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Comment by 4bpp | Hacker News Reader

"The plans for scanning your chats were on display for fifty Earth years at the local planning department in Alpha Centauri"?

Nobody's attention span is infinite. I don't doubt I could understand all details of the EU legislative process and keep track of what sort of terrible proposals are underway if I put in the time, but I have a day job, hobbies that are frankly more interesting, and enough national legislation to keep track of.

If you then also say that the outcome is still my responsibility as a voter, then it seems like the logical solution is that I should vote for whatever leave/obstruct-the-EU option is on the menu. I don't understand why I am obliged to surrender either a large and ever-growing slice of my attention or my one-over-400something-million share of sovereignty.

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> I don't understand why I am obliged to surrender either a large and ever-growing slice of my attention or my one-over-400something-million share of sovereignty.

Because your puny state is no match for the US, China or soon enough, India. Heck, even Russia in its current incarnation outmatches 80% of the EU countries.

That's it, it's that simple, conceptually.

It's basically the Articles of Confederation vs the Constitution of the United States.

Yes, it's not a pretty process, but the alternative is worse.

We can all live in La-La-Land and pretend we're hobbits living in the Shire ("Keep your nose out of trouble and no trouble will come to you") until reality comes crashing down.

Why, then, is the supposed anti-US/China/India/Russia power bloc trying to pass laws to mandate absolute surveillance of all private communications? If the EU is going to continue attempting to legislate away people's freedoms for purposes that are completely out of scope for the reason it exists, then the natural result is that people will turn on the EU. There is little purpose in staving off the surrendering of independence to US/China if the process entails surrendering even more freedom than they would demand to the EU, all the more so when the EU already rolls over to the US/China on almost everything anyways. I am supportive of a pan-European unification in theory, but if the result looks anything like this, no wonder people are disillusioned with the European project. With friends like the EU, who needs enemies?

Every government has abhorrent proposals. This is a PROPOSAL.

Then proposals maybe turn into laws, through a complex process. We are HERE.

A good government doesn't have many with abhorrent LAWS.

I understand that it is not currently law. I also understand that the EU has been dedicated to this road of eroding citizen privacy for decades, constantly trying to pass more and more egregious legislation. For example, the Data Retention Directive of 2006 was abhorrent law. After 8 years in force, it was struck down by the ECJ, which would be somewhat reassuring if not for the fact that the EU appears to consider the ECJ a thorn in its side that it seeks to undermine at every turn. I have very little faith that this will not eventually become abhorrent law given the persistence with which the EU pursues becoming a surveillance state.

If the end result is going to be that the EU turns into Russia or China under the pretext of standing up to them (because apparently building an opaque process that civil society can't keep up with to ram through authoritarian laws is what it takes to be competitive?), then I'd rather they cut out the extra steps and let the Russians/Chinese take over. At least then nobody would be telling me that what I got is the outcome of some sacred democratic process I am obliged to respect.

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