Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-03-16-Speech-4-031"
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"en.20000316.2.4-031"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, Commissioner, rapporteur, allow me to thank you for the open debate and, of course, the report. I should like to turn my attention first to the policy approach of the
initiative and to the approach taken by the Read report. The Internet, e-mail and mobile telephones will apparently do away with unemployment. But the reality of the matter is somewhat different. The IT boom is confronted by mergers and redundancies. History teaches us that this approach has failed. Industrialisation, atomic energy and biotechnology have not brought freedom and prosperity for all.
Initiatives and reports are informed by the concept that the playing field should be levelled for the youngest and best. Unfortunately, this concept totally ignores the fact that this group already represents the winners, while the general mass goes away empty-handed. What we need to do is to allow everyone to profit from technical innovation, irrespective of how old or how rich they are or in which region they live. We should hold our principle of equal opportunity up to the light of truth. A universal service points the right way, but the idea should not be implemented by providers which censor the Internet by using technical devices to deny their customers access to parts of the Net.
The Commission’s proposal aims to create equality through market liberalisation. That alone is nonsensical enough because liberalisation always starts from the premise that the strong will become stronger, while the state should only give the weak minimum support. In the case of information technology, however, we start with a totally different set of coordinates. For example, there are numerous initiatives to promote the Internet and computers in schools. But if no account is taken of the fact that each class contains at least one pupil who knows more than the teacher, then the initiative cannot but fail. The fact that strong anti-American arguments had to be used at numerous points of the Read report as an excuse for the liberalisation policy again illustrates the extent to which the interests of private industry have dictated the text.
That brings me to my next controversial point: civil rights. What we in fact need is a concept for universal data protection. Instead, the Commission and parts of the European Parliament visualise a smart card on which all your data would be stored. Your medical health fund would know that you are homosexual and your employer would know all about your previous and expected future illnesses and your forefathers. It means a step in the direction of see-through man and yet more state interference in our private lives. It is being used to deliberately plan and implement a further massive restriction of fundamental rights at European level. It is being sold as an innovative policy at the same time as Parliament is arguing with other institutions for a Charter of Fundamental Rights. How can these two things be reconciled? In the light of “echelon”, I am calling for a rethink of this matter. Data protection and encoding are what we need. For the rest, the citizens must control the state, not the other way around."@en1
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