We're moving towards total surveillance slowly but surely. Age verification. Chat control. To an extent also the digital euro. It all seems hopeless, they're pushing this through despite what semblance of a democratic process we have clearly being against it.
[that is not to speak of how undemocratic the european system is and how badly it needs reform. Von der leyen should never have been able to get the role she holds]
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> We're moving towards total surveillance slowly but surely
We're actually speedrunning towards total surveillance.
I don't believe in democracy at all anymore.
Non-democracies speedrun towards surveillance even faster. Democracy is the best we have and this action is anti-democratic.
The other part of the story is that as long as Europe continues to vote radical rights + conservatives, we are going to get more and more of this. Most greens and progressives fight this tooth and nail.
It's also this learned helplessness of the voters, a very useful tool for whoever wants to push their agenda. Have you noticed who the "anti-system" voters are actually voting for? They're voting exactly to increase borders, controls, surveillance, all for the children and against immigrants. Plus, this is the tech forum where the tech folks actually building the foundation for this surveillance, yes that's us, complain about inevitability. It's... sad to watch.
>The other part of the story is that as long as Europe continues to vote radical rights + conservatives,
Which itself happened due to a democratic deficit regarding migration.
The majority is for migration, the problem is far right propaganda
There hasn't been majority support for the current levels of migration in any western european country for a good while now. I think you live in a bubble.
What is anti-democratic about trying to assemble a coalition to change lawmakers' minds and get them to vote differently? It is rather core to democracies that decisions aren't set in stone and if you disagree with the majority you can always try to renegotiate.
While most greens and progressives may be against this particular law, I rather doubt that if they introduced a progressive green law for a vote and failed to get a majority, they would immediately give up and never try to get such a law passed ever again.
And I think it's good that nobody has to give up on politics just because they lost once.
I get your point, but I think there are several issues:
- Chat Control gets pushed by lobbyists, who have far more/better access to politicians than citizens. It is true that there are also some non-profits lobbying in this case, but the surveillance economy companies that are pushing this behind the scene have very deep pockets and very deep access.
- Chat Control gets pushed over and over again by the EC, which is the least accountable/democratic between the Parliament, Council, and Commission.
If you look outside the EU, there are enough examples of governments that are democratically elected, but are in practice not accountable to citizens because they are in the pockets of large companies that funded their campaigns, etc.
Unfortunately, public institutions also lobby in favor of chat control, so it's not just private interests. Europol and friends will not run out of public money.
Depending on the target audience, public actors can even avoid disclosing their actions in existing transparency registries. Technically it is very elegant.
The radical right isn't running the EU. Look into a mirror before it's too late.
Once again, democratic centralism proves superior
This is and has always been inevitable with tech.
Politics can only postpone people's inherent desire to control and dominate and powerful tech makes this easier and cheaper.
We (the tech people) have built the perfect tools to centralize and automate control and we're still doing it, mostly for free.
The way things are going, our imagination is probably too poor to visualize the kind of dystopia this can/will eventually grow into.
It's highly unlikely that the general population will revolt against this - fear makes most people docile and compliant, self censoring and obedient. There are many examples of this in the world right now and it's only going to get worse.
We can only push back to postpone this, but the tide is against us and too few really care about these things.
> This is and has always been inevitable with tech.
Keyword here is "centralized". Financial interests have pushed gatekeeper-style setups into a crapshoot.
Therefore (part of) the solution is decentralization. P2P everything, web of trust, etc. 'Benevolent' dictators don't cut it anymore.