacy is not the way to protect children. Police work and prosecution is. For reference see the grooming gangs in the UK, the infamous Eps*% case for which everyone is still walking free, and other cases in various EU countries. This is not whataboutism, it's proof that we have not taken the required steps as a western society to combat this. You don't press the nuclear option as your first action.
If it's bot farm meddling that is the true target, then ban bots and get technology to work properly. Creating ID honeypots on poorly protected website operator servers is not the solution.
Call your politicians, call your EU MEPs, call everyone you can. This matters because it's about our future.
Maybe reach out to Signal to implement some kind of one-way channel so you can reach people easily?
We need to put actual pressure on those fascists. Next time they even mention it, we flood the council website with an identical search query, say "Does no mean yes after all?" and if they persist, we strike for couple days.
Don't get me wrong: my blood boils reading those legislations, but rationally I don't see a path to victory here.
Is it just that there's no "privacy lobby" interested in getting even one lawyer around to sit down and write it up?
Or is there at least one such bill floating around, but no EU member state has been willing to table it for discussion?
[0]: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/sedcms/documents/PRIORITY_INF...
Note that the amendment was already amended on 11th March to set expiry to Aug 2027 and to also exclude E2E communications.
While it's still worth fighting, it is less worrying
The question of course is, why something is allowed multiple votes (and the basic answer is - if it presented some changed - but I don't know if it's the case)
Find a representative you think is at least somewhat likely to change their mind, and call their phone nr listed on the site. I tried one rep and couldn't get through, tried another (their Brussels phone) and I got someone on the line. The site helpfully suggests a call script, which you can take hints from.
I got a staffer on the line, who didn't want to share what my rep was planning to vote and generally wasn't very excited about calling with me, but I imagine that if lots of people call lots of these staffers, things actually do get through to these MEPs.
Please help.
It takes only one win to remove our rights but once they’re gone you’ll never get them back.
Either way those elected to supposedly serve are the only ones winning.
while not pass:
try to pass something stupid, malevolent or that hurts people and democracies“We decide something, then put it out there and wait for a while to see what happens.
If there is then no great outcry and no uprisings, because most people do not even understand what has been decided, then we continue—step by step, until there is no turning back.”
— Jean-Claude Juncker
That's the key question!
There's a small group of very powerful people that keep pushing this agenda.
Who are those people?
Find out.
Publicize their names. Make their corruption visible and linked to their identity.
In case anyone has an issue with this: Remember! This is what they want! For you! Not for them. Only the plebs.
The first goal of every bureaucracy is to guarantee its survival and power, all other goals are downstream this first goal.
How would this be enforced in practice? In other words, what would prevent E.U. users from using encrypted services outside of the jurisdiction of the E.U., to "illegally" encrypt their hard drives or to run their own private encrypted comms servers?
There is a long chain of actions that ends with you having e2e on your phone (or what not). At the starts of it there is your physical body living in jurisdiction and transacting with (mostly) other people being somewhat present in the same jurisdiction using government-captured money. There are multiply choke points, controlling which will not result in 100% enforcement, but will make whatever you want to do a huge pain in the ass, so most people will not bother (case in point -- jailbraking). Whoever is left self-selects themselves for selective enforcement.
23 Member States Supporting
0 Member States Undecided
To properly assess something, you need to be bodied in reality, being related to the other human in the same human reality. All the datacenters of the world combined will fail the stated objectives, let alone a stupid phone chip. We should not allow computers to take on the role of policing actors in our human reality, because they even can't perform that role faithfully.
- added targeted scanning requirement
- scanning must be “targeted, specified and limited… where there are reasonable grounds of suspicion… identified by a judicial authority”
[1] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/TA-10-2026-007...
God I love politics
Either include everyone, or accept it’s an awful idea for security and exempt everyone.
As a normal citizen you have no real possibility to hold MEPs accountable other then writing an angry E-Mail.
In an actually democratic system politicians would be in their position only by mercy of the people and can be voted down from their position anytime if enough people petition for it. (and not just maybe be called back when elections at home plummet)
Politicians should be afraid of the people and not the other way round.
"Article 7
Respect for private and family life
Everyone has the right to respect for his or her private and family life, home and communications.
Article 8
Protection of personal data
1. Everyone has the right to the protection of personal data concerning him or her.
2. Such data must be processed fairly for specified purposes and on the basis of the consent of the person concerned or some other legitimate basis laid down by law. Everyone has the right of access to data which has been collected concerning him or her, and the right to have it rectified.
3. Compliance with these rules shall be subject to control by an independent authority."
Article 7 codifies "respect for [one's] private life" and "respect for [one's] private communications". Well, "respect" is a vague notion. This does not clearly imply that the government is not allowed to read your communications, or otherwise spy on you, if it believes it has good reason. It will do so "respectfully", or supposedly minimize the intrusion etc.
As for article 8: Here it is "protection of personal data" and "fair processing". It does not say "protection from government access"; and "processing" is when the government or some other party already has your data. In fact, as others point out, even this wording has an explicit legitimization of violation of privacy and 'protection' whenever there is a law which defines something as "legitimate basis" for invading your privacy.
You would have liked to see wording like:
* "Privacy in one's home, personal life, communications and digital interactions is a fundamental right."
* "The EU, its members, its bodies, its officers and whoever acts on its behalf shall not invade individuals' privacy."
and probably something about a non-absolute right to anonymity. Codified exceptions should be limited and not open-ended.
The reality is that they'll just keep pushing it from different angles, they only have to get lucky once, we (or EU citizens, we left and have our own issues) need to be lucky every time - much like an adverserial relationship where you are on the defending side from a cyberattack...funny that really.
Because the people voting it down are the elected MEPs, whilst the people putting it up to parliament are the European Commission. The EC are appointed, rather than elected. Which means the powers that be just appoint people who are going to push through laws like this, that they want. The MEPs can't put up bills to be voted on.
Article 7, EU Charter of Fundamental Rights: Respect for private and family life (and probably a couple other sections in there as well).
The problem is national security exceptions. Chat control and other similar bills are trying to carve out exceptions to privacy laws under the excuse of national security.
Also its politically cheap to introduce surveillance or to expand state power, it's comparatively extremely difficult to pass laws that specifically restrict state power.
Privacy laws are well and good, but they exist. The problem is we need to stop allowing "public safety" or "national security" to be a trump card that allows exceptions to said laws, and good luck getting any government to ever agree that privacy is more important than national security.
- The GDPR
- The ePrivacy directive, which is explicitly derogated (sabotaged) by chat control 1.0
Combined with the right to communicate across borders, you can get quite a bit of privacy: a server in both sides of a geopolitical conflict and they've got to collaborate to track you.
And yet metadata collection is both unavoidable (if you don't collect it, your geopolitical opponents will) and should be enough. We don't need chat control in a world where I get precision-targeted ads -- it's not even about freedom of speech or privacy, it's about freedom of thought.
How is that supposed to work with e2e encrypted chats?
I once wrote a paper about Witold pilecki for my english project for who I consider to be the most influential person or something similar.
I picked Witold pilecki because I had read a book which talked about him and it captured so much of my mind.
For those who don't know, Witold Pilecki is a polish person who was the first and perhaps only person who willingly entered holocaust/auschwitz and then he was the first person to realize all the horrors happening inside, He then used washing machine parts (iirc) to send the signal to the allies, who COULDN'T believe what Pilecki said was happening. The amounts of Atrocities they thought wasn't possible.
When he found out that help wasn't coming, He decided to free himself and He accomplished doing that by taking a job at something bread related who then ends up leaving.
He then married an Polish teacher (iirc) and had kids but after Russia had won over Polish, he was fake trialed and he was falsely accused of treason.
His last words were, "I've been trying to live my life so that in the hour of my death I would rather feel joy, than fear."
On a personal level, when I was writing that project and this line, I genuinely believe that this might be one of the most influential lines to me that I have ever heard which has genuinely influenced me.
It was during this project that I found Sabaton from trying to research about Witold pilecki and found so many gems that Sabaton is quite part of my music taste now :-)
Sabaton- Inmate 4859: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pc1oSYXlUQ (This song is about Witold Pilecki)
Sabaton Uprising: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzeNBRbWXpI (Another Polish warsaw related song that I found after I had discovered Sabaton from the Inmate 4859 song)
I hope that you are proud of your heritage/nation. I am sure that Poland might have flaws too but I do believe that its history is quite rich and something to be quite proud of.
I am surprised not more people know about Witold Pilecki but I hope I am doing my part raising awareness about that hero.
Within my country, some of the revolutionaries which feel influential on such level to me feel most importantly Bhagat Singh, Subash Chandra Bose, Chandrashekhar Azad. These are also people who have influenced me.
There is also the story of how an Indian ruler hosted Polish WWII refugees[0] and helped them within his kingdom, which I am not sure if many Polish know.
While I was writing this comment, I discovered a good song about Indian revolutionaries as well which I feel like sharing too: Krantiveer (Revolutionary): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uXZG0pTxME [Turn the subtitles (on)]
I think my point can be summarized by a quote from Subash chandra bose, that freedom is not given, it is taken.
[0]: https://indianexpress.com/article/research/the-good-maharaja...
Hence, everything their government does is the opposite of what a typical European Union member would approve of.
https://digitalcourage.social/@echo_pbreyer/1162053712243153...
And I’d still take this clusterfuck over the alternative current state of the US. At least this situation we can (and have been) striking down, despite all the naysayers on HN. Here’s to hoping we’re able to do so again!
But if you are a US citizen, I would refrain talking about increased control of life outside of your own turf. Your education system is controlled either government or religious groups. Your streets are patrolled by uneducated police troops without control and they are detaining even US citizens without due process. Now your government says they will block all foreign made routers. And did you forget NSA Prism program? Your voting system is controlled via gerrymandered maps which are changing constantly depending who's in the control. Lots of your citizens are living paycheck to paycheck and one health issue can bankrupt them and only way to survive is to ask money from strangers via gofundme. All because of healthcare and insurance companies greed and politicians lack of interests of their constituents.
Yeah, the EU legislation about privacy and chat control is problematic but saying that US is doing so much better for it's citizens is a stretch.
Yes, but who isn't? Not the other side of the pond for sure.
We've shot it down before, and we'll shoot it down again, regardless of how relentless Palantir lobbying gets.
This is not true. No part of the Patriot Act required all people all private messages and photos to be scanned or have a backdoor to encryption. You're saying this to minimize what's about to happen to Europe, which is not helpful. The NSA made deals with private companies to tap lines, and used its influence and US intelligence's secret ownership of a Swiss encryption company to encourage us to use broken algorithms.
> We've shot it down before, and we'll shoot it down again, regardless of how relentless Palantir lobbying gets.
I wish you luck. But there's nothing keeping the EU from doing, and having always done, what the NSA has also done. What you're trying to stop is the requirement to serve your communications to your rulers on a silver platter.
I realise the EU is our only hope to defend ourselves against big players like China and the US and smaller bullies like Russia.
But at the same time I realise the EU we have in this timeline is one of the worst possible: a criminal venture, a safe heaven for the corrupt elite + their lobbyists and an organisation that‘s hell bent on harming and controlling its citizens.
Majorities for sane parties are not possible. Democracy is too slow, too indirect. Hell, this is barely a democracy at all, just like on the national level. As EU citizens we as powerless as every other citizen in the world.
But the price of freedom is indeed eternal vigilance.
This is not about mandatory scanning.
Makes me think about this clip.
this last part may just be my own bias in observing politicians, but I rarely feel like the top politicians in the EU (or any of their member states really) push for things they themselves actually care about or believe is right "for the people".
Which is... okay? Government gonna government, that's what we pay it to do.
With a server on the other side of a geopolitical conflict (actual conflict, not a mere discontinuity in legalscape) you trade a risk of the government reading your chats for a risk of the same government (which you don't trust for a good reason) locking you up for treason and espionage.
There have been EU laws which get struck down because they violated the Charter (e.g. Data Retention Directive).
You misspelled Palantir.
Ironically I've spend a lot of time reading about Gandhi .
But I will read more on him, and also about the 3 revolutionaries you mentioned.
> I hope that you are proud of your heritage/nation.
We're in this weird limbo in Poland, all the patriotic stuff has been hijacked by the virtue signaling (far)right and the centrists and left didn't bother to fight for it (even though all the remaining veterans of Warsaw Uprising were protesting the takeover).
I am proud, but it takes an actual effort to remind myself, that a real thing exists below the surface layer of daily politics...
> Ironically I've spend a lot of time reading about Gandhi .
> But I will read more on him, and also about the 3 revolutionaries you mentioned.
Indian revolutionaries can be divided into two parts for the most part, some wanted peaceful changes and some wanted change through actions. The 3 I mentioned are revolutionaries within the second aspect.
I am personally not a big fan of gandhi given his personal history and controversies, but I am a fan of the satyagrah movement and the people who participated in them like gaffar khan,sarojini naidu and our second prime minister, lal bahadur shastri.
Within the satyagrah movement, I am particularly a fan of Shastri Ji as he might've been the humblest prime minister of our country and he was closely linked to the satyagrah movement, when our nation was going through a acute food crisis, he asked his wife while being the PM of the nation to not make food one time (so only 2 times) as he could only urge the people of the nation to do the same if he and his family could do that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eauajC1U0X8, Here is one of the rare interviews he did outside of India as he was very focused in the nation himself. This might be the reason that many outsiders dont know him whereas gandhi used to travel quite frequently (as far as I can remember)
I also recommend watching a more personal movie about gandhi and his relation with family called "Gandhi, my father", its available on Youtube for free. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7jcXv5MwMU) which shows the troubled history gandhi had with his son
My thoughts on gandhi are a little nuanced. He was good for the nation in the movements but his personal life was also controversial and its best to view him as such and view both his flaws and positives about peacefulness in a more holistic manner while also taking a look at all the other people within the satyagrah movement like Shastri Ji for example and also people who sacrificed their lives for the nation like Bhagat Singh in hopes for a freed India.
> We're in this weird limbo in Poland, all the patriotic stuff has been hijacked by the virtue signaling (far)right and the centrists and left didn't bother to fight for it (even though all the remaining veterans of Warsaw Uprising were protesting the takeover).
if I have to comment on Indian politics right now, I would say that the media is at its weakest and feels very fake at times that independent channels are usually the ones only left if you want nuance. India's far right feels more religious rather than economical to me because economically, the far right is still having "freebies" but in some sense, they help the poor. Its the middle class which struggles a bit within India (I am from middle class :[ ) but overall, I am a bit happy in how our country is handling its geopolitics (India feels unique in the sense of its a friend of both Iran and Israel, a friend of both Us and russia, our only enemies are probably Pakistan and China and Pakistan is in a bit of quarrel with Afghanistan and isn't so much of a threat as China is, which is realisticly the only genuine threat that I can feel towards India)
It's a very unique country for the most part. I have written quite a lot about India on hackernews, so feel free to search it on algolia[0]
I do feel like India is an land of co-existence with both Human and animals as well. We all have our flaws but our diversity and heritage is truly rich and I hope that India can uplift itself in the future even more.
It is great to hear though of how each of our culture impacts the other. How polish culture/Witold pilecki influences my Morals and how on the other hand you are also interested within the Indian culture while at the same time we are both proud of the base realities of both nations but also realize its flaws and hope to improve nations.
I wish for Poland to have a great future ahead :-)
(https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...)
Edit: I also recommend reading about Lal Bal Pal and the radical movement if you are interested to know about the anti-colonial movement within India as well whose combined with all of the nationalists that I have mentioned within the list ultimately led to the independence of India.
They're just like the civil service in the UK, or any other country. They do the bidding of our nationally elected governments. Nearly all proposals coming from the commission originate from the national governments.
So a law:
Starts with member states directly elected ministers pushing and agenda or the council (again elected) agreeing to push an agenda -> Commissioners take this agenda and work with it to propose law (using EU civil service like any other country does) -> The law then gets voted on by the EU directly elected ministers, who are meant to (and do) represent the people of the states more directly.
Everything in that step is as democratic as any other nation (or nearly).
Most people really don't understand the EU - and yes, it is confusing. This unfortunately makes it easy for certain interests to weaponise this misunderstanding. I've spent years (and years) explaining these concepts, but ultimately like any other argument, this is not a debate from logic, everyone has already made up their minds on emotion or ideology and nothing will make a difference.
People don't want you to look deeper. They want you only have the most shallow understanding, because that allows them to manipulate more easily.
The older ones who resigned when they fucked up, or had a moral compass seamed to have disappeared. Instead we have more and more "MAGA-Style"-Politics
At what point do we admit that most of a group people are fine with a negative stereotype?
People have real choice in EP elections. There are parties that will always stand up for citizens’ rights. If they had enough seats, they could have voted this item off the agenda.
Yet, people continue to choose the same conservatives and radical right over and over again, because they are enraged about immigrants and identity politics. Blame the voters.
Germany, for exmaple, has secrecy of correspondence that extends to electronic communications, but allows for "restrictions to protect the free democratic basic order" and outlines when intelligence services can bypass the right to privacy.
Italy, France, and Polan also have similar carve outs.
Having it as a right isn't enough. National security and "public safety" carve outs need to be eliminated. So long as those exist, we have no right to privacy.
It's incredible how even with the current surge of autocracy, most politicians can't see that the surveillance tools they crave for, could come under control of people much worse than them.
And can't see what they could do with them.
I think that many current governments in Europe are convinced that more surveillance will stop the autocratic surge. It's insane that they don't see how this is far from guaranteed, and how it will go if they're wrong.
This is overly absolutist, or maybe idealistic view. National security and public safety IS more important than individual right to privacy. As an extreme example, if your friend was dying, you had a password to my email, and you knew that you can use information in my inbox to save that person i really hope you would do it.
In general I think that police with a court order should be able to invade someone's privacy (with judge discretion). I mean they can already kick down someone's doors and detain them for several days - checking email doesn't sound too bad compared to it, does it? I think they should also be legally obliged to inform that person in let's say 6 months that they did it.
The problem is that modern world is drastically different than the old world when you needed to physically hunt down letters. Now you can mass scan everyone's emails, siphon terabytes of personal data that stasi could only dream of, and invigilate everyone. This is something that is worth fighting against.
Surveillance would be a more "modern" (even if more natural or seemingly correct word), without this sort of the implied baggage.
If it were it would have happened already.
- kicked out of the Schengen Treaty
- kicked out of the NATO
- fined under EU breach of contract proceedings
- withheld financial support as long as they do not pay these fines
- forced through customs policy, which is sole EU competence, to stop compensating lost EU support with Chinese money
Honestly, I'd be in full support of some above listed actions if the elections in April show the current will of the Hungarian people misaligned with shared EU values.
Trump etc are tearing down international order. The ramifications of this will be decades long.
What does industry gain from new laws here?
- ideaological. They truly believe this is the best choice, or are fixated only on this choice and nothing else. They are putting their money where their mouths are
- financial. Straightforward one. If they need a service to collect ID's and you can get a government contract, that's big, safe, money. Or a politician is bribed and doesn't care either way. Companies find loopholes to sell data and make even more money.
- power. You get a law passed, you get more leverage to being voted into politics, or maintaining your incumbency. You show you can "get things done"
Politicians demanding total surveillance and population control? Of course there's an industry or two for that. Are they lobbying for this stuff? Absolutely.
But what's the causality? That's the ideological question.
In my view, it's a bit too convenient to blame all political evils on capitalism. Power is its own aphrodisiac. Bigotry has no prerequisits. Neither does stupidity.
Same with this Stazi 2.0 shit by EU. I'm sure the data produced will be either directly processed by some corpo having ad interests, or freely gifted to such corpos.
That's just more lobbying. Politics needs less money involved, not more.
These are literally the same process.
Passing new ones that "you like" requires lawyers to write laws, get those laws in front of reps, get them to agree to try and pass it, stake some of their reputation on pushing it, get the ground swell to support it -- which might be difficult when the current law is "dont scan messages", you can easily say "hey dont scan anything! support that!" vs "hey scan somethings sometimes", cause many people will call that a slippery slope. I don't see how they are at all the same process.
Passing it means organizing a sufficient number of yes votes.
They are the same process and they require exactly the same work. They take place at the exact same moment in time and space, although they are mutually exclusive.
You're free to describe things however you want, but your descriptions won't change the underlying reality.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/freedom-of-expression-ind...
I would be more worried about police and wannabe police shooting people on the streets, detaining citizens without due process, sending billions to war in Iran while regular people are struggling with day-to-day life. Your universities and primary schools are restricted what they can teach or say either by government or religious movements.
Sure, the chat control is a serious privacy issue but acting like US is some sort of bastion of free speech is not based on anything real. And yes, while hate speech is not allowed in europe like in the US, we at least understand that freedom comes with responsibility.
He bases it on the idea that we should not be subject to be “lifelong tuteledge.” At some point we must speak up and contribute.
We can be wrong. Very wrong. We can advise our rulers to do terrible things. The Holocaust hadn’t happened yet, but the Wars of Relgion had - he knew how bad people could be.
Europe doesn’t seem to reject lifelong tuteledge any more. There want opinion and thought to be guided and formed by an elite class, not a noisy crowd of peers.
This is new. It was foreign to Kant, foreign to Locke, Hobbes, Marx, etc.
It’s a bit scary the Europe is leading the way on this. And it does seem they are poking at speech specifically.
Most recently the EU is considering a “ban conversion therapy.” Not medical malpractice legislation - just a very specific type of medical malpractice that has a very specific political constituency.
Meanwhile people who are subject to quacky things like past life regression or Freudian analysis are left with the normal malpractice system.
Really Europe (and other places) are using it as a way to weaken freedom of speech.
Maybe I’m connecting dots where there are none, but there seems to be a big international shift away from free speech, with Europe taking the lead.
In America this manifests itself as “it would be nice if we could restrict speech like normal countries do, but we have to worry about the Republicans, so let’s not do that - yet.”
But it’s pretty clear free speech is going the way of right to bear arms and trial by jury.
The european (or EU in this context) is truly multinational representative political instance (not a government). While it provides lots of opportunities and lets voices from dozens of different cultures to be heard, it also makes decision making hard. The opposite way to rule is authoritan or totalitarian way where there is just one ruler who has not real opposing forces. In that light you could argue that while EU is large political and economical alliance, it also fails to satisfy every political need of it's elected members.
what US is showing that less there is political variety (powerful parties) less there is moving space for expression, freedoms and change.
As a person who has masters in politics, I appreciate the fact that you brought Kant but more Hobbes and Locke into this. They are excellent reference point for those thinking about origins of societies and liberties. John Locke would have hate everything what current representative democracies are (including US). He would have loved the ideal of ultimate personal freedom but at the same time he would have loathed every control that governments have today over their citizens. There is no separation of state and religion in most of the western nations for example.
We are closer to world what Focault said but he is more recent scholar.
> It argues that people should be permitted to say whatever they wanted, provided they obey the laws. that's exactly how it works
> Most recently the EU is considering a “ban conversion therapy.”
this has nothing to do with the opinions that are expressed in conversion therapy but with the insane practices - which actually try to enforce people to think like they believe is the "right" way to think about the world, which is far more restrictive than just letting people be themselves
> Really Europe (and other places) are using it as a way to weaken freedom of speech.
this is unfortunately true, too many extreme right wing politicians have been successful recently
> It’s a bit scary the Europe is leading the way on this.
it isn't, the US (though not just the US of course) famously collects data and searches through all of it if they need, and recently ICE had a hand full of incidents where they clearly used databases to profile people (just look at their use of AI cameras at protests)
Also what you group as the radical right doesn't tend to be supportive of this idea. They full well know they are at times at the receiving end of web control legislation and drives atm. Same for 'radical left' groups.
It's the conservatives that at times make some fuzz about migration to draw votes from the former whilst keeping said migration going since it favours some of the companies they (and a load of other established parties) draw support from.
"Whether left-wing or right-wing terrorism – I see no difference there."
"Yes, yes," calls the kangaroo, "the ones set foreigners on fire, the others cars. And cars are worse, because it could have been mine. I don't own any foreigners."
I disagree.
Because as soon as you open the door to governments reading your mail, they will read your mail. They can't help themselves. [0]
The only way of stopping them from doing this to excess is to stop them doing it at all.
The "National Security and Public Safety" thing is what they say to justify it, but that's not what the powers will actually be used for. They will actually be used for far less noble purposes, and possibly actually for evil.
We are actually much more secure if we don't let the government read our mail.
[0] In the UK, anti-terrorist laws passed in the post-9/11 haze of "national security and public safety" are routinely used for really, really, minor offences: https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/anti-terror...
I do think we should make work of kicking them out somehow if Peter Magyar does not win the next elections indeed.
But they are both issues where Americans have greater protections than Europeans.
Once removed even from that, the E.C. second level democracy is beyond a farce.
I mean nobody argues that the FED governor is voted in, right? In reality a lot of people argue that they're unelected and yet making decisions that affect everyone.
If you don't like how you are represented at the commission, then blame your government. It is THEIR representative - not yours.
Also, don't forget that the commission as a whole needs to be approved by a vote at European Parliament - i.e. by the directly elected representatives.
Any introduction to democracy explains that the power is separated in the executive, the legislative and the judicial.
The European Parliament is suppose to be the legislative body but can't initiate legislation.
The Commission is suppose to be the executive, but, somehow can also initiate legislation and is not elected directly by the citizens. And the council that, I suppose would be the equivalent to a senate, is not directly elected by the citizens.
And we could talk about how all the important decisions are done in the dark, or how, like in this case, when something is not 'correctly' voted, they just keep bringing it back until it pass, or how they have started to 'sanction' people without judicial supervision.
It's time to open the eyes, because this is not going to improve. The EU 'democracy' is a joke.
I hope you agree that elected representation isn't perfect - there is going to be disalignment, ways in which representatives resemble each other more than they resemble their voters.
This disalignment can only get amplified with every layer of indirect election. It never gets better.
Both represent the interests of themselves, the unelected bureucracy, and the elites.
It's good that both the US Fed Reserve Governor and EC appointees didn't have win popularity contests to get there.
So a law:
Starts with member states directly elected ministers pushing and agenda or the council (again elected) agreeing to push an agenda -> Commissioners take this agenda and work with it to propose law (using EU civil service like any other country does) -> The law then gets voted on by the EU directly elected ministers, who are meant to (and do) represent the people of the states more directly.
Everything in that step is as democratic as any other nation (or nearly).
Most people really don't understand the EU - and yes, it is confusing. This unfortunately makes it easy for certain interests to weaponise this misunderstanding. I've spent years (and years) explaining these concepts, but ultimately like any other argument, this is not a debate from logic, everyone has already made up their minds on emotion or ideology and nothing will make a difference.
You should be delivering this advice to your nearest mirror.
There's still no procedural difference between passing laws by executive fiat, repealing them by executive fiat, or ignoring them by executive fiat. The first of those things is called an "executive order" and the others are called "prosecutorial discretion", and the culture traditionally views authority exercised as an "executive order" negatively while viewing "prosecutorial discretion" positively, but in the implementation, "prosecutorial discretion" is commanded by executive orders (the documents) in the same way that "executive orders" (new legislation from the president) are.
If you want to get a new executive order issued, or an old one rescinded, or an incipient one forgotten, the process is the same (you convince the president) in all of those cases.
EU Parliament can't propose legislation, only vote on proposals from the Commission. We'd have to convince the Commission to propose a law to prevent themselves from trying to pass this bullshit over and over.
Rights are inherent to human nature, or they are nothing at all. If they could be granted by gov’t, then they can be taken away; they wouldn’t be rights. They allow individuals to fulfill their natural moral duties; you have a right to a good, because you have a prior obligation to pursue it. While the existence of these rights is universal and inalienable, their exercise is not absolute, as they are always limited by justice and the common good of the community. Because these rights are pre-political - they are not legal privileges; the state’s only legitimate role here is to recognize and protect what already exists by nature; any civil law that contradicts them is a perversion of justice rather than a binding law.
So…if privacy is a right (and I would say it is a derivative right, from more basic rights), then it does not follow that its scope is absolutely unrestrained. It’s not difficult to come up with examples where privacy is constrained or abrogated for this reason.
The trouble with broad privacy-violating measures is that they are sweeping in scope and unjustified, making them bad for the common good and a violation of a personal right. It is clearly motivated by technocratic design and desire for control, not the common good and the good of persons. Because it is unjustified, its institution is therefore opposed to reason. It effectively says that no vaild justification need exist. This is a voluntarist, tyrannical order.
The absolutist stance likes to claim that “having justification” is always how rights are violated, but this is wrongheaded. This is tantamount to claiming that we can’t tell a valid justification from an invalid one. But if that were true, then we are in much worse shape than such people suppose. If we cannot discern a valid justification from a bad one, then how can we have the capacity to discern when a right is being violated at all? Furthermore, it is simply not the case as a general political rule that gov’ts will violate rights if those rights are not absolute (which has never been the case anyway). The evidence does not support this thesis. And furthermore, if a gov’t wishes to violate a right, treating it as if it were an absolute doesn’t somehow prevent it from being violated. Some place too much faith in supposed structural elements of gov’t as ways to keep this from happening (like separation of powers), but there is nothing in principle to prevent these branches from cooperating toward such an end.
Take for example Article 3 of the declaration of human rights:
> Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.
The article already has a collision set up in itself: You have the right to live in safety. But also, everyone has the right to live in liberty. If taken as an absolute, the right of liberty would prevent incarceration of dangerous individuals, violating the other individuals right to all life in safety.
Similarly, other fundamental rights get curtailed: The freedom of speech is in balance with the right to personal dignity of article one and other rights.
Not acknowledging that even fundamental human rights are in a tension with each other is just ignoring reality and will get you nowhere in a legal discussion.
The discussion is not which right is absolute, it is about how to balance the tension between the various rights. And different societies strike a different balance here.
Take for example the right to freedom and liberty. Lifelong imprisonment without parole as punishment is not a thing in Germany. There’s an instrument that allows the court to keep the perpetrator locked up in case the court considers the individual dangerous, but until 1998, this could not be retroactively be applied. There was a major legal upheaval with multiple rounds to the constitutional court to change that and it took until 2012/2013 to find a legal framework that wasn’t declared unconstitutional. To this day, however, Sicherheitsverwahrung is not a punishment, but a combination of therapy and ensuring the safety of society and it’s subject to regular checks if the conditions for the lockup still exist. The individuals are also not held in prisons, but in nicer facilities.
On the other hand, many US states still have the death penalty and are proud of it.
Yeah, because it's a made up self-contradictory notion with absolutely zero basis in reality. It's the people who believe in "rights" who are ignoring reality. Safety? The world is a dangerous place where you can be randomly killed if you take a wrong turn and no amount of "rights" is ever going to change that. Food and shelter? Simple economics are enough to defeat this, there isn't enough for everybody, rationing ensues almost immediately and suddenly you're forced to decide who's most "deserving" of these resources. Privacy? The FVEY get around it by spying on each other and sharing data because foreigners are always fair game. You can name virtually any right and the inherent contradictions in it are plain to see to anyone willing to go outside and see the world for what it actually is instead of what some "charter" says it should be.
It would be infinitely more honest if these governments simply decided to declare you guilty of whatever you're suspected of when they find your encrypted data. That's what they actually want to do. No need to engage in this song and dance about balancing "rights". If they did this, at least people would see things as they are instead of engaging in this constant abstraction in an attempt to rationalize and justify things by saying that you have the "right" to privacy but actually you don't when it's "in the interests of national security" for you to not have it. That sort of double speak is hazardous for my mental health and I'm tired of engaging in it.
In this case, I see no reason that we would want to draft constitutional rights such that we consider a government's actions taken in pursuit of their national security to be, per se, legal — i.e. warranted, unable to be sued over, etc.
Imagine instead, a much weaker right granted to the state: the right to maintain laws or regulations which require/force government or military employees to do things that violate people's rights and/or the law of the land. But with no limit on liability. No grant of warrant. Just the mildest possible form of preservation: technically constitutional; and not immediately de-fanged the first time the Supreme Court gets their hands on it.
So, for example, some state might introduce a new law saying that soldiers can come to your house and confiscate your laptop. And then the head of that state might actually use that law to invade your home and take your laptop.
Given that the law exists, it would be legal for the head-of-state to give this order. And it would also be legal for the soldiers to obey this order (or to put it another way, court-martialable for the soldiers to disobey this order, since it's not an illegal order.)
But the actual thing that happened as a result of this law being followed, would be illegal — criminal theft! — and you would therefore be entitled to sue the state for damages about it. And perhaps, if it was still reporting on Find My or whatever, you might even be entitled to send police to whatever NSA vault your laptop is held in, to go get it back for you. (Where, unlike the state, those police do have a warrant to bust in there to get it. The state can't sue them for damages incurred while they were retrieving the laptop!)
The courts wouldn't be able to strike down the law (the national-security provision allows the state to declare it 'not un-constitutional", remember?); but since obeying the law produces illegal outcomes, you would be able to punish the government each and every time they actually use it. In as many ways as the state caused you and others harm through their actions.
There is absolutely zero reason why the state shouldn't be expected to "make people whole" for damages it has caused them, each and every time it does something against the people's interest in the name of national security.
And the simplest way to calculate that penalty / make the claiming and distribution of those rewards practical, would be to just not remove liability for these actions taken on behalf of the state, by not granting the state the right to do them in the first place. Just put them in the position of any other criminal, and force them to go to court to defend themselves.
Change my mind!
I totally agree with what you say about elected representation - but I am also thankful that decisions aren't made through direct democracy given that so many people are often dangerously uninformed and easily manipulated.
Sometimes a government only cares about a few citizens, or in some cases one citizen.
Ditto the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, with its 'notwithstanding' clause. (Though they're presently litigating over that, so we'll see what happens!)
Any constitution or human rights instrument full of exemptions, 'emergency powers', 'notwithstanding' clauses, or 'states of exception' is not worth the paper it's written on.
(That’s not to say laws shouldn’t make a better attempt to circumscribe exceptions)
No laws are absolute, some laws are more holes than cheese, but a law that says "A government must not punish you for doing X, except in accordance with duly passed criminal laws that make X illegal" is almost entirely pointless. It exists solely to make people feel fuzzy when reading the first half of the sentence, which is the only part you'll ever hear quoted, while not actually impeding anything a government may wish to do to you. This is intentional. Those carte blanche exemptions do not consistently appear across international human rights treaties by some accident.
Think about all the laws that aren't even attempted because they would be struck down. Or all the laws floated, but which don't pass because they'd be struck down. Or the laws modified so they won't be struck down.
I'm with you though - I think a lot of the constitution protections in the US have been watered down over the decades.
Last but not least, a number of EU countries enshrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secrecy_of_correspondence in their constitution.
Also it isn't respected in most types of criminal trials. If a sealed physical letter is opened and proves fraud, for example ...
Unfortunately large majority of parties in Finnish Parliament do not really care about that provision and have passed multiple laws which create exceptions to it. They do it via the proper protocol (which is essentially the same as modifying the Constitution itself) so it's technically legal.
But end to end encryption with forward secrecy at no cost to user makes your right to private communication absolute. It's a new thing and the balancers can't balance it against other rights of other people, so this happens.
Anyway, as far as human/fundamental rights go, the encryption and related issues in Chat Control tend to fall more on the Article 7 side of the Charter[2] like many similar questions related to different forms of (mass) surveillance, secrecy / confidentiality of (electronic) communications, including related national regimes with often diverse jurisdiction-specific histories, etc.
[1] The main difference between a Directive and a Regulation under EU law is that a Directive requires implementation on the national level to work properly (ie national legislation, usually with some room for discretion and details here and there), while a Regulation is directly binding and effective law in member states wholly in itself.
[2] And similar/corresponding language in the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), including the related case law of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). While these are not EU institutions, European human rights law is recognized and applied as constitutional / fundamental rights-level law both by the EU and member state courts.
The European Commission is formed of representatives of the individual states. They are NOT representatives of the citizens, other than by proxy.
YOUR government can request that THEIR representative raise or support legislation among the commission. If you have a problem with your countries representative at the commission then take that up with your government.
Proposals being "brought back" for discussion in some form is just a part of legislation. It happens EVERYWHERE - not just at the EU level.
Sanctions are proposed through the commission because it is a consensus of state government foreign policy.
How would YOU propose that the EU work to be "more democratic" - while also considering that your government needs to be involved and influential?
The whole idea with the current structure is that it "meets in the middle" between national sovereignty and citizen representation.
I agree it's not a perfect system, and there is certainly a lot of opportunity for positive change (I would like to have some process for parliament to request legislation from the council. I would like more transparency in what the commission does), but to dismiss it as "undemocratic" makes no sense and is just repeating an uniformed rhetoric.
You probably think that, because the commission is composed by representatives of every country, but they are "bound by their oath of office to represent the interest of the EU as a whole rather than their home state". That in itself is already contradictory. Those representatives are not elected officials but are the more powerful in the system.
The European Commission is the executive branch of the European Union. In not sane system, the executive branch is in charge of proposing legislation, because that make the all 'separation of powers' concept useless.
>>"How would YOU propose that the EU work to be "more democratic" - while also considering that your government needs to be involved and influential?"
Well, or you give the parliament real legislative and budgetary powers or all the system is a farce and you should dissolve it. If you want to keep the interest of individual countries in the process you need another chamber, elected by the people, that would represent the national interests.
Not only the system is undemocratic but it's winning power. The European Council can sanction you because doesn't like what you are saying without any judicial supervision. The budget is used to blackmail countries that don't agree with the commission views. Even the European Central Bank was used for blackmailing Greece in the Debt crisis of 2011. If that's democracy, the word democracy has not meaning anymore.
Wouldn't that make it a government and remove the sovereignty of the individual states?
Not saying thats a bad idea - its just the exact opposite of the usual "undemocratic" rhetoric.
As it should be. Governments should have to suck it up. If they want to know things about someone, they should have to actually assign police to follow them around. Not click a button and have the lives of everyone in the entire world revealed to them.
What you describe is clearly not the only possible policy choice.
The opposite doom scenario isn't either.
Based on the past experience, government gonna do their government stuff
If you are interested in a federation, you could have an American bicameral model, with the senate representing the countries interest (1).
The current path of the EU is, in my opinion, very worrisome. The important issues are decided in close doors. The Commission and the Council feel that they can 'sanction' citizens without judicial supervision. The countries that not play along are blackmailed. The Commission officials feel that they can speak for all Europe when most citizens disagree with what they are saying. They feel that they can block the public discourse that they don't like, and now they want total control of our communications.
Can you give concrete examples of these "important issues" that are supposedly being decided behind closed doors?
What sanctions are you talking about that require judicial supervision? Pretty sure all EU states can issue their own sanctions without needing a court to approve them.
How exactly is the Commission blocking public discourse? What are they doing, and where is this happening?
Also countries can not be blackmailed enough as the Hungary debacle clearly shows.