
TTIP Leaks - Hjugo
http://www.ttip-leaks.org/
======
tommyman
So business groups and lobbyists for companies like IBM, Apple, Google et al.
are deeply involved in the US side of negotiations (far more than any public
interest groups).

Then on the EU side, business groups and lobbyists for companies like IBM,
Apple, Google et al. are deeply involved in negotiations to the detriment of
all public groups.

So this is really lots of big US companies negotiating with themselves on how
to screw over Europe.

This is a takeover attempt through the backdoor.

~~~
grecy
> _This is a takeover attempt through the backdoor._

In case it wasn't already immensely obvious, the third world war has been
underway for some time. This one isn't a war fought with guns and bombs, it's
a war fought with information, deals and economies.

See China's massive economy and ownership of the US, the massive drop in oil
price and what that's done to the world economy etc.

The citizens of the world wouldn't tolerate full-scale war - they'd vote out
their leaders, so this is what we get when countries still want to dominate
each other.

~~~
ppod
>this is what we get when countries still want to dominate each other.

The most peaceful, prosperous, and healthy period known in human history?

~~~
mvanvoorden
You're repeating propaganda.

May be there's less violence, but the amount of suffering has skyrocketed over
the years. A more than significant amount of people are dependent on
tranquilizers and anti-depressants to make their life bearable, because for
them it has become mundane and meaningless without.

Statistiscs may tell a story of less violence, and people getting older and
having more material possessions, but these do not reflect the actual well-
being of people, and also these numbers don't show how much exploitation and
environmental damage our alleged 'prosperity' causes in other parts of the
world.

~~~
untog
What you're saying is "statistics might tell one story, but let me tell you,
without citing sources or evidence, those statistics are wrong".

~~~
wfo
No, what he's saying is "your metrics are measuring the wrong things and so it
does not matter what numbers pop out of them; they are completely meaningless
when it comes to answering the question which is actually important".

~~~
davnn
But nobody can answer the important question except for themselves.

~~~
onetimePete
You can measure the amount of ability to choose and answer your own questions
though. Also, this all very idealistic nonsense- until 300 years ago, we lived
basically in tribal community, and people yearn for that, no matter how
futuristic they dress up.

------
rkrzr
This leak once again shows the importance of transparency in negotiations that
will impact the lives of 800 million people (and the rest of the world
indirectly).

If TTIP were ratified, it would be out of the control of any subsequently
elected democratic governments as it would be part of international law.

Regardless what you think of TTIP it seems like the very least to ask is that
a contract of such importance is discussed in the open where the public can
have a voice in their own future.

~~~
lumberjack
What I'm now wondering is, can the WTO bully US and EU states in the way it
can bully third world countries?

What if renegade states across both sides of the Atlantic decided to disregard
the treaty and the fines that will follow immediately? What will the WTO do
then? Sanction them?

~~~
tajen
I need help in argumenting: What's the difference between the EU-US WTO
agreements and the TTIP, apart from the former being from the XXth century.
Aren't we happier and wealthier since the WTO exists?

Please don't tell me about how a treaty should be voted on by the people,
because I already agree about this part.

~~~
levemi
> Please don't tell me about how a treaty should be voted on by the people,
> because I already agree about this part.

Direct democracy in diplomacy and trade negotiation sounds like a really
terrible idea. It would just be constant protectionism, xenophobia and
probably ruin economic growth and everyone will be the worse of for it.
Sometimes giving more people a voice does not result in positive outcomes.

~~~
tajen
That's the difference between signing and ratifying. There's a story that
USA's Congress never ratified the end of the war with Europe. A lot of
countries voted No to the European referendum. Most of them voted Yes.
Ultimately, the citizen should decide when they give up power, and they must
repeat it regularly.

------
callcallcall
Instead of complaining into the echo chamber of comments, do something
actionable and call your representatives, it takes 2 minutes. Cynics will say
that calling has no value but they forget how we beat SOPA in 2012 and
protected Net Neutrality in 2014

Call your Reps: [http://TryVoices.com](http://TryVoices.com) (it takes 2
minutes)

------
elcapitan
I hope somebody who speaks Lawyerish will create a human-readable, per-
paragraph annotated version of this (rather than the sensationalist editorial
things that the media will publish).

------
msvan
Cecilia Malmström, European Commissioner for Trade, on the documents:

> First of all, and contrary to what many seem to believe, so-called
> "consolidated texts" in a trade negotiation are not the same thing as an
> outcome. They reflect each side's negotiating position, nothing else. [...]
> In that sense, many of today's alarmist headlines are a storm in a teacup.
> [...] No EU trade agreement will ever lower our level of protection of
> consumers, or food safety, or of the environment. Trade agreements will not
> change our laws on GMOs, or how to produce safe beef, or how to protect the
> environment.

[http://ec.europa.eu/commission/2014-2019/malmstrom/blog/nego...](http://ec.europa.eu/commission/2014-2019/malmstrom/blog/negotiating-
ttip_en)

~~~
lifeisstillgood
This is probably the most important takeaway

In most cases TTIP raised the level of consumer protection to the highest on
whatever side of the pond was already best (for example Americans see European
chicken as raised in shot basically do our chicken farmers will have to up the
game (assuming battery hens is something we think is a high standard anyway)

As for beef, Germans think the US do beef like we do chickens. And so there
will be a cost to the US cattle industry.

But consumers win

Are there parts of TTIP that are frankly dumb and will be damaging for years?
Yes. Would that have been fixed by an open process. Meh.

So if we the people don't like this, then we the people need to write our MPs
and congres people and say "start a new WTO round and don't stop till you get
something good - keep it open and don't let people like trump comment on it at
all"

~~~
tech-no-logical
> This is probably the most important takeaway

although this is important, I can't see how you reach the conclusion that

> But consumers win

from that. you see, the EU negotiator also said :

> "In #TTIP, we will not agree on anything that will imply lowering of
> protection. Full stop."

also, we can conclude from the leaked documents (both these and older ones)
that the US proposals in some fields differ wildly from the current EU
regulations, and I can't see the US giving in to EU demands on all of these
(like GMO's, chlorine chicken and less stringent environmental rules).

so, with these powers combined we can conclude that further negotiation is
useless, and TTIP is dead. so why are we still negotiating ?

fear is that a compromise will be reached somehow, and the EU citizens draw
the short straw (I say that as a concerned EU citizen)

------
creshal
Not that it's _still_ not all documents, and already out of date:

> _The documents that Greenpeace Netherlands has released about half of the
> draft text as of April 2016, prior to the start of the 13th round of TTIP
> negotiations between the EU and the US (New York, 25-29 April 2016). As far
> as we know the final document will consist of 25 to 30 chapters and many
> extensive annexes. The EU Commission published an overview stating that they
> have now 17 consolidated texts. This means the documents released by
> Greenpeace netherlands encompass 3 /4 of the existing consolidated texts.
> Consolidated texts are those where the EU and US positions on issues are
> shown side by side. This step in the negotiation process allows us to see
> the areas where the EU and US are close to agreement, and where compromises
> and concessions would still need to be made. Of the documents released by
> Greenpeace Netherlands, in total 248 pages, 13 chapters offer for the first
> time the position of the US._

So politics will probably pull the "your complaints are all addressed in the
still secret parts / were changed after the leak, we pinky-swear" card.

~~~
vog
_> So politics will probably pull the "your complaints are all addressed in
the still secret parts / were changed after the leak, we pinky-swear" card._

Maybe, but I deeply hope that the public reaction to that will be either:

"Yeeeaaah, sure ..."

Or, the more diplomatic variant:

"How do you plan to reestablish the trust needed to make your promise
credible?"

~~~
glasz
there were 250k ppl on the street in berlin. marching against ttip.

the first thing spiegel.de did, while the ppl were marching, was releasing a
polemic article basically saying "it's all nazis".

days later gabriel went public: "we don't care. we'll do it anyway."

now, nobody try telling me shit about public opinion's worthiness!

------
jychang
Here's the preview for relevant section for the TTRIP with regards to the
Internet:

[http://www.ttip-leaks.org/agamemnon/doc4.pdf](http://www.ttip-
leaks.org/agamemnon/doc4.pdf)

The actual preview function seems to be broken, it only opens in a tiny
iframe.

~~~
Loic
First page: "Nothing in this Chapter shall be construed to: ... (b) require a
Party to compel any enterprise exclusively engaged in the broadcast or cable
distribution of radio or television programming to make available its
broadcast or cable facilities as a public telecommunications network."

Which means, if your cable company is in monopoly somewhere, you cannot have
any regulations to force sharing the network to foster competition. This is
basically just going against what is making Internet great in most Europe.
Just right on the first page. Ouch!

Update to be clearer: "public telecommunications network means
telecommunications infrastructure used to provide public telecommunications
services;"

~~~
Loic
Reply to myself, effectively I was wrong, page 11:

"[EU: 4. Each Party shall ensure that a major supplier in its territory grants
access to its essential facilities, which may include, inter alia, network
elements, associated facilities, and ancillary services, to suppliers of
electronic communications services on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms
and conditions (including in relation to rates, technical standards,
specifications, quality and maintenance).]"

You have quite some anti-competitive safeguards so, this is not that bad. The
general tone here is pretty libertarian. Note that it only concerns the
telecommunication services, this section is not about IP etc..

------
riffraff
I don't understand this FAQ:

> None of the chapters we have seen reference the General Exceptions rule.
> This nearly 70-year-old rule enshrined in the GATT agreement of the World
> Trade Organization (WTO), allows nations to regulate trade “to protect
> human, animal and plant life or health" or for "the conservation of
> exhaustible natural resources" [1].

as point 2 in agriculture states

> In this regard, nothing in this Agreement will restrain the Parties from
> taking measures necessary to achieve legitimate policy objectives such as
> the protection of public health, safety, environment or public morals,
> social or consumer protection, or the promotion and protection of cultural
> diversity that each side deems appropriate.

------
r0h1n
The #2 and #3 stories are both links to ttip-leaks.org. The only difference
b/w them seems to be the presence of a "www" in one case. Doesn't HN dupe
detection handle something as basic?

~~~
foota
Unless I'm mistaken, there isn't dupe protection.

edit: looks like I was wrong.

~~~
DiabloD3
There is, but it is not coded cleverly intentionally.

------
mangeletti
There is little excuse[1] for such a website to not employ TSL encryption of
all traffic.

I can't even imagine the size of the TLA database containing <"evil" page
visited>: <ip of visitor> records at this point.

1\. [https://letsencrypt.org/](https://letsencrypt.org/)

~~~
kpcyrd
I agree that TLS would be nice, but it doesn't hide the fact that you've
visited www.ttip-leaks.org

------
jessup
"The original text has been typed again and obvious spelling and grammar
errors, possibly put there deliberately as markers to identify the origin in
case of a leak, have been removed. Other apparent textual or formatting-
related markers were removed as well. None of these adjustments have altered
the content of the text in any way."

This statement is leading me to rethink my conception of how steganography
might be applied In The Real World.

------
alva
Respect to Greenpeace for sourcing and distributing these. They tend to get a
good amount of news coverage. The more organisations that get involved in
this, the more pressure we can place on our respective governments.

------
woodpanel
The Europeans are socialists. In the sense that (anglo-saxons aside) they like
to socialize access to justice, thus the codefied law system. Having to switch
to abitral courts which decisions cascade into laws and juresprudence, comes
in detrimental to european legal cultures. TTIP is thus even more disliked
than the European Union itself is, with its regulations and directives.

------
alex20
i get the idea but it's not true. the tables enumerating the tariffs and such
on different classes of products alone can take thousands of pages, and there
generally isn't anything so malicious in there. they get incredibly specific.
for example in the section of the TPP relating to Chile, there are three
subcategories of "articles for Christmas festivities." Another example of how
specific they get is a class "Endless transmission belts of trapezoidal cross-
section, of an outside circumference exceeding 60cm but not exceeding 180cm"

edit: I should clarify that it's a tariff elimination schedule, so it's
thousands of pages describing exactly how quickly the tariffs drop to 0. Most
lines of the table are "Year 1: 0%." As to why some products have a more
gradual decline over a few years, I don't know, probably some special interest
influence, true. A small change in tariffs can mean life or death to certain
businesses.

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andrei_says_
Can we make it clear that we will not reelect any politician who supports
this?

------
known
I hate
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominant_minority](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominant_minority)

------
randyrand
My reading of this situation so far is that the TTIP is to increase free
trade?

To me that's a good thing....

