> those trying to pass this legislation get paid to do so
Chat Control has paid lobbyists on both sides. Also, paying lobbyists is still sinking resources. And the people taking their meetings are still sinking political capital into a fight that has–to date–yielded zilch.
> while those against it have work hard and pay taxes to fund the former
The principal moneyed interests in this fight are the tech companies. Your taxes aren't funding their fight. The police lobby is less effective if filtered through paid lobbyists versus having a police chief personally pitch lawmakers.
Considering it's a sensitive topic there'll be very little interest in repealing it. Especially if they drag up a few token cases and go like "see it's working!".
Look at all the crazy secret surveillance powers in the US. How much of that got repealed after snowden? No, people just got used to it because no politician wants to be called a tattooist terrorist friend.
The best defense is often an offense. If we start going on the offensive, and pushing laws that promote privacy, then they also need to start winning every time not to get those pushed. Let's get our act together.
It's a problem when the parliament can't propose the laws it has to vote on and the commission isn't elected and continues to be presided by the most corrupt person in the EU. She is blatantly EPP and just keeps proposing the shit they want.
For Americans, imagine if only Republicans ever got to propose legislation and only Democrats could vote on it. That's more or less it.
At least the Commision can't conduct war for 100 days without Congress approval.
I thought Juncker was an idiot but VdL is corrupt to Hillary levels and worse than the disastruous Merker/Juncker duo in every way. I'd like to see her replaced with someone like Macron. That's the type of leadership that the EU needs right now.
I honestly like the system as long as its reach is limited and it's stay this way (i.e EU regulations set goals, and states do what they want to reach it). The money lobbyists throw is huge, for very, very little progress.
Well, that's because she was nominated by European governments, which happen to be largely run by right-wing parties right now. There have been socialist personalities in her place in the past. That has nothing to do with democracy.
It's already there, in the European Convention on Human Rights [1], Article 8:
ARTICLE 8
Right to respect for private and family life
1. Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family
life, his home and his correspondence.
You have the right to privacy, just no actual privacy. Just like in Life of Brian, where Stan/Loretta has the right to have children, but can't actually have children.
I feel like that would end with the same surveillance loopholes that Google, Microsoft and Apple exploit today.
Users need the ability to choose operating systems and software that is not exclusively green-lit by a first-party vendor. It's not glamorous, but pretending that software isn't a competitive market is what put us into this surveillance monopoly in the first place. "trust" distributed among a handful of businesses isn't going to cut it in a post-2030s threat environment.
The US really, really wants it implemented, and several national police institutions in the EU does too. Plus the politicians that start to drool a little at the prospect.
The current institution where the parliament is not able to choose which laws it votes is already not democratic. Such limitation would at least avoid the blatant gaming of the system.
When have "the people" been last consulted on this? Do you really think Chat Control has high public support? Given how most "democracies" work in our world today (which is to say with no consultation of the people), i think limiting their ability to do further harm might be worth it.
This wouldn't limit the ability of governments to do harm, it would limit the ability of the people to mitigate that harm by giving them only one chance to ever do so.
I don't think "democracy is flawed therefore we need less of it" is a good idea.
The MEPs represent the people. They've just been consulted. They said no.
Looking at what each of my MEPs voted they seemed to pretty accurately represent their own party lines, the right and far right voted for, left and center left voted against. I'm shocked! Shocked! Well not that shocked.
