Yes, but it's easier to influence politicians in your country than in the EU.
It's easier to influence politicians in your county council than in your country.
It's easier to influence politicians in your town hall than in your county council.
> EU commissioners propose laws, they don't vote for them.
The distinction isn't meaningless but it's certainly a generous one when left to stand on its own.
The commissioners hold little allegiance to the spirit of democracy and these proposals are either career boosters or pet projects for them. They're not just going to pass it on to the parliament and leave it at that. They're going to do their best to finagle behind the scenes, horse trade, intimidate and pull from their endless infatuation with coddling the children the most fantastical justifications that, by pure chance I guess, smear any opponents.
> As a brit, let me tell you that leaving the EU will not solve this problem. Your local politicians will just do that anyway.
But it will help. No modern government will pass a law that grants its citizens more privacy. It's better to have a many smaller ones, each with different rates of deterioration (re privacy) than a super government where every little nudge towards the eventual zero-privacy Internet affects us all at once.
Sadly, residing in a region formerly part of the Russian Empire, together with last year's events, kind of kills the glee I felt in the past whenever I fantasized about the EU disintegrating, which is to say voting to leave the EU would only makes sense if online privacy was the only thing you cared about.
Sorry, I should have been more careful. It's a citizen versus a consumer thing; GDPR is about the latter and does not give you any real privacy gains in regards to your government except in areas where your relationship is business like.
Some Menial Low-Stakes Agency is required to handle your email and address details appropriately, sure, but meanwhile Europol was still able to mass collect data and have the Commission cover for them after they were found out.
It's just the same good old EU BAD -> everything coming from there BAD.
There's even a comment under this post on how GDPR "degrades the web in the name of privacy", I guess trackers are just way better then cookie banners after all.
Then you read Utah and California have comparable proposals yet I've seen a single mention of them in the whole comment section.
But it will make responsibility clear. Out of the EU, no domestic government can claim plausible deniability on a directive like this, claiming not to support it yet there being nothing they can do about it - while secretly wanting to implement something like that anyway, but without the political fallout.
Even if the EU parliament passes a neutered bill, it is going to be lose. Some politicians seem to have inane will (and lobby money) to pass these laws no matter what, including in bit by bit in smaller pieces and partial defeats.
I do not think so, Swedens population has a history of rejecting mass surveillance ideas and lot's of privacy advocating stuff has come from Sweden like Mullvad and The Pirate Bay.
Anyway, it is way easier for a citizen to affect your local politician rather than some other random countries politicians that don't care about you.
Sweden has one of the most comprehensive mass surveillance systems in the world. In short, the military is allowed to do mass surveillance on all communications within the borders of the country. Sweden is somewhere near the bottom of the list among countries worldwide when it comes to respecting online privacy of citizens.
> Swedens population has a history of rejecting mass surveillance ideas
What about the Swedish NDRE, which was found by the ECHR to violate personal privacy, and when urged to correct it they instead extended it? (as per the article).
As a brit, let me tell you that leaving the EU will not solve this problem. Your local politicians will just do that anyway.