EU plan to scan private messages for child abuse meets fresh scandal

The CPC governing bodies are indirectly elected too, by members of the Party, of which most anyone can join. That doesn't make it democratic.

Let's not play fast and loose with democracy here. We deserve, and should agitate for, more representative democracies else we slide slowly toward the very tyrannies we oppose.

Having more democratic EU institution is currently not related to federalism.

You can currently even have fully democratic institutions in a confederation system with limited power. Switzerland was an example of that.

> the current state of things, "aborted half-way", is a consequence of social engineering that failed to take into account

That is the pretty common eurosceptic speech and fortunately does not match the reality.

Most poll in Western Europe confirms an overwhelming majority of pro-EU position[^1]. It is currently even stronger in the younger generation.

The integration of the EU stopped because there is a political interest to keep it in its current state. An half baked monster is much easier to corrupt and control through lobbying and diplomatic negotiation than a democratic institution.

If you want to convince yourself of that, simply have a look on the last 2023 European Energy market reform.

It is a shit show of hidden national interests not even half covered up.

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/10/24/people-br...

More subtly I am not arguing that many people get into public service twirling their mustache and going "MuuuuAHAHAHA!". I am arguing that many people go in with their adolescent ideals and are convinced that they are doing good by doing the evil that they do. That is "banal corruption". They are not corrupt because going after money. They are not corrupt because going after fame and power. They are corrupt by letting their own ideals / philosophy / religion get in front of more provable, cold realities of what the polis actually needs done now.

Let's take a very banal example: Traffic engineers in one of the cities I live in (there might be only one traffic engineer). Their duty is to make traffic work ever better - that's required for the city to work well for its inhabitants. Other people have other missions. For that office, that's cars and bikes mostly - I don't know if public transit is this particular office's duty - and to keep pedestrians safe from that traffic and vice et versa. However in practice they work much more specifically to make it ever harder to drive cars. Based on the evidence of living in that city, they are actively working against car traffic. They are now NOT working to "honorably discharge" their duty. They are instead working on "what THEY think is good". That is NOT the same thing. It has a name. That name is "corruption".

Fine, another example at a different scale: You might remember the quote [The piece of paper is not a suicide pact] - as justification for one high office politician to ignore his sworn duty and do whatever he wanted. To which much of the country then cheered. Now that one is Corruption with a capital C.

Does the EU commissioner think they are doing the right thing? Probably yes. Would they acknowledge privately that they are stretching the limits to breaking point? Quite likely - they didn't get there by being stupid. Would they (privately) argue that it was worth doing "for the cause"? Yep. Corruption.

> the accumulated failure of voters, that enables the sociopathes their careers

Well, sure. I believe that in democracies, the buck does not stop with the president but with the voters. But I think this is at a deep level. That is, our current institutions are very vulnerable to this kind of takeover. And many voters cheer on that corruption (because it furthers THEIR ideals, and fuck the constitution.) Which is why I feel that "How we run institutions" is one of the current Big Challenges on humanity. How we do that currently really doesn't cut it. We have to find ways to do better.

> [libertarians vs democracy]

Facts not in evidence! Democracy as we run it currently is a fantastic breeding ground for this kind of corruption.

Authoritarian regimes are a different thing: They are completely dependent on whether the leading person or group is enlightened. It's a "luck of the draw" kind of thing. But yeah, they are "by design" there to pursue the obsessions of the leaders - whether good or bad.

I can assure you that the censoring goes much deeper than this. EU and especially the commission are not being open, while working hard to create the impression that they are.

I was not making a suggestion, I was stating facts.

> There's no way to have cash that doesn't also facilitate crime full stop

Life is not black and white. You can have freedom enabling technologies like cash but you acquiesce to cash controls, maximum transaction amounts, personal searches if there is reasonable suspicion and so on. Same applies to e2e encryption or anything else. To think otherwise just in this case is a nonce move, you have not refuted my points in the slightest.

Exactly. Which means tradeoffs. Like cash enables freedom, it also means that there are measures to reduce its use for bad purposes (including maximum transaction limits, how much you can carry in/out of country, etc) that we all agree to. Like using public transport enables mass killings, it also means there are measures to reduce that (security inspections, etc). Like advances in science and tech enable cool gadgets, they also enable deadly weapons and that's why their export is regulated (sanctions, etc).

If you want to have absolute freedom, please go start with those things instead of child abuse. It's top of double standard to agree to compromise when it concerns your personal adult freedom, but not when it concerns innocent and powerless victims.

> There is no such thing as a compromise. It requires pretending (or ignorance) to imagine that there is even any sort of compromise logically or physically possible.

Dude, it literally does not follow from what you write before this sentence. Any tool that can be used for good can also be used for bad, and there are always compromises in order to restrict its uses for bad.

The modern epidemic of abuse is a different beast. Never in the history it was possible to abuse a child, record the process or live broadcast it, and sell access to that to hundreds of people around the world. Technologies that enable this are only recently available (internet, e2e messaging and cryptocurrency).

But even if we pretended it was the same in absolute numbers, that is irrelevant. Yes, things were bad 500 years ago. If people were getting massacred today, you can say that it's all the same as back then, we should not be concerned, it's simply shedding more light on the same old murder. (It's especially easy to dismiss it if you were in the industry that makes tools for it). Or you could call it out as violence, even if it is happening less than in the dark ages, and try to do something about it.

None of the other compromises of freedom (gun controls, cash controls, security checks) have led to a fall of democracy. In fact, they are requisite for democracies to thrive. You are blowing a minor inconvenience for yourself out of proportion, covering your ears, closing your eyes and shouting.