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Comment by hnhg | Hacker News Reader

I have such a strong reaction to news like this, it's hard for me to not think that it's appropriate for every member state to consider leaving the EU now. They've succeeded in shifting me to a very anti-EU stance in one proposed measure - brilliant! It wouldn't surprise me if the leaders of most states are quite keen on such surveillance though.

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I kinda get it, but it doesn't make sense to blame it on the EU when you own government would likely impose the exact same (if not harsher) rules. Thats at least what I tell myself. I'm under no illusion that my own government is any better.

See: The UK, doggedly pursuing similar legislation

I think it does logically - in any countries where you have more direct democracy than the EU flavour, certainly easily achievable in respect of the Commission.

Whether that has any practical difference given the nature of politicians and politics in general, well, at best your mileage may vary.

EU is not a foreign entity, it's made up of the governments of the members(some elected some appointed by the locally elected). So when you leave EU, you end up to live with the entity that tried to introduce it in first place.

If they didn't wanted that, they could have blocked it. However, leaving EU might actually help the government to have a better localised excuse. For example, maybe child abuse is not a big thing in your country but immigration is a hot topic? Then you can have "break the encryption to stop the human smugglers" campaign.

Your argument does not stand with e.g. France.

In France, there's an election for each. One for national parliament seats, one for EU parliament seats.

In the last decade, the national elections were usually won by center-left (Macron's party) while the EU ones were won by the far-right (Le Pen even has a seat at the EU parliament AFAIK)

What it doesn’t stand exactly? Who is the foreign entity that makes French people do at stuff? Macros? Le Pen? The French voters?

Well in theory I'd agree with you, but in practice your assertion that people would vote the same party nationally and at the EU level is demonstrably false

I don't get it? Do you claim that one of the elections is rigged? I mean, we have multiple elections for a reason right? People choose to vote for different people on different elections, why would that be problematic and how that would be "fixed" if France left EU?

It is EU law that will prevent the Commission from actually getting anywhere near implementing a project this stupid and insanely-illegal.

Over in the UK, the EU can't stop the new Kakistocracy from actually doing it. I know where I'd rather live.

The EU commission members are appointed by each member state.

The schema how they're appointed and which country appoints which is.. muddy to say the least.

And then EC bureaucracy has a lot of weight with appointed commissioners (who frequently know jackshit about assigned fields) acting as PR figures.

I'm very critical of the EU, i do think it is poorly designed and not a desirable project regardless.

That being said, things like this would happen at the national level for sure, the EU has nothing to do with it. It's systemic to "modern democracies ".

The issue is that they might end up breaking encryption anyways as exited states.

Better to have a patchwork of occasional shitty laws from weak, small states than consistent and unified shitty laws with widespread enforcement.

The counter-argument is that nothing prevents governments coordinating on this in a supranational manner, anyway (cf. the planned, but fortunately rejected ACTA).

In the EU enforcement is mostly decentralised, anyway.

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