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Comment by str3wer | Hacker News Reader

this keeps getting proposed every few months and it keeps getting rejected

The problem is they only need to win once. What we really need is an immutable section in the EU constitution that anyone who tries to take away basic privacy rights like this is immediately tried for crimes against humanity and sent to prison for the rest of their lives.

No, they don't need to "win once", rules can be changed.

And the ECJ/ECHR are a thing (and yes they have ruled against overreaching rules in the past)

(though I like your suggestion)

> The problem is they only need to win once.

and due to the structure of the EU: once it is has passed it is almost impossible to rescind

no matter who you vote for in the future

You can't even vote out people who keep bringing it in in the first place.

Conversely, perhaps protection against this kind of dragnet can be enshrined in Constitutions / Bills of Rights / UN Charters to defend against these attacks more fundamentally.

> The problem is they only need to win once.

This is a classic EU tactic

Privacy rights are in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, which is indirectly part of the Treaty of Lisbon, the closest thing to an EU constitution.

The CJEU has stuck down laws affecting privacy multiple times.

There is always wiggle room of course, and vigilance has to be eternal.

They just change it slightly every time until it passes. But it won’t be very potent in the end; I cannot imagine blanket encryption backdoors etc will be voted in. But if it does I am gone, out of principle. As tech person I cannot stand the stupidity of this all. I hope I am dead before I run out of countries to go to.

This has been going on for 15 years

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zugangserschwerungsgesetz

>> this keeps getting proposed every few months and it keeps getting rejected

> This has been going on for 15 years

I paste here the comment I wrote a few hours ago in the thread “European Commission prefers breaking privacy to protecting kids”: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31344817

Indeed, in the words of the previous President of the European Commission:

“We decide on something, leave it lying around and wait and see what happens. If no one kicks up a fuss, because most people don't understand what has been decided, we continue step by step until there is no turning back.” https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jean-Claude_Juncker#1999

The current President of the European Commission has been a long time advocate for Internet control:

“However, in the digital community, her posturing for the EU’s top job has caused concern. In 2000 [sic, actually 2009], when Von Der Leyen was Families minister, she advocated for the mandatory blocking of child pornography online via a list of offending websites managed by police authorities. Germany’s Pirate Party claimed that the law would lead to censorship of the internet.”

“The outcry that resulted was dubbed the ‘Zensursula’ scandal, blending the German word for censorship (“Zensur”) and her name (“Ursula”). The move was eventually repealed after it being challenged broadly, including a petition that had garnered tens of thousands of signatures.” https://www.euractiv.com/section/digital/news/digital-brief-...

Keep voting, per country, for the right people and capable digital people on the gov; the pendulum can swing the other way giving people the right to strong encryption. I like dreaming. Any country where that is a right by the way? So where an org like the nsa cannot exist with backdoors by law?

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