The Snowden files showed in great details how European countries used US intelligence to spy on EU citizens and then request that data through intel sharing, thus bypassing local and EU law. It was an effective way to get the benefits of spying on your citizens with a plausible deniability that it was the Americans who did it, and that the fact that data was shared is simply a fact of Nato and other deals between EU and US.
Obviously this is not something EU citizens want. If we wanted it, we would issue laws that gave the military and police the right to do it themselves. The only reason that this roundabout way came to exist is that such surveillance would not pass unnoticed by voters.
There are some "more local" alternatives. Sweden for example can (and as rumors goes, do) use neighboring countries like Denmark to spy on Swedish citizens by looking at network traffic that goes over the border. People have argued however that this is a bit worse of an deal since you don't get access to the larger intelligence network that US has, and you also have to trust your neighbors with possible sensitive data.
If they're local, then they're subject to GDPR, which carries massive fines and a private right of action that lets you sue the shit out of anyone who spies on you.
International surveillance, on the other hand, doesn't give two shits about GDPR. Likewise, in the US, they pay private firms and other governments to spy on their own citizens to get around the 4th and 5th Amendments.
Limiting spying to nation-state actors only - and prohibiting cross-border surveillance cooperation - would do an insane amount of good for plugging the data drain.
Government spying is not subject to GDPR, just like you can’t ask the police what data they have on you.
Whatever company gives them the tools will be exempt from any form of customer interference.
Any company operating worldwide that has a base in the US is legally required to cut all ties with these people. Visa, Mastercard, Paypal, Google, Microsoft, and on and on. The US launched a trade nuclear bomb about some minor disagreement with the ICC, desperately trying to defend the war criminal (and just general criminal -- but don't worry, felon Trump is working to make sure he's pardoned for that, just like all the child molesters, drug dealers and sex traffickers that Trump is personally pardoning by the hundreds) Netanyahu.
For this reason alone, every country not the United States or Israel needs to be full bore ahead on replacing every single American dependency. The fact that the US is trying to use this to punish people prosecuting literal war crimes is absolutely disgusting behaviour, and is utterly intolerable. Ignoring that the US government treats American tech companies as extensions of the government (as much or worse than China, it should be noted. Literally enlisted tech executives from a number of companies in the armed forces, as Chairman Trump demands ownership stakes of all of the firms and their business), and the US government is a friend of no one.
And, it's happening. Everything the current pedo cabal is doing is the sort of short-term political win that is going to destroy the future of the US. Americans are still largely blissfully unaware and thinking this cabal of child rapists and self-dealing criminals (I believe Trump just gave himself $10B of taxpayer dollars...not even a murmur in the busted US) are just trolling the world, when really the US will be the biggest victim by far. Enjoy this brief moment of being the shining star, because the collapse is upon you. It turns out that the idiocracy has an expiry date.
[1] - While it shouldn't need to be said, Israel != Jewishness. Further, it isn't an antisemitic slur to note how absolutely Israel has a stranglehold over the US, constantly seeing the latter punching itself in the face in the service of that rogue nation. Utterly bizarre behaviour. The US is Israel's El Salvador, with a clucking crew of simpletons desperately looking for the boss to give them some accolades.
First of all Netanyahu is not a war criminal. He has not been convicted of any war crimes. Even if for a microsecond we entertain the idea that the ICC has any relationship to justice or morality then people are still innocent until proven guilty. At least in the world we want to live in, i.e. not China or Russia or most other countries where freedom and human rights do not exist. And the ICC is a political circus not a real court.
The US is going after the ICC because it perceives the ICC to be working against its interests and for the interests of the non-free/non-democratic world. If the spinless Europeans weren't, eh, spineless, then they would be working with the US here.
It is also totally antisemitic to say Israel has a stronghold over the US. Just because you make a disclaimer doesn't make it less so. Israel has no hold over the US. Last I checked the Saudis and the Qatari have a lot more influence. It just happens that there is an alignment of interests here. The US doesn't wish to yield any sovereignty to these fake and corrupt institutions serving autocratic regimes any more than Israel does. Israel carries its weight in its alliance with the US far more than other so called allies.
Every decent person and country should be standing with other countries that support democracy and freedom.
Yes, the current US president and administration are not great, and the current Israeli government ain't great either, but at least in democracies we can replace them. Unlike most of the world that's a) much worse b) people have no voice. So between the option of our imperfect western democracies and the likes of Russia, China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, I know what I'm picking. And those are the forces seeking to divide and destroy the west so that they can take over.
You're correct in that Israel doesn't have a hold over the US (it would be silly to assume that a pissant country could have the resources to control the [at time of writing] most prominent country in world), but they are a US client-state and thus receive preferential treatment when it suits US foreign-policy in the Middle East.
> is also totally antisemitic to say Israel has a stronghold over the US.
Sure. Ignore AIPAC.
Sure, build a false dichotomy that we either support Israel unconditionally or we hate Jews and support every antidemocratic nation in the eastern hemisphere.
Sure, further propagate antisemitism by intentionally conflating any criticism of Israel the government with the religion of Judaism.
I can be critical of Qatar and Saudia Arabia and China and Russia and Israel, for all the necessary reasons.
" The US is going after the ICC because it perceives the ICC to be working against its interests and for the interests of the non-free/non-democratic world. If the spinless Europeans weren't, eh, spineless, then they would be working with the US here. " Why? What are the interest of the free world?
"Every decent person and country should be standing with other countries that support democracy and freedom." Netanyahu has some problems with the constitutional court in Israel + corruption allegations. If he succeeds, Israel might become authoritarian and though there is a growing antisemitism some Israel consider leaving Israel because of him.
As we used to say when we were kids, if your grandmother had wheels she would be a bus.
Yes, Israel's democracy is under threat, very much fueled by those same external forces impact other western countries, social media and such.
The interest of the free world. In my opinion. Is to promote freedom and not give power to countries that are not free or democratic (which is most of the world). The UN primarily represents the non-free forces and its institutions similarly the same.
There is an arrest warrant out for him. He hasn't been convicted, but he should show up at that Hague and defend himself. When literally EVERY SINGLE DEVELOPED COUNTRY but the US and Israel is a member of the ICC, and those two happen to be largely the biggest perpetrators of war crimes, this "political theatre" act falls a bit flat.
Oh look, the US is committing terrorism and blowing up random boats again, even double tapping as yet another war crimin' activity. Howler. What a bastion of goodness. Yeah, positively no one cares what that terroristic plutocracy thinks is right or wrong.
"It is also totally antisemitic to say Israel has a stronghold over the US"
LOL, no it absolutely is not. The fact that Israel-apologists have to do this bit is pathetic business. It's intellectual garbage, immediately dismissible as a distraction.
The US relationship with Israel makes literally zero sense. Israel offers absolutely nothing to the US but geopolitical problems. Nothing. The US constantly burns actually valuable relationships in the service of that nuclear-armed international pariah.
Congresspeople will literally, directly say Israel first. One member proudly wore his Israeli military uniform in the House. Just bizarre, unfathomable behaviour time and time again, and if anyone showed that sort of bizarre loyalty to any other country they would be rightly declared a foreign asset and a traitor. Oh look, congress gave Netanyahu a four minute standing ovation, apparently for his largess of trying to drag the US into wars and demanding US taxpayer dollars. What a great guy.
Bizarre stuff.
As to democracies...are we pretending the US is a democracy, or that it has rules and laws? I suspect the midterms are going to disabuse you of that foolish notion.
> "There is an arrest warrant out for him. He hasn't been convicted, but he should show up at that Hague and defend himself"
Neither the US or Israel are treaties to the Rome Statute and are therefore not under the jurisdiction of the islamofacist ICC. The ICC, UN, etc are infested to the brim with islamofacists who do everything in their power to tear down the west, bit by bit. Israel and the US have more resolutions against them than Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, Nigeria, Syria, etc. These institutions are a fucking joke. International law is now codename for Sharia law.
> It's intellectual garbage, immediately dismissible as a distraction.
Absolutely false. This is standard antisemitic MO. The "Jews" control the media, the "Jews" control the US, The "Jews" control money. This is yet another permutation of the age old antisemitism just s/jews/zionists/ and s/jews/israel/ it's used by the same people and with the same intent belief. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck it's a duck. The intellectual garbage is coming from people who claim this is not antisemitic.
US relationship with Israel makes perfect sense. It started during the cold war when Israel was aligned with the US against the Arab countries aligned with the USSR. The US gets to test its weapons systems and benefit from Israel defense technology know-how. Post 9/11 and with the rise of organizations like ISIS it also benefited the US greatly to have a partner in this unstable region called the middle east.
I'm not aware of any US congress member that has declared their allegiance to Israel trumps their being American. But hey, any single member of any parliament can always be off the rails and the US has no shortage of those. But give me a specific example? What is understandable is that Americans consider Israel and Israelis their friends and allies and at challenging times friends support their friends and not stab them in the back like some have done.
Even if you buy Palantir’s claim of unfair framing, this is poor optics: the left defaults to “Palantir = big bad bully,” the right to “Europe = censorship,” and this fight manages to trigger both at once with Palantir looking very clumsy in the middle.
This is happening in Switzerland, Hulk Hogan would not have been able to destroy a relatively large media outlet with a single lawsuit there. The main outcome from this is that the Republik will have to print a correction if Palantir wins.
I do hope the Republik gains a few subscribers from this, because they absolutely rule.
Those pesky Swiss with their rights and freedom of press, must be really annoying for poor little thiel, while he just wants to sell surveillance to all sides.
But seriously why should we (valid anywhere in Europe) buy such stuff from US, heck even take it for free. We can go straight to China with same logic, would be cheaper and have about the same amount of backdoors or remote kill switches. US admin publicly wished for subversion and dissolution of EU and making whole Europe a weaker continent, something folks like putin would greatly appreciate.
that sounds good in theory, but in practice almost every country in europe has already fully bought into Palantir tech so you are a bit late with that. Europol has used "Palantir Gotham" for a decade at this point. The idea of western nations national sovereignty is an illusion. Most european journalists wouldn't need to be told not to report badly about Palantir, that's the only thing that makes this story an outlier.
Calling the company specialising in cyber espionage, data theft and generally human rights violations just an "analytics company"... Call it what it is cowards...
Shame on Heise for this GDPR-noncompliant trash in their cookie pop-up:
> We offer you the option of rejecting individual data processing. If you have made a selection for all processing purposes, you can save it. Please note that consent to personalised advertising is always required for use without a Pur subscription.
Naah, no, you don't get to gate rejecting consent behind a subscription. Not even if that's your economic reality. The GDPR entitles people in Europe to opt out of surveillance capitalism, and if you can't make money in that environment, you deserve to go bankrupt.
> Consent is presumed not to be freely given [..] if the performance of a contract, including the provision of a service, is dependent on the consent despite such consent not being necessary for such performance.
> the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) is working on a binding opinion on 'Pay or Consent', which will determine whether Europeans continue to have a realistic option to protect their privacy online. If the approach is legitimised for Meta, companies across all industries could follow suit - which would mark the end of genuine consent to the use of European's data.
I think it's time for the EU to start denying US companies for security reasons.
That's right. They still want to spy on their citizens, mind you. They just don't want it to look bad, so they should go with someone local.
The Snowden files showed in great details how European countries used US intelligence to spy on EU citizens and then request that data through intel sharing, thus bypassing local and EU law. It was an effective way to get the benefits of spying on your citizens with a plausible deniability that it was the Americans who did it, and that the fact that data was shared is simply a fact of Nato and other deals between EU and US.
Obviously this is not something EU citizens want. If we wanted it, we would issue laws that gave the military and police the right to do it themselves. The only reason that this roundabout way came to exist is that such surveillance would not pass unnoticed by voters.
There are some "more local" alternatives. Sweden for example can (and as rumors goes, do) use neighboring countries like Denmark to spy on Swedish citizens by looking at network traffic that goes over the border. People have argued however that this is a bit worse of an deal since you don't get access to the larger intelligence network that US has, and you also have to trust your neighbors with possible sensitive data.
If they're local, then they're subject to GDPR, which carries massive fines and a private right of action that lets you sue the shit out of anyone who spies on you.
International surveillance, on the other hand, doesn't give two shits about GDPR. Likewise, in the US, they pay private firms and other governments to spy on their own citizens to get around the 4th and 5th Amendments.
Limiting spying to nation-state actors only - and prohibiting cross-border surveillance cooperation - would do an insane amount of good for plugging the data drain.
Fines so massive every company out there (including the linked website) takes the (rational) decision to not comply with it.
What makes you say they're not complying?
Government spying is not subject to GDPR, just like you can’t ask the police what data they have on you. Whatever company gives them the tools will be exempt from any form of customer interference.
In which EU country do you not have Freedom of Information equivalent laws?
The US recently sanctioned a number of ICC judges and prosecutors, acting as a pathetic supplicant state for Israel[1].
https://www.state.gov/icc-sanctions
Any company operating worldwide that has a base in the US is legally required to cut all ties with these people. Visa, Mastercard, Paypal, Google, Microsoft, and on and on. The US launched a trade nuclear bomb about some minor disagreement with the ICC, desperately trying to defend the war criminal (and just general criminal -- but don't worry, felon Trump is working to make sure he's pardoned for that, just like all the child molesters, drug dealers and sex traffickers that Trump is personally pardoning by the hundreds) Netanyahu.
For this reason alone, every country not the United States or Israel needs to be full bore ahead on replacing every single American dependency. The fact that the US is trying to use this to punish people prosecuting literal war crimes is absolutely disgusting behaviour, and is utterly intolerable. Ignoring that the US government treats American tech companies as extensions of the government (as much or worse than China, it should be noted. Literally enlisted tech executives from a number of companies in the armed forces, as Chairman Trump demands ownership stakes of all of the firms and their business), and the US government is a friend of no one.
And, it's happening. Everything the current pedo cabal is doing is the sort of short-term political win that is going to destroy the future of the US. Americans are still largely blissfully unaware and thinking this cabal of child rapists and self-dealing criminals (I believe Trump just gave himself $10B of taxpayer dollars...not even a murmur in the busted US) are just trolling the world, when really the US will be the biggest victim by far. Enjoy this brief moment of being the shining star, because the collapse is upon you. It turns out that the idiocracy has an expiry date.
[1] - While it shouldn't need to be said, Israel != Jewishness. Further, it isn't an antisemitic slur to note how absolutely Israel has a stranglehold over the US, constantly seeing the latter punching itself in the face in the service of that rogue nation. Utterly bizarre behaviour. The US is Israel's El Salvador, with a clucking crew of simpletons desperately looking for the boss to give them some accolades.
You got this all wrong.
First of all Netanyahu is not a war criminal. He has not been convicted of any war crimes. Even if for a microsecond we entertain the idea that the ICC has any relationship to justice or morality then people are still innocent until proven guilty. At least in the world we want to live in, i.e. not China or Russia or most other countries where freedom and human rights do not exist. And the ICC is a political circus not a real court.
The US is going after the ICC because it perceives the ICC to be working against its interests and for the interests of the non-free/non-democratic world. If the spinless Europeans weren't, eh, spineless, then they would be working with the US here.
It is also totally antisemitic to say Israel has a stronghold over the US. Just because you make a disclaimer doesn't make it less so. Israel has no hold over the US. Last I checked the Saudis and the Qatari have a lot more influence. It just happens that there is an alignment of interests here. The US doesn't wish to yield any sovereignty to these fake and corrupt institutions serving autocratic regimes any more than Israel does. Israel carries its weight in its alliance with the US far more than other so called allies.
Every decent person and country should be standing with other countries that support democracy and freedom. Yes, the current US president and administration are not great, and the current Israeli government ain't great either, but at least in democracies we can replace them. Unlike most of the world that's a) much worse b) people have no voice. So between the option of our imperfect western democracies and the likes of Russia, China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, I know what I'm picking. And those are the forces seeking to divide and destroy the west so that they can take over.
Tl;Dr version: Israeli Propaganda version of the facts.
You're correct in that Israel doesn't have a hold over the US (it would be silly to assume that a pissant country could have the resources to control the [at time of writing] most prominent country in world), but they are a US client-state and thus receive preferential treatment when it suits US foreign-policy in the Middle East.
> is also totally antisemitic to say Israel has a stronghold over the US.
Sure. Ignore AIPAC.
Sure, build a false dichotomy that we either support Israel unconditionally or we hate Jews and support every antidemocratic nation in the eastern hemisphere.
Sure, further propagate antisemitism by intentionally conflating any criticism of Israel the government with the religion of Judaism.
I can be critical of Qatar and Saudia Arabia and China and Russia and Israel, for all the necessary reasons.
" The US is going after the ICC because it perceives the ICC to be working against its interests and for the interests of the non-free/non-democratic world. If the spinless Europeans weren't, eh, spineless, then they would be working with the US here. " Why? What are the interest of the free world?
"Every decent person and country should be standing with other countries that support democracy and freedom." Netanyahu has some problems with the constitutional court in Israel + corruption allegations. If he succeeds, Israel might become authoritarian and though there is a growing antisemitism some Israel consider leaving Israel because of him.
As we used to say when we were kids, if your grandmother had wheels she would be a bus.
Yes, Israel's democracy is under threat, very much fueled by those same external forces impact other western countries, social media and such.
The interest of the free world. In my opinion. Is to promote freedom and not give power to countries that are not free or democratic (which is most of the world). The UN primarily represents the non-free forces and its institutions similarly the same.
https://www.tehrantimes.com/news/523711/Iran-elected-as-vice...
We need to fight for democracy in Israel and the US just the same way we fight for it everywhere.
"He has not been convicted of any war crimes."
There is an arrest warrant out for him. He hasn't been convicted, but he should show up at that Hague and defend himself. When literally EVERY SINGLE DEVELOPED COUNTRY but the US and Israel is a member of the ICC, and those two happen to be largely the biggest perpetrators of war crimes, this "political theatre" act falls a bit flat.
Oh look, the US is committing terrorism and blowing up random boats again, even double tapping as yet another war crimin' activity. Howler. What a bastion of goodness. Yeah, positively no one cares what that terroristic plutocracy thinks is right or wrong.
"It is also totally antisemitic to say Israel has a stronghold over the US"
LOL, no it absolutely is not. The fact that Israel-apologists have to do this bit is pathetic business. It's intellectual garbage, immediately dismissible as a distraction.
The US relationship with Israel makes literally zero sense. Israel offers absolutely nothing to the US but geopolitical problems. Nothing. The US constantly burns actually valuable relationships in the service of that nuclear-armed international pariah.
Congresspeople will literally, directly say Israel first. One member proudly wore his Israeli military uniform in the House. Just bizarre, unfathomable behaviour time and time again, and if anyone showed that sort of bizarre loyalty to any other country they would be rightly declared a foreign asset and a traitor. Oh look, congress gave Netanyahu a four minute standing ovation, apparently for his largess of trying to drag the US into wars and demanding US taxpayer dollars. What a great guy.
Bizarre stuff.
As to democracies...are we pretending the US is a democracy, or that it has rules and laws? I suspect the midterms are going to disabuse you of that foolish notion.
> "There is an arrest warrant out for him. He hasn't been convicted, but he should show up at that Hague and defend himself"
Neither the US or Israel are treaties to the Rome Statute and are therefore not under the jurisdiction of the islamofacist ICC. The ICC, UN, etc are infested to the brim with islamofacists who do everything in their power to tear down the west, bit by bit. Israel and the US have more resolutions against them than Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, Nigeria, Syria, etc. These institutions are a fucking joke. International law is now codename for Sharia law.
> It's intellectual garbage, immediately dismissible as a distraction.
Absolutely false. This is standard antisemitic MO. The "Jews" control the media, the "Jews" control the US, The "Jews" control money. This is yet another permutation of the age old antisemitism just s/jews/zionists/ and s/jews/israel/ it's used by the same people and with the same intent belief. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck it's a duck. The intellectual garbage is coming from people who claim this is not antisemitic.
US relationship with Israel makes perfect sense. It started during the cold war when Israel was aligned with the US against the Arab countries aligned with the USSR. The US gets to test its weapons systems and benefit from Israel defense technology know-how. Post 9/11 and with the rise of organizations like ISIS it also benefited the US greatly to have a partner in this unstable region called the middle east.
I'm not aware of any US congress member that has declared their allegiance to Israel trumps their being American. But hey, any single member of any parliament can always be off the rails and the US has no shortage of those. But give me a specific example? What is understandable is that Americans consider Israel and Israelis their friends and allies and at challenging times friends support their friends and not stab them in the back like some have done.
Even if you buy Palantir’s claim of unfair framing, this is poor optics: the left defaults to “Palantir = big bad bully,” the right to “Europe = censorship,” and this fight manages to trigger both at once with Palantir looking very clumsy in the middle.
Oh come on there won't be anybody on the right calling this censorship, its one of their biggest donors.
The point is the right won't be able to easily defend them, on this particular issue they've crossed into "enemy" territory.
The realm of PR doesn’t require intellectual consistency. Besides “defending someone” online or in the media does very little to affect case outcomes.
I sure hope Republik didn't write anything about Hulk Hogan ...
This is happening in Switzerland, Hulk Hogan would not have been able to destroy a relatively large media outlet with a single lawsuit there. The main outcome from this is that the Republik will have to print a correction if Palantir wins.
I do hope the Republik gains a few subscribers from this, because they absolutely rule.
https://archive.ph/xobOu
Probably worth also posting this for context: https://blog.palantir.com/korrektur-wie-das-online-magazin-d...
Those pesky Swiss with their rights and freedom of press, must be really annoying for poor little thiel, while he just wants to sell surveillance to all sides.
But seriously why should we (valid anywhere in Europe) buy such stuff from US, heck even take it for free. We can go straight to China with same logic, would be cheaper and have about the same amount of backdoors or remote kill switches. US admin publicly wished for subversion and dissolution of EU and making whole Europe a weaker continent, something folks like putin would greatly appreciate.
that sounds good in theory, but in practice almost every country in europe has already fully bought into Palantir tech so you are a bit late with that. Europol has used "Palantir Gotham" for a decade at this point. The idea of western nations national sovereignty is an illusion. Most european journalists wouldn't need to be told not to report badly about Palantir, that's the only thing that makes this story an outlier.
Calling the company specialising in cyber espionage, data theft and generally human rights violations just an "analytics company"... Call it what it is cowards...
Shame on Heise for this GDPR-noncompliant trash in their cookie pop-up:
> We offer you the option of rejecting individual data processing. If you have made a selection for all processing purposes, you can save it. Please note that consent to personalised advertising is always required for use without a Pur subscription.
Naah, no, you don't get to gate rejecting consent behind a subscription. Not even if that's your economic reality. The GDPR entitles people in Europe to opt out of surveillance capitalism, and if you can't make money in that environment, you deserve to go bankrupt.
Gimme dat shit for free.
You do you think pay-or-ok is not compliant? Ive not heard of a ruling against it.
https://gdpr-info.eu/recitals/no-43/
> Consent is presumed not to be freely given [..] if the performance of a contract, including the provision of a service, is dependent on the consent despite such consent not being necessary for such performance.
https://noyb.eu/en/pay-or-okay-explained-why-more-and-more-w...
> the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) is working on a binding opinion on 'Pay or Consent', which will determine whether Europeans continue to have a realistic option to protect their privacy online. If the approach is legitimised for Meta, companies across all industries could follow suit - which would mark the end of genuine consent to the use of European's data.