One of the speeches which made quite an impression on me last Friday was given by Catherine Trautmann, a French MEP (Member of the European Parliament) in the Party of European Socialists (PES).
This is only a highly selective set of quotations, but I haven't found the full text online anywhere yet. They are also not verbatim, as she spoke in French, but they are from notes I took at the time, so should be close to the message, if not the exact wording.
On privacy:
"Privacy needs to be seen as a cross-border policy issue from the outset"
"The EU is defined as a democratic space to the extent that it is underpinned by a desire for respect for privacy"
"Cybercrime, people-trafficking and exploitation cannot [i.e. must not] be used to justify opaque decision-making with regard to privacy rights"
On the asymmetry of the relationship between citizens and government:
"There is much talk of transparency in e-government, but one must always remember that state transparency and citizen transparency are not the same" [in the sense that requiring transparency of the state in its dealings is reasonable, but requiring transparency of all a citizen's personal dealings is not].
"There is a high degree of asymmetry in most forums (e.g. online debate) even if these are established ostensibly to encourage e-participation" [in other words, even where the citizen is invited to take part, it is not from a position of equal influence].
On e-voting:
"e-voting projects to date have tended not to meet, to a satisfactory extent, all the polling criteria one would hope for in terms of being independent, free, transparent and conducive to greater voter participation".
Now, whether or not one agrees with Ms Trautmann's policy position, I think it's interesting that she was so forthright in expressing views which swing the pendulum so far in favour of citzens' rights to things like
- a genuinely international approach to privacy policy;
- transparency of the working of government, policy-making and voting;
- the balance of power between the voter and the executive.
Even (perhaps particularly) in this week of the UK Labour Party conference, I'd forgotten what it was like to hear an actual Socialist... which is interesting, when you consider that the UK's Labour MEPs are all members of the PES.
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