Thread · 8 tweets · 6 Jun 2019

It's hard to convey how disappointing it is to see @TheAtlantic publishing this piece. Its relationship to facts is so disingenuous it reads like a cheap lobbying playbook cut and pasted into a respectable outlet.

I have no doubt that the Romanian government is going after journalists. Corrupt officials will use shady distortions of the law to further their ends.

They also used tax/accounting law to intimidate the same journalists. So why isn't @BernhardWarner treating us to a choice fanciful rant about the perils of taxation?

"Constitution Comes With A Downside United States tried to protect citizens. It also gave rogue Presidents a blunt instrument with which to jail babies."

The rest of the article is a bunch of unsubstantiated assertions loosely tacked onto two paragraphs' worth of story. If I debunked them one by one you'd never read to the bottom of this thread.

There's a whole country suffering from politics so corrupt they'll use anything to go after independent journalism. That's tragic. But you won't read about that here because it's much more important that you be scared away from the liberty to control your data.

Oh look! It's *crazy* what you find when you do your homework instead of grinding an ax. "For processing carried out for journalistic purposes or the purpose of academic artistic or literary expression, Member States shall provide for exemptions or derogations" (GDPR Art 85)

In a data-driven world, without data privacy there will be no democracy. That might be a more interesting issue to consider than random fear-mongering.