Comment by belowavgiq
1 day ago
"The procedure now chosen gives the proponents of Chat Control a significant tactical advantage. Since the law is in its second reading, an absolute majority of 361 votes of all parliament members is required for amendments or a renewed rejection on Thursday. In contrast, a simple majority of the MEPs present is sufficient for the other side. As many parliamentarians have historically already departed by the last day before the summer break, the re-enactment of the regulation is considered almost unavoidable."
So, if I'm reading this correctly, Chat Control is bound to become law? and this is after I think 2/3 rejections, how democratic of the EU.
Oh, and parliamentarians starting their summer break whenever they want will never not be funny.
> So, if I'm reading this correctly, Chat Control [2.0, implied] is bound to become law?
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.
Thanks for the correction! I guess I can live with that.
yes. Frog will be boiled tomorrow, no need to panic today.
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> or maybe already has, I didn't keep track
Literally second paragraph.
> to reinstate the transitional regulation for Chat Control, which expired in April
What percentage of EU citizens support Chat Control and what percentage oppose it?
Why is this answer down voted? Isn't a reasonable question to ask? Are the lawmakers proposing laws the majority of the people want?
We never know, because it depends on what your source of information is instructed to propose. Like public opinion polls that created false illusion of what majority wants. But it's just a sample with manufactured questions manipulated to answer specific options.
Personally, I don't fell lawmakers proposing laws that I want. Firstly, because I don't belive that laws are solutions for problems.
> So, if I'm reading this correctly, Chat Control is bound to become law? and this is after I think 2/3 rejections, how democratic of the EU.
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.
1 - this is about Chat Control 1.0
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.
The voting dynamics changing beacause elected representatives can't plan their vacations like any regular work place is pretty silly
Yes it's a dirty trick
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One of reasons the the EU exists is so domestic prime ministers can deflect blame and say "not me, it was them over there in the EU parliament and my hands are tied"
That's the British approach
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
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You have apparently no idea what an actual dictatorship is
The European Comission is the top decision maker of the EU. The European citizen has zero (0) influence on the members or actions of the EC. No different than the politburo in China.
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It's mostly a lack of properly descriptive words in the language. I think "totalitarian liberalism" or the "managerial state" is probably closer to what we're talking about here. Power is not concentrated in one individual; responsibility and accountability are diffused so far that it is impossible to find someone who actually can do or change anything. "Rational systems" of business process and rigour serve to remove individual wisdom and intuition from the equation entirely. Adding AI on top of this will probably only further entrench it - walls of words protecting people from really improving anything meaningfully.
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.
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Tell me the difference please. Which country we compare to?
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No, I think the term applies very well. That there are worse dictatorships does not really nullify the statement.
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.
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I suppose you know?
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.
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It's much more of an oligarchy where even though the members of the elite are elected the body of them as a whole appears to have enough influence over new members to force them to act in accordance with an ongoing plan. It seems like any real change would require a very large super majority of new members to be elected at the same time in order to change course. Even a country like the UK seems to still be under their influence after leaving the union which speaks volumes about the amount of backroom dealing that must be going on.
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Nearly every law pushed by the EU Commission has support from the EU Council.
Chat control is no different.
Is there reliable polling that shows this is broadly unpopular?
The fact that the parliament pushed back already twice in the very recent past is a clear signal the population doesn’t want it
People like you are why Chat Control is needed btw.
I don’t understand your point. We do not need chat control.
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> how democratic of the EU.
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.
It’s the council. We have to be clear which institution we are talking about within the EU, otherwise that doesn’t make any sense. The European Parliament already pushed back that proposal. The EU is made of a lot of different actors with their own agenda.
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)
If the EU as a system has an undemocratic backdoor it's descriptively correct to call it undemocratic. Not to play too hard on the HN user stereotype, but you wouldn't call a computer system that is mostly secure other than a known privilege escalation exploit secure, would you?
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> The European Parliament already pushed back that proposal. The EU is made of a lot of different actors with their own agenda.
It doesn't matter how the European parliament voted.
https://www.politico.eu/article/president-vs-parliament-robe...
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> how democratic of the EU
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.
MEPs are directly elected by citizens, not governments. It's the Council instead where representatives (ministers) of all national governments sit
Yup, edited to clarify I mean the MEPs bring “the will of the people”. Clearly not enough has happened on local level to raise awareness / lobby against chat control. I don’t think many outside tech are even aware if the slippery slope of the surveillance machinery.
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The parliament rejected the proposal twice. Yes the governments support it, but not the people of European countries
And who exactly elects the governments I wonder? Aliens?
uhm, the will of the people is often already half-lost with the politicians/parties they directly elect, so I would hardly consider another layer of representative "demo"cracy on top of another layer of representative democracy following the will of the people at all.
But true, I blamed this on the Commission when I should have just started with this criticism of the overall system.
Is it really supported by the people, or just the politicians?
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.
We have representatives in Switzerland, please don’t misrepresent our political system to push your anti-EU agenda. We do not vote on every single laws. It’s a semi-direct democracy. A representative democracy is the most common instantiation of democratic systems.
Representative democracy vs direct democracy is the actual dichotomy you’re looking for.
Making it not illegal for Facebook to scan your DMs is not autocracy. (And we know Facebook does that whether it's legal or not.) To make it autocracy, at a minimum they'd have to mandate the scanning, which is Chat Control 2, which is still not passing.