"Rules for thy not for me" Our ruling class.
this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2025
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It’s not the EU that will be scanning. Given that the scans will largely be aided by “AI”, private corporations will have access to all communications.
They're such bullies. It also shows how awful democracy can be. They just change the legalese around until it goes trough. It has already been voted against, yet they want the control and do whatever they can to get it.
Can't believe that nobody told them their dick pics will get flagged as false positives.
It somewhat works here (Switzerland) since the Volksentscheid is holy and pulling that stunt gets a lot of people really upset about not honoring that choice.
But yeah democracies need rules against repeated attempts, since this is an exploit violating the idea of a democracy. In Germany, this is already a problem, called Salamitaktik (Salami slicing tactic).
What about the new internet surveillance law being pushed that Proton is moving it's infrastructure out of Switzerland to avoid? Is there any pushback to that?
The EU is a democracy.
While it's not perfect (no system is), each of the bodies that make up the EU legislature are democratic:
- The European Parliament is directly elected in European elections every five years
- The European Commission is made up of commissioners from each country, which are in turn appointed by their democratically elected governments
- The European Council consists of the heads of state or governance, which are also democratically elected in the respective countries.
- The Council of the European Union is made up of government ministers, which are appointed by the democratically elected governments.
Not every body is directly voted on, but each body comes forth from a democratic election
Edit: The message I responded to originally made the claim that the "EU is no democracy."
You are right that there are no perfect democracies, but the EU really isn't even close. Rather the EU should foremost be considered a technocracy with some formal democratic underwriting.
In most cases, that's totally fine and not a problem in terms of democracy. Most policies, especially in the matters the EU was originally formed to make decisions on, there isn't a huge interest for citizens to get involved – national interests (governments) and organized interest/lobby groups usually offer enough avenues for input on things like technical agricultural export standards. However, as the Union expands into things like organizing mass surveillance under flimsy pretexts, and whatnot, private citizens aren't adequately represented – a stronger popular mandate is required for the decisionmaking to truly be considered democratic.
Formally, I, as a citizen of an EU member state, can influence the decisions of the EU in two ways: By voting for my country's parliament every fourth year and by voting in the general elections for European Parliament every fifth. So let's examine how far that goes.
Where I live, the main opposition party and the largest government party generally agree on most controversial issues pertaining to privacy or individual rights, e.g. Chat Control. Together these parties control a majority of the seats of parliament. Those parties gain the bulk of their support on domestic issues, such as tax policy, crime prevention, etcetera. Thus, question like Chat Control are essentially dead on arrival in terms of parliamentary politics. Now, my country is also not a perfect democracy, but comparatively it would (justly) rank quite high and parties can be responsive to popular opinion and outcries. So let's say a citizen group managed to put Chat Control on the agenda, to the point where parties feel vulnerable on the issue. What then? Then that amounts to one vote out of 27 in the European Council, which is only meaningful when that is enough for a veto.
But the ubiquitous vetoes are what truly undermines the EU's standing as a democracy, in my opinion. Notably, vetoes are pretty much the best you can get from your EP vote as well, in terms of the parliament's decision making powers. In reality, the only thing citizens of the EU can rally behind is stopping proposals by, chiefly, the supreme technocratic body, the Commission. There is no cross-border party mechanism with pan-European campaigning on the council level. Voters do not influence majorities. And on the EP level the party mechanism, built on "political groups", is opaque and not truly cross-border. Cohesive citizen involvement is foreign to the EU decision making process.
That is not to say that the EU is a nefarious body, or that the democratic deficiencies are intended to alienate EU citizens from the decision process. It's just that it is glaring, especially in the context of Chat Control, that public opinion isn't in the driver's seat.
What you're describing is a republic not a democracy.
Republic and democracy are not mutually exclusive...
You are conveniently ignoring the facts that
- elected officials are only allowed to vote on legislation put forth and that legislation is heavily influenced if not entirely written by corporate lobbyists.
- lobbyists directly bribe their way to favourable outcomes
- democratic processes are simply ignored when inconveniencing the powers that be - see v.d. Leyen never being on the ballot yet holding the highest office
- corruption among high ranking EU officials is like a mafia, and they do not hold elected positions but get appointed, so they can't be voted out.
Yeah okay. But what i have issues with; it is yet another step away from the people (something medium+ sized democracies already struggle with), leading politicians to make decisions in their own interest instead of for the imaginary numbers. On top of that, member states often move the unqualified but powerful/loved politicians there, because they "can do less damage there" (i know multiple cases from Germany).
So i have trouble calling it one, even though it formally is.
Yup, a democratic system should be judged on its outcomes, not its structure. If the decisions taken by a democratic organization do not strongly align with the wishes of the large majority of its members, then it isn't democratic. There are plenty such examples playing out today. Besides, in representative democracy voting at the various elections is not enough to achieve highly aligned outcomes. By the time you get to the ballot box a whole lot of the fundamental decisions have been made without your input. E.g. who the representatives candidates are and what their candidate platforms are. This is how you get to "all the choices suck" and "vote for the least bad option" scenarios. Meanwhile the prebaked decions that lead to these scenarios are going to benefit the interested groups that made them. The effect of voting at the ballot box in such scenarios then becomes providing consent to satisfy those interests.
E: And of course any leftist can explain why and how those interests arise and how they capture the representative democratic system. And how that produces loss of faith in the system.
They are theoretically, but coming from Eastern Europe all those levels of abstractions lead to "opportunities" for "managing democracy" and more importantly for alienation of the people because most people do not know what they are voting for or what each of their chosen representativea do when in office.
I am not saying it is a broken system, but I think it can be better and in particular direct participation can be greatly improved.
If the economy is not democratic, it is not a democracy
All I see is a bureaucratic nightmare. No democracy to be seen, starting from the fact all politicians in the EU are bourgeoisie.
Their servants are all unpaid interns who have a near zero chance of ever staying in Brussels. Those that don't come from well-off families that can support them will never enter a single EU institution.
It is a buerocratic nightmare, but filthy bolsheviks has zero rights to criticize it.
Uh?
Yeah it is the 3th time in the past year I think some variation of this shit is proposed.... Fuck them.
This isn't democracy. It is capitalist dictatorships terrorising the working class.
Secret police monitoring your every action is incompatible with democracy. It is authoritarian tyranny.
I sent my emails and will try to call them. Have you?
It will pass eventually. Seeing the way EU countries are going, the right to far right will get voted in, and they will end up voting for these sort of bullshit measures they can Orwellianly exploit.
Sorry for spamming the tool but: https://fightchatcontrol.eu/
It shows you your representatives and generates a email for you. Very handy.
I’ve already reached out to several in my country, on the maybe list. Annoying to see this crop up again.
Somewhat irrelevant: omg, this is peak “corporate art sucks.” It’s like corporate art combined with fascist content, more than usual.
Just to note - from Wikipedia: "On 21 June 2024, it was reported that voting on the legislation had been temporarily withdrawn by the EU Council, in a move that is believed to be the result of pushback by critics of the proposal including software vendors."