The EU already has robust digital privacy laws and is likely to continue passing laws to protect their citizens. I think it's much better to take control away from Apple and place it in the hands of regulators that represent the people directly.
I mostly agree with you but from the sounds of the news across the pond it seems like the EU government, as well as our own, wants to eliminate encryption, VPNs or add back doors into systems to some degree.
There are obvious reasons to do so to combat crime but at the expense of privacy, freedom, and anonymity.
And I've quite been happy to see Apple stand up against such government control but fear the trend this will set.
>the EU government, as well as our own, wants to eliminate encryption, VPNs or add back doors into systems to some degree.
This is a continuous concern - some sectors of the EU indeed want to do that. So far, they've been mostly unsuccessful in getting their agenda through, either because other politicians have more influence, or due to listening to public protest/complaints. Still, that's no different than other healthy democracies - the people must vote, both in national elections (EU heads of state propose the European Commission's president to the Parliament), and European elections (who elect said Parliament) in order to keep reasonable people at the helm as much as possible.
> And I've quite been happy to see Apple stand up against such government control
Where, exactly?
Apple complies readily with thousands of warrantless surveillance requests[0] from around the world, every year. They've been a cardholding PRISM program member for over a decade, and just a few months ago admit that push notifications are also government-monitored[1].
Outside of eagerly marketed examples like San Bernadino, Apple appears utterly compliant with government control.
I would say to you that aren’t those very regulators to which you refer doing their very best to weaken the users ability to maintain privacy and not be snooped on? I don’t know about the EU but here in the U.S. there are always pushes afoot to break users control of encryption and other protections.
EU représentatives are literally elected by the population under the same rules as national legislators. EU commissars are appointed directly by the elected governments of EU member states, similar to ministers/secretaries on the national level. Stop spreading misinformation.
"Commissioners are nominated by member states in consultation with the commission president, who then selects a team of commissioners. This team of nominees are then subject to hearings at the European Parliament, which questions them and then votes on their suitability as a whole. If members of the team are found to be inappropriate, the president must then reshuffle the team or request a new candidate from the member state or risk the whole commission being voted down." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Commissioner
This is effectively the same procedure that ministers/secretaries are appointed by on the national level. The only difference is that it is not the national legislature, but the EU parliament approving the appointment. And again: the EU parliamentarians are directly (!) elected by EU citizens, according to their national election laws.
So please, please shut up about stuff you obviously don't know anything about.
> Commissioners are nominated by member states in consultation with the commission president, who then selects a team of commissioners.
let's break this down into levels of appointments
how are commissioners selected?
> with the commission president, who then selects a team of commissioners.
ok, so that's one level of appointment (TOTAL: 1)
how is the commission president selected?
they're appointed, by the council (TOTAL: 2)
how are the council members selected? (obviously e.g. the land mass "Germany" can't vote for itself)
who has the council vote? the German Chancellor
how is the German Chancellor selected?
they're appointed by the German Parliament (TOTAL: 3)
who select members of the German Parliament? the German people, so they are directly elected
so that's three levels, matching what I originally said:
> so EU commissioners are "appointed by someone (commission president) who is appointed by someone (head of government) who is appointed by someone (parliament) who is elected"
the statement is accurate
the fact bits of this are rubber stamped by the EU parliament is beside the point, the spitzenkandidat idea was completely killed off in 2019
> So please, please shut up about stuff you obviously don't know anything about.
Not sure why you insist on this, but you are counting wrong:
"Comissioners are nominated by member states". That's it. Yes, the commission president is the one that presents the list of commissioners to the EU parliament, but the member states (effectively the heads of national governments) are nominating the actual candidates.
*Exactly" the same as secretaries/ministers on the national level, who are also nominated by the heads of their respective national governments. Which is fitting, because the commissioners are more or less the EU ministers, i.e. the heads of executive agencies. They are no more or less removed from the voters than their national counterparts. I really don't get what your problem is.
Or you start from the other direction: Voters select their (EU) parliamentarians, parliamentarians appoint the commissioners. End of story.
The vote of the EU parliament is hardly a "rubber stamp". The list of commissioners is negotiated with the parliament and there have been various occasions where the list had to be reshuffled because the parliament would not accept a certain nomination.
Technically speaking no, because regulation is performed by national data protection authorities whereas the people you're speaking of are some members of the European parliament.
Using a cookie or sessions does not equate to spying. Is HN in the EU? Does it use cookies? Absolutely. As far as those useless messages go, I just use a plugin to remove them at this point because they're a waste of resource.
> The EU already has robust digital privacy laws and is likely to continue passing laws to protect their citizens. I think it's much better to take control away from Apple and place it in the hands of regulators that represent the people directly.
Laws don't protect privacy. What protects privacy is technical mechanisms for people to do so.
The very opposite is true. Technical means can't ever protect privacy from a determined attacker.
There is even a country that intercepts and MITMs all TLS traffic (one of the stans, forget which one). Of course, browsers don't recognize their certificate. So, you have a choice: you either trust the government MITM cert yourself, or you don't access the web. Laws trump technology every time.
My most charitable response would be that /both/ are required, but your example is one where law is taking away privacy, not one where law is granting privacy. The law cannot grant privacy, because the law is slow to act. We have recently had cases where the government and private actors/companies have violated privacy rights in western democracies and it took multiple years to see any semblance of justice done, and the victims were not made whole.
Laws that prevent technical mechanisms effectively prevent the enforcement of laws that protect privacy, because bad actors can still break the law. The law provides some means to get justice, in theory, after a bad actor has already violated your privacy. Technical means provide you a mechanism /you control/ to actually enforce that you have privacy. You need both, but the law alone is woefully insufficient.
