• 0 Posts
  • 5 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
cake
Cake day: June 25th, 2023

help-circle
rss
  • Well that could mean anything between “she died of not immediately obvious medical reason, so cause of death inguiry is needed” to “she was murdered, we are investigating”. Heck to investigate “there is no external markers, but we don’t know is it medical stroke or a poisoning murder”.

    So I would say, wait until they investigated and tell, if they suspect foul play before jumping to conclusions. Not that Israel isn’t capable and on choosing so willing, but sometimes people just suddenly die of medical causes without prior warning.


  • I would also add that isn’t empty talk like “Well he said it once, non biggie”. That statement by POTUS itself drove the national policy other countries. When POTUS says “other nations you are with us or are our enemies”, that matters.

    That is a signal the reverberates around with “do we dare to anger USA on this one”. The Afghan war partisipants list is long and contains some not so obvious participants often doing rather small token participations. Which I think is exactly “Well we have to show we are with USA”.

    For example here in Finland in the after action report of Finnish participation in Afghanistan tells the reason wasn’t building peace, it wasn’t even combat experience. It was “coalition and alliance building” aka showing USA “we are with them”.

    In the after action study one of the interviewed decision makers literally directly quoted:

    Yhdysvallat sanoi 9/11 jälkeen: olette joko meidän kanssa tai meitä vastaan.”

    United States said after 9/11: You are either with us or against us.

    Right above explaining how it was 20 year long very unpopular operation caused losses and achieved nothing in Afghanistan, but hey the Finnish NATO application will go through with flying colors.

    The whole time the media blitz was about “Helping and building peace in Afghanistan”. When in reality we went in because USA publicly extorted pretty all of west to show colors.

    This isn’t only in Finland in other European after action reports have shown similar “We went in, because Bush publicly demanded show of loyalty”.


  • It will at minimum be a fight. It won’t just sail through. Also whole governments being against means one of them might challenge the law in to European Court of Justice. Since as nation-states also often have, EU itself has charter of rights part in the fundamental EU treaties. It also has normal limit and share of powers. EU Council and Parliament aren’t all powerfull. ECJ can rule a directive or regulation to be against the core treaties like Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.

    Said charter does include in it right to privacy (which explicitly mentions right to privacy in ones communications) and protection of personal data. Obviously none of these are absolute, but it means such wide tampering as making encryption illegal might very well be deemed to wide a breach of right to private communications.

    Oh and those who might worry they wouldn’t dare at ECJ… ECJ has twice struck down the data protection agreement negotiated by EU with USA over “USA privacy laws are simply incompatible, no good enough assurances can be given by USA as long as USA has as powerful spying power laws as it has”. Each time against great consternation and frankly humiliating black eye to the Commission at the time.

    ECJ doesn’t mess around and doesn’t really care their ruling being mighty politically inconvenient and/or expensive to EU or it’s memberstates. They are also known for their stance that privacy is a corner stone civil right (as stated in the charter and human rights conventions also, their legal basis) and take it very seriously as key part of democracy and protection of democracy. Without free and private communications and expression there can be no free political discussion, without free political discussion there can be no democracy.



  • Also I would add, not like this is unanimously supported in EU among memberstates. So this isn’t a done deal, this is a legislative proposal. Ofcourse everyone should activate and campaign on this, but its not like this is “Privacy activists vs all of EU and all the member state governments” situation. Some official government positions on this one are “this should not pass like it is, breaking the encryption is bad idea”.

    Wouldn’t be first time EU commission proposal falls. Plus as you said ECJ would most likely rule it as being against the Charter of Rights of European Union as too wide breach of right to privacy.