Posted by alexzeitler 4 days ago
In times past, Governments could e.g. regulate the quality of coke, control election misinformation or forbid burglaries on their own soil, because they had law enforcement who could imprison people doing these things against the law. What happened outside of their borders was mostly of no concern to them.
If Coca Cola wanted to sell their products in Germany, they needed people in Germany willing to sell it, and those people were directly vulnerable to imprisonment by German law enforcement, so they had to care about and follow German law. Even if the original corporation wasn't involved directly, there were always vendors, importers, store owners and such, and all of them could be targeted to some extend.
Tech companies are different, you can make a product on the internet that interacts with the data of the majority of German citizens, without ever stepping foot in Germany or even realizing that a country called Germany exists and has laws. If Germany doesn't like the fact that this product exists, there isn't much they can do.
For now, most countries still have some semblance of control, usually backed by the power of international treaties, DNS blocking and control over payment infrastructure, but I wouldn't be surprised if the prevalence of fast and affordable satellite internet on one hand and easier access to crypto on the other will make the situation even worse.
Wireless and satellite shoots a rather big hole in that ownership model, but not completely, the concept of air space is a thing, as well as maritime. Things get muddy when you extend out into space of course, but most internet is distributed by wire + signals on the ground rather than from satellite, might not be able to argue that to much of an extent.
Then there's the arguability of whether or not government(s) own their people - I think governments today worldwide truly believe in that position wholeheartedly. I certainly don't think they do, and government(s) ought to think twice about that position if you were to ask me.
What exact scenario are you envisioning here? Germany bans X (for example), but people smuggle Starlink terminals to continue reading it and advertisers continue advertising to them illegally by paying with crypto? Sounds extremely unrealistic to me TBH.
Germany is notorious for banning, restricting, or altering, a huge number of tech products from smartphones to video games, with practically perfect compliance after a valid court order is issued.
Do you have some examples of non-compliance?
Who is "we" here, and which "democratic mandate" is being discussed?
The author was involved with the EU parliament? Excuse me for not taking their tech sector recommendations seriously.
Why be so dismissive on the idea that the “tech utopia” that Google or Meta wants to sell us is just digital serfdom? Seems appropriate seeing how damaging to society these companies truly are.
Then, in the next question: "For example, just as legislatures rely on independent legal teams to help draft legislation that will survive court challenges, they also need independent technology experts they can turn to for reliable information." What are "independent experts", where would the come from? Academia? NGOs? How really "independent" will they be? WHo will establish this independence and ensure it? It looks like quest for power - those guys do not deserve power, take power from them and give it to us, because we're the Experts, we deserve it!
Then: "There are no standards or reporting obligations requiring companies to say how much energy or water they’re using or plan to use." - why should they? It's their private business, why should they disclose this data to anyone?
Then Cambridge Analytica thing again. All political campaigns have been used behavioral data to get out the vote and influence results, but of course only for some campaigns it is extremely nefarious.
All in all, extremely sloppily done justification for grabbing power to control speech and development of digital economy, by people that do not have any justification for it and use "democracy" as if they own it, and only when they are in control it is "democracy" but if somebody else is allowed to play the same role they do it's "dangerous" and "harmful".
Besides lacking logic and therefore honesty in terms of why anyone should support her ask, the author is nakedly partisan and the ask is rank in its authoritarianism. Which aren't persuasive characteristics when pitching for more authority.
Either the writing should get better, or if it can't because the premise is horrible and dishonest, then at least learn to lie and cajole with more concision.
We already had "the Fappening" when iCloud was compromised, but I feel if someone did something similar and kept the data private for blackmail purposes, we'd probably never hear about it.
Am I missing something here about how this wouldn't actually be possible? Frankly, I'd be surprised if it isn't already happening.