A press release from the European Commission caught my eye: EU Internet Forum: a major step forward in curbing terrorist content on the internet »
At today’s second high-level meeting of the EU Internet Forum convened in Brussels by Commissioner for Migration, Home Affairs and Citizenship Dimitris Avramopoulos and Commissioner for the Security Union Julian King, key internet companies presented an industry initiative, which constitutes a significant step forward in curbing the spread of terrorist content online. As part of the industry-led hash-sharing initiative, participating companies can use hashes to detect terrorist images or videos, review the material against their respective policies and definitions, and remove matching content as appropriate.
Well, that is only a part of the story.
The Commission totally ignores the fact that this form of censorship is conducted outside the rule of law.
The concept is that Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and Microsoft should remove illegal terrorist content. But what is illegal? As a matter of fact, the press release doesn’t touch on this question. The word illegal is not even mentioned. And there might be reasons for that.
In a democratic society, censorship should strictly be a matter for the courts – as they are the ones qualified to make the delicate decisions about what is legal or not. And naturally, there must be a possibility to appeal.
But that is not how the EU Internet Forum / The Joint Referral Platform will work.
It’s all about using these social networks terms and conditions to block content. The decisions will be made by the companies abuse departments, with no possibility of redress. There will be no proper legal procedure, cases will be handled by people who are not legally trained and there is an obvious risk of overreach.
That is not a proper way to approach the delicate issue of free speech.
This is all about EU politicians having established a way to limit free speech without the inconvenience of having to create new law under public scrutiny – and without having to bother with proper legal procedures. It is an approach to limit free speech without getting your fingers dirty.
And there is more.
The same instrument is to be used to curb »hate speech« and other statements that politicians disapprove of. There are no real limitations, no oversight, and no transparency. This project doesn’t have a democratic mandate. And the European Commission has been very secretive and unwilling to share information about what is going on. This is totally inappropriate.
The people’s elected representatives in the European Parliament must look into this matter – to defend our civil rights, democratic process and the rule of law.
/ HAX
But is is really an important civil right to be allowed to post stuff on Facebook? If Facebook doesn’t want to host particular content, should they be forced to?
Facebook as such can do whatever they want.
The thing is *politicians* are using this as a backdoor for censorship.
So the reason we should oppose this is because it’s another step on the slippery slope that leads to actual censorship?
It is a part of the new trend. Don’t make X illegal. Just have businesses enforce it.
Other examples:
1. Anonymous travel is not illegal. However airlines etc have to register the travelers.
2. Anonymous payments are not illegtal. However banks have to register the identity of every sender and receiver.
There are more, and it is a good pattern to keep your eyes on.