I live in Canada and we have a simular thing with radio. They have to play X amount of hours of Canadian content, which is good because it gives the local artists some play(usually unless they blast Celine Dion *winmper*). But to do this for Candadian websites seems just weird. How is this going to benifit Canadians to have X amount of Canadian content on the sites. I don't see why it needs to be regulated any further than not allow children from seeing explicit material(excess violence and sexuality), which probably doesn't stop most children anyways(didn't when I was 16), but I can see it's usefullness.
Regulation of the internet in any way takes away apart of what the internet is. Freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and rarly do you have to listen to someone bluber an idiotic viewpoint. Regulating the internet goes against what it has come to represent raw informtion. Not always accurat not always sensable but I wouldn't change it for anything.
If people are afraid of the internet so much that they want to change it, I would like to ask them why? Why do they need to confine Canadian websites to having a certain amount Canadian content when it's a global community. The content shouldn't be limited because of the location the domain is in. Places like CBC.ca TSN.ca and CTV.ca are always going to have the canadian content I want. news.google.ca maps.google.ca all have local content for me if I need them. People do a good job of keeping canadian content and other out there for everyone because it's in their best interest.
This group is silly and I would like to know if there is somewhere I could send a letter telling them as much.
Send it to Steven Harper and whoever your elected officials are. Couldn't be easier. If you want them to listen, make a phone call. If you really want them to listen, demand to visit in person.
A guy is walking down a dark street, when he hears something behind him. He looks behind him and sees a casket, and it's going, 'dum... dum... dum... dum... ' and it's followin' him. So he gets frightened and goes faster, and the casket goes faster â" 'dum, dum, dum, dum, dum... '
So he starts to trot and runs into his apartment building and the casket crashes through the door and comes at him faster, up the stairs - 'dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum!'
He slams the door, and it crashes through his apartment door, so he runs into his bathroom and he slams the door and he hears, 'dum... dum... dum... dum... ' and he knows it's going to crash through the door... then it crashes through the door, and he grabs the only thing he can. He grabs a bottle of cold medicine and he throws it at the casket... and it stops the coffin!
Coca (cocaine) and Hemp (marijuana) also have important uses. They're mostly banned.
I suppose out of body experiences are sort of like brain malfunctions. Perhaps fun if you experience one in the right state of mind (like really good weed). This might make an awesome VR game. Just 'a thought.'
=Smidge=
To be honest, I'd rather actually consume some really good weed than simulate it.
Been there, feel your pain. But trust me, there's worse.
If you REALLY want to lose faith in humanity, work in emergency services. I spent 6 years in medicine, and two years in law enforcement. You truly get to meet the scrapings of the gene pool that way.
Well, given that a lot of cops are usually just adult bullies on a power trip, this doesn't shock me. Not sure about the medical folks...medical insurance doctors, however are mostly there to deny.
I don't find your comment very funny. The elderly are weak and most-likely to be attacked by criminals. Since they can't rely on aged muscles or frail bones like younger men/women, their ONLY recourse is to shoot the asshole dead.
Young people rely on aged muscles and frail bones?
That makes sense... Couldn't he just have called him on the same phone? Maybe I'm missing something critical here like reliability of vox vs txt in that area, but cellphone+speakerphone/wired headset/bluetooth would make more sense to me than txting.
Of course, if one interprets that amendment as a failsafe against gov't tyranny, then it would necessarily forbid a private citizen from maintaining parity with the most relevant military (be it state guard, national guard, or full army).
Correction: It would forbid the government from interfering with the private citizen who wishes to maintain parity with the current military.
Simple is not always good. In your case the document is more than 200 years old, and does not cover a lot of things that we hold relevant today.
Besides, most European constitutions are quite simple to understand, though some are lengthy.
Let's consider that a constitution is an operational document that outlines how a government is to function. It structures the governance of a country. It should be simple.
The US constitution takes the approach of KISS. It sets up a congress empowered to make laws that apply to the entire country (within limits), it specifically states what the government CAN (and CANNOT, in some cases) do, and if it is silent on the subject, specifically states that the States have dominion over it (i.e. the federal government cannot do it).
Let's refine this a bit more. The constitution technically does not apply active law to the people themselves (this is what legislation is for). If somehow, an amendment got passed that read "No citizen shall partake of mind-altering substances, under penalty of imprisonment." or something similar, I would immediately find it suspect, and probably ignore it. Remember, the constitution is meant to define a government, what it can do and cannot do, not regulate the daily lives of the citizenry.
Now, a lot of the trouble comes from people interpreting it in a silly way. Let's take the 2nd Amendment (Not a positive right, but a prohibition, actually). The 2nd amendment states that the government may not infringe upon the right of people to bear arms. Note that this is not specific to the type. Up until 1900 or so, people could even own warships. Technically, a US citizen could legally own a nuclear warhead, as it is an armament. This is despite what a lot of parties, including the US Federal Gov't would want. However, I digress. The silly interpretation would have private arms ownership restricted to unrifled flintlock muskets, blunderbuss, and similar (those were common at the time the constitution was written, and would've been in the minds of the writers). Of course, if one interprets that amendment as a failsafe against gov't tyranny, then it would necessarily forbid a private citizen from maintaining parity with the most relevant military (be it state guard, national guard, or full army).
While it is an exercise in patience to deal with such ambiguities, I would favor something simple (Gov't will NOT do something) to something that is extremely meticulous (Gov't will NOT do something, except in this case )
It's not so much that I object to somebody doing something stupid and blowing themselves up, it's that if my neighbor is boiling acetone so that he can make meth and he sparks up a cigarette, my house is going up in smoke right beside his. I see a few potential solutions:
* Ban/require licensed acetone purchases
* Reduce/eliminate the demand for meth
* Meet the demand for meth by making it in professional labs by people who actually know what they're doing
Personally, I like the latter 2 options, but we seem to be moving closer and closer to the first.
You know, a lot of the danger from meth labs is exactly what you're referring to: stupid moves on the part of a chemist.
A real chemist who wanted to make meth could potentially do it with *relatively* little danger by following safe lab procedures. An added bonus would be that he would probably attract very little attention by authorities.
Sadly, the guy who usually makes meth is also the one who dropped out of high school before taking chemistry.
You're quite right. You're forgetting one thing, however. Governments excel at banning things. They tend to do poorly at critical thinking tasks, such as "evaluate where the real problem is".
Now all the tinkering is just done in labs that have access to "controlled" substances. It has the same effect. We have regulations to stop people who are a few neurons shy of a full brain (probably from playing with too many chemicals) harming themselves or others. There are many responsible people who can tinker with chemicals but there are many irresponsible ones who would end up seriously harming themselves or others, accidentally or on purpose.
Yeah, but be sure to say "It's for the children".
Personally, I don't mind if they hurt themselves. That just has a tendency to take them out of the gene pool. It also has the effect of making my votes count that much more in elections.
Pssstt... That New Deal "We're still hurting from" is the primary reason the USA has such a (strike)well developed(/strike) crumbling infrastructure, since we're still using bridges and roads built over two and a half generations ago.
WWII was a secondary source of roads and railways, but is not nearly as responsibly for the USA's architectural legacy.
You make a great point that we got a lot of highways (Thank you, Mr. Eisenhower) from that time. On a more modern note, the $700B bailout was laced with lots of tax breaks (laced with bait). So I guess we can be thankful for small mercies.
iBorg was the worst episode of all the borg-related episodes. First of all it was the cheesiest with all the BS morality. What idiots. Compassion for a borg?! Secondly they missed their chance to destroy the entire collective. Which means that all future borg-caused deaths are on their shoulders.
That's what you get for listening to doctors.
I never understood how that would work...The borg were masters of assimilating unassimilated people without causing problems. Why would reassimilating one be much different?
I mean, I could bite on the "infected laptop inside the firewall" theory, but you'd think the borg would be smarter than that.
The EU is not alone. Here in New Zealand we're trying to find out what is in the ACTA and the word is we'll be told when they're ready to vote on it.
Meanwhile you have to wonder who this information is being kept secret from, since all the governments it'll affect already have a copy.
Vik:v)
Here's how you deal with that when it gets ratified.
Don't acknowlege it's validity. In effect, pretend it doesn't exist and carry on the way you did before. Behavior like this is akin to taxation without representation.
The EU doesn't want to reveal the documents that appear to have some sort of direct impact on me. So, wouldn't that amount to a secret law of some kind?
No, it would not.
You have failed to distinguish between an unratified treaty and a ratified treaty. They are negotiating the unratified treaty. It won't apply to you until it becomes a ratified treaty
If it actually starts down the path to ratification, it will not be secret. For example, in the EU, it will have to be submitted to the legislative bodies for approval. In the US, it has to be submitted to the Senate and receive a 2/3 vote and then be signed by the President. I don't know offhand how other counties deal with ratifying treaties--I'm sure you can find out if you look.
Well, I don't think I want the treaty ratified if it applies something to me that I don't like. And of course, if its unratified, and I don't know what's in it (how could it hurt me, potentially), then I'd rather it stay unratified, rather than applying to me.
Anyone notice how this seems to be more of a problem in the Orient than anywhere else? I don't usually hear about Punk-rocking Discotheque Germans or Rednecks ever dying from playing games for 10 days straight...
In case none of you know, the EU is pretty much a mislabeled dictatorship. Citizens of the EU have pretty much nothing to say about what goes on or who gets "elected" for this or that. Democracy, pah!
The EU is a very good idea gone horribly wrong. Read me right, I want a united Europe, but not like this. We can vote for people who have get no actual power, yay! We waste money on going from A to B X times a month to not hurt France and Germany's pride, yay! We the people decline on the new "constitution" (what a joke) and they try pushing it through anyways, yay! I could go on, but what's the use...
All the good ideas get tossed, more (insane) regulation nobody wants gets piled. Media pay no attention to it either. What's going on in EU politics? You wont get it from the telly, the paper, or the generic news sites (though Obama is all over the place)...
The EU as a government body is a farce in need of some serious fixing, the only problem is some countries have serious ego and other countries actually care.
Give me the information and my 1/300m'th say in who our new EU overlords are, and I shall welcome them!
What? Did I hear you whining about the EU? We've been putting up with that sort of crap since at least 1850. It started a war in 1861. The US Federal Government really took advantage of having fewer states to ratify constitutional amendments (well, they had claimed they had suceeded, and the Federal Gov't claimed they hadn't, but didn't include them in the ratification process anyway) and pass all sorts of terrible laws. Have you ever wondered why there's a negative stereotype of the US South?
What's that? I hear you whining about more laws that noone actually wants? May I present to you Franklin Rooseveldt, who got his New Deal to stick even though it was unconstitutional, by threatening to stack the supreme court in his favor. We're still hurting from that one, with an overburdened social security system that I pay into, but will probably be bankrupt when I get to retirement age. Let me present to you one Lyndon Baines Johnson, who intensified that problem, by creating even more entitlements. Furthermore, let me present to you the current crisis, which resulted in $700*10^9 (THAT'S A LOT OF NUTS!) to save corporate investors and debt-owners from their own greed. Let me point out that I didn't get a whole lot of say in that one, and I tried to clearly communicate it to my elected officials.
What's that? I hear you complaining about a lack of power? At least you have more control over your own little area. Our Federal government seems to be able to override a lot of things at the state level (let me be the first to point out that technically, the states were considered the supreme component, holding much the same status as the countries comprising the EU today.) Haven't you noticed that we always end up with one Republican and one Democrat in nearly all elections that win 49% and 50% of the vote? Have you further noticed that most of the time, their policies, despite how they are package, vary rather little from each other?
Maybe you should concentrate on making the EU a better place, looking at the US as an example of what not to do (and some examples of good ideas, lest I forget the extremely simple Constitution, simple enough that even a child can generally understand it). Maybe if you can make the EU a freer place, I'll want to move to one of the countries there. As it is now, The EU and US are going the direction of having telescreens on everyone's wall.
Ok. The EU doesn't want to reveal the documents that appear to have some sort of direct impact on me. So, wouldn't that amount to a secret law of some kind? Ignorance of the law is no excuse, with the exception that the law was intentionally hidden. In other words, a rather pointless law, unless you're trying to write yourself some sort of blank check. Then you're no better off than Soviet Russia or Mao Mao's China.
The EU won't release the paperwork? Well, the simplest solution is "Better the devil I know than the devil I don't. They're hiding something, but it could be potentially bad for me. Since I don't know, it would be best to oppose it in it's entirety." Of course, this yields a known devil (the status quo).
Slashdot Mirror
I live in Canada and we have a simular thing with radio. They have to play X amount of hours of Canadian content, which is good because it gives the local artists some play(usually unless they blast Celine Dion *winmper*). But to do this for Candadian websites seems just weird. How is this going to benifit Canadians to have X amount of Canadian content on the sites. I don't see why it needs to be regulated any further than not allow children from seeing explicit material(excess violence and sexuality), which probably doesn't stop most children anyways(didn't when I was 16), but I can see it's usefullness.
Regulation of the internet in any way takes away apart of what the internet is. Freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and rarly do you have to listen to someone bluber an idiotic viewpoint. Regulating the internet goes against what it has come to represent raw informtion. Not always accurat not always sensable but I wouldn't change it for anything.
If people are afraid of the internet so much that they want to change it, I would like to ask them why? Why do they need to confine Canadian websites to having a certain amount Canadian content when it's a global community. The content shouldn't be limited because of the location the domain is in. Places like CBC.ca TSN.ca and CTV.ca are always going to have the canadian content I want. news.google.ca maps.google.ca all have local content for me if I need them. People do a good job of keeping canadian content and other out there for everyone because it's in their best interest.
This group is silly and I would like to know if there is somewhere I could send a letter telling them as much.
Send it to Steven Harper and whoever your elected officials are. Couldn't be easier. If you want them to listen, make a phone call. If you really want them to listen, demand to visit in person.
Are we going to ban cars and cold medicine too?
No! Cold medicine has other important uses.
A guy is walking down a dark street, when he hears something behind him. He looks behind him and sees a casket, and it's going, 'dum ... dum ... dum ... dum ... ' and it's followin' him. So he gets frightened and goes faster, and the casket goes faster â" 'dum, dum, dum, dum, dum ... '
So he starts to trot and runs into his apartment building and the casket crashes through the door and comes at him faster, up the stairs - 'dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum!'
He slams the door, and it crashes through his apartment door, so he runs into his bathroom and he slams the door and he hears, 'dum ... dum ... dum ... dum ... ' and he knows it's going to crash through the door ... then it crashes through the door, and he grabs the only thing he can. He grabs a bottle of cold medicine and he throws it at the casket ... and it stops the coffin!
Coca (cocaine) and Hemp (marijuana) also have important uses. They're mostly banned.
Nope, I heard that joke several years ago; in fact my wife told it to me, I think she got it from her brother in England.
Yuck. Your wife's sexcapades with her discotheque brother should not be discussed on /. I certainly hope you don't fuck her anymore. :P
I just lost my train of thought.
It's those pesky kids...always putting pennies on the tracks, derailing your train of thought...
I suppose out of body experiences are sort of like brain malfunctions. Perhaps fun if you experience one in the right state of mind (like really good weed). This might make an awesome VR game. Just 'a thought.'
=Smidge=
To be honest, I'd rather actually consume some really good weed than simulate it.
No, the rate went up by 300%, not the total number of entrants. I.e., instead of 1 person/year we're now up to 4 people/year ;)
I &heart; Calculus!
Been there, feel your pain. But trust me, there's worse.
If you REALLY want to lose faith in humanity, work in emergency services. I spent 6 years in medicine, and two years in law enforcement. You truly get to meet the scrapings of the gene pool that way.
Well, given that a lot of cops are usually just adult bullies on a power trip, this doesn't shock me. Not sure about the medical folks...medical insurance doctors, however are mostly there to deny.
My custom anti-virus solution is better. It blocks 100% of all known and unknown viruses. Just don't ask what its false positive rate is...
Your solution is a condom on the network interface?
Yeah?
Well i can taste your anger.
Does it taste like chicken?
I don't find your comment very funny. The elderly are weak and most-likely to be attacked by criminals. Since they can't rely on aged muscles or frail bones like younger men/women, their ONLY recourse is to shoot the asshole dead.
Young people rely on aged muscles and frail bones?
That makes sense...
Couldn't he just have called him on the same phone?
Maybe I'm missing something critical here like reliability of vox vs txt in that area, but cellphone+speakerphone/wired headset/bluetooth would make more sense to me than txting.
No. It's ponies.
Of course, if one interprets that amendment as a failsafe against gov't tyranny, then it would necessarily forbid a private citizen from maintaining parity with the most relevant military (be it state guard, national guard, or full army).
Correction: It would forbid the government from interfering with the private citizen who wishes to maintain parity with the current military.
extremely simple Constitution
Simple is not always good. In your case the document is more than 200 years old, and does not cover a lot of things that we hold relevant today. Besides, most European constitutions are quite simple to understand, though some are lengthy.
Let's consider that a constitution is an operational document that outlines how a government is to function. It structures the governance of a country. It should be simple.
The US constitution takes the approach of KISS. It sets up a congress empowered to make laws that apply to the entire country (within limits), it specifically states what the government CAN (and CANNOT, in some cases) do, and if it is silent on the subject, specifically states that the States have dominion over it (i.e. the federal government cannot do it).
Let's refine this a bit more. The constitution technically does not apply active law to the people themselves (this is what legislation is for). If somehow, an amendment got passed that read "No citizen shall partake of mind-altering substances, under penalty of imprisonment." or something similar, I would immediately find it suspect, and probably ignore it. Remember, the constitution is meant to define a government, what it can do and cannot do, not regulate the daily lives of the citizenry.
Now, a lot of the trouble comes from people interpreting it in a silly way. Let's take the 2nd Amendment (Not a positive right, but a prohibition, actually). The 2nd amendment states that the government may not infringe upon the right of people to bear arms. Note that this is not specific to the type. Up until 1900 or so, people could even own warships. Technically, a US citizen could legally own a nuclear warhead, as it is an armament. This is despite what a lot of parties, including the US Federal Gov't would want. However, I digress. The silly interpretation would have private arms ownership restricted to unrifled flintlock muskets, blunderbuss, and similar (those were common at the time the constitution was written, and would've been in the minds of the writers). Of course, if one interprets that amendment as a failsafe against gov't tyranny, then it would necessarily forbid a private citizen from maintaining parity with the most relevant military (be it state guard, national guard, or full army).
While it is an exercise in patience to deal with such ambiguities, I would favor something simple (Gov't will NOT do something) to something that is extremely meticulous (Gov't will NOT do something, except in this case )
It's not so much that I object to somebody doing something stupid and blowing themselves up, it's that if my neighbor is boiling acetone so that he can make meth and he sparks up a cigarette, my house is going up in smoke right beside his. I see a few potential solutions: * Ban/require licensed acetone purchases * Reduce/eliminate the demand for meth * Meet the demand for meth by making it in professional labs by people who actually know what they're doing
Personally, I like the latter 2 options, but we seem to be moving closer and closer to the first.
You know, a lot of the danger from meth labs is exactly what you're referring to: stupid moves on the part of a chemist.
A real chemist who wanted to make meth could potentially do it with *relatively* little danger by following safe lab procedures. An added bonus would be that he would probably attract very little attention by authorities.
Sadly, the guy who usually makes meth is also the one who dropped out of high school before taking chemistry.
You're quite right. You're forgetting one thing, however. Governments excel at banning things. They tend to do poorly at critical thinking tasks, such as "evaluate where the real problem is".
Now all the tinkering is just done in labs that have access to "controlled" substances. It has the same effect. We have regulations to stop people who are a few neurons shy of a full brain (probably from playing with too many chemicals) harming themselves or others. There are many responsible people who can tinker with chemicals but there are many irresponsible ones who would end up seriously harming themselves or others, accidentally or on purpose.
Yeah, but be sure to say "It's for the children".
Personally, I don't mind if they hurt themselves. That just has a tendency to take them out of the gene pool. It also has the effect of making my votes count that much more in elections.
Pssstt... That New Deal "We're still hurting from" is the primary reason the USA has such a (strike)well developed(/strike) crumbling infrastructure, since we're still using bridges and roads built over two and a half generations ago.
WWII was a secondary source of roads and railways, but is not nearly as responsibly for the USA's architectural legacy.
You make a great point that we got a lot of highways (Thank you, Mr. Eisenhower) from that time. On a more modern note, the $700B bailout was laced with lots of tax breaks (laced with bait). So I guess we can be thankful for small mercies.
iBorg was the worst episode of all the borg-related episodes. First of all it was the cheesiest with all the BS morality. What idiots. Compassion for a borg?! Secondly they missed their chance to destroy the entire collective. Which means that all future borg-caused deaths are on their shoulders. That's what you get for listening to doctors.
I never understood how that would work...The borg were masters of assimilating unassimilated people without causing problems. Why would reassimilating one be much different?
I mean, I could bite on the "infected laptop inside the firewall" theory, but you'd think the borg would be smarter than that.
The EU is not alone. Here in New Zealand we're trying to find out what is in the ACTA and the word is we'll be told when they're ready to vote on it.
Meanwhile you have to wonder who this information is being kept secret from, since all the governments it'll affect already have a copy.
Vik :v)
Here's how you deal with that when it gets ratified.
Don't acknowlege it's validity. In effect, pretend it doesn't exist and carry on the way you did before. Behavior like this is akin to taxation without representation.
No, it would not.
You have failed to distinguish between an unratified treaty and a ratified treaty. They are negotiating the unratified treaty. It won't apply to you until it becomes a ratified treaty
If it actually starts down the path to ratification, it will not be secret. For example, in the EU, it will have to be submitted to the legislative bodies for approval. In the US, it has to be submitted to the Senate and receive a 2/3 vote and then be signed by the President. I don't know offhand how other counties deal with ratifying treaties--I'm sure you can find out if you look.
Well, I don't think I want the treaty ratified if it applies something to me that I don't like. And of course, if its unratified, and I don't know what's in it (how could it hurt me, potentially), then I'd rather it stay unratified, rather than applying to me.
Anyone notice how this seems to be more of a problem in the Orient than anywhere else? I don't usually hear about Punk-rocking Discotheque Germans or Rednecks ever dying from playing games for 10 days straight...
Actually, it has aleph-zero chance of rising!
In case none of you know, the EU is pretty much a mislabeled dictatorship. Citizens of the EU have pretty much nothing to say about what goes on or who gets "elected" for this or that. Democracy, pah!
The EU is a very good idea gone horribly wrong. Read me right, I want a united Europe, but not like this. We can vote for people who have get no actual power, yay! We waste money on going from A to B X times a month to not hurt France and Germany's pride, yay! We the people decline on the new "constitution" (what a joke) and they try pushing it through anyways, yay! I could go on, but what's the use...
All the good ideas get tossed, more (insane) regulation nobody wants gets piled. Media pay no attention to it either. What's going on in EU politics? You wont get it from the telly, the paper, or the generic news sites (though Obama is all over the place)...
The EU as a government body is a farce in need of some serious fixing, the only problem is some countries have serious ego and other countries actually care.
Give me the information and my 1/300m'th say in who our new EU overlords are, and I shall welcome them!
What? Did I hear you whining about the EU? We've been putting up with that sort of crap since at least 1850. It started a war in 1861. The US Federal Government really took advantage of having fewer states to ratify constitutional amendments (well, they had claimed they had suceeded, and the Federal Gov't claimed they hadn't, but didn't include them in the ratification process anyway) and pass all sorts of terrible laws. Have you ever wondered why there's a negative stereotype of the US South?
What's that? I hear you whining about more laws that noone actually wants? May I present to you Franklin Rooseveldt, who got his New Deal to stick even though it was unconstitutional, by threatening to stack the supreme court in his favor. We're still hurting from that one, with an overburdened social security system that I pay into, but will probably be bankrupt when I get to retirement age. Let me present to you one Lyndon Baines Johnson, who intensified that problem, by creating even more entitlements. Furthermore, let me present to you the current crisis, which resulted in $700*10^9 (THAT'S A LOT OF NUTS!) to save corporate investors and debt-owners from their own greed. Let me point out that I didn't get a whole lot of say in that one, and I tried to clearly communicate it to my elected officials.
What's that? I hear you complaining about a lack of power? At least you have more control over your own little area. Our Federal government seems to be able to override a lot of things at the state level (let me be the first to point out that technically, the states were considered the supreme component, holding much the same status as the countries comprising the EU today.) Haven't you noticed that we always end up with one Republican and one Democrat in nearly all elections that win 49% and 50% of the vote? Have you further noticed that most of the time, their policies, despite how they are package, vary rather little from each other?
Maybe you should concentrate on making the EU a better place, looking at the US as an example of what not to do (and some examples of good ideas, lest I forget the extremely simple Constitution, simple enough that even a child can generally understand it). Maybe if you can make the EU a freer place, I'll want to move to one of the countries there. As it is now, The EU and US are going the direction of having telescreens on everyone's wall.
Ok. The EU doesn't want to reveal the documents that appear to have some sort of direct impact on me. So, wouldn't that amount to a secret law of some kind? Ignorance of the law is no excuse, with the exception that the law was intentionally hidden. In other words, a rather pointless law, unless you're trying to write yourself some sort of blank check. Then you're no better off than Soviet Russia or Mao Mao's China.
The EU won't release the paperwork? Well, the simplest solution is "Better the devil I know than the devil I don't. They're hiding something, but it could be potentially bad for me. Since I don't know, it would be best to oppose it in it's entirety." Of course, this yields a known devil (the status quo).
There. Problem solved.