To hold a citizen incommunicado and indefinitely while awaiting trial for the alleged crime of serving as a journalistic source should outrage us all.
Motherboard » Snowden: Prosecuting NSA Leaker Reality Winner Is a ‘Fundamental Threat to the Free Press’ »
To nobody’s surprise also the London Bridge assassins were known to the authorities. One of them has been in a tv-documentary about jihadism. And he was reported trying to convert children he met in a park to Islam. According to himself, he would be prepared to kill his own mother in the name of Allah.
Responsible for the authorities that are supposed to handle things like this was – between 2010 and 2016 – now Prime Minister Theresa May.
Today her only comment is that she would like to censor the Internet.
Censoring information and maximizing surveillance of the people is not the way to defend democracy. That would rather be to support the terrorists strive to destroy our open and free society. And it would do very little to stop religious radicalization.
To Theresa Mays defense, it should be said that it is not all that easy to know what to do. You can hardly lock people up who have not (yet) committed any crime. You cannot jail people because of their skin color, their cultural background, their faith or their political beliefs. And you should not punish entire ethnic groups because of the deeds of a few.
There must be better ways to defeat terrorism.
/ HAX
A few links:
London Bridge terrorist ‘was in Channel 4 documentary about British jihadis’ »
Theresa May Blames The Internet For London Bridge Attack; Repeats Demands To Censor It »
‘Blame the internet’ is just not a good enough response, Theresa May »
Tim Farron warns of win for terrorists if web is made surveillance tool »
The European Commission, Parliament and Council (representing member states) agreed on Monday to a €120-million plan to install free wi-fi services in 6,000 to 8,000 municipalities across the EU by 2020. The scheme had been proposed by EU commission president Jean-Claude Juncker last September. How the system will be funded will have to be discussed and agreed before local authorities can start applying to it.
How kind. I guess a lot of people will be happy. But there might be unintended and unwanted consequences.
First of all, there is no such thing as a free lunch. In the end, this is €129M that somehow, forcefully will be taken from taxpayers.
Second, there must be much merriment within various mass surveillance organizations. This will make controlling the people that much easier.
And if you read the parliaments statement, there is mention of a »single authentication system valid throughout the EU«. This will have huge privacy implications. Can we please have a discussion about this first?
Third, it usually doesn’t end well when politicians start to meddle with what is supposed to be a free market. Is this at all fair competition? What will the consequences be when it comes to developing better and quicker commercial connections?
Finally, communal WiFi run by your local bureaucracy. What can possibly go wrong? Will it even work? How will surplus metadata that you generate be used? By whom? Wich web pages will be blocked?
/ HAX
Next Thursday, June 8, the European Parliaments Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee (IMCO) will have its main vote on the EU Copyright Package.
Here a proposal will be hammered out for the parliament’s final plenary vote later this summer. So it’s a very important event. And there are dark clouds on the horizon.
Key points are the EU Censorship Machine (forcing internet platforms to control and, in relevant cases, censor content uploaded by its users) and the Link-tax (a license fee for linking to media news articles).
This is the best – and maybe last – opportunity to stop this from becoming EU law.
Take action, spread the word and please contact your elected members of the parliament.
Julia Reda (German Pirate MEP): Just 9 days left to reject the worst version of EU copyright expansion plans yet »
BoingBoing: ACT NOW! In 9 days, the European Parliament could pass a truly terrible copyright expansion »
Dear all,
Please take notice that the G7 meeting just decided to beef up censorship and control of the Internet.
If you make censorship possible at all – sooner or later it will be used by sinister minds.
Please – do not limit the freedom of speech. We cannot silence or put people in prison, simply because we do not agree with whatever they are saying. (Unless they are a direct threat to other people’s immediate security. And if so, only after a fair trial respecting fundamental human rights.)
Giving Big Government and Big Data control over the freedom of the word – that must not happen.
/ HAX
In the EU, member states are pressing on for censorship of online video:
European Union ministers have approved proposals to make social media companies such as Facebook, Twitter and Google’s YouTube tackle videos with hate speech on their platforms.
The proposals, which would be the first legislation at EU level on the issue, still need to be agreed with the European Parliament before becoming law.
And, under the same scheme, there is a totally unrelated proposal for cultural protectionism:
The proposals also include a quota of 30 per cent of European films and TV shows on video streaming platforms such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video.
Member states will also be able to require video-sharing platforms to contribute financially to the production of European works in the country where they are established and also where they target audiences.
Daily Mail: EU ministers approve plans to force Facebook, YouTube and Twitter to tackle hate speech videos »
https://youtu.be/jTAuaTSWaxM
This bill asks social media companies to take down content, including perfectly legal material, that social media companies like Facebook can arbitrarily label as “hate speech”, “fake news”, “pornographic content”, among other categories. In addition, the draft law de facto imposes filtering of content, despite the fact that such technology cannot understand context and will, therefore, inevitably lead to still more legal content being deleted. The basic aim of the bill is, of course, well-intentioned. However, the way this bill is drafted appoints social media companies as arbiters of legality and “the truth”. Furthermore, this bill breaches EU law, which establishes that all restrictions to fundamental rights, including freedom of expression, must be provided for by law, necessary and proportionate (Article 52 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union). In addition, EU law also prohibits imposing general monitoring obligations on companies. If adopted, this unprecedented law would serve as a bad example for other states, including countries with serious democratic deficits.
EDRi » EU action needed: German NetzDG draft threatens freedom of expression »
“Some people say that it is not for government to regulate when it comes to technology and the internet,” it states. “We disagree.”
The Independent: Theresa May to Crete New Internet that would be Controlled and Regulated by Government »
Pull the various tech-related manifesto pledges together and – if the polls are correct and May wins a majority in next month’s election – the Conservatives could have a mandate from the British public for a significant extension of internet regulation, all based on the idea that a government’s duty to protect citizens exists just as much on the internet as it does in the real world.
Buzzfeed: Theresa May Wants To Regulate The Internet »
“Balances” freedoms? Freedoms aren’t supposed to be “balanced.” They’re supposed to be supported and protected. And when you have your freedoms protected, that also protects users. Those two things aren’t in opposition. They don’t need to be balanced. As for “obligations for businesses and platforms” — those five words are basically the ones that say “we’re going to force Google and Facebook to censor stuff we don’t like, while making it impossible for any new platform to ever challenge the big guys.” It’s a bad, bad idea.
Techdirt: Theresa May Plans To Regulate, Tax And Censor The Internet »
Something remarkable happened in Sweden this week: a list of 15,000 people with the wrong political opinions was used to block those people from the @Sweden account, and thereby preventing these people from communicating over Twitter with that part of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The government tried defending the block as only concerning neo-nazi right-wing extremists, which was a narrative that held water in legacy media until somebody pointed out that the Ambassador of Israel (!) was among the blocked.
Falkvinge: What do you do when you realize your government has blocked you for Wrongthink? »
