11 ms·

Whereas we in the EU have our own dubious surveillance programmes, at least they are made by governments we can overthrow ourselves. Also, European governments

• notatoad 13y ago
  from my very basic understanding of EU privacy laws, the big win is that they treat everybody equally - the rules say what data you can retain, what data you can't, and that's it. What really scares me about all this FISA and PRISM stuff is that they treat foreigners as essentially non-persons. They at least make some effort at pretending there's a due process for american citizens, but if you're a foreigner with your data on a system owned by a US company, you literally have no rights at all.
  • aswanson 13y ago
    Yeah, that attitude in the u.s. scares me; the labels we put on noncitizens. Those labels, I believe enabled our compliant media to sell that idiotic Iraq war to the public. I don't recall them tracking the Iraqi civilian deaths at all. I mean, after all, they weren't born in the u.s. so who cares, right?
    • dnautics 13y ago
      it's merely formalizing the truth that because they can't vote, the government is not accountable to noncitizens. Do you seriously think that the European Union treats everyone within its borders equally? If that were the case, why are there the banlieues of Paris? Why does Italy treat african boat people so poorly? Why are there stateless individuals of Turkish descent in Germany?
  • flexie 13y ago
    That's a very good point - in the last months the world listened in on Americans debating whether drones can be used against Americans or just against us foreigners, as if we are worth less. Now we learn that the American government speculates that maybe foreigners don't deserve the same degree of privacy.
    • mpyne 13y ago
      I hope this isn't new to you. Since day one the NSA has been legally limited to collection of data on foreigners. That part of it is nothing new. FBI is who handled domestic intelligence operations. While I don't like that attitude (and don't like it for the drone discussion either, or Gitmo), it's not at all anything new. I think the concept dates from the 1800s in fact
  • Silhouette 13y ago
    What really scares me about all this FISA and PRISM stuff is that they treat foreigners as essentially non-persons. Something that struck me a while ago is that while most of the modern world talks about protecting "human rights", the ruling classes in the US always seem to talk about protecting things like "Constitutional rights" or "citizens' rights". I'm not sure what that says about their underlying attitude, but it can't be good. The trouble is, a lot of places have at least tendencies in the same direction, it's just hard to see them if you're a native and get to go in the "EU citizen" queue at customs or whatever it might be, so you don't see how others visiting your country are treated even from the moment they arrive. And since typically those outsiders have no direct influence on policy in places they visit, there is no natural political incentive for each country's government to treat them as much more than a source of revenue for the tourism/education/commercial sector. With the rise in modern times of ubiquitous international communications networks and relatively quick and easy physical travel between countries, unfortunately this seems to be a race to the bottom, with a lower bound determined only by the point at which people actually stop visiting/communicating with your country, which as a practical matter is going to be difficult for many people to do.
    • guard-of-terra 13y ago
      Well, i've seen people avoid visiting USA thanks to airport security (and US airports in general). Insane visa requirements don't help either. In the age of internet it's actually easier to stop physically moving around.
      • Silhouette 13y ago
        Well, i've seen people avoid visiting USA thanks to airport security In fact, you're talking to one right now. The way I look at it, there are many wonderful places in the world that I would like to visit one day, but I'm never going to make it to all of them in the one lifetime I get. I'd prefer to go to places where I will feel welcome and enjoy myself, not to places where the procedure on arrival or departure is going to make me feel like a criminal just for showing up. Of course, some people have jobs that require them to travel or have family living abroad or for many other reasons would need to make much greater sacrifices than I do if they were to give up flying. So I try not to assume that everyone else can vote with their wallets as easily as I can on this one.
  • 7952 13y ago
    And the irony is that foreigners are increasingly being considered as targets fo prosecution without having set foot in the county.
• deleted 13y ago
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• pfortuny 13y ago
  IANAL but (Spain): there is NO way to get an order from the Government which you cannot legally make public. You cannot be forced to keep a secret you did not seek to know (unless you are a Gvt employee, which includes that explicitly).
  • weinzierl 13y ago
    That's interesting, does anyone know how this is in Germany?
• philwelch 13y ago
  It's interesting. There are few European countries where I can unconditionally refuse to speak to police or refuse them to search my home or person without a warrant. We don't have CCTV cameras like they do in the UK. And when it comes to being able to overthrow your government yourselves, much of Europe has the same sham democracy we do. (Berlusconi? Seriously? Twice?) We have guns, but the parts of Western Europe who really wanted to overthrow their governments within recent history were able to get all the guns and explosives they wanted too. So it's hard to really say one is any better than the other.
  • davidw 13y ago
    > So it's hard to really say one is any better than the other. Smart people look at both and try and learn, rather than getting on a high horse about "better", when "better" is awfully difficult to define anyway. > Berlusconi? Seriously? Twice? Sadly, no: three times, the first being in 1994.
  • flexie 13y ago
    The European Court of Human Rights has established that the right to remain silent under police questioning and the privilege against self-incrimination applies. All over Europe elections are held at least every 4th or 5th year and governments are regularly overthrown, in Italy more often than anywhere else, I think.
    • philwelch 13y ago
      > The European Court of Human Rights has established that the right to remain silent under police questioning and the privilege against self-incrimination applies. Interesting. But the details of that certainly differ from country to country, at least judging from the reaction to James Duane's "Don't Talk To Police" video. For instance, in the UK, if you refuse to answer police questions, statements you make in favor of your innocence can be thrown out because you didn't mention them to the police under questioning. So the "right to remain silent under police questioning" is much weaker in the UK. > All over Europe elections are held at least every 4th or 5th year and governments are regularly overthrown We have elections every other year, so I'm curious why that's considered a point of difference between Europe and the US. The issue is whether the electoral system can effect real change or whether it's fixed by the rich and powerful, e.g. by owning a large chunk of the country's media and continuing to run those and other private businesses while serving as Prime Minister.
• dnautics 13y ago
  "European governments mostly grant us basic human rights" In the US the traditional (but fading) attitude is that "The US government protects basic human rights". See, the problem is if government 'grants' you human rights, there's a potential for conflict of interest where the government could decide to no longer grant you that right if it becomes inconvenient. At least with the US attitude, you can wag your finger and say, "you're failing to protect right X". And yes, that attitude means that the US is not obligated to protect the privacy of foreigners. BUT that is different from the question of whether or not the US should actively violate the privacy of foreigners.
  • dllthomas 13y ago
    Right. There's a difference between "respect" and "protect" - I think US policy should be to respect the rights of everyone, and protect the rights of citizens; it should protect the rights of others when it can do so conveniently and without stomping on too much else, but it should really commit to those first two.
    • dnautics 13y ago
      Well the US rights system has selective applicability to non citizens. For example in a court of law, non-citizens absolutely have the right to a jury, a fair trial, due process, etc. The bill of rights, for example, does not specify 'citizens' in any way. In the US natural rights system, the primary offender of rights is the government[1]. For example, you can't argue that facebook is violating your first amendment rights when it 'censors' what you post, because your decision to use facebook was voluntary. So when the government protects your rights[2] (as in the bill of rights), it's mostly protecting your rights from itself. Privacy isn't specifically enumerated in the US constitution (it's been inferred from natural rights and the 10th amendment - to a lesser degree the 5th and 14th as well). [1] The 'right to life'/'not be assaulted' seems to be the major exception. Obivously someone that is not the government can threaten your life, including, murderers, corporate negligence, foreign states, etc. The 'right to privacy' does take on aspects of this, too, though - since google can drive its cars down public commons and gather information. Do you have a right to privacy, if you're out in what is generally accepted as a public commons? Does it make a difference if google records you (for example) making an ass of yourself, in a sweeping indiscriminate data collection, or if a friend you know happens to be at the right place and the wrong time to record you making an ass of yourself? [2] This is a very different concept of rights than what the europeans/UN have, which can include things like, the right to water, the right to food, the right to healthcare, the right to education, the right to internet access, etc. Under the US concept of rights might believe that you have the right to not be stopped from having water, stopped from having food, stopped from having healthcare, stopped from being educated, or stopped from accessing the internet, but, by and large, calling it a right to force others to provide these things rubs americans the wrong way (we call them 'entitlements' not 'rights'.)
• sliverstorm 13y ago
  small military It does simplify the issue for EU nations, but it doesn't mean this is the answer for the US. To my knowledge, EU nations get away with very small militaries in part due to the "umbrella" of the friendly US military. Not to say the US needs a super-mega-ultra-huge military, but this is like when people compare country X to Norway. "Look at how successful Norway is! Look at how wealthy everyone is!" Yeah, I'm sure that has nothing to do with the tremendous quantities of natural resources in Norway. Point being, we need to compare apples to apples. have no secret overseas prisons How exactly would you know if the EU nations had secret overseas prisons? Aren't they secret? :)
• stackedmidgets 13y ago
  To be fair, your governments lack the military strength to withstand the US. Germany is still under American occupation. To really throw off the yoke (which I support), you'll need to re-militarize.
  • znowi 13y ago
    And therein lies the problem. The US thinks in terms of military nouns. The EU doesn't :)
    • stackedmidgets 13y ago
      This is why those EU states are subordinate to the US and have been so since V-E day. Want to stop being subordinate? Kick out those soldiers.