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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
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.
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
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?
TNT is kind of a low power explosive by modern standards, that hardly rates blacklisting slashdot ;)
It's amazing how stupid people in power are. Do they really think censoring that sort of information on the web will stop anyone who wants to build a bomb? My university chemistry textbook has plenty of instructions for things that can be used for terrorism.
The next step would have to be to stop teaching science and burn all science books. The dark ages were several centuries ago, maybe it's time for another one.
V-Chips to be made mandatory at birth. Film at 11.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
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 protects them from knowledge, isn't that the real goal of people like this?
Knowledge only leads to questioning religion and authority.
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?"
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.
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!
No, of course they don't, that is not the real purpose of the exercise. Let me try to explain.
Suppose that you are a politician and you are being interviewed on the TV. The interviewer says "Minister, what steps is your government taking to stop terrorists acquiring bomb making instructions?". Now, you basically have two options:
If you try option 1, then 1% of the viewers will understand the technical impossibility and agree with you, whilst the other 99% will get the vague impression that you are soft on terrorism or, at best, hear a strange buzzing noise. With option 2, OTOH, 1% of viewers will be outraged by such a pointless and stupid idea, whilst the rest will get the impression that you are tough on terrorists.
Now, you are a smart politician and wish to be re-elected. Which one are you going to choose?
Of course, you know full well that in a few years time you will get a question like "Minister, in the recent terrorism trial it was revealed that the terrorists obtained their bomb instructions from the internet. I thought that you had introduced legislation to prevent this?", but fortunately there are lots of ways out of this:
>How can we learn from our past if our past is blurred?
One thing we learn from the past is that it's always distorted. Is there anything really new about internet censorship?
Do Europeans consider free speech or free press important enough to kill, die, dissolve political alliances or revoke currency in order to protect them?
Freedom of speech is one of the very few things actually *worth* killing or dying to protect. But do Europeans feel that way? Or are they willing to surrender their rights?
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Well, to me this shows that not only do your students pay attention in class, but they are capable of taking examples and "prior work", for lack of a better term, and applying that knowledge to produce their personally desired result. Now granted, blowing up trash cans may not be the best use of their time, but that's a sociological issue, just like using a fork to stab someone in the eye. Perhaps we should address those issues instead of trying to keep people from getting their hands on information that "could" be used for an evil purpose. Restricting information is a losing battle, anyway.