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In the Face of Oppression

By on January 22, 2017 in Big Brother, Censorship, Civil rights, Democracy, EU, Freedom of Speech, Human rights, surveillance, US, War on Terror

Many people fear the new U.S. president, Donald Trump. They might be right. Or not. But I think that we might oversimplify this issue.

Yes, Mr. Trump has the image of a despot. But it might be dangerous to judge a book by its’ cover. Not that we should »underestimate« Trump – but because it might lead to a false sense of security in other cases.

Presidents Bush and Obama were the ones expanding the Surveillance State that has now been handed over to the new administration. Their responsibility is immense. And the way they themselves used mass surveillance justifies very strong criticism.

In Europe, democratically elected leaders are rolling out the most massive mass surveillance regime in history. May in the UK, the »Großkolaition« in Germany and the French – they are all creating tools that can very easily be used to oppress the people. This even goes for countries with strong(ish) democratic and human rights credentials, like Sweden.

The EU is setting up the first major system for selective censorship of the Internet. And it’s being done outside the democratic process and institutions, outside the rule of law.

There is every reason to closely watch what the new U.S. administration is up to. But there are equally strong reasons to watch what is going on in the rest of the western world, under the cloak of parliamentary democracy.

It’s not just about what first meets the eye, but what is being done.

/ HAX

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Communia: No to filtering of user-uploaded content

By on January 13, 2017 in Civil rights, Copyright, EU, Free Information

A project tackling issues concerning the public domain in the digital environment has called on the European Commission to abandon its proposals for mandatory service provider filtering of user-uploaded content. Communia, which has Creative Commons as a founder member, says such filters will violate users’ fundamental rights.

Torrentfreak: Public Domain Project Calls on EU to Abandon Piracy Filter Proposals »

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EU proposal: All travel to be registered

By on January 6, 2017 in Big Brother, Civil liberties, EU, PNR, Police state, Privacy, War on Terror

I cannot say that I am surprised. I have seen this coming, for a long time:

Jambon’s plan takes this initiative [PNR] and applies it to other means of transport. It will mean that anyone wanting to travel by rail, sea or by bus to another EU country will have to register their information.

Fighting terrorism is just a pretext. Politicians want ever more control and surveillance of the people. They will not be satisfied until there is total control.

• Euractiv: Belgium prepares to present passenger data plans to rest of EU »
• Techdirt: Belgium Wants EU Nations To Collect And Store Personal Data Of Train, Bus And Boat Passengers »

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EU: Privatised censorship and filtering of free speech

By on December 29, 2016 in Big Entertainment, Copyright, EU, Freedom of Speech, Intellectual Property

The European Commission’s proposal on copyright attempts something very ambitious — two different measures that would restrict free speech, squeezed into a single article of a legislative proposal. (…)

1) Requires internet companies to install filtering technology to prevent the upload of content that has been “identified by rightsholders”. (…)

2) Seeks to make internet providers responsible for their users’ uploads. (…)

3) Gives internet users no meaningful protection from unfair deletion of their creations.

Medium: EU Copyright Directive — privatised censorship and filtering of free speech »

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EU producing a lot of hot air trying to curb free speech

By on December 15, 2016 in Big Brother, Censorship, Civil liberties, Civil rights, Democracy, EU, Free Information, Freedom of Speech, Internet, Rule of law, social media

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

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EU mulling over encryption – behind closed doors

By on December 15, 2016 in Cryptography, EU

It seems that, once again, an important legislative process is being set in motion behind closed doors. With the exception of the Council meeting outcomes document, none of the documents were made public. The lack of transparency around these actions, both at the EU and member state level, undermines the already vulnerable trust between EU citizens, their respective governments, and EU institutions.

EDRi: Council debates encryption and other closed-door matters »

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A word of warning on piracy filters

By on December 6, 2016 in Censorship, Copyright, EU, File Sharing, Internet

A group of prominent legal scholars has warned that the EU Commission’s plans to modernize copyright law in Europe appear to be incompatible with EU law. One of the main problems is the mandatory piracy filter Internet services are required to use, which largely ignore existing case law and human rights.

TorrentFreak: Mandatory Piracy Filters May Violate EU Law, Scholars Warn »

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EU:s ambiguous directive on combating terrorism

By on December 4, 2016 in Big Brother, Civil rights, Democracy, EU, Human rights, Police state, Rule of law, War on Terror

This week the Human Rights Committee (LIBE) in the European Parliament will finalize the formalities on the new EU directive on combating terrorism. There is little room for changes, as there has been closed door negotiations (trialogue) on the content between the Parliament, the Council (member states) and the Commission. From LIBE the directive will go to the vote in the December Parliamentary plenary session in Strasbourg.

This directive is an odd document as national security is not formally an EU competence. Newer the less, it has been rushed trough the system and is now close to becoming EU law.

The document can be seen as a response to the Paris and Brussels terrorist attacks. It is surely the result of pressure on EU member states interior ministers to be seen to do… something.

The directive is notably vague. Maybe even suspiciously vague.

Among the listed purposes for illegal terrorist actions, we can read the following »seriously destabilising or destroying the fundamental political, constitutional, economic or social structures of a country or an international organisation«. And on form… »given their nature or context«.

This is vague. And it sounds dangerously close to… suppressing opposition or perfectly legitimate disruptive political activism. Would this label e.g. a tax revolt terrorism?

Threats to »information systems« resulting in »major economic loss« are also mentioned. Exactly where does this place some forms of hacking or maybe a DDoS attack? Will hackers now be deemed to be terrorists?

And exactly what does the following suggest? »Member States shall take the necessary measures to ensure that the distribution, or otherwise making available, of a message to the public, with the intent to incite the commission of one of the offences listed in points (a) to (h) of Article 3(2), where such conduct, whether or not directly advocating terrorist offences, causes a danger that one or more such offences may be committed, is punishable as a criminal offence when committed intentionally.«

The wording »whether or not directly advocating terrorist offences« is just confusing.

»For an offence referred to in Article 4 and Title III to be punishable, it shall not be necessary that a terrorist offence be actually committed, nor shall it be necessary to establish a link to a specific terrorist offence or, insofar as the offences in Articles 9 to 11 are concerned, to specific offences related to terrorist activities.«

Isn’t that a bit ambiguous?

So it continues. And I’m not the only one being suspicious…

Amnesty International, the European Network Against Racism (ENAR), European Digital Rights (EDRi), the Fundamental Rights European Experts (FREE) Group, Human Rights Watch (HRW), the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) and the Open Society Foundations (OSF) are warning that the overly broad language of the new EU Directive on Combating Terrorism could lead to criminalising public protests and other peaceful acts, to the suppression of the exercise of freedom of expression protected under international law, including expression of dissenting political views and to other unjustified limitations on human rights. The Directive’s punitive measures also pose the risk of being disproportionately applied and implemented in a manner that discriminates against specific ethnic and religious communities.

It seems that the purpose of this directive is to expand the scope of the anti-terror legislation to cover as much as possible. The risk is that it will go too far – labeling opposition, activism, hacking, and some other political activities as terrorism. Especially as it is up to the member states to implement this directive. There are plenty of politicians in Europe just looking for an excuse to silence uncomfortable voices and disruptive political movements.

/ HAX

LIBE meeting documents »

EDRi: European Union Directive on counterterrorism is seriously flawed »

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