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..."

Comments

Cannot read the article

[LiquidCoooled]

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" ???

Re:Cannot read the article

[moranar]

So, following your example, if you saw an active terroristic threat, the thing you'd do to alert others would be to post it on a blog and wait for search engines to catch up, and then the unexploded lucky ones could read about it on the intertubes?

Makes sense. I was thinking more of calling the police first on a phone, but I must be getting something wrong.

Re:Cannot read the article

[ultranova]

Seriously, has this guy never heard the old adage: "Know your enemy so you may face them."?!?

I think that this has more to do with another old saying: "Knowledge is power."

If there's one thing a politician hates it's an informed public, because such public is not as thoroughly in his power as an ignorant one. That's why every story about "redesigning the Internet" makes me scared: the Internet happened because it managed to "sneak" into common usage behind the backs of powers-that-be, and if it gets redesigned now it gets tracking, surveillance and censorship built-in.

Don't forget, the Internet was originally built by US Government as their communication tool. It was built for military use and sure as Hell not meant for civilians. It is every politicians worst nightmare: a communication medium in which everyone can get their voice heard to the other side of the world. Enjoy it as long as you can, for it won't last.

Franco?

[essence]

Not another one.

Search

[fozzmeister]

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.

Re:Search

[Zelos]

Or looking for Unix command references (kill).

How do people this dumb get appointed to such high office?

C6H2(NO2)3CH3.

[dermond]

C6H2(NO2)3CH3

will they block slashdot now?

Re:C6H2(NO2)3CH3.

[Jason1729]

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.

Re:C6H2(NO2)3CH3.

[arivanov]

1. Low power.
2. Hard to purify. The isomers really screw up the quality of the product and getting rid of them in non-industrial environment is cumbersome. The unpurified product is unstable and dangerous to handle.
3. Harder to produce than a number of higher power explosives (Hexogen aka T4 comes to mind).
4. Even if they restrict the search on the Internet any University library will contain everything needed for the purpose and any chemistry major can give it to you anyway as most of these are standard reactions
5. The chap is a "Prodotti di Berlusconi" (I apologise for my bad Italian). Idiots begat more idiots. Ignore and move along.

Re:C6H2(NO2)3CH3.

[HuskyDog]

Do they really think censoring that sort of information on the web will stop anyone who wants to build a bomb?

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:

1. Patiently try to explain that this would be a pointless waste of time.
2. Say, "We are introducing legislation forcing ISPs to block access to such reprehensible material"

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:

• Blame "evil hackers" and announce even more draconian restrictions.
• Blame ISPs for not implementing the law and announce increased penalties.
• Count on the fact that by then you will have moved on or retired and it will be someone else's problem.

I'm sure terrorism will drop rapidly

[scsirob]

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.

What about other languages?

[Spacejock]

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?

Re:What about other languages?

[sarahbau]

Does he really think that someone searching for "genocide" is trying to learn how to commit it? That's rather silly.

I don't agree...

[kc2keo]

with this type of censorship because then it will be easier for them to censor anything else that they would like to censor. Also, how effective can this be? Aren't there unintended consequences when you put these filters up?

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?

Re:I don't agree...

[fastest fascist]

More importantly, isn't it just a matter of time until laws requiring such filtering are passed? Governments want to control the Internet, and if it is technically feasible, they will do it sooner or later. The only option is to make government interference technically impossible. You can't count on legislation to keep your freedoms. Laws change.

Re:I don't agree...

[perlchild]

Unintended consequence would be to ban historical research on genocide. After all, if you search for a word, it must be on how to commit one, not about those that already happened, after all, and not how to prevent them from occuring again.

I want to thank the EU for reminding me again how censorship of ideas doesn't work, unless you actually have a human read the content, and even then...

Next up...

[Tastecicles]

V-Chips to be made mandatory at birth. Film at 11.

Erosion of civil liberties IS terrorism

[noddyxoi]

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 !

Everything already prepared ...

[foobsr]

"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.

The Solution!

[rlp]

Issue copyrights on all information related to manufacturing explosives. Turn over the copyrights to the RIAA. Oh, wait ...

holocaust denial?

[olman]

That's interesting. FTA:
"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," Frattini told Reuters.

So in other words, Frattini is in fact trying to make information on holocaust inaccessible, among other things. Score one for neo-nazis!

How It Protects Kids...

[Neo_piper]

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.

Ban this, Mr. Frattini!

[adnonsense]

www.how-to-make-a-bomb.eu

(The domain's freshly registered so DNS might not be working everywhere yet).

I taught my students how to make bombs!

[Tsu Dho Nimh]

You would have to eliminate a lot of chemistry instruction, and here's an example:

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.