ChatControl: EU ministers want to exempt themselves
european-pirateparty.eu
european-pirateparty.eu
"Laws are to govern all alike — those opposed as well as those who favor them. I know no method to secure the repeal of bad or obnoxious laws so effective as their stringent execution." –Ulysses S. Grant (1869)—often misquoted and misattributed to Lincoln,
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ulysses_S._Grant#First_Inaugur...
When working for a large company, when moving, my boss praised the virtues of the new open office and how our current team rooms were bad. Then we learned, that he had a private office in the new setup.
The silver lining about them clearly trying to exempt themselves is that they at least seem to be aware of the negative consequences of their proposal. So: not the right solution, but at least something that looks like a transition from blissfully ignorant -> aware of problems. Cogs are in motion, learning is happening.
cogs are NOT in motion to fix this for the people, they are in motion to DO this to the people.
... But I get your point
1: a law is proposed, to solve some problem (real or otherwise is irellevant).
2: wait shiiiieet, this law kindof sucks, it could really hurt people.
3: I KNOW! lets fix it by making it not hurt us, only those we govern!
you do not get to claim incompetence to get you out of what you did in step 3. (and no, not you personally, obviously)
Shielding yourself is a naive, human reaction. It isn't intrinsically malicious. This is where they slowly start realizing their good intentions result in a weapon of mass surveillance. I'm hoping for step 4 where they find a way to mitigate 2 for all people. One way would be: retract 1 altogether.
its sorta like if i began spraying a harmful chemical on the local population because I thought genuinely that it would help reduce mosquito diseases and be a really great thing for everyone. Then I learn its really harmful to humans, so I equip myself with a hazmat suit and carry on with my plan. I do not get to claim "incompetence"
I'm (naively) hopeful that wearing it day in day out will ultimately make them feel uncomfortable, maybe guilty about their activities, change their act, reconsider spraying a harmful chemicals, etc.
The incompetence I was alluding to lies in proposing these types of laws in first place. Well intended, but harmful. Understanding the dangers forces knee jerk reaction to at least make sure they themselves are safe from harm. Dumb solution, but progress made on learning about the dangers.
But I say dumb as in short sighted, not malicious. If they'd thought this through they'd understand these exemptions don't protect future-thems, their loved ones or whomever else is powerless, yet needy of their (political) support.
* corporations
* anonymous strangers
* those who want to wield power over you
With shenanigans like this, it's easy to forget that the EU is a democratic institution. At least on paper, Europeans wield power over themselves.
It's good to be wary and have a healthy dose of skepticism, but let's not get nihilistic. I'd rather be naive and trust myself and the democratic system I live in, assume good intentions from anonymous strangers and even politicians.
Because what is the alternative? How would you organize society if everyone but personal friends or [..] individuals you have a one on one relationship with deserves distrust?
Would they get away with the lies they spout if they were selling medical products? I think not.
So yeah, they WANT to wield power over you, and those who seek to do such, are the least qualified.
They know what power is, and have demonstrated that clearly. If there is a silver lining, it's that they've revealed their knowledge and desire for asymmetry of power.
This is a dog and pony show by people who think they're better than the people they represent, and they must think very lowly of the people they represent indeed if they think no one will notice their shenanigans.
Besides that, there have been a number of stories of politicians abusing children or possessing CSAM. If I were going to order the list of whose PC's get checked for CSAM first, politicians would be pretty high up there. Probably right after Hollywood, and right before the uber-rich.
The problem is that EU institutions are so far and detached from the member states that most citizens are completely unaware of their doing, at least until said European laws get implemented locally.
You mean, the MEPs? There's very little that MEPs can do to hold the executive (the Commission) to account. Commissioners are appointed by national governments; each government gets a quota. The appointees are generally ex-ministers whose careers in national politics are over, due either to failure or disgrace.
Essentially the only power that MEPs have is to vote down legislative proposals from the Commission. They have approximately no power to remedy administrative failures, corruption, and mistakes in implementation.
What is the base of this claim? There are EU elections this year FYI.
There is a lot of criticism (warranted, IMO) on this state of affairs.
In EU countries keep having strong sovereignty, it’s not like the USA. EU here acts more like an alignment institution among countries, it doesn’t actually have powers by itself and it appears that Europeans are still not ready to switch to a US-like system.
EDIT: in a typical HN fashion people downvote simple statement of the fact, because they are in denial about the fact.
Because it's easy to blame "Brussel bureaucrat" when it's hardly visible that said bureaucrat is minister and/or represantive from the party that is now campaigning against "brussel's edict".
Can you point me to the parts of the Lisbon treaty that facilitate this please?
Few key countries (Germany, France and Italy) got their voting weights in both the Council of Ministers and the European Council increased at the expense of everyone else (witch Germany's voting power doubling).
European Central Bank got official recognition.
European Court of Justice got its jurisdiction expanded.
But I do agree that Parliament should be given law making powers, and the Commission should just be enforcement and implementation of said laws.
Of course, direct election of the commission would be more democratic formally, but the fact is there's not really a truly European polity in the first place so its not clear the outcome would be much better in regards to the problem of the commission being composed of random politicians you never heard of.
In fact, given that Ireland (a very small country) would have to have a referendum on it, then I can almost guarantee that such a system would over-weight small countries.
Also from my interpretation of TFA, the people that expect intelligence agencies to be exempted are national interior ministers (not named though), there's no such thing as a "European Union minister", which have no influence at the EU level.
This is a convenient fiction that the EU Council (i.e. the national governments) are very keen to retain, as it insulates them from the consequences of their decisions.
If you really wanted to be tactical about it, one should vote for a disjoint set of parties in the EU vs the national elections, as this would be more likely to lead to effective supervision and assessment of decisions.
While for European elections it is usually 40-50% with huge differences by country (https://results.elections.europa.eu/en/turnout/)
It would be better if more people voted though.
>The more local the more people care but half of the population voting is not really drastically different than 2/3 of the population voting.
And I was simply pointing out how the result is different. I thought you were referencing that it was a random sample. Though apparently you just decided it's the same even though you knew it wasn't a random sample.
At least in my country, almost all the debate in news outlets is about national or local issues. EU regulations do come up, but they are always depicted as something that comes "from above" and not tied to specific parties or people. If there is controversy about a national law, the media will blame things on the government or on the opposition (depending on their bias). If there is controversy about an European law, the media will blame an abstract "Brussels"... or directly the government or the opposition anyway, as they're the ones who implement it.
In the EU elections, most (euphemism for all) people I know just vote to the party they prefer in terms of national or regional politics. Almost no one votes because they want a given European directive to be implemented.
Sometimes I have actually made some effort to find out what each of my country's parties voted in some EU decision, and most of the times I failed. It's not clear what decisions come from the Commission or from Parliament (many come from the Commission which is not even directly elected but elected by local governments, by the way). And even for those from Parliament, it's not clear how to find detailed results of Parliament votes. Mind you, I'm not saying there is no way - probably there is one, if you are very well informed or have a lot of time, but there is definitely no way that I could find in 20 minutes of Googling, and most people won't make a greater investment than that.
Not sure if it's the same in all countries, and not sure how to fix it... but yes, I do have the perception that EU institutions are detached from citizens.
That said, this has its pros. If citizens had more of a say, we'd probably have no low-emmission zones, no or almost no pollution regulations, etc. Many environmental policies that are, IMO, unquestionably good, are pushed to reluctant citizens using the "hey, don't blame me, it comes from Brussels" wildcard, and we are better for it (again, IMO). Sad, but true.
This is definitely a feature disguised as a bug.
I agree that it's under reported but I don't think it's because the EU is far away or detached from the people. The media simply don't tell us what's going on. There's no regular programmes in my country covering it. There are shows like that for local politics and for national politics, and I can even keep up with US politics if I like. But to know what's happening in the EU I have to very actively choose to search for it.
The US is surely more removed but everyone seems to know every detail of what's going on over there.
Yes, people should be more focused on what's going on in their back yard, at least on the social level, than another country "half way" around the world.
Except for Britain, European nations simply do not have a strong tradition of news publishing and free debate like the United States. In Europe, news mostly came and still comes in the form of dictates from the rulers. That's why it was so important that people had to go to church each Sunday: not to listen to the word of God, but to be told the latest decisions of the king directly from the preacher's pulpit. Later on, non-government affiliated media has mainly been partisan affairs, directly or indirectly controlled by political parties.
With a weak tradition of free speech and press, it is no wonder that European journalists prefer to sit around all day and read reporting on American politics and summarise for their readers, instead of doing some actual investigating, reporting and interviewing.
European traditions in terms of journalism are as good as any. The problems of modern media are the same everywhere: nobody wants to pay for quality journalism, so only people with deep pockets end up footing the bill and hence setting the agenda.
If there is no coverage of something it generally means people don’t care. That can be a vicious circle, of course. But as soon as people start paying attention to the small outlets that do cover these things, the bigger ones will adapt their coverage.
There are several ones in mine. However, the huge majority of people is not interested in watching them. Unless it is making the headlines/major news programs, most people only hear about it when it is too late to change anything.
I think its good to have that sort of thing though and I don't think we ever had such a thing in the UK. I would have liked to understood how the EU works better and the interaction between the parliament and the commission.
Since we would rightly blame corporations for polluting the Earth and not ourselves, we would absolutely do away with low-emission zones, but we would surely crank up pollution regulations for them.
That's not only sad - it erodes public trust in democracy, and leads to a rise of populist parties.
Political initiative and agenda-setting, in the EU, are firmly in the hands of national governments - they just hide behind "Bruxelles bureaucrats" as a shield.
And EU-Elections have usually a pretty low participation, showing how many people it really concerns.
That's largely because citizens of several countries accept the narrative of their local governing parties that the EU is some "external force" that is outside of anyone's control.
Reality is that the EU is largely formed by members of local political parties sent to EU-institutions. They just send people there which they deem not useful for local campaigning or prefer to become "invisible" to local politics.
Citizens should not accept this narrative, and instead demand more transparency on the activities of the local politicians sent to EU, holding the party accountable for their actions (or non-action) within the EU.
It's been same before EU or other similar multiple country things.
Back then some politicians were getting "promoted" into ambassadors of some faraway country, or decided to become university professors, if not flat out sent to "Goli Otok", "Siberia" ...etc.
Since that mentality/way-of-doing politics has been around for a while - it will not be easy to get the political establishment to change.
But it's also inherent in running an organisation with 24 official languages.
Let's say you had really strong opinions on this, and you wanted to rally voters for a letter-writing campaign. Good luck coordinating the Spanish-speakers, the German-speakers and the Polish-speakers and so on. All of whom also have different TV networks, different newspapers, different radio, presumably different social media and so on.
And politicians have the same problem - maybe you're an amazing public speaker. Maybe you've got the farming subsidy policy equivalent of the Gettysburg Address. Clear, succinct, witty, persuasive, honest, passionate - everyone who hears it will be fired up to support your vision. But if you can only deliver that speech in Portuguese? Good luck with that.
Hell, look at this very discussion: I know first-hand about the complex relationship between the EU with the British parliament, press and electorate. But I have no idea what the equivalent situation is in the Czech Republic.
But it's also an inherent problem of the EU. In retrospect, they shouldn't have left communication with citizens to the EU-members, expecting that they would communicate based on common interest.
As it turns out, the local governments are much more comfortable to celebrate themselves for everything positive, and blame everything negative on these "EU overlords".
The EU charter should have included the means for the Union to communicate directly with citizens, i.e. the basis to have their own local news-channels.
I can see improvements in communication nowadays, with EU press-releases and announcement carrying over into local (online) news at least. The fact that none of those messages are already carried by the local government speaks volumes...
What I'm saying is that everyone is ill-equipped to communicate, when communications are conducted in 24 languages.
Imagine a Greek newspaper decided to send a team of dedicated EU reporters to Brussels - how are they supposed to talk to the delegates from Sweden and Slovenia and Spain?
(and if you're thinking "they'll just communicate in english" let me remind you that less than 2% of the EU population lives in a country where english is an official language)
> As it turns out, the local governments are much more comfortable to celebrate themselves for everything positive, and blame everything negative on these "EU overlords".
Truth.
But IMO pre-Brexit a big reason the British government had a lot of influence over the British press (and vice-versa) while the EU government didn't was the simple issue of speaking the same language and being in the same city.
If a Greek newspaper is sending a journalist who can't speak English or French they sent the wrong person. If a local government sends a politician into the EU who can't communicate in English or French they sent the wrong person. Also, it would already be sufficient for the cause if Greek newspapers would put the spotlight on GREEK politicians in Brussels. So far not even THAT is happening in a sufficient manner...
> But IMO pre-Brexit a big reason the British government had a lot of influence over the British press (and vice-versa) while the EU government didn't was the simple issue of speaking the same language and being in the same city.
Every single press-Release of the EU is done in English language. Granted, the EU doesn't invite to press-conferences in London to talk to the local press, that's the job of the local government.
Pre-Brexit it would have been the job of the British government to promote the spirit of "We are European", but as everywhere it is more useful to their narrative to promote "We are Nationalists!"
> If a Greek newspaper is sending a journalist who can't speak English or French they sent the wrong person.
Right - so from the perspective of a Greek person, EU lawmakers are speaking a completely different language. Seems like a pretty big communication problem to me.
> Also, it would already be sufficient for the cause if Greek newspapers would put the spotlight on GREEK politicians in Brussels.
But the Greek politicians in Brussels already agree with the Greek government.
If the German faction in Brussels wants to do something that'll be unpopular with Greece, they've got no way to make their case to the Greek people directly.
> Pre-Brexit it would have been the job of the British government to promote the spirit of "We are European"
Did the British government ever agree that was their job?
I mean, in the United States I don't see Biden expecting the Texan government to convince Texans of anything. Luckily for Biden, he can speak to Texans himself. Because they share a language.
It appears you've never checked the publications of the EU. They are published in ALL OFFICIAL LANGUAGES of the member countries, including Greek! [1]
> But the Greek politicians in Brussels already agree with the Greek government.
Sorry, I'm not following. I am talking about local citizens and media surfacing and challenging the actions/non-actions of the politicians that were sent to the EU, by holding their local government accountable for the performance of their representatives in the EU.
> If the German faction in Brussels wants to do something that'll be unpopular with Greece, they've got no way to make their case to the Greek people directly.
They shouldn't. They should make their case towards the designated representatives of Greece in the EU. It is their job to facilitate communication with the Greek government, whose job it should be to communicate with its citizens. This chain is intentionally broken, for the local party to either claim positive outcomes only on themselves or blame negative outcomes to some overlords outside of their control.
[1] Example: https://commission.europa.eu/law/law-topic/data-protection/d...
Switching language to Greek: https://commission.europa.eu/law/law-topic/data-protection/d...
Not sure what "that" actually refers to.
The common official language of the European Union is ALL official languages of the member-states. Every major publication of the EU is ALREADY made in all languages of its members.
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Example: Electricity market reform, an ongoing topic. What's the status there?
Here it is: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/topics/en/article/20240304STO...
Ah, you only speak Greek?
No problem. Here: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/topics/el/article/20240304STO...
Ah sorry, Polish? Here: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/topics/pl/article/20240304STO...
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> you cannot really build something democratic if a large part of the population has no idea what you are saying
Why? There is a LOCAL government which is in charge of representing the citizens locally and also representing the country in the European union.
If they can't explain to me what they are doing, they are not qualified to represent me.
How exactly is it detached?
The EU parliament is elected.
The EU commission is composed of members appointed by each member state (and every member state is - or should be - a democracy, so the commissioner is s representative of an elected government).
I keep seeing this bullshit being repeated as if it was true, and whenever I ask I never get meaningful answers.
One might argue that even national governments that are directly elected are socially detached from the general population.
That is in my opinion a fault of society rather than fault of governments. If you don't care about politics, you are doomed to be ruled by those that do.
At least this was the case back in 2016 when I was doing as much research as I could before the referendum.
I can set my language, and separately I can set my regional format which encompasses things like which decimal symbol and which thousands separator to use (both offer the comma, the dot and '), how dates are written, which day is the first of the week, how time is written (12/24h), whether to use Arabian numbers or one of the other digit-based systems, which unit system to use (US or metric) etc.
> it's a shame that this isn't standardised
It kind of is: The International Bureau of Weights and Measures has maintained since 1948 that you shouldn't use dots or commas as thousands separators. ISO 31-0 prescribes the use of small spaces, and so do various other American and international standards organizations. It's just that this is widely ignored.
Let me tell you about the pain of CSV-files that use ; as a delimiter because otherwise you couldn't use decimal numbers.
Or in office documents where MS "translates" commas. That means you also need to replace all , and ; if you translate office scripts from English to a language with other decimal rules.
Nevermind the parsing of numbers in general... That stuff can crashes moon probes.
1'234.56 1'234,56
Either of these can be understood no matter which format you're used to. Although, I don't think it's ever caught on really (or whether it's even advisable/sensible).
Then just figure out which portion of your countries budget comes out of your taxes, and how big the total budget of your country is, and you have your answer. It's not like this is top secret information
1: https://www.statista.com/statistics/316691/eu-budget-contrib...
2: https://www.statista.com/chart/18794/net-contributors-to-eu-...
They get 1% of VAT which is mostly spent on poor regions (cohesion funding) and agricultural subsidies (Common Agricultural Policy).
What are people's talking points against these views?
- It is not about you but fundamental rights in our society that are important. Argueing like "I don't have any of that sort of stuff" is like saying "I'm not gay, so what do I care about gay rights" (replace with any disadvantaged group and don't blame me for bad example please).
- Things can quickly change, even when done with nothing bad in mind. You find countless misuses with collected data, prime example is again the Nazis that rolled into Dutch (or Belgium?) and abused the recorded religions. However, today in almost any democracy imagination has not to be taken too far that another worse power comes to real power. Just look at threats Trump, or mostly right wing parties in Europe already made.
"Would you mind if all your online activity and chat histories were sent to ChatGPT live, with it deciding if you're a suspect or a criminal? If not, why are you okay with a vague system designed by politicians?"
"If you or your partner is short and look young relative to the average Caucasian, for example due to being from certain Asian countries with low average height, would you trust that ChatGPT wouldn't erroneously classify pictures as being of a minor and mark you a criminal?"
People tend to get sensitive when you expand the idea a bit and give them an example of the technical part that they can relate to.
I know a lot of people who would just go “yes?”. The same people would freak out if there was a camera in their Airbnb. Or if they thought two steps ahead and realized their sexy photos or pictures of their kids would be viewed by some 20 year old moderator-reviewer type. Or would want to make revenge porn criminal, or even deepfake porn. Let alone any type of concern for journalists and their sources.
People for some reason don’t think these laws apply to them, that they would just be ignored by any snooping eyes because of course they look only for real criminals like terrorists and pedos. These proposals should ideally cause the same type of worry as being stopped by a cop even if you didn’t do anything wrong.
There will always be people you cannot convince however, either because they have different ideologies or being in a place in life where all arguments wear off and they have no reason to spare it another thought.
We only need a majority in the voting group, not everyone.
Hence why people hate speed cameras "they just trying to make money" Well don't speed then, and you won't have to give em money!
- Think of the most embarrassing thing you've done, and now tell me about it
- Unlock and show me your phone so I can view all your messages, photos and apps
Now that we've established that you have something to hide, we can talk about where the line is.
This sounds like a very hands on counter argument. I'm gonna use that the next time this comes up in conversation.
Everyone knows what you're doing in the toilet, yet we do not use glass walls for toilet stall doors.
Some people abuse this and do drugs or hide in toilets, but does that genuinely mean we should have glass doors for all our toilets in society?
What about toilets at home?
Usually they start to see the problem.
For many europeans, US-style toilet cubicles (with large space between floor and wall) feels pretty much like glass doors. I wonder why people tolerate that.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37114262
Today I'd add to the list the discussion on Israel using AI to decide who to bomb. AI isn't smart enough to understand that people who just bought a washing machine shouldn't be shown ads for washing machines, but apparently it's good enough for deciding who's a terrorist.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39918245
Having said that, I personally know someone who was arrested and mistreated by police forces for being related to a criminal, and yet I've never managed to convince them that maybe the police shouldn't have that kind of power. In those cases I typically consider that the person discussing probably won't change their view, but maybe I can still reach those listening to the conversation.
However, I am not sure if using examples of something currently considered crime will work well, especially as people will actively deny anything other than petty violations like speeding. It is valid of course, in particular when combined with inhumane regimes and authorities, or even regular ones that do not see lightly on people airing their dirty laundry, but convincing others takes more than just having a correct argument...
If you have nothing to hide then unlock your phone and let me dig in. And give me all your passwords, you have nothing to hide, right?
0% of them will comply.
Or you can cite the Four Horsemen of the Infocalypse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalyp...
On a more abstract level: in a democracy you need to consider the abuse potential of a law, and you need to leave open ways for peaceful reform if our institutions fail. That's why confidential communication channels between citizens are important, and intercepting private communication has to always come with strong checks and balances
"Can I see your chat history?"
"Ultimately, arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say."
Jewish Dutch people willingly filled in their religion during a census in the 1930’s. A decade later 95% of them were exterminated. The nazis appreciated the organized nature of the Dutch.
5. This Regulation shall not create any obligation that would require a provider of hosting services or a provider of interpersonal communications services to decrypt data or create access to end-to-end encrypted data, or that would prevent the provision of end-to-end encrypted services.
[0] page 36 onwards of https://www.patrick-breyer.de/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/202...
This Regulation shall lead to the general obligation to monitor the information which providers of hosting services transmit or store, to actively seek facts or circumstances indicating illegal activity.
It’s a good summary of the purpose of the law, I should say. Welcome to China… I mean, to the EU.
Maybe in Germany.
Everything else can be published (there can be civil lawsuits later of course, but the state won't stop you unless you are actively treating people).
That's false
> There is basically no free speech anymore
That's a far right narrative and that have never been as false as today given how much we are now unfortunately allowing far right bullshit.
> they want to even track and control our private communication.
Some executives wants it yes, but this still have to be voted by the European parliament, which is democratically elected and which already voted this [0] . Friendly reminder that European elections are on 6-9 June 2024.
0: https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/historic-agreement-on-child...
You say so, but is it true? If it were obvious, it'd be faster to say the explanation of why it were obvious than to describe as you have. You'd instead be able to say something like 'we have the first amendment, and there aren't any exception-- we don't do anything like that fire in a crowded theater stuff from WWI', and then you'd be done, and you'd have done it in a way that's certain.
I don't think it's obvious at all, and it may well be false.
If you're making an assertion you need evidence, for someone to say "that's not true" in response providing the same amount of evidence is fine.
There was the recent Varoufakis thing, there's all sorts of weird corporate censorship on the web, there's these laws about offensive speech in the UK, there's that weird thing where a politically controversial newspaper run by a Swede in Estonia had its bank account frozen (it was eventually unfrozen after a lawsuit, but that took time, and harassment strategies can harm a publication just as bans can), these arrests of anti-monarchy protestors in the UK-- all that stuff about blank protest signs etc.
There's so much weird stuff that it's not obvious that we have freedom of speech. We might, but I am personally not totally sure of the total situation, taking everything into account.
However, the main point I was making is that a refutation without evidence is a valid response to a statement made without evidence (which is what the comment you replied to was).
Having a higher burden of proof doesn't make sense to me.
[EDIT I just reread your comment, and noticed you said "you". I just wanted to point out it was someone else you were replying to before]
An assertion without proof. You can deny it, but you can't respond with any essay about how the assertion is reprehensible.
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/4/16/germany_palestine#:~:...
Like in all capitalist countries: Youre free in Europe as long as you don't pose a risk to the ruling class or oppose the ongoing foreign policy. If you do, there are many ways to repress you.
That is why things like this chat spying thing are dangerous. They increase the amount of surveillance and control. All it takes for it to be used for another purpose than fighting pedophilia is a new administration coming to power in a few years and deciding to do so.
[0] https://www.politico.eu/article/new-york-times-sue-european-...
Edit: Eva Kaili. They found 1.5 Million in cash. She lost her immunity, but is still member of the parliament with full voting rights. Excellent.
--
https://www.spiegel.de/ausland/eu-parlament-hebt-immunitaet-...
Just in time for elections...
It's similar to how in the US you have people complain about the flyover states, though I'd argue that people from Spain don't think of people from Poland as even close to the same. The difference between the two peoples ideologies is fundamentally great.
But at the same time, the 49% did vote to join a union where this could happen so could you argue they must be fine with it? I don't know.
Laws in EU don't get passed if just 51% of countries agree.
National governments have veto rights on passed laws. Problem rather is that even when people value privacy, it's normally not on top of their priority list. E.g. in Germany people do value privacy if you ask them - but the two biggest parties don't, and people still vote for them.
this hasn't been the case for over 20 years, it's now almost all by majority vote
the only things that are still subject to the veto are treaty change, new members, defence and a few other things
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_in_the_Council_of_the_E...
Pretty much it's what divides the free world from the dictatorships. Its pretty scary when you start seeing politicians attacking courts, judges etc.
Every country that went ahead with steamrolling courts has become a dumpster fire. When politicians start saying that they have mandate to do this one thing but the courts are not allowing it, it's a huge red flag. When institutions or politicians say that something is slowing them down, it's a huge red flag.
He also changed the (otherwise unfair) constitution that prohibited him from going for reelection, although at that point I believe a referendum would have been a much better solution.
I'm seeing the same taking over court happening in other countries, so I just don't think there's a simple solution that can be applied in all cases.
As everything in live, just because it says X on the label doesn't mean it has X in it. Same with democracy. To have a functioning democracy, you not only need to have separation of power, you also always have to make sure it is maintained, and a society has to constantly re-educate itself on why that is so important. When we take things for granted, they are up for grabs from people who just want power.
But that does not solve the core problem that the executive should not become legislator.
Well, guess what, the police is the government, and they need some intel to go on... (And, yeah, they also need to be restrained. But that's not what this particular submission, nor your reply, makes a strong point for)
How about police get to doing actual oldfashioned police work?
PS: When it was shot down a few months ago, I told everyone it was only temporary and they will keep trying again and again but people downvoted me for not celebrating :/