[microtonal]

Non-democracies speedrun towards surveillance even faster. Democracy is the best we have and this action is anti-democratic.

The other part of the story is that as long as Europe continues to vote radical rights + conservatives, we are going to get more and more of this. Most greens and progressives fight this tooth and nail.

[yorwba]

What is anti-democratic about trying to assemble a coalition to change lawmakers' minds and get them to vote differently? It is rather core to democracies that decisions aren't set in stone and if you disagree with the majority you can always try to renegotiate.

While most greens and progressives may be against this particular law, I rather doubt that if they introduced a progressive green law for a vote and failed to get a majority, they would immediately give up and never try to get such a law passed ever again.

And I think it's good that nobody has to give up on politics just because they lost once.

[microtonal]

I get your point, but I think there are several issues:

- Chat Control gets pushed by lobbyists, who have far more/better access to politicians than citizens. It is true that there are also some non-profits lobbying in this case, but the surveillance economy companies that are pushing this behind the scene have very deep pockets and very deep access.

- Chat Control gets pushed over and over again by the EC, which is the least accountable/democratic between the Parliament, Council, and Commission.

If you look outside the EU, there are enough examples of governments that are democratically elected, but are in practice not accountable to citizens because they are in the pockets of large companies that funded their campaigns, etc.

[soco]

It's also this learned helplessness of the voters, a very useful tool for whoever wants to push their agenda. Have you noticed who the "anti-system" voters are actually voting for? They're voting exactly to increase borders, controls, surveillance, all for the children and against immigrants. Plus, this is the tech forum where the tech folks actually building the foundation for this surveillance, yes that's us, complain about inevitability. It's... sad to watch.

[modo_mario]

>The other part of the story is that as long as Europe continues to vote radical rights + conservatives,

Which itself happened due to a democratic deficit regarding migration.