How mass surveillance is eroding the liberal democratic system

-- SjoerdOppenheim - 18 Jan 2015

I think you misunderstood my point with reference to the 'rechtsstaat'. I never claimed that the Netherlands, or any European country whatsoever has a perfect rechtstaat, nor did I claim that the term 'rechtsstaat' is binary, ('you either have it or you don't') as I think it is a continuum spectrum. Al I said that whatever level of rechtsstaat we have now, the national listeners are harming it. But this is not really important.

The important part was of course, that in a rechtsstaat the executive part of the government is bound by the law. Although this doesn't necessarily entail that nationals and non-nationals are to be treated by the same rules , they do have to be treated by rules.

What is new? While in your view the US and UK listeners are essentially one team, the judiciary in Europe cares to differ as they have competence over the UK's actions they would not have over the US's. Therefore the UK can in theory be held responsible for their actions, when they are not in conformance with i.a the idea of the rechtsstaat. You accuse me of naive optimism concerning the powers of the ECtHR? . On the degree of confidence we should have in this institute we could differ, but I do not think that is important right now. Your accusation also contains the idea (or it is just my mind putting that idea in your accusation after attending your course the past semester) that we do not need to rely on the judiciary for our freedom, but that we can do it ourself with Free Software and encryption. You told miss Scola in your interview with her that it would take her about a weekend to have safe communications. But then again the government still needs to provide some basic things, such as internet access and it not being illegal to communicate (or to ban encryption, as David Cameron wants to do).

So then again, I'm puzzled as well. I also do not see why you have such an aversion against the judiciary while you yourself have written multiple amici curiae for the SC. Why would you bother if everything we need is free software and encryption?

-- SjoerdOppenheim - 18 Jan 2015

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