> I'm talking about technical and design issues, like requiring every web site in the EU to pop up a stupid banner while you're trying to read something that blocks the content just to say, "Hey! We use cookies! Got it?"

When I worried about the impact of the the EU cookie directive I read it. Surprisingly, it only requires Cookie notifications for web sites that use cookies for purposes that are not strictly necessary for the web site to function. This means that the operators of web pages that show cookie notifications are probably spying on their users for advertising (or other) purposes. The EU cookie directive only makes this obvious.

I think EU politicians know what cookies are and how they are used. You can see that in the list of cookies exempt from consent:

• session IDs

• authentication cookies

• user-centric security cookies

• session-limited multimedia player cookies

• social network cookies (for logged in members of the social network)

Source: http://ec.europa.eu/ipg/basics/legal/cookies/index_en.htm