Explain this logic to me please.
I vote liberal parties in my country and that has done jack shit to prevent shitty laws to be passed because the majority seems to be electing the types of people who absolutely adore surveillance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Organs_of_the_European_Un...
To the extent that conspiracies of “deep state” or “lobbyist” are involved, the only reason the EU is different to the member states themselves is that it’s a single big target instead of a lot of small ones.
Confusingly, there's also the European Council. You vote out your representative in there by voting out your your head of government (president, premier, taoiseach etc.), because again, it's literally the same person.
And if you're talking about the commission, which seems to have little to do with this, you vote them out by voting in different heads of government (again) to nominate different commissioners/a different president, and/or different members of the European parliament to not confirm them.
Also - I am still shocked how much surveillance there is in the UK compared to mainland Europe. In the UK it's a criminal offence to refuse to hand over passwords for your devices (and encryption keys).
That is not the case in the EU, so I find it quite funny that you cite a proposal that would have to go through the parliament first and could still be overruled by national laws, as a good reason for not being in the EU :D
If that means you’re British: the GCHQ initiated this. Nobody is more under video surveillance than you guys. Enjoy your chat loicense.
And it's not like the police can barge in and demand video.
I don't even know where to start.
Considering that I come from a third world nation where the cops often pull members of my community aside for searches and special checks, the British police force for all their faults are a breath of fresh air. I've been exactly in that spot, with police using surveillance data and national ID data to arrest protestors and put them under false charges. I've personally almost been arrested for no reason except for 1.) walking in the night alone and 2.) walking at night in suspicious clothing (i.e. T-shirt and shorts).
If we left at the last minute, it's so that we can go faster. One of the things we are deliberately jettisoning is the protections afforded us by being in the EU.
People who cared about this in the UK; our best bet was to stay in the EU which is not nearly so extreme about it as the UK is. The current UK government is looking forwards to jettisoning the protections and human rights that were afforded us by being in the EU.
That said, the current UK government is fantastically inept. Everything they touch turns to shit, and any time BoJo says he absolutely won't do something - he'll crumble in a fortnight (see e.g. every EU negotiation, Lockdown 2.0, the feeding children fiasco, etc etc).
There are current UK ministers whose names have become bywords for incompetency and government fuckup. If the UK decided to ban encryption tomorrow, and the government put their best people on it, we'd be looking at a decade or so before they got anywhere. The EU are heading to a more moderate place, but they will get there faster by virtue of not being British; by not having to do it via the dream team of Johnson, Cummings, and whoever is in charge of screwing up everything they touch this week (Chris Grayling, the man who paid millions to a ferry company that had never owned, chartered, leased or in any other way been involved with a ferry or single ferry route, historically takes this role).
Ah, Priti Patel, the minister that was forced to resign by the May government for having had several secret meetings with Israeli officials during her tenure. Enjoy the UK!
She wanted to fund Israeli Army hospitals in the Golan Heights out of the UK foreign aid budget. Off her own back, without telling anyone.