How comfortable are you guys with the fact that EU countries allow prosecutors and sometimes even police officers to issue their own search warrants without meaningful judicial review? Some EU courts will not exclude illegally obtained evidence either, so challenging the warrant later on will be pointless.
Oh, and you might be in a reasonable EU country and still be hit with an EIO from one of the unreasonable countries. This is especially concerning given recent ECJ rulings increasingly directing courts in receiving nations to blindly defer to the requesting party when dealing with EAWs, EIOs and similar.
>How comfortable are you guys with the fact that EU countries allow prosecutors and sometimes even police officers to issue their own search warrants without meaningful judicial review?
This is a hilarious 'just asking questions' concern that doesn't address the complete 180 in direction the US is taking and descending in to authoritarianism while moving against the world order it primarily helped build post WWII while threatening other liberal democracies like Canada and Denmark with invasions.
It's a complete false equivalence. ICE agents have straight up murdered two US citizens in broad daylight without consequence and you're querying the nature of some search warrants in the EU.
His comment did not even mention the US. Only critiquing the authoritarianism going on in the EU. One of the issues with modern politics is everyone wants to deflect.
I need to host my emails somewhere. This means that you can't reject the EU in isolation, you have to compare it to the alternatives. And the most prevalent alternative is the US
Now of course if somebody has a better alternative that's neither in the EU nor US (nor Russia, or China) that'd be interesting to hear about
Funny enough, they mention moving to ProtonMail which is at least based out of Switzerland. It makes this whole chain a bit funny, but I don't blame the commenter for not breaking down every service the OP talked about and the OP did shorthand it to "Migrating to the EU", so fair enough.
Didn't proton fold like a wet napkin when they were asked for information about their users? What I mean is: Switzerland as a whole is probably the wrong metric...
Switzerland - as well as EU based providers - have to comply with court orders. And the EU as well as Switzerland issue court orders upon request from friendly foreign states ("Rechtshilfeersuchen" in german) - such as the US.
Wasn't Proton launched as a "your data is encrypted at rest, we could never access it without your consent"? The implication being that even if they received said court orders, they didn't have anything to give. Am I misremembering that?
They encrypt your data insofar as your email, files, etc. but that doesn't mean they don't have information potentially useful to the authorities. See the recent headline where they revealed a user's payment information allowing them to be identified.
These are also political decisions and the EU is much more powerful politically than Switzerland so if your adversary is the US and they're willing to use lawfare or more than you should probably go with the EU and not Switzerland. Germany is considered one of the most robust legal systems for privacy.
Do you run your email server? I run two, have next to no problems (the key is in setting up DNS correctly, as I mentioned) and keep getting told this by people who have never tried.
I made sure to include the word correctly in the reply. Mox mailserver tells you exactly what to do. I think mailcow does as well. A lot of people don't do it and then tell others that selfhosting email with good deliverability is impossible. You set it up once and you're good to go
It depends on whether your IP address has good reputation or not. Don't act like we're idiots, we know what SPF, DKIM and DMARC are. We've seen perfect e-mails (rated 100/100 by deliverability services) get rejected by Microsoft because reasons.
> It depends on whether your IP address has good reputation or not
Addressed in another comment "I wouldn't try it from a residential IP but as long as you run a blacklist check on the IP before you start".
> Don't act like we're idiots, we know what SPF, DKIM and DMARC are.
If you read one comment higher in the thread instead of reacting emotionally, I was specifically asked to elaborate on what the correct DNS meant. Please don't act like those who don't know are idiots.
> We've seen perfect e-mails (rated 100/100 by deliverability services) get rejected by Microsoft because reasons.
No, you haven't.
> You were lucky, congratulations.
What do you call consistent luck? In my case 14 years across 6 different sending domains, 4 different servers with four different hosts using two different MTAs?
I mean I have seen 100/100 on https://mail-tester.com/ get rejected by Microsoft, yes, but feel free to call me a liar if that helps you feel better.
I've just noticed you're the guy who said that people were migrating away from US services "because it's trending"; you're obviously a self-satisfied pillock and I won't engage in further discussion with your tedious online personality
Yes but you may need the IPs to warm up and build some reputation, depending where you setup your server the IPs may be burned. Check logs and reputation with some of the postmaster tools the major providers offer and with the services that allow looking up an IP. senderscore used to be convenient to use now it displays a stupid contact form when you try to check an IP, there are others.
To be honest I haven't done the setup for sending a handful of emails but IPs sending hundreds/thousands per day it's fine as long as you don't start spamming people and get flagged.
Yes they do. I wouldn't try it from a residential IP but as long as you run a blacklist check on the IP before you start, and configure DNS correctly, it's generally fine.
It's happening in the EU too, just not at such a fast pace than in other regions. And it's still far away from authoritarianism.
Currently it's just smaller pieces and no bigger agenda is visible (or even exiting). But there are constantly new regulations that would make an authoritarian coup (like currently in the US) easier.
> the complete 180 in direction the US is taking and descending in to authoritarianism while moving against the world order
The EU is just one AfD win away from doing the same thing. It's not immune to this issue either, you have the same problem happening right under your noses.
Most European countries have parliamentary democracies.
It's not a winner-takes-all system ala presidential and semi-presidential republics where effectively individuals:
1. rule without opposition. There's no opposition it's not represented in that branch.
2. rule without even needing support of their own parties. The Italian prime minister or the German chancellor have to fight every day in parliament to have support of their parties and the other parties coalitions.
3. a single individual can claim popular mandate. In parliamentary systems you vote for parties/coalitions, not individuals
There's a reason why this authoritarian trend goes from the Philippines, Nicaragua, to Belarus, to Turkey, to Russia, to most African countries and now US. They are all presidential republics.
The last parliamentary democracy to turn authoritarian has been...Sri Lanka. Almost 50 years ago. Presidential ones? It's basically every year.
Systems with winner-takes-all mechanics do not represent voters, and power is too concentrated.
Parliamentary democracies might be labeled as less efficient, that I can agree, but they have strong antibodies to such people.
See Austria or the Netherlands as examples where strong far right authoritarian-wannabes individuals became prime ministers...and then nothing happened and their governments didn't last.
I agree that presidential systems in particular are problematic, and the EU is lucky that Germany and France use parliamentary systems. But the nasty thing about populism is that it happens in waves and it does overtake parliaments. We need only look at what happened to the UK with Brexit for a recent example. It's not hard to imagine that a wave of far-right populism could one day overtake Germany, or send France's RN, Austria's FPO or Poland's PIS to a majority position.
We can cross our fingers and hope that nobody would work with them (I know that Germany's parties all have a pinky promise not to work with AfD), but it was only 10 years ago that everyone in the US was laughing at the prospect of a Donald Trump presidency – and now here we are, much sobered. These things happen, and AfD, or RN, or whoever, could wreak havoc to the EU from within the EU if they took power and started working with Hungary to block EU legislation, veto sanctions, defund programs and more.
Most European countries have functioning legal and electoral systems, and more than two parties. On top of that, constitutional courts aren't political appointments.
So it would be incredibly hard for a political entity like AfD or RN to gain full and absolute power like the orange has achieved. Even in the worst cases, those parties usually only have ~30% popular support at most, which usually translates to at most ~30-40% of seats in parliament. Which means they cannot even get parliamentary majority, and probably can't get head of state either.
Americans just like to pretend things aren't that bad and they aren't the only ones falling into the abyss.
Could you explain to me (non-US and non-EU resident), how people in EU are okay with mandatory photo scanning on your devices(aka CSAM protection)?
Who does this weird proposals like Chat Control?
AFAIK, it is not "alt-right" parties - so it really does not clicking for me, why AfD and others constantly brought in during online privacy discussions?
I am not saying passing, but seems there is a large group of politicians(supposedly backed by voters?) who lobby such initiatives who are not some alt-right fascist outliers?
I'm not pretending things aren't bad, I'm pointing out that things could be bad for you as well. America had functioning legal and electoral systems too, and we only need to look at Brexit for a shining example of how parliamentary systems can also fail to resist a populist wave. By refusing to acknowledge that, you look no wiser than the Americans who were laughing at the idea of a Donald Trump presidency just ten years ago.
Not every European country, but unfortunately many countries are at risk. Someone like Orban is so deeply and openly corrupt, you have to wonder why anyone besides his cronies vote for him. But as an autocrat, you apparently only have to chase lgbti people and immigrants to cheer people up. Going to CPAC with all your kinky friends doing the Sieg Heils on stage (yes, that happened, even if someone doesn't want to hear that). Conservatism is a depressing view of the world.
And then you have all kinds of charlatans that are basically Orban doubles. You hear the same stupid talking points and bullshit, the same cozying up with Putin. And to top it off, the USA has openly vowed to fuel and fund that fire of self destruction, so the billionaires can eat the corpse. Because that is where the term conservatism came from, to conserve the power of the king and the ruling elites, as a god given construct (the only original moral aspect of conservatism).
Again this is a false equivalence, 'a little less marked' isn't close to imparting the true state of things and to be honest a little disingenuous.
The EU is not in full motion to dismantle democracy across her 27 states. The US should it not turn this around in the midterms is finished as a liberal democracy.
So 'ah yes but Hungary' doesn't persuade me even though I'll concede it's a problem for the EU. If Tisza is elected in April, Hungary will be on course to turn things around. So you're comparing 1 out of 27 to 50 out of 50 states.
Didn't like the candidate? Half the country (or perhaps more) didn't even know the candidate. He was pushed with the help of Russia/China via Tiktok and that's about it. He declared 0 (z-e-r-o) campaign expenses. Delusional!
What actually happened was that former EU Commissioner Thierry Breton publicly stated on French TV in January 2025 that if the AfD won in Germany, elections there could also be annulled by the EU "as was done in Romania". That was a stupid thing for him to say, but he is a private citizen, he did not represent the EU in any capacity, and there is no evidence whatsoever that the EU pressured Romania. Of course, post-truth political movements run with a distorted version of this story to play the victim.
Romania's Supreme Court decision was based mainly on illegal campaign financing. The Constitutional Court noted that Georgescu had officially reported zero campaign expenditures, yet had an enormous social media presence. His TikTok account had over 646K followers and 7.2M likes. This was in the context of interconnected declassified intelligence. Around 25000 pro-Georgescu TikTok accounts became highly active in the two weeks before the first-round vote, with nearly 800 accounts created in 2016 that had remained dormant until the election. Activity was coordinated through a Telegram channel. Romania's intelligence service said there were signs of state-sponsored attacks operating in a hybrid manner, targeting critical infrastructure and shaping public opinion through misinformation. The campaign was said to mirror influence operations conducted by Moscow during elections in Ukraine and Moldova.
Romanian prosecutors later charged Georgescu with involvement behind cyberattacks targeting Romanian electoral systems.
Russia has been systematically attempting to interfere with EU elections, and anyone who argues otherwise in the face of mountains of evidence is either being naive or disingenuous. Post-truth political parties such as the AfD are funded and supported by the Kremlin, which is interested in sowing division and wished the collapse of the EU for a long time. Unfortunately, the current US administration is also ideologically aligned with the Kremlin and also wishes the collapse of the EU, as is explicitally stated in the recent strategic document published by the Trump administration. These are the actual facts, that are easy to verify if you are actually interested in the truth.
Yes it's always the evil Russians and the stupid people are influenced by TikTok so we need to tell them what they should vote!
From e.g. Wikipedia:
>At the time of his exclusion, Georgescu was leading in public opinion polls
D'oh!
>That was a stupid thing for him to say, but he is a private citizen
How convenient he got fired, everything is good now, surely the Commission does not hold the same views as him! Are you really this naive?
And don't get me wrong, I support neither Georgescu (a typical conspiracy theorist nut) nor AfD (who only argue that the evil immigrants are at fault). But I support a free and democratic process and these are no longer in place. If you ban leading candidates and try to ban political parties that are in the lead (AfD and CDU constantly switch #1 positions in polls by 1-2 percentagep points) just because they are not on "your side" you are not better than any country that you mark as authoritian.
> Yes it's always the evil Russians and the stupid people are influenced by TikTok so we need to tell them what they should vote!
I didn't call anyone stupid. I have been deceived many times in my life. It happens to all of us and it is happening to you now.
> At the time of his exclusion, Georgescu was leading in public opinion polls
Yes, that is the issue with misinformation, isn't it? It works. Otherwise nobody would care, would they? Misinformation is incredibly destructive, for example it caused Brexit, which was based on mostly lies, some of them famously written on a bus, along with algorithmic manipulation by Cambridge Analytica, that were never properly challenged leading to the referendum. This is all well-known by now and easily verifiable.
> How convenient he got fired
He didn't get fired, you are making things up. This is precisely the sort of misinformation that destroys democracy. He had resigned months before this appearance on French TV because of frictions with von der Leyen, who tried to block him from being reappointed. By the time he gave the interview, he was already a private citizen and his resignation had nothing to do with this incident.
Also, and importantily, he never claimed that the problem was that any party of candidate was "bad" or "not acceptable". Breton framed his remarks around enforcing EU law against foreign interference, specifically in the context of Elon Musk's (a foreign actor, by the way) support for the AfD ahead of Germany's snap elections. He said: "Let's stay calm and enforce the laws in Europe. They did it in Romania and, obviously, it will have to be done, if necessary, in Germany as well".
The misrepresentation that you are repeating was initially posted on X by the account Visegrád 24, a well-known propaganda account that constantly posts lies and disinformation with an anti-EU bias.
> But I support a free and democratic process and these are no longer in place.
Unfortunately there is indeed one European member state that is suffering democratic backsliding and that is Hungary, but this is not the EU's fault. Otherwise, everything you wrote is demonstrably false.
> If you ban leading candidates and try to ban political parties that are in the lead (AfD and CDU constantly switch #1 positions in polls by 1-2 percentagep points) just because they are not on "your side" you are not better than any country that you mark as authoritian.
AfD has not been banned, and the issue is not them being on my side or not. There are plenty of political parties that I dislike in Europe and I don't want them to be banned. I only wish to ban parties and candidates that break the law, namely by receiving illegal funding from out geopolitical enemies because, unlike the "nationalist" post-truth movements, I am actually a patriot and I love Europe, open societies and liberal democracy.
> The US should it not turn this around in the midterms is finished as a liberal democracy.
I wish there was an easy way for me to bet against the imminent fall of the United States as predicted by so many internet commenters. I don’t like what the current administration is doing, either, but I would readily bet against all of these “the end is just around the corner” or “the empire is dying” takes in a heartbeat.
I didn't say the US is finished, I said it was finished as a liberal democracy.
It's already slid in to 'electoral democracy' instead of 'liberal democracy' the difference between the two is how 'rule of law' is prioritised and the balance between checks and balances between institutions is enforced.
Not quibbling but to be fair that report shows problems in Europe too, not the same speed of change, and its a different situation, but if you care about democracy its not great.
Trends are various. You had Poland remove rightwing goverment 2 years ago (yes and elect righwing president few months ago). Romania electing a European centric president.
We can go on. EU is not a single country, not a single community of people.
I'm not advertising the US here or trying to troll. I'm an European pointing out things about the European system that many here will not have thought about.
>It's a complete false equivalence. ICE agents have straight up murdered two US citizens in broad daylight without consequence and you're querying the nature of some search warrants in the EU.
I’m in the US and generally pretty level-headed. Nothing makes me become a red-blooded patriot nationalist temporarily faster than seeing Europeans completely ignore the similarities in our political ills.
It always boils down to, “but it’s the good kind of authoritarianism we have that preserves social order!!!” as if that has never failed to produce desired results. Thanks for being much more rational. We have a concerning political trend here in the US, it can’t be denied, but the EU is following in step.
Yeah, it's really bizarre how this has to be turned into a competition. We have stupid problems in the EU that don't exist in the US and vice-versa.
The way this particular part of our system works is downright horrifying, but it's exotic enough that very few people (even lawyers) will be familiar with it.
What the EU fails to realize is that rights have always been dennied due to the "great good". Nazi Germany did it. The USSR did it. China does it today.
So by claiming "there are good reasons" creates no distinction between them an authoritarians. They need to have a better reason.
Sorry what? While there are right wing idiots in various governments in the EU, the Trump admin is on a completely different level. Also the bosses of big tech are clamouring over each other to s** him off.
I’m not particularly patriotic or bothered about nations in general, but the yanks can go take a hike.
Just saying, the vast majority of services people are moving from would be US based given it is where all of big tech comes from. So comparing it to the US is relevant?
If you're trying to say the eu isn't a saint either, sure.
>If you're trying to say the eu isn't a saint either, sure.
I'm not trying to say anything about anyone else besides the EU. Therefore I'm certainly not trying to compare EU to anyone else.
I am an European pointing out issues with the local system, issues that many commenters here clearly aren't aware of given how many replies seem to think that they'll be just fine as long as they don't host in Hungary.
What a disingenuous comparison. The wiki article you've linked ("List of killings by law enforcement officers in Germany") sums to 552 people over the last 100 years. In contrast, the corresponding wiki article on the US ("Lists of killings by law enforcement officers in the United States" [1]) estimates more than 900 deaths per year. Indeed, the number of slayings is so great that the article does not tabulate the sum in a single table (as the German article does) but instead links to separate wiki articles with tabulated results by month.
Over the last 100 years, almost certainly not. For the most recent decade? Yes, of course I would expect these statistics to be fairly accurate.
Between 2021 and 2025 (inclusive), Wikipedia lists 68 dead in Germany versus 5882 dead in the US, despite the US only being ~4 times larger. More people have been killed by police in the US this year than in Germany in the past ten years, and it's not even April yet.
> Imagine the outrage EU would have had if US seized immigrants jewelry
The US literally deports people to concentration camps in countries with no civil liberties. Many have disappeared there. A whole other group have been raped and become pregnant and are being moved around to force births.
And you are concerned about fucking jewelry. Genuinely, are you taking a piss here?
> How comfortable are you guys with the fact that EU countries allow prosecutors and sometimes even police officers to issue their own search warrants without meaningful judicial review?
(IANAL.) This was reviewed by the courts themselves:
> The CJEU confirmed that the Belgian, French and Swedish prosecutors were sufficiently independent from the executive to be able to issue EAWs. […]
> […] Public prosecutors will qualify as an issuing judicial authority where two conditions are met: […]
> 2. Second, public prosecutors must be in a position to act in an independent way, specifically with respect to the executive. The CJEU requires that the independence of public prosecutors be organised by a statutory framework and organisational rules that prevent the risk of prosecutors being subject to individual instructions by the executive (as was the case with the German prosecutor). Moreover, the framework must enable prosecutors to assess the necessity and proportionality of issuing an EAW. In the French prosecutor judgment, the CJEU specifically indicated that:
The question that the OP asks is fair enough, but there's a lot of subtly and 'low-level' details on how things operate compared to the high-level question that is being asked. Also depends on where the OP lives and what he's used to: common law (UK/US/CA/etc) and civil law procedures and laws are (AIUI) quite different.
Valid question, which must be put in the context of US-based providers willingly satisfying US out-of-jurisdiction search requests for EU data without even letting the EU know about it. (And when the providers are not willing, they can be forced by U.S. Cloud Act)
Sweden is a country like this. It is just the way it is here. It can be abused, sure. But all things considered, I much rather have my things hosted here than in the US.
Sure, those EIO will be held if Hungary starts applying EIO that it got (e.g. for former Ministry of Justice of Poland which awaits trail, he sits comfortably in Hungary).
Let's hope elections there will change Orban into something saner.
I think you might be missing the ‘concerning’ part. Which specific cases are concerning? I don’t find it inherently concerning that people can’t escape justice by crossing the Hungarian border, Bonnie and Clyde style.
Too explicitly spell it out, op is saying here that if any one of the 27 countries in the EU decides you are breaking one of their laws, they can have 1 of the other 26 enforce an EIO.
EIOs are subject to a dual criminality requirement. So it’s not as if arbitrary Hungarian laws can be applied in France via EIOs. And of course, we all know this is not happening, which is why we get radio silence from the people who are ‘concerned’ about this whenever specifics are requested.
Annex D is a list of things that are crimes pretty much everywhere.
Not sure what to make of the claim that Hungary might theoretically be enforcing Hungarian law in France. It seems surprising that no-one has noticed any specific consequences of this that you can point to.
The EIO is mostly just a formalization and standardization of a bunch of ad-hoc processes that were already in place. Law enforcement agencies in different European countries do try to assist each other, on the whole.
What you're missing is the erosion of the ability of the executing states to say things like "hey this is sketchy, we think this crime might not have happened", "hey the police department in this particular city is notoriously untrustworthy", or "hey this prosecutor is widely known in the local press to be corrupt and owns a collection of ferraris".
Now foreign authorities are trusted by default and significant parts of their reasoning are not subject to review, that's bad.
You understand that these aren't typically public, right? There's not any particularly good mechanism to discover abuse in this system in the first place, because the checks and balances are largely left to the requesting state.
>Where are search warrants issued via public proceedings? You could make the same point about any jurisdiction.
It's different though, typically you can fight those warrants after the fact, with EIOs you have to do the fighting in a jurisdiction you don't live in.
This is all deeply problematic because things like "probable cause" have very different meanings in different EU countries, even if on paper it's all supposed to be the same.
>Also, account first created in 2021, coincidentally starts posting right after the other account in this thread is replaced with a green account?
Maybe stick to one account? It’s confusing for the rest of us, if nothing else.
You are determined not to point to any specific examples and you keep switching to different abstract arguments. For example, you’ve now dropped the point about EIOs being non-public in some sort of allegedly sinister way, and are raising a different set of equally irrelevant abstract points.
>you’ve now dropped the point about EIOs being non-public in some sort of allegedly sinister way
Nonsense, I told you that EIOs are non-public after you repeatedly insisted on examples of them being abused. I did not suggest that there's anything sinister about them being non-public. The sinister part is outsourcing warrants to other countries. I can't trust that the French legal system will protect me in France anymore because now I also have to trust the Hungarian legal system, that's bad.
Frankly, it seems silly to debate about whether or not these systems are being abused when we know that Poland has historically issued one third of all EAWs.
Oh no, that's totally up to you. If you're happy with the courts in your country not being able to review the requests sent from Hungary, that's cool. Without transparent judicial review, how could we even know if the cases are concerning?
"Subject to review" means little more than "is the form filled correctly?", it certainly does not mean second-guessing by the courts in the executing state.
Like, yeah, your EIO will be rejected if you don't tick any of the crime-category boxes in the form.
You can look at past ECHR decisions for countless cases of abuse by various national governments.
You can look at the history of EAW related litigation also, it'll probably prove most informative. Executing states used to constantly deny requests due to judicial review, rules were clarified to remove the possibility of judicial review by executing states.
> How comfortable are you guys with the fact that EU countries allow prosecutors and sometimes even police officers to issue their own search warrants without meaningful judicial review?
Just to be clear, according to the DOJ, law enforcement officials in the US can search your home without a warrant if they suspect that you are a "Alien Enemy" [1].
Wouldn't source that this is happening in 1 of the member states be enough to raise alarms? Why do all of them need to for you to consider this an issue?
You are technically correct but seem to be applying common law standards to civil law countries.
Unlike common law judiciary, civil law judiciary in and of itself has investigatory powers and judges don’t just hear arguments but can order their own investigations and are significantly more independent than in common law.
This can cut both ways, yes in theory the judge can accept evidence the prosecution obtained illegally, but the judges can also call the prosecutions bluff and call their own witnesses or order an independent expert to provide their own opinion, even if defense is unable to.
Scandinavian law is commonly considered to be a subcategory of civil law. Judges in Scandinavia have investigative powers and can judge the truth of the matter.
>Scandinavian law is commonly considered to be a subcategory of civil law
Their judiciaries are very different from how you describe civil law systems.
>Judges in Scandinavia have investigative powers and can judge the truth of the matter.
This is, at best, technically correct. While Judges in Nordic countries tend to technically have some limited investigative powers, it is extraordinarily unusual for them to be used in any meaningful capacity.
In reality the investigate powers wielded by judges in Nordic countries tend to be the same as in common law countries, asking a question here and there during the hearing to make sure they're keeping up.
These countries are certainly not at all like France or Spain where you might have examining magistrates, criminal investigations are run by the police and prosecutors.
Note that original discussion was discussing extraordinary unusual circumstances already.
This isn’t your average „my neighbor built a fence and damaged my tree“ case.
In such cases, the technical differences between fully adversarial common law systems and mixed-but-still-some-inquisitive-powers systems like the Nordic law matters.
And of course it is not exactly like Napoleonic law countries.
Also, the police still runs investigations, even in France. It’s just that the judges can choose to not believe the police. Famously, even if you sign a confession they can say they don’t believe it.
Police in many EU countries was systematically searching suspects phones without mandatory due process. This was prima facie illegal, everyone involved knew it. They did it regardless.
Yeah, this decision eventually resulted in many governments issuing new guidance, and some countries rewriting their national legislation. Is that a big victory for the rule of law? I think not, the national governments should not be knowingly violating the ECHR in the first place.
It took Ireland years from an ECHR ruling to rule buggery was not unlawful, and Ireland was given a special exemption to the EUs abortion laws which remained in place for 26 years.
I interpret ECHR as what it is: not a regulatory body by any stretch of the imagination. It can recommend changes to the national law, but it cannot force any state to do so. You seem to be interpreting it as some sort of an equivalent to the US supreme court, which it is not.
But now we're straying even further from my original argument which boils down to "laws mean something" into arguing the intricacies of how laws are supposed to be changed. I'm not interested in having that discussion, as it has nothing to do with my original claim.
The only thing ECHR cares about is one piece of "legislation", which is not a law, but a declaration (Declaration of Human Rights), so that you have some sort of internationally recognised body to go to whenever you feel that your local judicial system has done you injustice. That is all it does. That is all it is meant to do. That is the sole reason of its existence. It is not a legislative body at all.
> ECHR can simply invalidate national law.
It can't. You're either making things up or severely misunderstanding the court. It can say "this law doesn't align with the Declaration" and that's it. The law still exists. ECHR relies on signatories being willing to make the necessary changes themselves. Some are and get right on it, some aren't. The election law in my country has lost 5 cases in the ECHR and not a single one of the verdicts are fixed as of now, the oldest of which dates back to 2009. This is horrible, I want to see them fixed, but ECHR can't force us to fix it and we as in the country face 0 consequences for not addressing any of them (as of yet).
There is a separate court called European Court of Justice which is the equivalent of the US supreme court and is tasked with interpreting EU-wide laws and making sure national laws are aligned as much as possible. That is a legislative body with an enforcement mechanism. ECHR is not, you don't know what you're talking about.
The baseline level of freedom of speech in the EU, in particular, is much, much worse than in the US. We’re talking about a group of countries with active, enforced blasphemy laws! Completely unthinkable for Americans.
You linked to a site about press freedom, which is a subset of free speech and not generally what Americans are talking about when they talk about freedom of speech.
"Congress shall make no law...prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press."
that does not imply one being the subset of the other to me, if anything they are clearly defined and therefore clearly separate.
Trump refuses to answer simple questions and attacks and mocks reporters, that's if they're lucky and he doesn't directly sue them for millions/billions. Hell, the white house banned Associated Press. Is that free speech or freedom of the press?
It's worth reading the specific actions they cite that lower the US's ranking. They include the closure of Voice of America, a government-run propaganda outlet for foreign audiences (and I do think that closure is bad! just not relevant at all to free speech); mergers of several big media conglomerates; not to mention, bafflingly, restrictions on journalism by the Iranian government in Iran, which somehow counts against the US.
None of this says anything about Americans' right to speak freely, which is absolute, unlike in any European country.
I would argue that if protesters against Israels politics are persecuted, detained or even deported, the baseline of free speech has crumbled significantly.
Boiling down the different approaches to freedom of speech to "The baseline level is higher/lower", has always been a pretty simplistic (and if you would actually delve into the topic a little, flat out wrong) view .
Freedom of speech is not absolute. Neither in Europe nor in the US. Both effectively have rules restricting certain speech. For example, speech that may harm others, such as inciting violence or maybe the most famous example: "Shouting FIRE in a full venue".
European countries tend to spell out these restrictions more explicitly. It's completely reasonable to disagree with these restrictions. But the simple existence of them shouldn't lead you to the conclusion that one is "more freedom of speech" than the other.
And at last I want to add, that that is how it's been historically. Sadly, the recent developments in US show pretty well how freedom of speech cannot be measured by "How many specific laws are there about things I cannot say?".
"Crowded theater"? In any case, yes, that's a popular understanding of limits on free speech in the US, but it's actually been superseded twice - first by "clear and present danger," then by "inciting or producing imminent lawless action." These days, it's probably (I am not a lawyer) legal to yell "fire!" in a crowded theater under many circumstances.
> Sadly, the recent developments in US show pretty well how freedom of speech cannot be measured by "How many specific laws are there about things I cannot say?".
There are no laws preventing you from saying anything in the US, unless you are specifically, directly inciting people, at that moment, to do things that break other laws. That's the point. You can't measure it in terms of degrees of restrictions; the US has none, and all European countries have at least some. The latter approach opens the floodgates to restrictions on any kind of speech that the government doesn't like. The US Constitution prevents that from ever happening.
This is a common refrain from people in countries without freedom of speech, used to argue that the US doesn't AcKtUalLy have freedom of speech.
The idea that "freedom of speech" in the US is not philosophically and fundamentally different than "freedom of speech" in, for example, the UK or Germany, is not an opinion grounded in reality regardless of what legal minutiae you can point to.
So far all we have is the statement that Germany has some speech laws, but the US has no speech laws except for the speech laws that it has, which is a grammatical trick, not an actual difference, because it's saying both countries have some speech laws.
>For example, speech that may harm others, such as inciting violence or maybe the most famous example: "Shouting FIRE in a full venue".
Perhaps a misquote from 1919 wartime supreme court decision involving an anti-draft activist isn't a great example? Even when correctly quoted, this quote is utterly meaningless in 2026.
>Freedom of speech is not absolute
Nobody ever claims it is? That's literally never in dispute, fraud (for example) is illegal everywhere.
> Perhaps a misquote from 1919 wartime supreme court decision involving an anti-draft activist isn't a great example? Even when correctly quoted, this quote is utterly meaningless in 2026.
I was not actually quoting any specific American case law but referring to the general legal concept. But even if I had referred to it specifically, it would not be meaningless. If I understand correctly, the US has overturned that specific case, but to my understanding the legal concept behind it remains in effect. But I see how my use of quotes and the choice of words "most famous example" was confusing here. I was not aware that there is this specific US case where the "Fire in a theater" phrase originates from and was talking about the general concept of purposefully causing a panic in a crowded space.
>Freedom of speech is not absolute
> Nobody ever claims it is? That's literally never in dispute, fraud (for example) is illegal everywhere.
I never claimed that anyone claimed that.
I thought that the preceding statement was too simplistic for a complex topic and tried to offer a more differentiated explanation. Why are you upset that I started that explanation with a statement that you agree is true?
Oh please. There's free speech without a free press (US ranks 57/190, behind Sierra Leone) people are just amplifying the same BS they heard from some ignorant influencer. I would argue even your idea of "active enforced blasphemy laws" shows that. That's worse than useless, that is detrimental to a society (case in point, the current president and his whole cabinet).
> We’re talking about a group of countries with active, enforced blasphemy laws
In a very narrow interpretation, yes. Everyone with a modicum of common sense would realise that countries with laws on the books against offending religions / inciting hatred against them are still more free than a country where the fucking Bible is cited in court rulings and political speeches, and where there are active laws prohibiting non-religious people from holding office.
One is for keeping the peace, the other is actively meddling religion and politics.
> baseline level of freedom of speech
Being unable to spout Nazi ideology is technically a restriction on freedom of speech, yes. But again, anyone with a modicum of common sense (and a bit of historical understanding) would understand this to be a good thing.
The far right is ascendant in Europe; obviously restrictions on speech haven't prevented that. I am Jewish, I have a strong dislike of Nazis, and yet I think Nazis legally being able to "spout Nazi ideology" is a healthy thing for our society. Criminalizing speech doesn't stop people from holding abhorrent beliefs.
It's fine if you think the American approach to free speech is bad - you don't have to live here - but please justify that rather than just name-calling.
> yet I think Nazis legally being able to "spout Nazi ideology" is a healthy thing for our society
How did that end last time? We know where it ends, we know there's nothing redeeming. Nobody needs Nazis, there is nothing to be gained by engaging with them or giving them a platform.
That they did not apply. They let a guy who tried to overthrow the government free to run for election again. This kind of thing should never be allowed. Someone who physically demonstrates they have no business in a democratic society doesn't belong in it.
Is it not true that when entering the US you are required to show all your social media content on request, and if there is anything negative about the current administration, you can be denied entry (if you are lucky, and not detained for an indefinite amount of time)?
Truly exceptional indeed. You are basically on par with China.
Do they really do that and what do they do when you say you don't have one? Do they believe you or not having one is as suspicious as having one with the content they don't like?
The EU is really more middle-of-the-road in most things, while the US tends to be more extreme: more really good ideas, but also more really bad ideas. But that is also the result of the EU being largely controlled by bureaucrats and compliance officers instead of real leaders.
FYI American exceptionalism is stuff like having, bar none, the worst school shooting rate in the world, and by far the highest murder rate in a developed country, and stating that what everyone else is doing wouldn't apply to the US. Or designing cities wrong and saying that everyone else doing better by any imaginable metric wouldn't apply to the US.
The EU governance system is vastly different than the US, and not nearly as fragile. Even if AfD gets sway in one country, it doesn't mean that suddenly they can do anything they want like you saw in the last US election.
My understanding of the EU system is that it's far more proportional in representation, and a simple 51% isn't enough to have 100% control. Parties still need to work together and compromise.
> My understanding of the EU system is that it's far more proportional in representation, and a simple 51% isn't enough to have 100% control. Parties still need to work together and compromise.
We've already seen with Brexit that 100% control is not needed in a parliamentary system to destroy a country's livelihood. But my point was that AfD doesn't need something like "presidential control" of the EU, it would just need to start working with other far-right parties in the EU such as Hungary and France's RN to sow chaos from within. Is that very far-fetched? You can't tell me that most of Europe doesn't hold its collective breath at every French election, crossing their fingers that Le Pen's party doesn't win this go around.
AfD is a far right populist party in the EU's biggest economic powerhouse country, whose explicit goals are to leave the EU (they probably can't due to the German constitution), exit the eurozone, withdraw from the Paris climate deal, leave NATO, and cozy up with Russia.
It's not hard to imagine what kind of damage they could do to the EU if they took power in Germany and started working with Hungary to block EU legislation, veto sanctions, defund programs, etc.
They don't, they don't even apply to EU citizens keeping their (our, in fact) data on our (EU's servers) if what we're doing happens to cross some interests of the US Government. I mean, there are some legal "protections" in place for that, but notice the quotes. Thinking otherwise is delusional, but, hey, people should be allowed to enjoy the liberty of their slightly larger iron bird-cage.
> An administrative warrant is a legal document issued by a government agency, rather than a court, that authorizes the agency to take specific actions such as conducting inspections, searches, or seizing property. Unlike judicial warrants, administrative warrants are frequently issued on less than probable cause of a crime.
> Administrative warrants are typically used for regulatory or civil enforcement purposes and allow agencies to enforce rules and regulations within their jurisdiction, such as health inspections, building code enforcement, or immigration-related actions.
> The problem with administrative warrants is that they make the agency both the prosecutor and the judge in the very same matter. The entire point of having agencies go to court for a warrant is because courts are an independent branch with an independent mission. Rather than solely focusing on identifying and prosecuting violations of law, courts seek to check agency errors and overreach. When the very same agency that wants to execute a warrant is the one deciding whether it issues, those checks disappear, and Americans’ security pays the price.
Without disagreeing at all, can you think of a major jurisdiction that's better? US I basically assume everything is searchable without a warrant, if not leaked on a ex-DOGE intern USB stick.
Who else is there with a major infra ecosystem? Russia? China? UK? Not sure these are better than EU. Japan seems quite inward looking.
It’s why I don’t trust anyone. Sure, EU has better policies and regulations than the wild west (US/Canada), but they still can and will do monkey business when needed, and they are more twisted about it than the US. The best strategy is to host your own and encrypt all, if it’s too much effort for some services try to use one from a country that has no interest in you (outside the west for example).
I'd say don't let perfect be the enemy of good/better. Moving from US to EU is a move for the better. But EU isn't perfect, and there might be even better options available, but unless you have them, I'd recommend starting with the move to EU.
Do you seriously think that US requires warrants from US judges to spy on non-citizens abroad? That is 100% false. There is zero protection from the US govt for non-citizens living abroad.
> you might be in a reasonable EU country and still be hit with an EIO from one of the unreasonable countries.
Are you certain this has happened? I never heard that happen in central Europe. I am pretty certain legislation of other countries is irrelevant, unless it would be an EU regulation - and I am unaware of an EU regulation that could bypass local laws and that has not been made a EU law. Which EU law specifically do you refer to?
While the EIO is s controversial instrument (I particularly dislike the excessive power it gives to authorities in issuing countries and the inability to question the warrant), it at least is something that happens as part of a judicial process.
I'm certainly more comfortable with it than being subject to the whims of the US government and its 3 letter agencies.
That said, yeah, EIO in the shape it exists is bad.
>it at least is something that happens as part of a judicial process
Only sort of, because some countries have very weird ideas of what a "judicial process" is.
>I'm certainly more comfortable with it than being subject to the whims of the US government and its 3 letter agencies.
That's fair, but I think it's a mistake. In the worst case the European system grants a village cop in another country the authority to conduct extremely intrusive surveillance on you.
Criminals can easily co-opt this system and steal your crypto or whatever, a far more realistic threat for most people than the NSA.
> village cop in another country the authority to conduct extremely intrusive surveillance on you.
> far more realistic threat for most people than the NSA.
If you think some policeman in a rural Frech village is a bigger threat to your freedom than NSA or other 3-letter agencies from the USA, we can all see who is mistaken in evaluating threats.
> Criminals can easily co-opt this system and steal your crypto or whatever
I don't want to say anything, I just wanted to highlight this bit because it made me giggle.
>If you think some policeman in a rural Frech village is a bigger threat to your freedom than NSA or other 3-letter agencies from the USA, we can all see who is mistaken in evaluating threats.
Just like the random mugger on the streets of Paris is a far bigger threat to my life and limb than the US with their drones.
You're talking from an ideological perspective, I'm looking at this from a rather more practical angle. It's very possible that your line of thinking leads to a better outcome than mine, or perhaps it doesn't.
>I don't want to say anything, I just wanted to highlight this bit because it made me giggle.
How much is this a practical rather than theoretical problem?
One of the problems with being on the US Internet is that we get lots of coverage of US police overreach and much less coverage of EU police overreach. That could have one of three causes:
- actual incidence is low
- it's not being reported
- it is being reported, but doesn't generate discourse
(And the counter option: sometimes when you do hear about it, it's been laundered through weird US right-wing politics, like almost anything anyone says about Sweden)
As long as you stay away from questionable behaviour, there is very little chance to encounter the police in the EU or having problems with your privacy. USA is different in that regard. Your existence can be a problem. Or monetary interests will risk your privacy to whoever wants to make money with you.
EU is not perfect, but saver than the USA in those matters (if you want to only invest a reasonable amount of effort and money), which is kinda the point here, isn't it?
EU is not a single uniform blob. There are neighbourhoods where you have to worry about being shot, and there are neighbourhoods where people leave their keys inside their cars.
Obviously, but we are talking about online-activity here, not randomly walking the streets. The normal sketchy cop on the streets will not be accessing your mailbox just because they don't like your skin. Attending certain events would trigger this more likely, but then you should also know how to protect yourself in those cases.
This isn't a downside against EU services when compared to the US, so what are you actually suggesting? Don't just vaguely hint at stuff. Should we be moving to Singaporean services? Oh shit, similar concerns there. Okay, where do you suggest we move? If you don't have any suggestions then there's little substance behind what you're saying.
>What you are claiming about European cops is also not uniformly true. A German police officer cannot "just" self-issue a search warrant.
Yes. The more worrying situation is that Hungary can just decide that their police officers can self-issue search warrants, and then send those around the EU in the form of EIOs.
"On 5 April 2018, the Oberlandesgericht (Higher State Court) in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein ruled that Puigdemont would not be extradited on charges of rebellion, and released him on bail while deliberating about the extradition on charges of misuse of public funds."
So, exactly as I wrote: The rebellion charge did not make sense to the court, so no extradition due to that. On the other hand they found that they could do something with the charges of misusing public funds (and thus needed longer to decide about it). If Spain had not dropped the EAW, Puigdemont's legal team would have had an opportunity to challenge any decisions of the court.
In general it is no fun if another EU country issues an EAW against you, but anything making no sense will be thrown out by the local EU country's courts and you have every chance to go against the decisions of the court.
That's rather rude of you, I did in fact read the entire text of the link.
I hate citing wikipedia, but if you'll skip forward a few lines, you'll find this nugget:
"On 12 July 2018 the higher court in Schleswig-Holstein confirmed that Puigdemont could not be extradited by the crime of rebellion, but may still be extradited based on charges of misuse of public funds"
Puigdemont would have almost certainly ended up extradited, but he would enjoy the EAW protections which would presumably not be desirable for the Spanish government.
It was not rude but a reasonable assumption. Let's revisit what we discussed:
>>Usually LE in European countries will not respect warrants from another country if it does not make sense in the local jurisdiction as well.
>
>This is incorrect and goes explicitly against the intent of the relevant frameworks.
But in the link you could clearly see that the court dismissed the EAW on charges of rebellion. If Spain had only issued the EAW based on this charge, or if Spain had issued two separate EAW for the separate charges, this is clearly showing what I was claiming.
What you have cited only confirms what I was writing earlier - if it makes sense to the court they might follow-up with the EAW. I am not sure at all, though, how you come to the conclusion that Puigdemont "almost certainly" would have ended up extradited. It is not given that the court would have found the charges valid and there are all legal means available to challenge the court's decision.
But even if he had been extradited due to the charges of misusing public funds, whatever is wrong with that? There are extradition treaties between many countries and that would be an absolutely valid case for extradition, if the charges make sense in the local jurisdiction. Should every criminal be safe as soon as they are crossing a border?
The important thing is that a court is checking the charges and that there is legal recourse, before any extradition.
So, in summary I feel not threatened at all by the existence of those instruments in the EU and you failed to make me understand why I should. The chance of an abuse of power or unjust persecution in any single country (EU or not) is so much larger than a scenario where this happens in two countries at the same time.
However, this is a bit exhausting, so I am done with this discussion.
>It was not rude but a reasonable assumption. Let's revisit what we discussed:
Yeah, variations of "did you even read the link" are rude. Yours was perhaps particularly aggressive.
>But in the link you could clearly see that the court dismissed the EAW on charges of rebellion. If Spain had only issued the EAW based on this charge, or if Spain had issued two separate EAW for the separate charges, this is clearly showing what I was claiming.
"Another important advantage of the EAW compared to extradition proceedings is that for 32 categories of offences, there is no verification on whether the act constitutes a criminal offence in both countries. The only requirement is that the offence needs to be punishable by a maximum period of at least 3 years of imprisonment in the issuing Member State."
The dual criminality check does not apply to most crimes. It did apply in the basically unique case of "rebellion", but the EAW largely did away with dual criminality checks.
>It is not given that the court would have found the charges valid and there are all legal means available to challenge the court's decision.
There are no meaningful legal means to challenge the validity of the charges in the EAW process, the entire point of the process is to skip that. You get to challenge the validity of the charges after you've been extradited and brought in front of the courts of the requesting country.
>But even if he had been extradited due to the charges of misusing public funds, whatever is wrong with that?
Specifically in Puigdemonts case I do not wish him extradited as I doubt he would be treated respectfully in Spain. But his case is obviously one-of-a-kind.
>There are extradition treaties between many countries and that would be an absolutely valid case for extradition, if the charges make sense in the local jurisdiction. Should every criminal be safe as soon as they are crossing a border?
EAW is completely different from regular extradition treaties.
>The important thing is that a court is checking the charges and that there is legal recourse, before any extradition.
The whole purpose of EAW has been to get rid of as much legal recourse as possible, and over time various CJEU decisions have been further eroding practices some national courts had established.
>you failed to make me understand why I should
You'll probably receive better replies in the future if you avoid the unnecessary personal attacks.
Maybe the motivation is more to stop giving American big tech MAGA fascists money rather than any kind of gain in privacy/security against state level law enforcement.
> Some EU courts will not exclude illegally obtained evidence either, so challenging the warrant later on will be pointless.
Generally speaking, I trust EU countries criminal systems more then USA one. USA one is too procedure oriented - like for example with this rule.
Unlike in USA, in general European cops and prosecutors can be punished when they do illegal stuff. That provides better protection then the pretend fairness rule you just cited.
They are not and also dont do much to protect you. Untouchable cops due to qualified immunity and presumption of reguparity and simple fact that there is no remedy if they break your rights make this entirely moot.
Just now, like today, a decision was made that cops who literally made up a gang to go after innocent people ... wont be investigated.
Pretending you found proofs legally when you did not is easy. Especially when you are untouchable. And the rule does absolutely nothing to protect innocent people. It is just trying to make up for one injustice by creating another smaller one.
In America the normal term is "European", not "luxury".
It would be somewhat odd to specialize in both American and European luxury cars. It'd be significantly less odd to service a RR and a BMW 3er next to each other.
The actual company’s website says European, not luxury. My guess is that the OP wasn’t familiar with this distinction and just figured luxury means the same thing (the car shop is his brother’s as per the link.)
Ah yes I can see the misunderstanding: I meant “acceptable” in a broader sense than just legally, but I can see how the use of “jurisdiction” implies law. It was not my intention to just reference the legality, but more in terms of what is considered “violence” by the society, where law is one level you can look at to get an idea.
Then, again: one persons illegal actions do not warrant another persons illegal actions. That’s not how society works, and not how law works.
What do you want me to address? I'm just pointing out that there are no great archival services, and the only real alternative to archive.today is worse.
>Pay attention to this type of behavior, folks. It's revealing
Oh, and you might be in a reasonable EU country and still be hit with an EIO from one of the unreasonable countries. This is especially concerning given recent ECJ rulings increasingly directing courts in receiving nations to blindly defer to the requesting party when dealing with EAWs, EIOs and similar.
Worth considering when hosting in the EU.
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