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These bureaucrats overwhelm citizens with enormous amounts of text. Expression of opinion is regulated here. A few principles should be enough. The most import

These 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 ago
Some (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 ago
  In 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
  - rayiner 3y ago
    But it does mean that, if you have even the most passing familiarity with the geography of the region.
    - skissane 3y ago
      Taken literally, the phrase could be understood as simply a call for a free State of Palestine composed of the West Bank and Gaza, with internationally recognised Israel remaining intact – "from the river" meaning the West Bank's boundary with the Jordan River, "to the sea" meaning the coast of the Gaza Strip. Maybe even with some sort of corridor with right of free passage connecting the two (see this NGO proposal – https://geneva-accord.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/corridor.pdf https://geneva-accord.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/corrido... ) Now, I agree in practice many (most?) people using this phrase don't mean it in just that sense, and actually mean it as a call for the abolition of the State of Israel. But it doesn't seem impossible that some people who use it actually do mean it in just the literal sense I suggest. The phrase is inherently ambiguous–which is one of the reasons why I think the potential criminalisation of an ambiguous political slogan (one which I myself would never use or endorse) is rather problematic.
      - rayiner 3y ago
        The phrase “from the river to the sea” was used by the PLO since 1964, a time when Jordan controlled the West Bank and Egypt controlled Gaza. It’s unambiguously a reference to eliminating the state of Israel. I agree that we shouldn’t criminalize political slogans.
        skissane 3y ago
        > The phrase “from the river to the sea” was used by the PLO since 1964, a time when Jordan controlled the West Bank and Egypt controlled Gaza. It’s unambiguously a reference to eliminating the state of Israel. The meaning of a phrase is not fixed by its origin. A lot of people using the phrase today weren’t even born then. I’m sure many of them mean it in the exact same sense that the PLO meant it in 1964-but can we be sure that everyone who currently uses it means it that way? I don’t think we can, it seems entirely plausible that some of its users have reinterpreted it to refer to a more moderate position
- baaaaaah 3y ago
  The same people making these laws get to determine what hate speech is defined as. You can be charged with a hate crime in Louisiana for resisting arrest at a peaceful protest, for instance. In Ireland you can run afoul of blasphemy laws, which is in the same spirit as hate speech laws (in my religion it's a blasphemy to discuss any other religion, and since Ireland won't enforce my ideas of blasphemy on anyone else, their enforcement is selective for their favorite religions). Once you make it a crime to express certain opinions, all opinions are up for negotiation. It's not hard to imagine an ultra conservative getting elected and what that would do to discussion around LGBT, for instance.
- hackandthink 3y ago
  I would not discuss with Nazis. If they are criminal they should be prosecuted. Otherwise I ignore them. Noam Chomsky - Should Neo-Nazis Be Allowed Free Speech? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ui1vmS9Yz5M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ui1vmS9Yz5M
  - hn_acker 3y ago
    > If they are criminal they should be prosecuted. You should be a bit more careful about your word choice, since making hate speech a crime would make Neo-Nazis criminals.
    - hackandthink 3y ago
      Good point. I also realize that there is no clear demarcation between speech and criminal action and that my position cannot be upheld in the strict sense. Nevertheless, I seem to be orders of magnitude more liberal than the mainstream about what is permissible speech. And I continue to find the extent to which speech is monitored and regulated disturbing, and it's getting worse. The STASI (GDR) were amateurs in comparison.
- kypro 3y ago
  I'll add that a guy got sentenced to prison in Switzerland last week for calling someone a fat lesbian in a video that he posted two years ago. What is considered hate speech is very broad these days – Nazism would actually be on the more extreme side of what is considered an arrestable hate crime.
  - csomar 3y ago
    That’s a bit extreme (and disturbing). Got a link for that?
    - kypro 3y ago
      I'll note I don't know anything about the guy. He doesn't seem to hold very pleasant views from what I've read, but that shouldn't be relevant. https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-news/swiss-lgbtq-groups-praise-jail-sentence-commentator-called-journalist-rcna118715 https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-news/swiss-lgbtq-groups-...
- concordDance 3y ago
  > Nobody sheds any tears over their opinions being restricted, and nobody should. Debating with pidgeons doesn't work. Wrong, wrong and in my experience the people most similar to pigeons (e.g. shitting on the table rather than debating) are the young teens on reddit with vaguely leftist ideas with no foundation (proper communists are generally good debaters), the actual heriditarians and ethnic nationalists might be wrong, but they do try and actually debate rather than insult.
peoplefromibiza 3y ago
> Every citizen is free to express his opinion. you are, but if you commit a crime in doing it you go to trial. which is fair. edit: libel is a crime punishable by the law, everywhere in the west. Doesn't mean you are forbidden to say what you want. democracy without a justice system as a counter power is not democracy as we intend them in modern era.
- concordDance 3y ago
  > Doesn't mean you are forbidden to say what you want. This confuses me. Saying someone is "free to do X" normally means that X is allowed by law. Or else what could it possibly mean?
  - try_the_bass 3y ago
    I don't see "free to do X" being exclusively "it's allowed by law". One is always free to do whatever one wants. Criminal law exists to punish those who abuse that freedom in ways their society has deemed to be harmful. That is to say "free to do X (under the law)" is a subset of "free to do X".
    - concordDance 3y ago
      What does "free to do X" mean then? That you are physically able to do so?
  - peoplefromibiza 3y ago
    it simply means that you are free to do it, but not overdo it because there are rules. it's the basis of every modern society. many things allowed by the law are not really "free". police forces are allowed to use weapons, that doesn't mean they can shoot randomly whenever they feel like it.
scott_w 3y ago
The EU does not set freedom of speech laws beyond requiring signatory nations protect a weaker freedom of expression. Any nation can have stronger free speech protections if it chooses to and the EU bodies can’t prevent it. Your argument is nonsense.
- bondarchuk 3y ago
  The proposal in question does regulate freedom of expression, as the gp said, because it proposes monitoring all communications of citizens. So their argument is not nonsense at all.
  - scott_w 3y ago
    It’s nonsense because that’s not what the proposal is. It’s focused on CSAM. It’s a bad law but what you and GP are saying is pure tinfoil-hat-level nonsense.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - hn_acker 3y ago
      Is it appropriate to say that it's focused on CSAM? A and B implies B. Scan all chats and only look for CSAM implies scan all chats. Moreoever, will the government actually just look for CSAM and ignore everything else? Does this law punish the government for looking for things other than CSAM? If not, then there's no reason to believe that "only look for CSAM" is true as long as "scan all chats" is true.

RandomLensman 3y ago

Some (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 ago
In 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
- rayiner 3y ago
  But it does mean that, if you have even the most passing familiarity with the geography of the region.
  - skissane 3y ago
    Taken literally, the phrase could be understood as simply a call for a free State of Palestine composed of the West Bank and Gaza, with internationally recognised Israel remaining intact – "from the river" meaning the West Bank's boundary with the Jordan River, "to the sea" meaning the coast of the Gaza Strip. Maybe even with some sort of corridor with right of free passage connecting the two (see this NGO proposal – https://geneva-accord.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/corridor.pdf https://geneva-accord.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/corrido... ) Now, I agree in practice many (most?) people using this phrase don't mean it in just that sense, and actually mean it as a call for the abolition of the State of Israel. But it doesn't seem impossible that some people who use it actually do mean it in just the literal sense I suggest. The phrase is inherently ambiguous–which is one of the reasons why I think the potential criminalisation of an ambiguous political slogan (one which I myself would never use or endorse) is rather problematic.
    - rayiner 3y ago
      The phrase “from the river to the sea” was used by the PLO since 1964, a time when Jordan controlled the West Bank and Egypt controlled Gaza. It’s unambiguously a reference to eliminating the state of Israel. I agree that we shouldn’t criminalize political slogans.
      - skissane 3y ago
        > The phrase “from the river to the sea” was used by the PLO since 1964, a time when Jordan controlled the West Bank and Egypt controlled Gaza. It’s unambiguously a reference to eliminating the state of Israel. The meaning of a phrase is not fixed by its origin. A lot of people using the phrase today weren’t even born then. I’m sure many of them mean it in the exact same sense that the PLO meant it in 1964-but can we be sure that everyone who currently uses it means it that way? I don’t think we can, it seems entirely plausible that some of its users have reinterpreted it to refer to a more moderate position
baaaaaah 3y ago
The same people making these laws get to determine what hate speech is defined as. You can be charged with a hate crime in Louisiana for resisting arrest at a peaceful protest, for instance. In Ireland you can run afoul of blasphemy laws, which is in the same spirit as hate speech laws (in my religion it's a blasphemy to discuss any other religion, and since Ireland won't enforce my ideas of blasphemy on anyone else, their enforcement is selective for their favorite religions). Once you make it a crime to express certain opinions, all opinions are up for negotiation. It's not hard to imagine an ultra conservative getting elected and what that would do to discussion around LGBT, for instance.
hackandthink 3y ago
I would not discuss with Nazis. If they are criminal they should be prosecuted. Otherwise I ignore them. Noam Chomsky - Should Neo-Nazis Be Allowed Free Speech? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ui1vmS9Yz5M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ui1vmS9Yz5M
- hn_acker 3y ago
  > If they are criminal they should be prosecuted. You should be a bit more careful about your word choice, since making hate speech a crime would make Neo-Nazis criminals.
  - hackandthink 3y ago
    Good point. I also realize that there is no clear demarcation between speech and criminal action and that my position cannot be upheld in the strict sense. Nevertheless, I seem to be orders of magnitude more liberal than the mainstream about what is permissible speech. And I continue to find the extent to which speech is monitored and regulated disturbing, and it's getting worse. The STASI (GDR) were amateurs in comparison.
kypro 3y ago
I'll add that a guy got sentenced to prison in Switzerland last week for calling someone a fat lesbian in a video that he posted two years ago. What is considered hate speech is very broad these days – Nazism would actually be on the more extreme side of what is considered an arrestable hate crime.
- csomar 3y ago
  That’s a bit extreme (and disturbing). Got a link for that?
  - kypro 3y ago
    I'll note I don't know anything about the guy. He doesn't seem to hold very pleasant views from what I've read, but that shouldn't be relevant. https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-news/swiss-lgbtq-groups-praise-jail-sentence-commentator-called-journalist-rcna118715 https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-news/swiss-lgbtq-groups-...
concordDance 3y ago
> Nobody sheds any tears over their opinions being restricted, and nobody should. Debating with pidgeons doesn't work. Wrong, wrong and in my experience the people most similar to pigeons (e.g. shitting on the table rather than debating) are the young teens on reddit with vaguely leftist ideas with no foundation (proper communists are generally good debaters), the actual heriditarians and ethnic nationalists might be wrong, but they do try and actually debate rather than insult.

peoplefromibiza 3y ago

> Every citizen is free to express his opinion. you are, but if you commit a crime in doing it you go to trial. which is fair. edit: libel is a crime punishable by the law, everywhere in the west. Doesn't mean you are forbidden to say what you want. democracy without a justice system as a counter power is not democracy as we intend them in modern era.

concordDance 3y ago
> Doesn't mean you are forbidden to say what you want. This confuses me. Saying someone is "free to do X" normally means that X is allowed by law. Or else what could it possibly mean?
- try_the_bass 3y ago
  I don't see "free to do X" being exclusively "it's allowed by law". One is always free to do whatever one wants. Criminal law exists to punish those who abuse that freedom in ways their society has deemed to be harmful. That is to say "free to do X (under the law)" is a subset of "free to do X".
  - concordDance 3y ago
    What does "free to do X" mean then? That you are physically able to do so?
- peoplefromibiza 3y ago
  it simply means that you are free to do it, but not overdo it because there are rules. it's the basis of every modern society. many things allowed by the law are not really "free". police forces are allowed to use weapons, that doesn't mean they can shoot randomly whenever they feel like it.

scott_w 3y ago

The EU does not set freedom of speech laws beyond requiring signatory nations protect a weaker freedom of expression. Any nation can have stronger free speech protections if it chooses to and the EU bodies can’t prevent it. Your argument is nonsense.

bondarchuk 3y ago
The proposal in question does regulate freedom of expression, as the gp said, because it proposes monitoring all communications of citizens. So their argument is not nonsense at all.
- scott_w 3y ago
  It’s nonsense because that’s not what the proposal is. It’s focused on CSAM. It’s a bad law but what you and GP are saying is pure tinfoil-hat-level nonsense.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - hn_acker 3y ago
    Is it appropriate to say that it's focused on CSAM? A and B implies B. Scan all chats and only look for CSAM implies scan all chats. Moreoever, will the government actually just look for CSAM and ignore everything else? Does this law punish the government for looking for things other than CSAM? If not, then there's no reason to believe that "only look for CSAM" is true as long as "scan all chats" is true.