This is a must read about TIPP. How your privacy is a barrier to economic growth

[snagglepuss]

Guardian UK

snip

...the European parliament has quietly passed a non-binding resolution on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), the controversial trade liberalisation agreement between the United States and Europe.


snip


One overlooked aspect of the emerging legal architecture that they enact is that, barring a Greece-like rebellion from the citizens, Europe will eventually sacrifice its strong and much-cherished commitment to data protection.


snip


... “Barriers against the free flow of data are, in effect, barriers against trade.” By the same token, building fences around your house is also an offence against capitalism. Who knows what kinds of advertising deals could be made with your data?


snip


The future advocated by the industry-funded think tanks that actually shape the global policy agenda is exceedingly grim, whatever funky spin they add to it. Essentially, citizens not only won’t have a right to privacy but their very attempts to hide something will be interpreted as either an offence against free trade or as an effort to undermine national security. But even if citizens vote to elect a government that promises to reverse this despicable trend, that government itself is likely to be sued out of it; the treaties will contain all the necessary legal instruments to do so. The 21st century of transatlantic prosperity has arrived, indeed.





http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/12/ttip-your-data-privacy-is-a-barrier-to-economic-growth

[historylovr]

1. K & R

[davidpdx]

2. Bookmarking for reading later tonight

Looks very informative.

[hedda_foil]

3. Holy crap! Remember the Progressive Policy Institute -- the "think tank" of our DLC buddies?

More from the article linked in the OP:

Of course, if the only stick to measure our technology policy is how well it advances the interests of corporations, then there’s much to dislike about data protection and virtually all privacy laws. And soon this very well might be our only stick: the most hideous aspect of the three trade agreements currently under negotiation is precisely that they describe a world devoid of any other political actors; it’s just companies out there. Then, a plethora of op-eds and thinktank reports – many of them published with industry funding – rush to validate such framings by claiming that the treaties do not go far enough to consider all the other factors that affect trade and economic growth – once again, as if there is no world outside the corporate bubble.

Take Uncovering the Hidden Value of Digital Trade: Towards a 21st Century Agenda of Transatlantic Prosperity, a recent report published by two high-profile thinktanks – the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) in Washington and the Lisbon Council in Brussels. It doesn’t even bother to say that what citizens want is bad or unachievable; it is simply written as if they didn’t exist.

[Elwood P Dowd]

4. Bernie Sanders is a non-tariff trade barrier. DU posts like this is a non-tariff trade barrier.

The minimum wage is a non-tariff trade barrier. Freedom is a non-tariff trade barrier. We are on the verge of being free traded into oblivion. Its The New World Order.

[JDPriestly]

5. So true. It appears that is the plan.

[hifiguy]

8. You mean HRC doesn't have our best interests at heart

with her corporatist agenda? How dare you suggest such a thing, you commie!

Go Bernie!

[cui bono]

6. Soon it will be illegal to have any sort of protection software on your computer/table/phone.

No adblockers, no anti-spyware, no script blockers... you will be considered a criminal if you stop corporations from implanting themselves on your systems and learning everything they want to know about you.

[hifiguy]

7. Sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up peons.

There are Profits To Be Made. Serfs aren't allowed to comment.

[raouldukelives]

9. "The more you ignore me, the closer I get." nt

[Ghost Dog]

10. Excellent comment there, three hours ago:

Justin Thyme
3h ago

So the client states are now embroiled in the web of corporate control, their citizens being either resource or an inconvenience, in the new slavish marketplace. We have all been sold, without consent, through the elected dictatorship we all adhere to. They know best, although an unqualified government is easier to manipulate, which is exactly what the parasitic class require. TTIP is not the end of a process, its the start of what the corporate agenda can now unfold. The implications for future generations make an Orwellian future just the blueprint from which control will be exercised. We live in a world where short term profits are the accepted religious mantra, where people are superfluous, unless they advance the corporate cause. Greece being the sacrificial lamb, where democracy was both invented and curtailed through this new heartless agenda of profit, not people.

So now its just a matter of allowing the corporations to turn the thumbscrews, and other apparatus that fulfills their goals. The new Nazi agenda where its not the state this time, that all must subjugate themselves for or be exterminated, but the profits and aims of the transnational corporations and their extended corporate corporals.

One cannot blame the politicians they were unable to understand what they were truly involved in, and anyway this parasitic class are always open to career inducements, in the world of the individual. So let history be rewritten by the corporate class, let them educate future generations, to serve their exclusive needs, as they will soon rule every aspect of our lives from birth to death. Let the prison populations start to explode, as the antisocial, element, the non co-operatives, be introduces to the re-educational facilities, as the NAZI upgrade, with its corporate slogan of FREEDOM THROUGH HARD WORK spouted in various forms by the TORY government ministers. WORK MAKES PEOPLE FREE is what the emphasis of the new Government push for all those on low wages and benefits are now being told. Who said history does repeats itself if one does not learn the lessons from the past. The wolfs new clothes are so very new and modern!!!!