[pp.int.general] European citizens' Initiative - ID requirement & data retention

[Pat Maechler aka Valio]

I'm not saying something like the ECI can't be useful; indeed I say
many good uses for the cause of democracy. I'm just very cautious with
it as it is currently setup, because the safeguards are not closely to
what I would consider secure enough and the possible implications of
intended malice manipulation can be extremely severe; just as it is
with electronic voting.
I know that there never can't be 100% certainty in this world (if you
omit mathematical idealized constructs).
I'm cautious because we're at the beginning of the digital revolution;
a revolution where today no one - really no one - can even grasp where
we might end up in 100 years. If we are not be cautious enough of
steps with possibly severe implications, we might miss the point where
it was probably still possible to turn things for the better (probably
we already did) and safe the ideals & achievements of the French
Revolution. If things go really awry, there might be simply no "second
French Revolution", after which individuals can act on an autonomous
level, but instead just dictatorship where the few rule over the many
without their consent (probably not on worldwide level, but on
sub-levels; but that doesn't really matter). If you don't see that you
probably have not yet understood what Cory Doctorrow was saying in his
speech "The Coming War on General Purpose Computation". The
possibility for a prosperous, free society scale with technological
improvement, but so do the risks for a society that is ruled by
dictatorship for egoistic purposes, because the dependency of
technology by and the means for control over individuals scale as
well.

-pat