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Comment by fredsted | Hacker News Reader

European bureaucrats generally have little understanding of the technology they get paid to regulate, as we've seen with the their previous attempts to regulate the industry. It's very much a "vibes-based" approach. They can simply keep proposing the same regulation with a new name until it's voted through.

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> European bureaucrats generally have little understanding of the technology they get paid to regulate

I'd agree with you if you just put "bureaucrats" instead of European bureaucrats, what country isn't currently led by a bunch of bureaucrats who don't seem to understand even the basics of the technology they legislate about?

I've yet to seen a country to lead the way, no wonder the rest of the countries don't seem to know what to do and just throwing stuff at the wall.

While I generally agree, the bureaucrats in the US have been somewhat checked by nonprofits who will lobby against this kind of legislative overreach and sue if the legislation passes. Obviously we have all sorts of other problems, but mostly our bureaucrats and legislators aren’t making backdoors a policy as far as ai’m aware (who knows what the CIA and FBI and NSA are up to, though?).

I assume it’s just one of those things that Swedish society is having to grapple with abruptly and that they will adapt the appropriate institutions. I have more faith in Sweden than my own country lately.

> While I generally agree, the bureaucrats in the US have been somewhat checked by nonprofits

So does Sweden, and have had strong privacy advocates for a long time. Remember that The Pirate Bay came from Sweden? It spawned a political and ideological movement (Piratbyrån & Copyleft/Kopimi) that still has some presence in Sweden and EU although doesn't seem as strong as it used to be, except for Iceland I think.

> I have more faith in Sweden than my own country lately.

Not sure what your own country is, but assuming it's US, they're pretty much equal in many ways (but not all obviously) and Sweden basically copy-pastes US political policy for the last decades, for better or worse.

Yes, my country is the US. I'm very skeptical that Sweden and the US have similar policy in the general case or in the case of privacy in particular. With respect to privacy specifically, I don't think the US has passed any "no encryption" or "mandatory backdoor" policies (I'm happy to be corrected). In the broader case, I'm of the impression that Swedish policy differs dramatically from US policy with respect to regulation, social safety net, taxation, government-owned enterprises, etc.

The politicians voting on it might not fully understand but the people pushing the regulation absolutely do. They want a popultion that hears and sees only what they want to.

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