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The writing makes it conspiratorial. It’s law enforcement companies trying to lobby for increased chat control. They’re doing it via a scummy way of NGO fronts
by wayfinder 3y ago
The writing makes it conspiratorial.
It’s law enforcement companies trying to lobby for increased chat control. They’re doing it via a scummy way of NGO fronts.
That is not really a conspiracy in the classic sense of something crazy. Lobbying via front organizations happens all the time. I don’t condone it. We should stop this effort. But it ain’t anything special.
- matthewdgreen 3y ago>It’s law enforcement companies trying to lobby for increased chat control. They’re doing it via a scummy way of NGO fronts. This is your hypothesis, and I agree it's a likely one. But frankly nobody knows because it's all being done with dark money. It could also be US national security contractors looking to maliciously exploit EU data networks, or even private data brokers looking for new revenue opportunities. In every case, these possibilities significantly change the tenor of the debate away from "it's just to protect children." I'm not familiar with the way that EU governance works, but my impression is that dark-money-based lobbying is less common over there. Which is why there seem to be so few defenses against it. Here in the US such lobbying would be less effective, since our structures are more distributed and lobbying would be countered with corresponding lobbying from civil society organizations and the tech industry -- in some sense (and here I only half-jest) we US folks can be more cynical about this because our corruption is more mature.
- tremon 3y agoI'm not convinced it's less common over here, but I do believe it's less blatant. Things operate more in the shadows here, but I'm not at all convinced there is less corruption in/surrounding the EU Commission than there is in the US Senate.
- lazide 3y agoI mean, it’s literally a conspiracy [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy] of foreign interests (including foreign intelligence services!) trying to convince legislators to pass laws against their own (and their constituents) interest using deceptive and likely illegal methods. I think you might mean that it doesn’t involve blackmail, assassinations, etc?* Notably, a conspiracy doesn’t require those things - but some do. And they’re pretty bad too. * that we are currently aware of anyway.
- mcpackieh 3y ago> That is not really a conspiracy in the classic sense of something crazy. "Something crazy" is not the classic sense of a conspiracy. That's the modern corrupt meaning.
- tremon 3y agolaw enforcement companies These don't exist in Europe for as far as I know, and should not exist anywhere else either. As soon as basic functions like this are outsourced, the state loses its monopoly on violence and a large part of its legitimacy.
- ClumsyPilot 3y agoif state loses monopoly on violence, violence is a valid strategy for entrepreneurship. crime no longer exists
- Gud 3y agoThey absolutely do exist in Europe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Securitas_AB https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Securitas_AB
- narag 3y agoI don't want to embroil in an absurd semantics discussion, so please, take this answer in a constructive way. The term "private law enforcement company" is unfortunate. There are private providers of security tech, weapons, etc. for law enforcement and there are also private security companies. But neither seem to really be law enforcement in my opinion.