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Undermining Democracy: The EU Commission's Controversial Push for Surveillance
- tekla 3y agoHow are there not riots in the EU right now?
- Cloudef 3y agoPeople have been either blind for past 20 years or succesfully converted
- RandomLensman 3y agoAs I understand it, there is no clear path for this to be enacted nor for it to stand if enacted.
- _hcuq 3y agoYep. Just the usual hysteria.
- Xelbair 3y agoPeople got bored of rioting. There were pushes for that since 2010-ish, and the cycle was: propose something that no citizen wants, riots happen, they push back. year later they repeat the same process again and again. First major one was ACTA if i remember right.
- Lionga 3y agoEU is a shit show of corruption and oppression. If people would riot for every atrocious thing EU does there would not be time for anything else.
- RandomLensman 3y agoWhere or how are people oppressed in the EU?
- betaby 3y ago[link I was referring to has been deleted by the original author]
- RandomLensman 3y agoDo you have a link to the court case? Defaming the state is its own offense so not quite clear what the terrorism link is. Btw., that has nothing to do with the EU. Domestic German criminal law and nothing recent.
- blipvert 3y agoSounds like a Germany thing, not an EU thing.
- Lionga 3y agoJust see the propose law above among many others. Oppression happens gradually, then suddenly.
- Saline9515 3y agoTaxes are very high in the EU as a result of generalized waste of money. The green energy subsidies come to mind. We're massively subsidizing solar panels in Estonia, for instance (no light in winter).
- doktrin 3y agoBecause this nonsense has no chance at being implemented.
- csomar 3y agoDangerous polarization is happening in the EU right now. You'd think after WW II there will be safeguards against a repeat. But that's clearly not case.
- logicchains 3y agoIt has safeguards, especially the German constitution. But fundamentally in a democracy if enough people want to elect a party like AFD or PFN there's nothing that can be done.
- lamp987 3y agoPeople are used to EU tightening the screws every year. This is normal. Though the proposition seems to be technically faulty/unenforcable so we might be spared (this time).
- clarada 3y agoIt's called "ever closer union" and a founding principle of the EU. Whether you voted for it or not - or in many cases never even asked - you will have your rights taken by the EU.
- eigenket 3y agoBecause the EU doesn't really have much actual power to do anything that impacts normal citizens. Like the EU doesn't start criminal prosecutions or anything against people. If there is some crime you're being prosecuted for it's going to be your country's government that prosecutes you. No one is really worried about the EU becoming some sort of Orwellian state because it isn't a state, it doesn't operate like that. Edit: I should say that this shit also isn't going to pass the European Parliament, its just a proposal which is going to get voted down.
- clarada 3y agoThe European Commission has veto power over the European Parliament, so I'm afraid it can just force it through. Doesn't normally come to that - there's enough corruption and alternative ways to pressurise the MEPs.
- eigenket 3y agoAs far as I am aware this is pretty far from accurate. Pretty much everything goes through the "Ordinary legislative procedure" where the comission proposes legislation and the parliament and council have to agree it (Codecision). The council and commission can change stuff together without concent of parliament in very specialised areas (special legislative procedures), I think this only gets used for internal competion law and market regulation stuff. In even more specialised areas the commission can change stuff on its own, as far as I know this is mostly restricted to agreeing trade deals and fixing specific tarrifs. I can't comment on the corruption and alternative ways of pressuring MEPs. Those probably exist.
- _hcuq 3y agoYep. In conspiracy circles they like to demonise the EU. They don't know what it is or how it operates and can't be bothered to find out.
- eigenket 3y agoI don't think its a thing exclusive to conspiracy circles. Its natural for Americans to mentally model the EU as something like the US, with the EU representing the federal government and the individual countries acting like US states. The reality is that that model is pretty innacurate, the EU has a lot less power than the US Federal governenment has. The EU still acts more like a club of individual nations than it does one overall government.
- erur 3y agoBecause they've been boiling the frog for 20 years. This one might not pass today but in 5-10 years we'll likely just be fine with it if the narrative continues to evolve on its current trajectory.
- barrysteve 3y agoA policeman in France killed a teenager in cold blood and they set their city blocks on fire. Polticians are arguing over the presence (vaguely racist) of immigrants. There's a war in Ukraine flooding out Poland. They have more local and pressing concerns, than this.
- peoplefromibiza 3y agoriot against what? what kind of people riot against proposals before they are even discussed?
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- LaGrange 3y agoWe're all quite busy rioting about other things, because the US funded and supplied an actual genocide nearby. As bad as this is, it's a side show, and probably won't do much.
- TacticalCoder 3y agoThe title should be shortened from "Undermining Democracy: The European Commission's Controversial Push for Digital Surveillance" simply to: "Undermining Democracy: The European Commission". The EC is sheer horror. The thousands of years old saying: "The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the state" has never been truer. I've done a short consulting gig at the European Parliament, which at least tries to be the good guys. But the EP is tiny compared to the EC and the EC is pulling the strings: the EP is supposed to bring some kind of democracy but there's none. All these rules are benefitting people in power and they're all ever more intrusive. For example the MiCA one (Markets in Digital Assets), which is not at all only about cryptocurrencies/crypto-tokens (it's also about upcoming centralized "euro coin" emitted by EU central banks), is sheer horror too. I've read it all and it's madness. Insanity. It's all about control. Complete, total and utter control over every single aspect of EU citizens' lives. They want to know everything about everyone: nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. Those who believe it's "for our own good" are out of their minds.
- kubb 3y agoHaha, sure, it’s real invigilation terror over here in Europe. We all just want to escape this tyrannical dictatorship. But, the European Parliament is against this legislation, and for the moment it’s not passing.
- admissionsguy 3y ago> We all just want to escape this tyrannical dictatorship. Well, I actually do.
- hackandthink 3y agoThese bureaucrats overwhelm citizens with enormous amounts of text. Expression of opinion is regulated here. A few principles should be enough. The most important one should be: Every citizen is free to express his opinion. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:32022R2065#d1e4563-1-1 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...
- RandomLensman 3y agoSome (most?) countries in Europe have a criminal offense of "insult", so this just isn't how things work (or worked as that is nothing new).
- sofixa 3y ago> The most important one should be: Every citizen is free to express his opinion. And if their opinion is that, all Jews are subhuman and have to be exterminated? (real life example) Most EU countries have "hate speech" laws explicitly banning hate speech such as Nazis and Anti-Semites. Nobody sheds any tears over their opinions being restricted, and nobody should. Debating with pidgeons doesn't work.
- jjgreen 3y agoIn the UK, the Home Secretary is pressuring the Police to interpret the phrase "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" (a slogan often used in pro-Palestinian demonstrations) as an "expression of a violent desire to see Israel erased from the world", possibly making it a "racially aggravated" public order offence. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67110119 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67110119
- csomar 3y agoThe EU and the West are over-playing their hands with this in my opinion. They'll get burned by this at some point, at which point it'll be too late; and maybe then they'll recognize that the reason they have had such control was just the fact they were first. Not some universal physics law that such companies can only exist in the Western sphere. The recent Middle-East events had some troubling intervention (in Twitter/Meta). The "other side" wanting to voice its opinion is now being pushed more to other platforms. There aren't many (mainly Telegram and Tiktok) but nothing creates a market than sequestration. China did this to create a local market. The EU is forcing this on the global south. What's next? De-platform such sites/apps from the major PaaS (AWS/Azure/etc...)? This might slow things down but it'll create a market for alternative hosting platforms. Then what's next? Ban hardware? This will boil down to chips. Maybe the US is ahead on this and realizes this is the only frontier that's left.
- barrysteve 3y agoThey want to overplay their hand. An oppressive internet that they can bully, works for them. An internet that withdraws into itself and the EU returns to pen and paper + dumb phones works for them. The US is all on this. As long as the US owns the internet and big tech, they are happy to let other countries do the dirty work of setting boundaries. The long term solution is to 'manualize' tech. Make all tech we touch, open and ready to modify, run at full capacity and be easily controlled by a single man. The only way to keep tech free, is to take it out of the System's hands and put it into the hands of the average joe, for his control. And feed the machines silence.
- csomar 3y agoThey are under-estimating the level of development in tech in the "global south" which has a differing agenda. There is now enough talent and capital in the global south to kick-start tech companies and actually it's cheaper there. The problem is that they need time to catch up to the Western big tech. Why would anyone use a local chat/social app if Twitter and Instagram exists. Now, if they are being deplatformed, it'll be a different situation.
- irusensei 3y agoIts 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 settles the same politicians and lobbysts bring the thing again this time with another name or sneakily group it into some other law. Perhaps something bad happened and that momentarily gained public support, of course with lots of emotions involved and very little context given to the common folk. The politicians and lobbyists are literally being paid for this. You are not. They can pretty much push the same bullshit forever until it stays while you are devoting your life to prevent it.
- layer8 3y agoWhat alternative do you propose? The politicians are elected representatives of and by the people.
- spencerflem 3y agoTake the money out of politics as much as possible and there will be less incentive for politicians to sell out their people
- layer8 3y agoWhat do you mean by that? There’s already anti-corruption laws, and corruption is actually being prosecuted. To have less incentives, you’d actually have to pay politicians more, which would constitute putting more money into politics.
- raincom 3y agoAnti-corruption laws don't deal with collusions much, as there is no tangible proof of "pay for play" in such situations. Look at the US Senator Menedez case of late: he and his wife are stupid to accept cash, gold bars, Benz cars, etc. Sophisticated players in the beltway don't accept such "play for cash", because these colluders trust each other beyond the term limits.
- dmcq2 3y agoThat is so awful, Britain is trying on this sort of thing too saying it is to protect children. However they don't try and support citizen organiztions that do a good job there, and have been involved in actions showing it is much lower priority than control. Has anyone ever done a study even of how much benefit it would have in countering paedophiles even ignoring any loss from the general control freakery and general loss of freedom? I think it would be quite ineffective compared to the citizen organizations countering paedophilia. It's just trying to emulate China in conttrolling the population.
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- masswerk 3y ago> To sway European public opinion, however, the European Commission went even further. X’s Transparency Report shows that the European Commission also used ‘microtargeting’ to ensure that the ads did not appear to people who care about privacy (…) and eurosceptics Independently of the broader privacy and surveillance topic, this is highly concerning: if institutions, like the EC, start to run agendas through and by carefully created echo chambers and keep certain segments of the demographic out of the loop, all is lost, as there is no common and public realm of political discourse anymore.
- firtoz 3y agoHoly crap that's pretty much evil scheming right there. Digital gerrymandering?
- masswerk 3y agoLet's put it this ways: if policymakers are allowed to think that certain elements should not be represented in the political process and/or should be just overwhelmed by a broad wave welcoming the agenda, we're deep into the root causes of what haunted Europe in the 1930s. If only for this reason, we must stop targeted advertising and messaging, before it is too late. Because, for a minimal social and political alignment, everybody must be allowed to be informed of what is on the market, that of goods and that of ideas. Modern democracy is built on mass media and communications and not on in-group messaging and arbitrage deals. (At least, in the more idealistic and not-entirely-cynical version of the narrative.)
- throwaway50662 3y agoTargeted 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.
- masswerk 3y agoI 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.
- southernplaces7 3y agoTo those of you on this site who get so sanctimonious about how wonderful GDPR is at mitigating the surveillance conducted by the big tech giants (most of them American), here's a wonderful example of how your cherished EU government uses both carrots and sticks. It's apparently not so much that the EU fights for individual privacy, it just doesn't like to have external competitors surveil the shit out of people without its say-so.
- mindslight 3y agoIt's almost like laws can have good or bad effects based on their details.
- malermeister 3y agoGDPR is good for protecting us from surveillance capitalism. This proposal is bad for trying to establish another form of capitalism. Those two are not conflicting statements.
- mjan22640 3y agoThe pressure to implement this both in EU and in five eyes countries comes IMHO from the US. In the EU itself there are no structures that would profit from this.
- greatgib 3y agoThe European parlement is probably the best thing that we have in Europe, most good things and new rights come from there. At the opposite, the European Commission is probably the worse that we can have. It is totally corrupted (see the vice president with bags of cash given by the Qatar and co) or at least morally corrupted by lobbies. And no one elected this persons with so much power by the way. Good things to wonder is why America got shared access to all financial transactions of European citizens but the opposite is not true.
- peoplefromibiza 3y ago> And no one elected this persons with so much power by the way. this is a very tired meme, they have been nominated and scrutinized by the people elected in what you called probably the best thing that we have in Europe i.e. the EU Parliament edit: elections solve none of the problems people think they solve. proof is governments are corrupt even though they are elected by the people. if the objections is "we can't let them chose because they will meet in a room and exchange money for the position" well, how is it different from "they will meet in the same room exchanging the same money to decide who you can vote or not"? elections are a consensus strategy, they do not solve social and political issues.
- blibble 3y ago> this is a very tired meme, they have been nominated and scrutinized by the people elected in what you called probably the best thing that we have in Europe i.e. the EU Parliament yes, in 2019 the Parliament were allowed to pick from a list of exactly one person (selected by another part of the EU)
- hef19898 3y agoSaid other part being the elected heada of states / government of each member nation.
- peoplefromibiza 3y agothe Parliament does the vetting, the countries Parliaments propose the candidates. It's all done by elected officials, what more do you want? the commission is a place for technicians, it's not a political entity. it would be like electing the people in the HR department because the board of directors cast votes.
- jjtheblunt 3y agoLanguage confusion question: aren’t democracy (people voting?) and surveillance conflating different topics? What correlation is implied?
- logicchains 3y agoYou can't have democracy if people are persecuted for their voting preferences, and with total surveillance a bad government could identify ahead of time people who planned to vote against it and punish them.
- scott_w 3y agoThis is a nonsense slippery slope argument. Voting systems are entirely for individual nations to determine, not the EU.
- bondarchuk 3y agoNo, 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.
- scott_w 3y agoThe law is bad but spouting off incorrect nonsense like this only makes you look unhinged. Everything you said is just completely made up.
- zorrolovsky 3y agoTo 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.
- nforgerit 3y agoKeep in mind that the EU is doing other funny things like providing a publicly-paid "DNS4EU" which is (for now) totally voluntary and free-to-use but surely will be enforced eventually on any digital product. It drives them crazy that law enforcement is that incompetent to enforce law so the solution is to criminalize everyone instead of developing operational excellence in law-enforcement. [0] https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/collection/ict-standards-procurement/solution/dns-rfc-1034-rfc-1035-domain-name-system/news/dns4eu https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/collection/ict-standards-procure...
- EMCymatics 3y agoI would love it for Europeans to end Lèse-majesté laws but I have little faith of that happening.
- tgv 3y agoYou really want to insult the monarch (who -BTW- is rather powerless in the member states of the EU)? Those kind of antics rarely have any influence.
- EMCymatics 3y agoThere are Lèse-majesté laws that protect the head of state as well (France ect) There is a fine line between criticism and insult that is entirely up to the discretion that enforces laws.
- callalex 3y agoEveryone here on Hacker News seems to be painting this issue as universally disliked and unwanted and obviously bad. However, that is just blatantly not the case. The “think of the children” and “all opposition are pedophiles” arguments are very powerful and effective. It is important to know your enemy if you wish to defeat them, burying your head in the sand accomplishes nothing.
- myaccountonhn 3y agoWell the irony is that children have a right to privacy. This law hurts their integrity
- freeopinion 3y agoI would be interested in learning the thoughts of those who have thought deeply about the role of anonymity in democracy. I am intrigued how often people with the attitude that if you aren't don't anything wrong you shouldn't mind being observed apply that philosophy in only one direction. I see people who are upset that Snowden would leak and provide visibility into government actions, but don't blink that the revealed actions were actually the government spying on its own citizens. So governments are entitled to privacy, but their citizens are not? My interest is not one sided. I have an intuition that personal privacy is important in maintaining democracy. But I also have an intuition that institutional privacy for a government is harmful to democracy. I think most would argue that a reasonable amount of governmental privacy is important to national security. I tend to favor the bare minimum. Most people I know disagree with me on that. I enjoy exploring both sides and trying to move beyond intuition for my position. Any links or references to reasoned arguments on all sides are appreciated.
- mcpackieh 3y ago> I am intrigued how often people with the attitude that if you aren't don't anything wrong you shouldn't mind being observed apply that philosophy in only one direction. I see people who are upset that Snowden would leak and provide visibility into government actions, but don't blink that the revealed actions were actually the government spying on its own citizens. So governments are entitled to privacy, but their citizens are not? I am strongly in the pro individual privacy camp FWIW, but I'm bored so I'll take a stab at steel-manning the premise that governments are entitled to privacy while individual people are not: One of the obligations of governments is military defense. Governments are required to protect their people and the reality of war necessitates the keeping of some secrets. Failure to recognize this reality would constitute an abdication of their duty as a government. On the other hand, private persons are not permitted to wage war (this is why governments are obliged to defend their people, because they forbid people from doing it themselves.) Since people are not allowed to wage war on their own, the "realities of war" justification for governments keeping secrets doesn't justify people keeping personal secrets. Rebuttal to the above: throughout history and particularly in the 20th century, tens of millions of people were killed by their own government. While governments may need to keep some secrets to effectively defend their population against external threats, people also need the right to keep secrets from their government to defend themselves against that domestic threat, which is every bit as real and concerning as the external threats.
- peoplefromibiza 3y agothe best part of this thread is people that do not know how a democracy works and how the EU works giving advice to improve democracy in EU, that sound like bullet points to pitch some startup idea before having checked if their idea can work in practice, what the flaws in the reasoning are and if something similar has been already tried and rejected .
- jokethrowaway 3y ago[flagged]
- loldk 3y ago[dead]
- _hcuq 3y agoThe boy cries wolf once again. WTF is he referring to?
- alerighi 3y agoWhat they are even trying to achieve? A criminal can always use an e2e messaging system. Even if they ban the systems (such as Signal) that don’t employ these measures, it’s just a matter of using a VPN. The excuse of reducing crime is just… an excuse
- firtoz 3y agoSurveillance is a key to controlling the general public. It's as simple as that. It's a distraction to look at what they put on the cover or how they sell it.
- orwell_bruh 3y agoI find that people like to sooth themselves with thoughts like that. "They can never ban X", "I would just do Y". The state can absolute ban anything. It bans certain plants! This surveilance doesnt have to be 100%. Big nets catch many fish but never all. However, if you find a way to defeat this on a scale that matters like if too many people started using VPN then they'd just ban VPN, too. Goto 0.
- try_the_bass 3y agoMaking it harder to do crimes shouldn't be discouraged because some criminals will find new ways to do crimes. You're defending the ability to commit crimes because the law isn't perfect. The law _cannot_ be perfect, so no law will ever satisfy your requirement. Following this line of reasoning to it's conclusion: because all laws are imperfect, and criminals can always find ways around them, your position is that no laws should be enacted. After all, you can't have crime if nothing is criminalized, right?
- naveen99 3y agoTax collection requires surveillance. But surveillance is usually skipped on people you exempt from taxes anyway. because you can’t nail them for tax evasion if there are no taxes to evade.
- rdm_blackhole 3y agoSo much for the beacon of privacy! At least we got those sweet GDPR cookie banners. It's not all that bad. And with this new law, we won't have to worry about Meta selling our data, the governments will take care of that. It's looks like history seems to repeat itself. It's a just a matter of time. Social credit, the Ministry of Truth and whatever else they can think of, that's just around the corner. But it's for the children ammaright?
- alexpotato 3y agoI 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 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.
- m3at 3y agoI learned about this effect too recently in an ACX post, let me add a link for the curious: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-book-review-secret-government https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-book-review-secret-gov...
- alexpotato 3y agoThis article was both exactly in line with the point I was making and excellent. Thanks for sharing!
- jscipione 3y agoThere 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.
- Roark66 3y agoNothing new for the EU commission. They are the least democratic of the EU bodies. The name the have (the commission, from the soviet union commissars) is very appropriate and the do live up to it. Just look how they attack every country that has the audacity to elect forces opposed to their paymasters (that mostly include German interest groups, and Russia by proxy). Trying to redefine words like "rule of law" to hit for example Poland(ruled by a party opposed to EPP, the ruling party in the EU) while 100% ignoring horrible corruption in Bulgaria that is aligned with them. No reaction whatsoever to huge corruption in the Court of Justice of the EU (the Court of Justice is the opposite of the rule of law at the moment, but it's a long story). All while trying to force more power to itself against treaties, get rid of veto rights, and push through things like this law. Sad really, because the EU itself was a great idea, but everything can be corrupted.
- torcete 3y agoThere is actually no democracy in the European Union, nor in any of its state members. There is no power separation, the executive branch and the legislative branch is all one that is trying to control everything. You can see it with all these laws that bypass the judiciary system when censoring content on the internet. It's not a judge who decides to ban or not Russia Today or Twitter. This is basically Michels' iron law of oligarchy unfolding under our eyes. They create the laws, they execute them and they punish if you don't follow.
- my4ng 3y agoI first heard about this push on a VPN’s website nearly a year ago. What worries me more is how little this is actually reported in media. How can people protest against something that they haven’t even heard of? I think it’s this hegemonic power to undermine fundamental rights of not only europeans clandestinely through convoluted bureaucracy and media suppression and under the pretext of child protection, even more harrowing than the proposal itself. It is absolutely important to fight against child porn and other criminal activities, but mass surveillance is not the answer.
- RGBCube 3y agoNow I understand why they did Brexit.