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EU Commissioner Calls For Censorship of Web Search
An anonymous reader sends us a Reuters story on a statement yesterday by Franco Frattini, the EU Justice and Security commissioner, who believes that Internet searches for bomb-making instructions should be blocked across the European Union. The commissioner "intend[s] to carry out a clear exploring exercise with the private sector... on how it is possible to use technology to prevent people from using or searching dangerous words like bomb, kill, genocide or terrorism..."
I tried following the link but it was invalid on my machine, so I did a search for
bomb, kill, genocide or terrorism
It got me the intended results, but if this is implemented how will I find the article in the future?
If I cannot search for terrorism, how will I know if I am safe?
Addition to this, note that they think we should not be able to useor search the words, so if something does unfortunately happen, how can we warn others?
"Theres a man in the back with a skimask on holding a complex exothermic chemical compound over there, run for your lives" ???
liqbase
Seems like a good idea to me if it protects the kids...after all, the world did change on September the 11th
Not another one.
Here in Kansas, we tried to eliminate science, physics, biology (embryos, etc...) and other things that weren't in the bible. Its not working.
People know how to find Wikipedia and find out how to make energy uncontrollable.
Searching for details on the 9/11 terrorism event...
Student doing research for school on the atom bomb or genocide for ww2 project
Some people are so stupid.
will they block slashdot now?
Once Google stops those terrorists from finding the secret recipy for furtilizer... whoops.. bombs, I'm sure they will have no means to obtain that information elsewhere...
What is this commissioner thnking?!? These guys go to Pakistan and Afghanistan to be trained in full operational training camps. And he thinks filtering Google will make them harmless? What utter naïvity.
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
So they're going to block all these words, across all languages?
And what if someone is searching for the title of a Monty Python movie where they used, for example, Holy hand grenades? Or a scene from a novel, or a TV show?
Hal Spacejock: Science Fiction with Nuts
Does Mr commissioner know that something cant be totally blocked/filtered on the web, since one who is bent on finding what s/he wants will eventually find a way to find it ?
Read radical news here
What if somebody needs to learn about terrorism for a paper or something like that.
Also... if any terrorist really wanted to make a bomb there are plenty of other ways to learn how to create one. I think this is just another attempt to have government closer to total control of the Internet. Maybe we will eventually see taxes on it in other ways. Maybe I'm going to far?
Of course, as many will no doubt realize, people will search for "how to make a b0mb" and so on, so this idea alone will be largely ineffective. Thus we need to take preemptive action and ban not only these words, but also these ideas, from all literature.
V-Chips to be made mandatory at birth. Film at 11.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
I take it this is a fake announcement to highlight the dangers of censorship? Ah, proposals, where you can say anything to appease the masses with no intent or method of implimentation.
like they tried to ban prOn err... *cough* porn?
Right!
Erosion of civil liberties IS terrorism for me... I want to be able to see chemistry instructions for anything i please... even to recognize a bomb... besides bombs don't have to be meant to hurt people ! Next what are they going to make people eat with their bare hands just because a fork can be used to kill someone ?!?!? STAY OUT OF MY SPACE YOU FASCISTS ! politics should be paid to simplify the system, not to make it inoperable by addind kafkanian regulations that only a few of the people understand !
It's not like the Internet isn't going to route around this damage.
The waste of time and money on this is just disheartening (though not unexpected).
All so some silly little fool can feel "safe".
Most people understand that "safe" is a myth. You can't protect everyone from everything (least of all, themselves).
Go ahead and chase that unicorn if you want.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
So I'm assuming all that trouble in the Balkins started when Slobodan Milosevic did a Yahoo search and told everyone around him, "Hey guys, I'm not sure if we should get this new Michael Jackson album or not but I just came across this article on genocide. Ya know, we ought go to Srebrenica and wipe everyone out to find out if its cool or not. I mean, it sounds awesome, what do you say?"
"Does Google censor search results?
Yes, they sometimes do, in different countries, like Germany, France or China. Sometimes, specific content is censored globally (including US results, e.g. in the case of certain censored newsgroup messages)."
http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-03-02-n19.html
1984 is calling.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
Censorship can only go from bad to worse. At first it's only about blocking information on how to construct a bomb, but where does it end? It's a slope with no friction. It begins with anti-terrorism and it ends with a dictatorship. Censorship is never good, no matter what the original intention.
The obvious solution is to allow access to all information, but set up rules that send alerts on who is searching for the offending words, and disallow anonymous web use, if that even still exists.
Make using the web at all require a login.
I'd bet the best way to stop this stuff would be to create fake honeypot sites. These sites would contain incorrect information on making bombs, but close enough to be mistaken. That would be a good way to differentiate those doing searches for innocent results and those actually searching for potentially "no no" sites and those who click on the links. And the best thing about this would be that the sites would be easy to create (though I'm sure the infrastructure would be complex): the more crappy the sites, the more they'd appear realistic.
Many have said that banning weapons will only hurt the people who buy them legally. The people who do things illegally will always find a way to get around it, whether guns, bomb making, etc. (This is only a comment on a viewpoint, I am not advocating it, I am only presenting it, so I hope this doesn't turn into a battle over this.)
If some kid who wants to blow up a school can't find a simple bomb, then he will find another way the wreak havoc. Only the method will be different.
Changing the ability to find something will not change people or their ability for new and more inventive ways to cause destruction.
I read some of the handbooks out of curiosity when I was a kid, as did a number of my friends. None of them blew up anything. There are a number of kids who are white hat hackers, but we only hear about the evil kids, as good kids aren't news.
You can filter all you want, but the end result will be the same - people who want to do something bad enough will most certainly find a way to do it.
In fact this seems to be a great idea. Add some really fake info like, "Every jihadi should pour a little sand into the barrels of their rifles before firing. The sand will create scratches in the bullets that will make it impossible for the Great Satan to trace our brave fighters' bullets".
Or "Brave Jihadi Soldiers fighting for Allah! Please take a moment to etch the name of Allah or his Prophet in your bullets. That will guide these bullets unerringly into the targets".
The sand will cause more jams and render more of the rifles useless. These dumb terrorists etching something on the bullet are more likely to bend/damage the bullet and make it fly less true. Such sprinkling of misinformation is likely to have much better effect and make them suspect anything and everything found on the net.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Issue copyrights on all information related to manufacturing explosives. Turn over the copyrights to the RIAA. Oh, wait ...
[Insert pithy quote here]
The recipe for a chocolate bomb
A joke that kills me with laughter
Information on the Genocide in the second world war
The effects of terrorism on current society?
Or does he propose an intellectual limit to the searches? That'd be fun. We'd get all kinds of _smart_ terrorists...
B.
Every experiment which ends in a big bang is a good experiment.
How about the consequences to our future generations? OBSERVATION: Holocaust is a bad word, almost like genocide CONSEQUENCE: Holocaust can't be found on Google CONCLUSION: The Holocaust never happened... Errm... you can substitute "Holocaust" with some other shocking word. How can we learn from our past if our past is blurred?
That's interesting. FTA: ... on how it is possible to use technology to prevent people from using or searching dangerous words like bomb, kill, genocide or terrorism," Frattini told Reuters.
"I do intend to carry out a clear exploring exercise with the private sector
So in other words, Frattini is in fact trying to make information on holocaust inaccessible, among other things. Score one for neo-nazis!
because terrorism and bombs didn't exist before Google and Yahoo!
[place
and then ask how well it works.
I think someone has been watching just a little too much Harry Potter
FGD 135
It seems like I better start hoarding bomb making plans then, so I can go trough with my plan to overthrow the government, so I can install a leftists, flip-flopping, black, gay, Islamo-atheistic, liberal terrorist government.
Just kidding, I got my bomb plans of the internet ages ago.
BTW: Wouldn't this just make the people interested in using bombs in a bad way start using code names, like booms for bombs etc?
BTW2: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
This is just stupid, blocking those words brings nothing. It doesn't give me safety. Terrorists have their training camps, arab fundamentalists can search for the recipe in Arabic using other search engines. But imagine now - your arab neighbor buys some chemicals in large amount, yet you are unable to find out whether one may make a bomb with this or not. Less safety, in my opinion. No, i don't encourage anyone to spy on their neighbors, no, i'm not anti-arabic. I'm just trying to show, that there is no "evil" information. Any kind of information can be used for good as well as for bad purpose. It's like forbidding computer languages because one can write a computer virus using them - totally useless.
I do have another solution for the authorities - fill the Internet with bomb plans, with your own ones. The trick is - no bomb built using these instructions should ever be able to detonate. Let the terrorists find only these fake instructions on first 100+ google search results. Let them fail as they did lately in London.
It is fairly easy for the govt. to track "professional" terrorists - i mean those who were in training camps around the Middle East. And it is almost impossible to prevent local sleepers from doing terrorist attacks using self-build bombs. Look at London bombings - the bombers were locals, they were born in England of were living there for a long time. So, let those "amateur" terrorists build exactly the bombs we want them to build - harmless as a Storm Worm on Linux.
of the Dylan song from the 1960's "The Mighty Quinn".
...
Ev'rybody's 'neath the trees,
Feeding pigeons on a limb
But when Quinn the Eskimo gets here,
All the pigeons gonna run to him.
A cat's meow and a cow's moo, I can recite 'em all,
Just tell me where it hurts yuh, honey,
And I'll tell you who to call.
It's about a pusher and his clients.
free speech in any form, especially on the internet, will just route around censorship one way or the other.
Pavlov wouldn't be so famous if he'd used a can opener instead of a bell.
to the EU Commissioner: Are you taking drugs or are you "stupid by nature"?
Blocking words is stupid because people can just invent synonyms.
Please filter those things on the military Internet. They use the stuff a lot more than all Terrorists combined!
It might sound faceious but this Franco (although Italian not Spanish) IS in a coalition with neo-facists The House Of Freedoms - In Italy Mussolini isn't really that dead. The problem is that this guy is making these choices Europe-wide.
If this were really happening, what would you think?
Crazy ass muslims who want to blow up structures will be provided instructions on how to do so from Saudi Arabia when they call home.
Blocking and censoring will only prevent people who have an interest in learning from being blocked. Just like gun control in the USA -- this only will work on law abiding citizens. You can legislate all the laws you want, but laws only effect law-abiding people . Criminals in the USA bring Assault Rifles in from mexico along with their drugs. I would imagine the terrorists in the EU would bring the knowledge for whatever they need with each "immigrant" that each country allows in.
That's a double plus plus way to make people safer.
---- aut viam inveniam aut faciam
Ever since Barosso and the Italians came in the EU Commission, the only thing they care to chime about are rules and legislation about civil liberty rights. Lastly they were in favor for a rating system that would ban violent video games, now this. I'd rather vote for the inclusion of Turkey than to vote for Italian commissioners.
With great power comes great electricity bills.
Apparently there are detailed instructions on genocide online..
We wouldn't want the kids to accidentally start wiping out entire races by accident, you know with those genocide machine schematics online.
I assume you're just being funny. But in case you're not, you make me fear for civilization.
Quoting the article: "I do intend to carry out a clear exploring exercise with the private sector ... on how it is possible to use technology to prevent people from using or searching dangerous words like bomb, kill, genocide or terrorism,"
In what way is blocking words like genocide going to help preventing terrorism? Does our friend the commisioner even know what the word means? Is he serious that covering up the WWII holocaust or the whole Yugoslavia disaster is the best way forward? The last parties that tried to cover those things up are now laughing in their graves, if they have any, for it seems that they have won their criminal wars after all.
By the way, does he know that "kill" is a standard UNIX command that doesn't harm anyone? :-)
Linux user since early January 1992.
"Hey there friend, you, uh, Jewish?"
"Why yes, yes I am. Why?"
"Oh, no reason. Say, do me a favor and hop on this train..."
Repeat as necessary.
This guy can't really believe that banning nasty words from the internet will prevent genocidal shitheads from popping up now and again. Now I'm not normally a big "black helicopter" kind of guy but this smells like a first step toward trying to entrench a censorship body of some kind, with the idea that bureaucracies are impossible to get rid of once they're formed (case in point: the IRS). My guess is that the list will go from four words to eight, maybe starting with "IED" and progressing to "parliament" or "voting record." This same guy apparently wants to ban violent video games because of the damage they do to young european minds. Because there obviously wasn't violence in Europe prior to the Playstation.
Here's a wiki on this clown: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco_Frattini
This unbiased moderation brought to you by the Porcine Aviation Group!
it's a good job I've already downloaded them and all the people who have been blowing us up seem to have been trained in Pakistan which last time I checked was outside the EU.
Anyhow, all you have to do is pickup a good encyclopaedia to find out the same info.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Second, who is to say an EU IP uses an EU search engine?
This looks like bureaucratic window-dressing to me. Brussels is trying to be worse than Washington. Stiff competition.
Perhaps someone can enlighten me, but genocide? Wouldn't anyone in a position to commit such a thing naturally be able to trivially get around ANY filter? Not to mention I doubt detailed plans for most genocides are available online, but most just involved whatever was cheap - Typically guns or sharp objects. Most dictators without a significantly strong (and organized) military can't use more advanced weapons (which were almost always gas)
Also will CSI be banned over there? It gives all sorts of ways to murder, how to cover up most things...and then what the person did wrong in the end! I'm surprised the murder rate hasn't doubled, with the what, 3 different variants on TV?
As for terrorism? Once again how much of this is actually on the internet and relevant? Yes there are terrorist websites, but I imagine most users don't find them through google... if they could, they'd tend to be shut down.
Bomb making is the only one I could see a reason for. And even then, the threat to liberties vs the ease of circumvention (just don't mention certain words...) really isn't worth it.
I am not an expert. If I am misled in something, please correct me.
In response to yesterday's police riot in Brussels, Terry Davis (head of the Council of Europe) stated:
"It is very important to remember that the freedom of assembly and expression can be restricted to protect the rights and freedoms of others, including the freedom of thought, conscience and religion."
*"The dark night of fascism is always descending in the United States and yet lands only in Europe." - Tom Wolfe, Mauve Gloves & Madmen, Clutter & Vine
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
FTA, EU Justice and Security Commissioner Franco Frattini:
"Frankly speaking, instructing people to make a bomb has nothing to do with the freedom of expression, or the freedom of informing people.
"The right balance, in my view, is to give priority to the protection of absolute rights and, first of all, right to life."
A more important question in my mind is, who DOES get to see the information on making bombs? There are many, many industrial applications for explosive devices. In fact, I can buy explosive devices online!
This is what happens when you hand over your rights to some unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats in Brussels instead of governing primarily at the local level. One numbnuts gets to decide what 400+ million people get to search for online. Don't worry, though. The US isn't far behind with the inevitable creation of an American Union looming on the horizon. After the world is divided up into only a handful of various "unions", we're only a stone's throw away from some elitist liberals deciding that 10 people should make decisions for the entire earth's population - leading to the one-world government hell you think is going to usher in the golden age of humanity.
A) all real interviewers are smarter....
B) anyone who asks your dumb questions is really a CIA/DHS stooge planning the next STASSI
C) I would answer by saying, all this stuff has been invented EONS ago, nothing is secret or hard to do, you cannot go back to 5000BC. Info is useless anyway without materials.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
That's easy, they'll only block the ones that www.alqaeda.org link to.
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
maybe they have forgot about the gun powder plot, or that little uprising that took place across the pond! I think that terrorist are winning the war, just not the physical battles. To say that the world was not changed 6 yrs and a day ago, to say that they did not accomplish their goals would be admitting that we do not understand their goals. The terrorist will continue to win if we continue to give up our freedom. All they have to do is wait for the populous to become so heavily taxed that they will no longer tolerate the government and then the populous will attempt to overthrow the government.
insert inflammatory comment here!
So what is left? Britney Spears and Paula Abdul? If that is the choice, give me the terrorists along with the knowledge. When are these vacuum heads going to finally learn that knowledge itself is not dangerous, its what you do with it.
Its time people understand that the New World Order is going to try to take away every right we have !
This censorship is just a steppingstone.
Next thing you know, he'll be banning the use of dihydrogen monoxide
How does MacGuyver escape from a prison cell that only has a wooden chair? Simple- he makes a bomb from all natural ingredients.
Gunpowder consists of charcoal, sulphur and salpeter.
To get charcoal, burn the chair. Without matches, rub pieces of broken chair together- this may not burn the chair but it will char it.
Instead of sulphur, phosphorus will do- you can obtain it by evaporating urine.
Shit is a good source for salpeter (KNO3).
Phosphorus, charcoal and salpeter are then mixed in a 1:2:9 ratio.
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
www.how-to-make-a-bomb.eu
(The domain's freshly registered so DNS might not be working everywhere yet).
I think EUDIOCY would just about cover it.
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
OK, so how is it going to be?
....
....... morons
He wants to block "how to make a bomb" or "how bombs work"? Not very successful, if you are interested you already know at least 1-2 components, and then search on them.
But wait, let's block everything related to a bomb. So first we have to block the whole periodic table, as most of the elements probably are contained in a bomb at the end.
Then can continue with keywords that will most likely be mentioned in the simplest instruction to do anything with any project as well:
container, metal, powder, wire, cable, liquid, chemicals, transport, cell phone, ignition, battery, timer, clock, remote
Oh wait, seems like the whole dictionary could be blocked then, so why not just have a keylogger on everyones computer, and put little animated bomb squad and police officers on the pages of google, wikipedia, how stuff works, or any page containing these dangerous terms that lead our society of blowing someone up. Do not forget your favourite paintball and airsoft (maybe include all water pistol makers too - the first step to shoot a man is to play violent games, such as shooting each other with waterpistols).
If they are so worried then just watch traffic. Oh wait they already do. Whole Europe is full of their black boxes sniffing at backbones. So just look for the searches.
You know what. Reading stupidity like this just makes people worried. The sad thing is that it only limits people who are innocently interested in stuff, and it won't stop someone from finding out if they really need to blow someone up.
Oh yeah that stupidity won't stop anyone from putting up a proxy abroad and make searches through it. It will just encourage them to access it through an encrypted tunnel, so even the black boxes won't help. Quite a task for someone who wants to go as far as plotting an attack, building a bomb, and maybe even blow himself up.... that will stop them definitely
So someone gets the job of researching all possible method of making a bomb so searches can be blocked, yet somehow doesn't block anything that happens to mention the keywords in other contexts? Is stupidity catching?
In an army surplus store.
Improvised munitions.
Explosives and demolitions.
50 cents each... Published by the army.
Better ban books too.
captcha: instruct
HA!
I'm Italian and not surprised by this proposition. Italy has a long record of censorship. Mainly on grounds of morals and good taste, Italians tend to give up freedom instantly.
For instance, in Italy anonymous internet access is not allowed. When you want access internet in a public place you will be asked for ab ID which will be written manually into a huge big register. The forms in these registers were designed around the time Mussolini was around. In Mussolini's time traveling and communicating wer suspicious activities which would be monitored.
Add a pinch of terror and the Italian in the street will waive his freedom completely.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
Let's assume for a moment that I'm one of those terrorists. I'm all hyped up and ready to blow me, some people and a few cubic meters of concrete up. Now, where do I go? The internet? Most certainly not. When was the last time your local radical cult told you to go on the net for more information? They want you to go to them, and only to them, for information. No matter what information. That way they can make sure you only hear what they want you to hear, and only see what they want you to see. It's a matter of control.
And where do the terrorist "bomb experts" get their information about bomb construction and explosives? The internet? More likely, they went somewhere in the middle east for some hands-on training. Would you put a project like blowing up an embassy into the hands of someone who gets his information out of a few lines he reads and pictures he sees?
So please, apply some brains to a statement like that. This cannot have any positive effect on anti-terrorism, so what's the intention behind it?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
"dangerous words like bomb, kill, genocide or terrorism..."
*Searches for the proper syntax for the command to terminate a non-responsive application*
*gets arrested*
Menus: Linux=function, Windows=vendor, OS X=as little as possible. Makes a statement, don't you think?
I was a substitute teacher for a chemistry class. We were discussing reaction rates as part of the class material, and I pointed out that a local flour mill explosion was the result of a flour/air mix that was ignited by a spark or over-heated equipment. The flour particles could oxidize (burn) extremely quickly because they were suspended in air, and being contained in an inflexible building the pressure from all those hot gases shattered the building, as opposed to another local fire in a grain silo that was still smoldering after two weeks because the paticles were large and air supply was limited.
On my return to that school, some days later, I was blamed for teaching the students how to blow up the trash barrels! Extrapolating from my information that flour/air mixes can go KABOOM, they shook flour into a barrel from a large kitchen shaker (the kind used for powdered sugar spreading), jammed on the lid, and gave it a spark from a battery-powered circuit. It was apparently an impressive KABOOM, although maybe not an earth-shattering one, and the trash barrel looked like it had been run over by a large truck.
This is true. It means the EU could no longer research the Holocaust are get information on Darfur .
Signature applied for, Patent Pending
I would rather have companies hosting such websites to shutdown the site. If they refuse to then shut that providers backbones off till the site is down, or just have the backbones block traffic to and from that websites IP address anyways. If its in a country that won't listen then simply turn that country into an Intranet. It won't have access to the Internet outside of its borders.
There are laws here against "hate crimes" however it seems no one wants to apply them to people standing in the streets shouting "death to this or that country" or "death to this person" because its "freedom of speech". Bull crap I say. I'm all for civil liberties however survival is more important at times like this.
that I randomly sumbled accross this flex-code for a English2newspeak-filter today:
... on how it is possible to use technology to prevent party workers from using or searching unsafewise words like bomb, kill, genocide or Goldsteinism, Hail Big Brother!"" Frattini told Reuters.
http://www.obairlann.net/reaper/filters/source/newspeak.l
Might want to add the following patch to avoid compile errors, though:
48a49,50
> %option noyywrap
>
I made some additional changes; to account for modern user of Mr etc without a following dot, and references to the EU and the al Queada. As listed in the original code, there's probably room for many more improvements -- these are just some minor updates to bring the lexer into the 21st century:
28a29
>
48a50,51
> %option noyywrap
>
126c129
< {W}[Mm]r"."/{EW} WCAP("brother");
---
> {W}[Mm]r"."?/{EW} WCAP("brother");
131c134
< {W}[Mm]r?s"."/{EW} WCAP("sister");
---
> {W}[Mm]r?s"."?/{EW} WCAP("sister");
323c326,327
< [Gg]ermany|[Ii]srael|[Ee]urope printf("Oceania");
---
> {THE}?[Ee]urope(an{W}Union)?|EU |
> [Gg]ermany|[Ii]srael printf("Oceania");
326a331
> ([Aa]l{W})?[Qq]aeda |
644d648
<
Anyway, applied to the original article:
By Ingrid Melander
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Internet searches for bomb-making B. B. DayOrder should be blocked across Oceania, the bloc's top security official said on Monday.
Internet providers should also prevent access to any site giving B. B. DayOrder on how to make a bomb, Oceania CrimeThink and Security Commissioner Franco Frattini said in an interview.
"I do intend to carry out a clear exploring exercise with the private sector
The Oceania executive is to make this proposal to member states earwise in November as part of a raft of unGoldsteinism proposals.
These include the screening of private data of passengers flying into the 27-nation bloc and the creation of an earwise warning system to alert police forces to thefts of explosives.
Inner Party Members of the Internet industry are meeting the Oceania on Tuesday, the sixth anniversary of Eurasia's September 11 attacks on Oceania, at a Oceaniaan Security CrimeThink and Innovation Forum.
The Internet has taken on huge importance for militant groups, enabling them to share know-how and spread propaganda to a mass audience, as well as to link cell members.
MORE COOPERATION
Asked whether a plan to block searches for bomb B. B. DayOrder or for the word 'Goldsteinism' on Web search engines could infringe on the rights to expression and information, Frattini said in the phone interview:
"Frankwise speaking, instructing party workers to make a bomb has nothing to do with the crimethink of expression, or the crimethink of informing party workers.
"The right balance, in my view, is to give priority to the protection of absolute rights and, first of all, right to life. Hail Big Brother!""
Frattini said there would be no bar on opinion, analysis or historwise information but operational B. B. DayOrder useful to terrorists should be blocked.
He said Oceaniaan legislation would spell out the principles of blocking access to bomb B. B. DayOrder. The details would be worked out by each Oceania country.
Disconnecting a Web site immediatewise was currentwise possible only in a minority of Oceania states including Itawise, Frattini said.
After German police arrested three men suspected of a major bomb plot last week, politicians called for greater powers to monitor computers. Oceania's top appeals court has ruled the clandestine monitoring of computers by police is unlegal.
"The level of the threat (in the Oceania) remains doubleplushigh," Frattini said. "That's why I am making appeals and appeals for stronger and closer cooperation." (additional reporting by David Brunnstrom)
Hail Big Brother!
stupid web blocking tools might prevent me from searching for "Breast Cancer" because that phrase has the sexy word "breast" in it. Similarly, if I were looking to diffuse a bomb, I might need to research different types of bombs to learn what kind was in the package on my desk before attempting to dismantle it. and as for genocide, I highly doubt that those inhuman jackasses who are involved in committing genocide are bothering to research it on the web before killing and torturing people. banning searches for genocide would be tantamount to burying our knowledge of genocide, and would likely lead future generations to become ignorant about the plight of those who have suffered and died at the hands of madmen in power.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
Kill him. Blow him up with a bomb. Genocide all who think like him.
Will code a sig generator for food
is still a bomb.
If they outlawed the word Marijuana, we'd just start using other words for it...HAH!
If a guy named Dick outlawed words associated with sex, we'd come up with other ways subvert that Dick.
If we outlawed these nasty terrorism words, they'd just come up with new ones. And their new ones might not be so easily recognizable...
This concept is stupid, and everyone with any small bit of sense knows it. That's why I doubt it will even float in Europe, where they talk about sex and legalize drugs and fight terrorism with words more than bombs!
It's too bad they didn't have this censorship implemented back in WWII, or Hitler might not have been able to use Google to figure out how to commit a genocide. Live & learn, I guess...
Years ago, I worked for ${BIGGEST_PHARMA} when they were making the switch to users having to have 2 authorizing signatures on a form before they were given Internet access, and allowing all users access to the live Internet. This was back in 1997/1998 timeframe, when most people were still using dialup at home to get to the net.
Initially, the Powers-that-Be that ran the network topology, fed a list of 'bad words' into their filters, and blocked any content based on that. They filtered on words like breast, sex, penis and other body parts of people and animals.
Suddenly, they noticed a dropoff in their productivity, because now internal scientists were no longer able to search for papers and articles on 'breast cancer', 'determining sex of mice', 'erectile dysfunction', and so on. Scientists were blocked from legitimate searches for legitimate content, and so the filters were relaxed and removed almost entirely.
Searching for 'bomb', or 'genocide' or 'terrorism', is certainly not an indicator that you wish to perpetrate those crimes, or are a terrorist yourself. Heck, I converted the entire 9/11 Commission Report to clean, validated HTML, and it gets an enormous amount of hits. You should see the kinds of search criteria that brings people to the page:
Here are the top 50 from today:
Both France and Germany blocking information related with WWII Nazi, China blocking mostly everything, now they want to try blocking bomb making data. Not going to happen, once the genie is let out, cant put them back. If someone wants to find a certin piece of information that has been released, all they need to do is a proper internet search, maybe going around blocked sites, or going to ftp sites, book stores, or other ways of getting the information. Worst comes to worst there is always black market.
I am not saying I condone the use of such data, just that where there is a will to find it, someone will find it.
Your search for "rwanda genocide" returned no pages. It never happened.
There is no such thing as good luck. There is only misfortune and its occasional absence.
Try his disliked words in the search at the top of
http://europa.eu/index_en.htm
EU members would not be able to get documents such as
Council Decision 2002/494/JHA of 13 June 2002, setting up a European network of contact points in respect of persons responsible for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes
Then again, perhaps he's a proponent of Turkish and Serb membership? Neither of those nations like the term "genocide" applied to their past... or maybe he likes revisionist history which claims Holocaust was a hoax...
Make information illegal and only criminals will have that information.
Is it me or does this sound like the first chapter in several books they made us read in high school (appologies to those too young for HS) where books are banned, information is all protected, "citizens" are not permitted anything that might be dangerous, offensive...and i think one of them had people eating generic paste goo or somethign for food.
WAKE UP. If some idiot kid wants to make a chlorine bomb and kills himself because mommy and daddy figured the internet was a good babysitter like the TV is (was?) and paid no attention...blame THEM! Same parents that would take him to buy chlorine tabs at the pool store without asking why...and then blame the 'net.
UGH...why not just justify it all "FOR THE CHILDREN...."
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
I, along with xkcd, knew that if we waited long enough, the day would come when this sentence would be on topic:
Somebody set up us the bomb!
Dear Sir/Madam:
Fire!
Fire!
Fire!
Looking forward to hearing from you,
Maurice Moss
-ZA
Oh, and don't forget to put "censorship" in the list. That should be right at the top!
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Oh wait, that was tried before, and in some cases, cost humanity bigtime.
What is it with those in power, and fear of information?
Too bad for them, info can't be killed anymore. Supressed, made harder to find, sure -- but not wiped out on a wholesale scale.
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
H0w w!ll tH3¥ $t0p p30pl3 fr0m d0!ñg 4lt3rñ4t3 $34r©H3$ f0r b0mb 0r t3rr0r!$m? http://www.onlineconversion.com/haxor.htm
Yep, that's how it always starts. Then pretty soon, it devolves to this:
"I do intend to carry out a clear exploring exercise with the private sector ... on how it is possible to use technology to prevent people from using or searching dangerous words like free, free market, free speech or freedom," Fasctini told Reuters.
"Fear is the mind killer." --Dune
"Necessity is always the cry of tyrants." --Seneca
DNA is a Turing machine. You, however, being dynamic and emergent, are not.
I wonder if Mr. Frattini (who, IIRC, is an arch conservative catholic with an agenda similar to John Ashcroft's) realises what he's asking for there and how extremely difficult that would be to implement with current technology. Banning search terms like Bomb, Gun, Kill and Genocide would automatically end up blocking about 50 percent of Wikipedia alone. Banning them in the wanted context, however is something that even Google, I'm sure, would pay good money for, since the same technique would be excellent in narowing online searches.
But it doesn't and won't work and I suggest to Mr. Frattini that he do a search for Clueless Fundamentalist With An Agenda in the proper context before he gets too carried away.
So the entire European Union is going to be made to suffer intellectual poverty and repression of information because of a representative of a member state that has a historical disregard for (or outright hostility to) the institutions of democracy and free exchange of ideas (which I consider a necessary ingredient for true liberty). Expect to see more lunacy like this in the future.
I would venture to say that anyone who can seriously put forth such a proposal doesn't "get" the notion of liberty. Amazingly, nobody seems to be batting an eye at this, certainly not in Italy.
This just underscores that nothing has really changed that dramatically since the mid-20th century. Fascism is alive and well; people with ties to Mussolini's government (even tenuous ties, like being children of known fascists) extoll the virtues of the "good ol' days" and the sheeple smile and nod their heads in agreement. Of course, the roots of these sentiments really go back much farther than Mussolini. Some would say they are ancient. And I'm saying this as someone who was born into a family with a large, culturally conservative Italian contingent.
I wonder how much of Frattini's comments were distorted due to language barrier issues, how much were due to plain ignorance of how difficult it is to contextualize information (e.g., historical data about genocide or terrorism versus news about terrorism versus how-to guides on conducting terrorism), and how much were attributable to pure demagoguery. I suspect all three factors were at play here.
Bombs and terrorists kill people.
:-)
What if I want to find out about how atomic bombs are made? (no, I don't want to build one. But I do want to know how it is done, so that I know how seriously to regard activities such as enriching uranium or making heavy water in Iran -- just how much of an imminent threat is this? How far off are they, if we assume the worst? What will the signs be of diversion to weapons programs rather than for power systems? Will it be obvious or subtle?) What if I want to find out something about the history of terrorism? (No, I don't want to become a terrorist. But I do want to understand what has happened in history, because those who do not understand it are doomed to repeat the same mistakes) What if I want to find out about genocide? (No, I don't want to cause it. I want to PREVENT it, and put modern events in perspective. See previous) What if I want to know something about the innumerable ways that people could be killed? (No, I don't want to kill anybody. I want to know the risks to me and people I care about are, and how they can be averted)
How are people supposed to take care of themselves if they can't assess what the real risks are or the history? How are we supposed to learn? Are we simply supposed to take government's word for what is a serious risk and what isn't? Are we supposed to ignore our duty as informed citizens that are supposed to be involved the democratic process, and just trust the politicians and security personel to take care of us all? The best defense is to be informed, and in the interests of hindering the terrorists they want to take away information from everybody? That's nuts!
Words aren't dangerous. These attempts to stifle information are, because even if it worked the real terrorists will get ahold of the information anyway, just as they did before the internet existed. And, guess what? It won't work anyway. It'll be circumvented and hidden. Sure, *maybe* it might be a little easier for the bad guys, but so what? The good guys (i.e. us) have easier access to all sorts of information too. The way it is now, the stupid terrorists will give themselves away with what they search for. Let them.
Don't even get me started on absurdity of trying to suppress searches for a word like "kill". The UNIX man pages are all over the internet and installed on people's systems already!
Sheesh, I need to read "Fahrenheit 451" again and try to remind myself it is still fiction.
The strange thing about excluding "genocide" is that it is a crime that historically has been a government sanctioned activity. It makes you wonder if he is trying to block people from finding out what genocide is what his real purpose is behind all of this.
... for example that in the name of fighting "terrorism" the European Union (at some point in the future) decides to stamp out the Islamic religion because they decide that the religion itself is largely responsible for encouraging and perpetrating terrorism. It might be in your best interest to try to prevent people from discovering that what you are doing is not very different than the atrocities perpetrated by Nazi Germany during WWII.
Say
Windows is a bonfire, Linux is the sun. Linux only looks smaller if you lack perspective.
So if the Associated Press, Reuters, CNN, MSNBC, or any other news site were to run an article with a sentence like "police retrieved fragments of the bomb, including the explosive and the casing" would that be enough of the instructions for creating that type of bomb to force the censorship of the article? How much of the instructions is too much?
.... is a bomba in Italian and a pump in English. Or something like that, but you better do not scream "Tengo una bomba!" (I have a bomb) in any crowded places in Spanish speaking countries.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
http://ec.europa.eu/commission_barroso/frattini/index_en.htm
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
"...to prevent people from using or searching dangerous words like bomb, kill, genocide or terrorism..."
There goes the White House's website
(and the rest of the military industrial complex's) then.
RR
Then how will we be able to enjoy the news about Father of all bombs?
hany