alt Hacker NewsThe European Commission has far too much power, and answers far too little to the populace. In reality, they want to be dictators.
If you don't know, the unfortunate way thf EU is structured, the Parliament cannot initiate legislation. They can only vote on whatever the Commission puts in front of them.
If the Parliament votes "wrong", the Commission just repackages the idea in a new bill, pulls a couple of dirty tricks, and tried again. They only have to succeed once. See ChatControl for a prime example.
So the EU will eventually require backdoors in encryption. It's only a question of how many tries it takes...
Replies
The dictators part is false, the EU is not a structure you can easily dictate. But this encryption backdoor thing is somebody's pet project and extremely alarming. The UK has a similar bend they've already put in place with IPA and TCNs. The US is way gone on decrypted stored data and metadata, but not on encryption backdoors yet, though legislators have tried.
Unfortunately every attempt at reforming it is blocked with "but my sovereignty!" - as EC and Council of Ministers are very much controlled and steered by member nations' governments.
Not to mention it makes for perfect scapegoat
Ursula is 100% a dictator and the EU as well. All in the pockets of Bibi. Every time I hear it's a democracy I want to gag. We have a huge issue with fascists again and it won't solve itself.
> So the EU will eventually require backdoors in encryption. It's only a question of how many tries it takes...
So how many tries (i.e. EU parliamentary votes on an actual legislative text brought in by commission) has there been for encryption backdoors or mandatory screening of chat content?
There has actually been only one, the November 2023 vote on CSAR regulation, and it was rejected overwhelmingly (https://edri.org/our-work/eu-parliament-committee-rejects-ma...).
There is no reason to believe the same thing won't occur in future votes.
I'm a little hazy on how this gets enforced. I thought the EU made rules, but then those rules had to be ratified and implemented by the national governments of the member nations (and historically, some of them have been very lax about implementing and enforcing those rules).
Will we end up with a hodgepodge of national rules from each EU country that is effectively unenforceable? Or is there a different mechanism that allows the EU to enforce a blanket rule over all the EU nations?
It's unfortunate that some of us have been warning and shouting this for years, before it got to this place, and before they amassed all this power, and now that it's almost too late people are catching on.
> The European Commission has far too much power, and answers far too little to the populace. In reality, they want to be dictators.
This is an incredibly uninformed take on how the EU is structured and completely undermine the argument you’re trying to make.
I understand this setup was likely necessary to get countries to join initially, but it no longer makes sense & should be abolished, with all power of the commission given to the parliament.
The wild part is that both the United States and China will get the decryption. There's too much money and corruption in the world.
Maybe local(European states) won't care as long as they can use it against their people in their feifdom.
> The European Commission has far too much power, and answers far too little to the populace. In reality, they want to be dictators.
As much as I hate the political leaning of the Commission, this is complete bullshit.
The commission is named by the member states' head, with the head of the commission and the individual commissioners' nomination being validated by the European parliament.
Yes they aren't elected, but that's no different from a minister in most country, nobody elected the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the UK, the Secretary of Defense in the US or the Ministre de l'Intérieur in France. But we don't call them wannabe dictators because that would be silly.
That's equally silly when talking about the European commission.
> In reality, they want to be dictators.
Its much worse than that. They want to be unaccountable bureaucrats.
I don't think it is too much power or even the wish for more. It is IMHO more the disconnect of EU beaurocrats and the Brussels bubble. We need more direct legitimation given the amount of power they have (actually down to the DGs).
Who picks the comissioners are the national governments.
It's important to lay the blame on who is actually pushing this crap.
It's little coincidence that the EU parliament, who actually represents the people, that keep shooting shit like this down.
That is the structure of the EU. Wannabe fascists propose all kinds of laws, then a democracy chooses which ones it wants.
This its more like an oligarch edict with democratic dressing. Its set up so the European elite can force political chance without having to deal with annoying things like democracy other than in name
Given the almost religious attention the term limit of sitting presidents of the US has it is interesting that so very little attention is given to the fact that the EU structure has no effectual limit at all; if the current EU President were to be nominated by the European Council in a circular manner she will effectually serve for perpetuity (while the Parliament can in principle say no they are only ever given one candidate to vote for (...) and has thus far never said no to any nominee).