Quote Originally Posted by eisenherz View Post
I am not confusing them - the EU is based on democratic principles more so than most other places.
Iassume you know the way eurpian "comissions" are being formed. You might consider it democratic why not.

If you cannot agree that Austria is a more democratic place than what the USSR was;
i didn't say that
than basically our views on the world are just very different. Also consider that having laws is one thing, but the consistant and fair application thereof makes a big difference too. I cannot recall Austria making a mockery of law by arbitrarily relocating people to remote areas where the party at power sees fit (eg Karaganda).
what does it have to do with law? things you are talking about were under stalin's rgime. May be i should recall Austria-Hungary either?

I would believe you that Austria has some stupid laws too - and maybe less than perfect; however in Austria your rights as an individual are less trampled on than just about every country outside Europe (save maybe a very few)
That was all about rights of individual.
last year in january i went to austria to ski. I rented a car and was going to stick my dash cam on frontwindow like i used to do before. The rent compoany guy noticed that and told me that now it's illegal to have a dash cam. I wasn't surprised but when i arrived i tried to find out wats going on.
Here's waht i found out.
I don't have any links and references here by me but you can easily find it if you know some german (my german is very poor so it's gonna take long) so i'm typing from my memory.
There's such comission in Austrian government called "data protection comission".
That commission (i wander what memebers of that commisiion were on) spawned a law (i wander how some "commision" can make a law at all) that bans any dash cams in a private cars. (10 000 euro fine for first violation and 25 000 for second and folowing). Not only it bans dash cams but any video recording devices (including cell phones).
But it is allowed to use dash cams in vehicles of state run companies and services. To me that means that a private person can be video recorded from withing any state owned vehicle (without any judge's decision) while the same is not allowed for that private person. Which means that the state is higher that a private person while in a "democratic" society it should be the other way around. (reminds me NK)
Another funny thing is that it's not prohibited to video record when you are not in the car. When you are in car you can't take picturesbut if you got out you can record as much as you want.