Nope. This is bad, but not THAT bad.
This is an extension of the existing Chat Control 1.0, which was set to expire (or maybe already has, I didn't keep track). AIUI it gives chat companies permission to scan user chats for illicit content, but does not mandate it.
This is bad, but it's not the much worse still Chat Control 2.0 that was defeated several times already.
That’s not true, the previous instance of it expired, and the parliament rejected it. It wasn’t already lost, it was actually a win for people against the proposal
my bad then, i misunderstood the context
Certain implementations may fall afoul of data protection laws however.
The NSA wiretaps all phone calls - do they extort random citizens for petty crimes that in any other case nobody would ever know or care about?
Microsoft has your browsing history - we know this because of the recently unsealed court case. Do they do it?
Facebook already ignores this law and scans the content of all private messages anyway. Are they doing what you predicted?
I don't think even the actual Stasi was stopping people at random for petty crimes, right?
These are what leaked. Which is to say that it is very naive to assume that large powerful organization is not going to use its power for gain.
Microsoft and Facebook both use the scanning to network your connections and to build profiles of users to better manipulate your behavior. Hence the Cambridge Analytica Scandal let alone what we dont know about.
Why hand over power to these super powerful and large orgs? What do we supposedly gain as a society? I mean look at flock and Palantir, all it takes is for the political winds to change and the power is there because of these bills.
With the massive, byzantine web of local, state and federal laws everyone is violating numerous laws and regulations all the time. The goal here isn't to arrest everyone all the time for petty crimes and regulatory violations, it is to give the ability to the powers-that-be to select anyone engaging any frowned-upon behavior and pull up a list of legal violations that can be used to silence and/or imprison them. Activists, protesters, political opponents, people who are against whatever latest war the government chooses to engage in or speaking up against "chat control" or whatever the latest Orwellian government seizure of power is will be the ones who are targeted. The end game, which we are rapidly approaching with the elimination of privacy and individual autonomy, is totalitarianism.
Literally second paragraph.
> to reinstate the transitional regulation for Chat Control, which expired in April
Personally, I don't fell lawmakers proposing laws that I want. Firstly, because I don't belive that laws are solutions for problems.
Yes, (un?)fortunately that's how democracy works. You keep trying until you get the required majority. No different than elections.
And now, instead of blaming "democracy" or the EU, how about we look at people we all elected to our national and EU institutions who are now making this happen.
And just preemptively, there's is not a single person in a decision-making position on this issue whose power wasn't gifted to them either directly or indirectly by the voters. So let's not blame the EU for people being dumb with their votes.
2 - The vote was on the "Urgency requirement"
> parliamentarians starting their summer break whenever they want will never not be funny
Eh. This is the least problematic thing here. Some MEPs might just be on official PTO.
In Germany it's usually the other way around: the EU tries to force us to do objectively good things, while national and regional governments drag their feet implementing EU law or complying with regulations. We regularly have headlines about how we might have to pay fines to the EU, and every time it's for something where the EU seems clearly on the morally right side
And all that despite our government's best efforts to send their worst politicians to represent us in the EU. Describing von der Leyen as a disgraced politician who just failed upwards would not be entirely inaccurate
Germany is one of most wealthy, powerful and biggest contributors to the EU budget. They can't be bullied round easily.
"We regularly have headlines about how we might have to pay fines to the EU"
The state controls the media... a lot of headlines are orchestrated. But it is done so well, unless you know, you don't know...
Where Germany doesn't agree, it has sway. Where Germany and France don't agree, it is unlikely, and where Germany, France and Italy don't agree it's not going to happen as some countries matter more than others.
As I understand it, many of the issues faced by petitioners in the past were due to local corruption; officials would physically prevent petitioners from traveling to the petition office to deliver a complaint. The new systems (12345, 12388, and the apps) are intended to bypass that and have done a decent job at reducing corruption.
The Citizen’s Initiative is more of a referendum system for proposing bills, but due to its non-binding nature those bills are often ignored. China’s system doesn’t necessarily bind the government to action either, but given the small scale of the problems they are motivated to fix them.
This does not excuse China’s human rights abuses, but if you’re going to be abused either way, I can see why some would prefer to do it in a place with a rising standard of living and with a government that seems interested in improving.
It’s mainly complaints that are considered sensitive or destabilizing that are suppressed. This should sound familiar to those of us in the West. Germany actually goes farther by directly funding left-wing protest groups, as these are not considered destabilizing.
So yeah, if I had to choose to live in a country where I had to toe the party line and bite my tongue when it came to political expression it would be China. At least they would be providing a high quality of life and a secure and peaceful society in exchange even if I had to deal with the negatives of being a minority in their country.
We have spent 20 years criticising China for the great firewall and control of social media, but now are adopting similar laws ourselves.
There is significant probability that China will have better quality of life than Europe in 2045 and that very little will be left of European liberties
It can only propose; the decision is made by the EU parliament.
Whenever one reads EC you need to read: "All of the heads of state in a trenchcoat". Macron, Merz, etc
And yet this is an EP maneuver
And let's not forget on the American lobbyists pushing for it (Including Big Tech)
In some ways, the concentration of power in a dictatorship might be better, if the dictator was well morally aligned with the people. Trouble is, the people are seldom even morally aligned with each other in a unified way, so a dictator cannot easily represent their conflicting interests. Representative democracy does at least take a step towards solving that issue.
Although I’d argue it is often just as much a failed technocracy.
This is pretty much the exact argument that Hayek makes - socialism leads to fascism through political gridlock.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/45129546
https://lpeproject.org/blog/neoliberal-encasement-infrastruc...
Calling everything fascist, nazis, communists, etc. is making actual fascism, nazism and dictatorship more likely.
Because you can't raise the attention of people to the absolute priority those needs when the time come if you just wasted it on stuff that were not it again and again.
We are crying wolf, and we'll pay the price.
There are dictatorships, where a very select few people have absolute power, but there’s no visible dictator.
Iran is a country like this. There’s no visible dictator. It’s a game of power between the clergy, the military, and the civil government.
Even "democracies" have death penalties and commit to genocide. See the USA as an example here. One can always reason that there are worse countries in this regard - nobody rejects that either.
We need to have a much more nuanced view on democracy. The EU presently is not one.
You can have some gray area I guess, with unfair elections or whatever, but when the bad decisions are made by leaders who keep on getting re-elected in reasonably fair elections, we do not have a dictatorship.
Now go enlighten us on how the EU is super democratic and way better than the worst dictatorship that ever existed, so we may be happy we are not the worst.
Well they're not rounding people because of their religion or sexuality and putting them in "retraining" camps yet. Or using "criminals" as enforced organ donors. I suppose there's that.
The EU is being a bit short-sighted and shit with regard to Chat Control but let's not loose perspective here.
Right. They pay Turkey to do that: https://www.rescue.org/eu/article/what-eu-turkey-deal
I don’t think the EU is a classic dictatorship, but it’s a colossal failure nonetheless, has a severe lack of democracy and acceptance. And their personnel is mediocre, not like the US administration but it’s closer than ppl in this forum realize.
You really have trouble imagining what this could lead to?
https://www.bbc.com/news/live/c70yk5xjyl1t
https://www.politico.eu/europe-poll-of-polls/germany/ (the biggest party gets first shot at providing the chancellor and government)
And while Hungary's Magyar is a huge improvement over Orban, let's be honest here, he's extreme right too.
Anti-immigration rightist parties are the norm across Europe nowadays. The center is shifting right in a big way, and the current "sanity" coalitions are forced to make deeper and deeper cuts in government services. They will keep losing popularity for another decade or so.
The extreme right's message of "let's kick immigrants out so we can instead spend on normal, good people" is total bullshit of course, it doesn't work like that. But voters are going to be more and more desperate for anything that stops the government service cuts, for a very long time yet.
And the problem is that the base part of the argument is true. Immigration was supposed to save Europe's collective economic ass and has utterly, completely and totally failed to do that.
And, of course, like the UK has demonstrated, the sad truth is EU governments are going to cause a lot of social problems through ECB-enforced spending cuts. They'll be looking for someone to blame and ... well we all know where that leads.
We could easily see a repeat of Trumps wrecking ball, enforced by the EU, in Europe.
Oh, I 100% see the problem with it. I think pushing draconian laws, that have already been defeated, in secret backroom deals is dodgy as.
I think you have some very valid points.
I think the centre and left just see opportunities to act without compromise, never considering that it will piss of their electorates. The electorate will reply by voting just to piss off the politicians regardless of the consequences. Just like with Brexit.
That still doesn't mean that the EU is currently worse than actual dictatorships.
If you'll indulge my argument: I have a fair amount of confidence in the stability of the system and fairness of elections. It may be rigged in favour of some interested parties, but there are solid ways to get the people currently in power to be replaced by others and still retain stability in the system. Not so in any of: Iran, Russia, Albany, Eastern Germany, The phillipines, China, Belarus, Sudan, ... That is my whole point. The rest is a different topic, but cynicism usually does not help in doing something.
Chat control is no different.
In the past, pre public availability of internet chat rooms, people used to be a lot more reserved, and speech had a consequence of public accountability.
Now, anyone can be anonymous, post anything that comes to mind without any real repercussion. People love to criticize laws like UK has against hate speech online, citing lack of freedom, but most people that got punished with that law will be seen in public saying the same shit.
There are 2 options to fix this. First, is no internet anonymity. Second is surveillance. The latter option is preferable, because it de-anonymizes you only to the government entities, not everyone.
The famous argument is "don't give the government power that you don't want the political opposition to have" is silly. As been proven so clearly, if the political opposition takes power, they will just do what they want ignoring the law anyways. Its much better to create systems in place that allow current sane governments to implement guardrails to prevent nefarious ideas from taking hold in the first place, and silencing the people that would have been ostasized in public in the pre internet days anyways.
Really, it's not the first time the EU pulls that kind of shite off.
And summertime is the perfect time, in Europe everyone's at the beach.
They even managed to find a work around an actual referendum.
Here the council, with the help of the EPP party is doing that undemocratic maneuvering: They made it on purpose so that the parliament is unlikely to be able to push back a third time (all of that leaked a few days ago)
An executive order isn't a law. It is an instruction for an executive branch agency or committee.
https://www.federalregister.gov/presidential-documents/execu...
When the congress doesn't even know that the president can do this or that, it's just dictatorship with some theater. In Europe, the EU's powers are much much more limited.
The way the EU is designed has nothing to do with the US or France. First the Parliament and Council (the bodies democratically elected) do not have power of legislative initiative.
Then the Commission, which is a "super" executive power, is not democratically elected. Unlike France or the US (the two you mentioned).
The EU has an architecture that is fundamentally different from the US or French system. In many way it is actually closer to something like the UN or PRC.
The head of the executive is elected, that makes quite a big difference.
> You’re missing the point I’m making, which is about how „democratic“ is a nuanced spectrum.
Yes and some have the right to argue that China is a democracy. They do have a lot of elections. And the CCP has a very broad spectrum of ideas and politics within it, in fact much broader than the people you will find in the EU Commission.
In the end it is about how much you perceive the common will is represented and served by the regime in place. Chat Control has openly gone against it for years and is being shove down our throat.
And there is a reason why farmers have been driving their tractors to Brussels from all over Europe for decades. The trip ain't cheap.
People do this all the time, regardless of whether or not they're right or wrong. "This product I own is definitely secure because the marketing says so, even if the CVEs prove me wrong" is a common sentiment online and in real life.
Not to play too hard on the computing-detatched normie stereotype, but this type of surveillance is bound to succeed due to their apathy. We've seen this play out in the US before, and it's always a shoo-in for the surveillance legislation. Security, privacy and fairness doesn't even cross most people's minds anymore.
It doesn't matter how the European parliament voted.
https://www.politico.eu/article/president-vs-parliament-robe...
Well, these are the MEPs elected by member states. We don’t like the outcome but this means chat control is well supported within the government of each country.
The Council decided Chat Control was on the agenda, the Commission wrote the law, and the MEPs voted to reject said law in March. Then the president of the parliament (not the MEPs at large) asked the Council to ignore the March vote and proceed with the agenda under urgency as if it had passed.
Now a minority of the MEPs (331 out of 720) - but a majority of who were present at the time and chose not to abstain - have voted to deal with the matter under urgency, but haven't voted on the substance of it. This makes the actual vote happen on the last sitting day, when apparently they are hoping a lot of MEPs will be away.
> The Council decided Chat Control was on the agenda
The Council is different from the European Council (yes, the treaty drafters were not much creative in naming institutions), the latter is composed of the heads of states and sets the agenda like you said, while the former is composed on ministers in the policy area under discussion, and it's a "co-legislator" together for the Parliament (on most areas, including Chat Control 1.0 & 2.0, both must agree to pass an act).
The issue here (it's part of the "democratic deficits") is that, in its second reading, the EP needs an absolute majority to amend/reject the Council first reading, and a simple majority to approve it and pass it into law.
But true, I blamed this on the Commission when I should have just started with this criticism of the overall system.
If the former, the EU is an autocratic democracy. If the later, an autocratic oligarchy.
Either way bad. Only true democracy in Europe is Switzerland where the people actually get to vote on laws.