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Here's one point, duh.

"Extremism" says it all. Presumably they mean "Islamists" at the moment. [...] Usually I hate "slippery slope" arguments, but yeah- slippery slope...

They're already a ways down that slope. Britain’s bar on anti-Muslim activists travelling to the country could do more harm than good. In the UK today, a Muslim cleric calling for jihad in Syria or the imposition of sharia in the UK is more acceptable than American writers who warn against the dangers of such people. I.e., advocating totalitarian Islam is OK, but opposing it is "extremist" "hate speech" against a religion.

I like this quote: "Index on Censorship said to EU states this morning: "Members of the EU have a duty to protect freedom of expression and should not interfere in an individual's attempts to seek asylum. Edward Snowden is a whistleblower whose free speech rights should be protected not criminalised.""

The Pentagon is maintaining a line that WikiLeaks inherently, as an institution that tells military and government whistleblowers to step forward with information, is a crime. They allege we are criminal, moving forward.

Without commenting on whether or not that is the Pentagon's allegation, Wikileaks has been caught giving leaked secrets to "the bad guys" while they were, at the time, withholding the same secrets from the public. Wikileaks has also been shown to deliberately lie about the information it releases in such a way as to wrongly disparage the United States, as in the "Collateral Murder" hoax.

Actions such as these raise the question of whether it is the intent of Wikileaks to leak US secrets to the enemies of the US rather than to simply publish the information for the world to know. Such an intent would make the actions of Wikileaks criminal in the US jurisdiction. They would be enemy spies.

We also have Bradley Manning's talk about wanting to get back at the army he believed was oppressing him. This raises the question of whether Manning's intent was to release information to the public, which would make him an innocent man, or if his intent was to hinder the operations of the US army, which would make him a traitor.

Proving intent is difficult, but this gets to the core of whether the actions of Wikileaks are within the law or whether the US has a case against it. Is Wikileaks only telling military and government whistleblowers to step forward with information, or are they trying to deliver US military secrets to the the enemy during a war?

Here's the pdf of the judgement

Technically that is a judgment not a judgement. In legal English, the former is the word to describe a legal ruling - it's also the word used within the document. Don't ask me why.

This is the pdf for todays judgement if you want to read it. It says about 2/3 of the way through that the BCA had "understandably not sought to make a major issue of the word bogus." In the context of what you're saying I guess they may have realised they had a less than favourable judge.

Here's the pdf of the judgement
It's pretty damn scathing and looks like escalating this further up the court is pointless.

Well, given that it is now approaching 9PM in the UK, it is more correct to say Simon Singh was in court today. And so far things look promising – Lord Judge is less than impressed by BCA's case. See http://www.indexoncensorship.org/2010/02/simon-singh-chiropractic-bca-libel-appeal

You got to posting the important link before me, so let me instead say that even if Simon wins this round there is still a whole lot more work to be done; firstly, this is only the appeal against the previous judge's decision of what was meant by his use of the word 'bogus', and a win here will just make the rest of the case easier to fight. Secondly, Britain still lacks a proper 'public interest' defense in these sorts of cases, and that is why it is important to support full and considered libel reform so that this ridiculous charade does not have to be repeated, at enormous expense, for every individual who would reasonably criticise his peers.

"Simon Singh, author, television presenter and known critic of pseudoscience, is in court today...

Well, given that it is now approaching 9PM in the UK, it is more correct to say Simon Singh was in court today. And so far things look promising – Lord Judge is less than impressed by BCA's case. See http://www.indexoncensorship.org/2010/02/simon-singh-chiropractic-bca-libel-appeal

You might like to know - Singh just got right to appeal: http://www.indexoncensorship.org/2009/10/simon-singh-wins-leave-to-appeal-in-bca-libel-case/ I agree with you entirely and hope that this sets a precedent for libel

http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSL1277265220080312 - Islamic states seek world freedom curbs: humanists

http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSTRE52O5QY20090325 - U.N. urged to reject bar on defamation of religion

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iRHXSIoJJdXQpG3kPrRO2LWMnWTAD975TOK00 - UN body OKs call to curb religious criticism

http://www.secularism.org.uk/108265.html - Defamation of religion passes at UN Human Rights Council again

http://www.indexoncensorship.org/2009/03/26/the-slow-death-of-freedom-of-expression/ - The Slow Death Of Freedom Of Expression

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/03/freedom-for-the.html - Freedom For The Thought That We Hate

Lots more at http://news.google.com/news?um=1&ned=us&cf=all&ncl=1320377548

I'm glad to see that Slashdotters are sceptical of what they read, but sometimes all it takes is a 10 second Google.

The RIP Bill is certainly one of the most controversial bills I've noticed in my time. For those who can be bothered reading them:

Stand.org.uk
Bills before Parliament currently

What is scary to notice is this particular set of bills, all called to the Houses of Commons (and Lords) by Mr Jack Straw (the man who seems to be getting the blame for the RIP bill):

• Regulation of Investigatory Powers [RIP]
• Terrorism Bill [T]
• Freedom of Information Act [FoI]
• Electronic Communications Bill [EC]
• Copyright and Trademarks Bill [CaT]

The [T] bill grants full powers to the police, without warrant, without "Innocent Until Proven Guilty" if they suspect you of terrorism. Terrorism now can include environmental and anti-capitalist demonstrations.

The [CaT] bill makes owning software which removes copy-protection illegal (I have no idea what this would mean to anyone with a copy of the source for DeCSS, which could be seen as a form of copy-protection).

[RIP] bill has enough people ranting about it to be ridiculous. Some people think that the government can't afford to enforce this bill (estimates of tens of millions for a year), and that the bill won't be passed. That said, the bill is already at the stage where it needs a lawyer to write a formal document to get changes made to it. I guess we'll know the truth around 4th October (unless the date has changed) which is when the bill is to come into action.

Given that list of bills that are being changed, and the changes that have come to light, it seems as though the UK government is heading towards a semi-police-state sort of arrangement? Check out this site for their latest ideas on censorship:

School Internet Access

What I think has to be borne in mind is that most countries (all of them that I've come across) do not give you "Privacy" as a right. All legal systems seem to rely on the fact that the citizens will be open about certain things - namely they will give the police access to their homes when presented with a warrant. In many ways, the RIP bill is fair in asking for you to hand over your keys. However, what are not fair, or well thought through, are the consequences for not doing so.

Stand's website already mentions one major problem with the "Give us your keys or go to jail" mentality - any hard-core terrorist group would rather go to jail for 2 years for obstruction of justice than face life imprisonment because their encrypted mails had their keys given out. This applies to paedophilia (another of the crimes that the government is trying to tighten up on), where the Department of Trade and Industry provided a "brochure" on cryptography/legislation in the UK:

Encryption and Law Enforcement

To me, that brochure summarises the way the government believes it can (and actually manages to) control its people - for the most part, the general population in this country is willing to believe that paedophilia == bad, paedophiles use crypto, terrorists use crypto, ergo: crypto == bad and we must do everything in our power to make sure that the Finally, I see two or three ways around these problems (which seem to be caused by men-in-suits who have no idea about what they are legislating):

• Ignore it - it doesn't bother me, I'll just bury my head in the sand and wonder why I'm in jail for two years when I lose a key.
• Emigrate - question is, where to? How many other countries have laws which could be construed as "backwards" in other respects? Canada seems to have sane crypto laws, but is going crazy about MP3 and copyright legislations. America seems to be following suit. Germany allows ISP's to be sued for content that isn't there own (old slashdot story - don't quote me on it!). France used to deny existance of RSA...
• Fight fire with fire - this is the solution that I believe I shall adopt. As part of my final year in University, I have to do a project. As my project I've chosen to do something a bit like the Eternity service, but with a twist: anonymity. For the first time, freedom of speech can only be stopped by a government if they cut off the internet. And if they do that, businesses will leave straight away. Granted, it doesn't get around [RIP], unless you only use session keys and destroy them after the session, but it does finally give us something that few governments are willing to: freedom of speech and privacy (in the sense that no matter who snoops our connections, they still can't prove we sent a message, let alone prove we have the key).
• Clue up - this is for anyone who has an interest in law. Clue the government up, and the best way to do that is to become the government. This is meant to be a democracy, after all, so should your views be supported, you will be able to get into power and make our voices heard. If the tide of opinion is against you (as it may well be, especially in the UK), then the only thing you can do is to accept that this is how democracy works, and maybe this is the wrong type of government system for you.

Well, that's my four-quid's worth.

-- Maz