
EU Data Protection: Proposed Amendments Written by US Lobbyists - EdwardQ
http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2013/02/eu-data-protection-proposed-amendments-written-by-us-lobbyists/index.htm
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netcan
There are layers upon layers of problems here.

1\. EU democracy and governance is not great. Very few europeans have any
understanding of how the EU legislative process works or feel like they have
anything to do with it.

2\. Lobbying is increasingly making a mockery of consultation as an idea.

3\. These laws are pretty technical and the people making them have no
understanding of the issues. They don't need lobbyists to make stupid laws.
See the UK/EU cookie laws for an example. They mandated that all sites must
have _nag screens._ They cost the economy money. Annoy all european website
users and achieved _absolutely nothing useful._ Malice may have had some role,
but incompetence had a bigger one in that case.

I wish the EU would think creatively about its whole legislative process.

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rmc
Actually a lot of EU directives are relatively easy to read. It only gets
complex and legalese when national governments transpose them into national
law.

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netcan
I'm not talking about the language. I mean that if you ask someone in Italy or
Poland how reps get elected, what their job is, what sort of laws they can
make, how they get enforced locally, how you can participate, etc., then they
have no idea.

It feels more like the American IRS than the Congress.

~~~
rmc
But then ask the same to those people of their own national governments, or
political structure. Many don't understand how their own country works.

Should we abolish or get rid of national governments? Why are you holding the
EU to a different standard?

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the_watcher
Much of the EU is unelected and unaccountable as compared to national
governments. It's more a bureaucracy than a legislature. I don't want to pass
too much judgement since I am far from an EU scholar, but tat unaccountability
seems to remove an incentive to learn about the processes, since you will have
less of an opportunity to change it.

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flexie
All members of the European Parliament are directly elected. The entire
Council consists of the member states' ministers, which are elected
politicians in their home states or appointed by elected politicians. The
Commission too consists solely of persons appointed by elected politicians.

I too would like more direct elections and more openness in the legislative
process but that does not come from lobbyists paid by American companies.

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Nursie
The wording in any data protection act within the EU should be strongly anti-
US. It's been shown many times that the US government does not consider data
held in the US or by US corps on non-US citizens to be protected at all.

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homosaur
Even without looking at the ethics of all this, you're exactly right. At the
most basic level, why do governments do things that are against the national
interest in favor of multinational corporations or other countries?

I think the answer probably has to do with who is picking up the tab.
Politicians are owned, even more so the higher level you get.

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Nursie
I'm not sure it's so simple, but there's definitely something wrong. You
wonder if they live in a little echo-chamber that only lobbyists have access
to.

In terms of laws that impact trade I think they absolutely do need to consider
whether new data laws will make trade with the US (or other entity) difficult,
because it could negatively affect both sides. However they shouldn't always
shy away from it when it's the right thing to do.

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homosaur
Yes, they definitely do live in an echo chamber which is why their views are
so skewed, but they also live in the world of globalist weasels who love this
crap. Most of the people who would participate in a body as anti-democratic as
the EU are not dependent on their own nations to succeed to make their
checkbooks fat. They, like say, AlGore and Soros and these creeps, are mostly
tied to economic interests outside of their own nations and could honestly
care less whether or not their own nations sink or swim. Do I care whether the
company across the street goes belly up?

Now you can go crazy down the conspiracy road here and think those people are
somehow in a cabal, but I think it's far more simple than that. They are just
more reliant on groups outside their countries for their personal success.

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hipsters_unite
The audaciousness of taking those lobbyists' demands word-for-word and
expecting nobody to find out in this day and age is pretty shocking.

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lutze
It's not audaciousness, it's ignorance.

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hipsters_unite
Politician in "doesn't understand the internet" shock. It's an old story, I
agree. Like when they wanted to "turn off Twitter" during the riots...

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contingencies
I am involved in some FOIA at the moment. It seems to me thus far that, at
least at times, the EU Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) has been well meaning
but have been actively sidelined by other, pro-American-outcome parts of the
European beast. For example, see: <http://www.asktheeu.org/en/body/edps>

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larsberg
Somebody should make a kickstarter for political lobbying.

Then, somebody could start a project to raise funding for writing new patent
laws, and based on funding thresholds there'd be a certain amount of lobbyist
facetime with congresspeople, "draft legislation" provided, etc. Why should
big companies be the only ones playing that game?

It'd be like the White House petition system, but with some results - even if
they're just congressional awareness.

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knowaveragejoe
The same problems will still exist.

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mattmanser
The title of this has been changed and is wildly misleading.

New _AMENDMENTS_ being proposed by _some_ MEPs are taken from lobbyists. These
are amendments to the presently extremely pro-consumer proposal that are
trying to water it down.

