The important part of these are the “do, don’t” orders of business conduct. Then on top small fine. Hence it isn’t merely cost of doing business. The real stinger is “you can’t offer choice of tracking or pay up. You must offer free choice to decline for consent based operations”.

If they ignore the “do’s and dont’s” compliance order, then the big fines come out.

And this is how it is supposed to happen. By vote of democratic representative body. Not by President of the United States or President of the Commission of European Union body their sole decision being able to decide such stuff.

By the way there is chance this whole thing in USA is unconstitutional. Since the taxing power is Congresses. POTUS can only use it where Congress has delegate power to POTUS via law.

Well the law Trump is citing talks of POTUS having right to issue economic sanctions in case foreign power threatens USA in major way. POTUS declares emergency. However the law doesn’t mention tariffs. Rather whole thing is based on Whitehouse creatively interpreting, that well tariffing is maybe kinda sanction.

Which is crazy to me is not the main talking point. It is “how much the rates are and how badly calculated those are”. When it should be " International Emergency Economic Powers Act doesn’t give you power to do that. It allows you to sanction and ban exports and so on. It does not give power to tariff. For that there is different international trade regulatory law. However that law sets strict procedure and due diligence limits. Hey Whitehouse why are you doing unconstitutional thing".

That should be every journalists question on interview. Not will he, won’t he. It should be “This is illegal, right? The act gives no taxing powers. You are taxing Americans without power to do so. IEEPA doesn’t authorize this.”

Yeah pretty sure “thou shall know there is only, one one God and you shall believe in him” and

Article 10
Freedom of thought, conscience and religion

1. Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. This right includes freedom to change religion or belief and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or in private, to manifest religion or belief, in worship, teaching, practice and observance.
2. The right to conscientious objection is recognised, in accordance with the national laws governing the exercise of this right.

from the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union are in pretty strict violation. Not very “you get to change your religion, if you wish, that book” Didn’t get past like first 5 commandments of Torah/Talmud and already disproven, that EU values are talmud derived. If they were, Article 10 wouldn’t exist.

Well to EU, the federal government is responsible. If they don’t have authority to intervene on behalf of EU-citizens rights being violated, it in itself would be treaty violation. Member states have duty to police and administer the rights. EU doesn’t care is state federal or not, the singular member state entity is responsible to EU and it is up to member state to domestically organize so that treaties are followed.

They should take this to ECJ. If I understand what I read correctly, this is clear treaty violation by Germany. Freedom of movement isn’t some “oh we observe it, when we like it” thing. It is treaty bound obligation by member states who have ratified treaties. Take this all the way to ECJ and have it bonk bundestag and chancellery over the head with clown hammer of “it is pretty stupid you think treaty obligations arent legally binding mwmber state”.

I’ve seen this claimed and if true I hope that a lot of people were convicted, not just her. Because I know for a fact that this exact setup has been used by other MEPs.

And you have done your civic duty and reported these cases of crime you know of happening to prosecutors/law enforcement?

Yes, if anyone else was doing it, they should be charged. Even in this case, it wasn’t merely Le Pen. The case involved over 10 people being charged for various roles in misappropriation funds.

The size of the stick is purely about comfort level. You seriously suggest 140 million Russians will beat 480 million European union population. With better industrial capacity, more planes and so on.

They bogged down with 40 million Ukrainians.

What having USA buys “it isn’t even a fight”. Which seems to be many peoples comfort level. My comfort level is “99% it isn’t a fight, 1% it is a fight, it won’t be a walk over picnic to Moscow”.

I also could get driven over by a drunk driver tomorrow and that is more likely, than Russia attacking us in next decade even without USA on our side.

“Owwww please daddy USA, save us from having to have any level of risk to concern with at all, 1% of risk is too much risk”.

He is on a stupid “let’s play nice with USA and maybe the leopard doesn’t eat our face” campaign. Even though this leopard has memory of gold fish regarding who his friends are. As Finn it is sad and pathetic. We didn’t scream USA to defend us before we joined NATO and now suddenly supposedly we are utterly incapable of anything should USA be mean to us, since we didn’t say thank you and wear a suit.

Guy is literally putting nice words to Trumps mouth, when in reality there is none.

Hey our dear president, as a Finnish conscript reserve what I’m I to you? A joke? There is 900k reserves and USA doesn’t make our field artillery. Stop pandering to the orange one. It’s embarrassing, under mines our international position and is pointless since the guy being pondered changes his mind everytime he talks to new person or watches new episode of FOX news.

Except on Greenland, Canada and Panama. Which seems to be Trump’s only consistent positions. Two of which we are bound to defend per having joined NATO in case USA decides to go on “freedom delivering world tour” again.

Edit: when we did this to USSR, it was called finlandisation. Back then we had real fear based reason to do it. But this new round, this is voluntary and it makes it way worse.

The causality implied in the title is bullshit (and reading the article confirms this).

Yeah. Smallish fine and order to comply is the standard practice first round enforcement action on all European competition and such regulatory matters. The largest fines are reserved for willful violation once one has already been told to come into compliance and one outright refuse or tries to shade by the order with shady and deceitful means.

That or he is stupid, had big hubris and thought he would get away with it just because his passport had different name on it. Since should he have gotten past Finland, he would have likely been caught in France or so on. Whomever (likely suspects would be Ukrainian or American intelligence) tipped off Finnish law enforcemen could have just as easily have later on tipped of French security services “hey this guy is in Nice, wanna go arrest a war criminal?”.

Ehh apparently laying low and trying to use it as transit route. He was on his way to Nice in France. As I remember he had false papers for false identity and there is a Russian minority in Finland, so he was trying to blend in as traveling route. Apparently supposed super patriot didn’t like living in Russia.

Got caught at border check. I think there was intelligence tip off or something, though obviously authorities have been tight lipped exactly how they noticed him. He was travelling under false name Russian passport and that was the initial arrest. Traveling with false papers and violating Schengen wide entry ban issued to his actual identity.

Yan Petrovsky alias Voislav Torden is Russian. He was sentenced in Finland since that is where he was caught (Helsinki Airport actually trying to transit through the country) and Supreme Court of Finland decided it wasn’t legal to extradite to Ukraine due to prison conditions and due process concerns. So instead the case was brought in Finland by Finnish prosecutors.

Because they can’t without backdooring the software? Just like they also refuse to co-operate with Swedish government and threatened to leave the market should Sweden try to force them.

You know Russian spies can also use TOR onion routing and so on.

As for phishing there is nothing Signal can do about someone scanning a signal contact sharing QR and adding it to their contracts list beyond informative “hey are you really sure, really really sure you want to add this contact”. If user trusts someone they shouldn’t, no amount of app policy protections help. Or maybe they manage to shish them to scan and approve “share account to another device”. Again nothing Signal can do about that.