> That would be against everything european governments stand for.
I really struggle to understand why the hell this is always only applied to european governments? The idea to take 1984 as a book of requirements seems to extend *far* beyond europe.
yes, and here is a fun fact, most of the push for mass surveillance comes from the European Council, the thing is that literally are "just" the locally elected leaders...
not some vague far away "the EU (personalized)" thing
which also mean you can locally enact pressure on them
furthermore the EU supreme court(s) might have more often hindered mass surveillance laws in member states then the council pushing for them...
and if we speak as of "now", not just the UK, but also the US and probably many other states have far more mass surveillance then the EU has "in general".
so year the whole "EU is at fault of everything" sentiment makes little sense. I guess in some cases it's an excuse for people having given up on politics. But given how often EU decisions are severely presented out of context I guess some degree of anti-EU propaganda is in there, too.
> mass surveillance comes from the European Council, the thing is that literally are "just" the locally elected leaders...
Factually incorrect.
The European Parliament is elected. The Council is appointed, so there is no direct democratic incentive for the council to act on and no direct electorate to please.
On top of that the actually elected European Parliament can only approve (or turn down) directives authored by the Council. They have no authority to draft policies on their own.
To make matters even worse the European Council, which drafts the policies, has no public minutes to inspect. Which obviously makes it ripe for corruption. Which evidently there is a lot of!
Looking at the complete picture, the EU looks like a construct designed intentionally to superficially appear democratic while in reality being the opposite. The more you look at how it actually works, the worse it looks. Sadly.
In short, there are three core institutions, the "technocratic" European Commission, the European Parliament elected by direct popular vote, and the Council ("of the EU"/"of ministers") made up of the relevant (in terms of subject matter) ministers of the standing national govs. The law-making procedures depend on policy areas etc. but usually in the policy areas where EU is fully competent, the Commission — the democratically least accountable of the three bodies — by default makes the initiatives and negotiates/mediates them further along with the Parliament and Council, but only the last two together really have the power to finally approve actual legislation, usually either Regulations (directly applicable in member states as such — so an increasingly preferred instrument of near-full harmonisation), or Directives (requiring separate national transposition / implementation and usually leaving more room for national-level discretion otherwise as well).
While not fully comparable to nation-state parliaments, the powers of the EU Parliament have been strengthened vis-à-vis both the Commission and the Council, and it's certainly long been a misrepresentation to say that they, e.g., only have the power to "approve or turn down" proposals of the Commission and/or the Council.
There's societal memory of monarchies and kings that held a lot of power that still impacts things to this day, sometimes unconsciously and sometimes consciously.
The NSA is an American body, and Trump is the subject of a personality cult far in excess of any European monarch. Authoritarianism is a personality trait independent of political structures.
I really struggle to understand why the hell this is always only applied to european governments? The idea to take 1984 as a book of requirements seems to extend *far* beyond europe.