EU proposal: All travel to be registered

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 »

Italian call for state censorship

Pitruzzella, head of the Italian competition body since 2011, said “EU countries should set up independent bodies — co-ordinated by Brussels and modeled on the system of antitrust agencies — which could quickly label fake news, remove it from circulation and impose fines if necessary.”

Zerohedge: Italy Urges Europe To Begin Censoring Free Speech On The Internet »

EU copyright reform: Oettinger’s legacy

These proposals will cause major collateral damage – making many everyday habits on the web and many services you regularly use downright illegal, subject to fees or, at the very least, mired in legal uncertainty.

Julia Reda, Pirate MEP: 10 everyday things on the web the EU Commission wants to make illegal »

Another kind of censorship

Google removed over 900 million pirate site URLs from its search results in 2016. The staggering number is an increase of nearly 100% compared to the year before. While Google has taken some steps to make pirate sites less visible, it continues to disagree with rightsholders on how to move forward.

TorrentFreak: Google Removed Over 900 Million ‘Pirate’ Links in 2016 »

Information trench war over Snowden

It seems to be open season for mudslinging against NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The latest example is a widely spread article by Edward Jay Epstein in the Wall Street Journal. However, it seems to offer very little or nothing of substance.

The purpose of the piece might rather be to promote Epstein’s upcoming book »How America Lost Its Secrets: Edward Snowden, the Man and the Theft«.

Epstein is no fool. But he is very much into certain… theories. In the quite entertaining book »Deception: The Invisible War Between the KGB & the CIA« he rises to defend CIA:s former and widely criticized director of counterintelligence (1954-75), the late James Jesus Angleton. Epstein’s latest book is »The JFK Assassination Diary: My Search for Answers to the Mystery of the Century«.

I don’t say that Epstein is a conspiracy theorist. But it might be wise for those who are about to refer to him as an authority on Snowden, to be aware that he is a controversial author.

/ HAX

Also, read Errata Security: Your absurd story doesn’t make me a Snowden apologist »

EU: Privatised censorship and filtering of free speech

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 »