EU To Monitor All Internet Searches

Xemu writes "The European Parliament is issuing a written declaration about the need to set up an early warning system to combat sexual child abuse. However, the substance of the declaration is to extend the EU data retention directive to search engines, so that all searches done on for example Google will be monitored. If you are a citizen concerned about the right to privacy and freedom on the Internet, you can help by sending e-mail to the MEPs from your country and explaining the issue to them."

Comments

All searches?

[B5_geek]

Yeah, i'd say this is a good opportunity to dust off my gopher skills.

Re:All searches?

[Vinegar Joe]

Yeah, i'd say this is a good opportunity to dust off my gopher skills.

Gophers and duct tape? Ewwww......

Re:All searches?

[metacell]

But think of the children!

No wait! Don't think of the children!

Re:All searches?

[davester666]

Too late. Now I'm thinking of gophers and children and duct tape and wondering "What's so wrong about this?"

Re:All searches?

[grahamm]

Not forgetting Veronica as well.

Re:All searches?

[Halo1]

It's mainly a good opportunity to correct some sensationalist misreporting:

• A written declaration is just that: a declaration. It's not a legislative proposal and has no legislative value. So the title "EU To Monitor All Internet Searches" is complete bullshit. If it is adopted, at most it can be used to remind MEPs later on that they supported this text, and hence should support legislative proposals in the same vein. However...
• ... as TFA explains, MEPs (Members of the European Parliament) have been misled into signing it, because the statement that "data retention should be extended to search engine queries" is hidden in the text. "Data retention" is not mentioned, it just says, amongst many other statements, "implement Directive 2006/24/EC and extend it to search engines in order to tackle online child pornography and sex offending rapidly and effectively". There are tons of directives and most MEPs won't have looked up what this specific directive is.

Since MEPs have been mostly misled into signing onto that particular statement, it is quite unlikely to have any clout if cited back at them later on. If someone tricked you into signing a declaration containing stuff you don't support, you'd probably not be very motivated to strongly care about it later on either. In that sense, overblowing the whole thing like in this Slashdot summary is completely counterproductive, because you give the MEPs signature more weight and make them actually more bound to it then they would be otherwise!

Christian Engström's blog post (TFA), where he explains how MEPs are misled, is good because it can help getting rid of the declaration altogether by exposing it for the deceit that it is.

This summary on the other hand is just a bunch of misinformation that will cause a lot of misguided mails to be sent. It might also raise awareness and cause MEPs to withdraw their signatures, but it will probably cause at least as many MEPs to disregard the complaints because it will be clear that people sending a mail don't know what the hell they are talking about.

Re:All searches?

[FuckingNickName]

If document B says, "extends document A with provisions C" and you sign it without reading document A and all A's dependencies, you aren't "misled"; you are lazy, incompetent and negligent. If the process is unnecessarily complex (and this is the EU, so that goes without saying), you simply refuse to consider the document on process grounds. You don't sign something because some words look vaguely appealing to lobbyists^Wvoters and those lobbyists^Wvoters told you to do so.

Re:All searches?

[Halo1]

These aren't legislative documents. That written declaration is presented by the MEP who took the initiative as something that simply enables MEPs to simply say "we want the commission to do something about child porn".

Yes, people who sign it without looking up all references are lazy. However, that does not exclude the fact that they are also misled. It also has nothing to do with whether or not the process in unnecessarily complex (there is nothing complex about this particular process).

Re:All searches?

[FuckingNickName]

It's not so vague - if the proposal were to merely consider "doing something", that's all the document would need to say.

Though yes, you're right, there was the intention to mislead, even if it was by taking advantage of laziness. As long as everyone is clear that they're equally to blame :-).

I maintain that it's needlessly complex - shouldn't the elected /Parliament/ propose then discuss legislation in conjuction with its constituents? The Commission's legislative roles make for a poor separation and needless complexity of (i.e. corruptibility of) powers. But I'm not looking for a debate on that right now.

Re:All searches?

[lennier1]

Well, my niece definitely would take the duct tape and glue two gophers together back-to-back to get an all terrain gopher.

Re:All searches?

[FuckingNickName]

It's also worth clarifying that they're not legislative documents in the formal sense, but they do form part of the legislative process. To not prepare such preliminary documents with care and attention at every stage inevitably means you'll end up with a bad legislative document.

Re:All searches?

[Halo1]

A written declaration is not preparation any more than a (common) press release or blog post is. It's a rallying document. The preparation for directives happens with white/green papers, consultations amongst the ministers of the member states and externally ordered studies (although the Commission often messes those up, but that's another discussion).

Re:All searches?

[someone1234]

Luckily she is older than the age of consent.

Re:All searches?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since MEPs have been mostly misled into signing onto that particular statement,

Oh noes! MEPs being held accountable for signing every random thing thrown in front of them without reading it, the horror!

Well, shit

[Andorin]

I guess search engines like StartPage (also known as Ixquick) that don't keep logs of your IP address are gonna see a nice jump in traffic.

Re:Well, shit

[Darkness404]

No https://www.startpage.com/ might, but if its ordinary HTTP, it can be detected by the ISP which is honestly more of a threat than Google logging searches.

Re:Well, shit

[smart_ass]

Or be forbidden from serving up search results to European IPs

Re:Well, shit

[klui]

These guys are in Europe. Will they be forced to open a backdoor to the EU?

Re:Well, shit

[klui]

This site is really cool.

I just used FF's Add to SearchBar to add it to my searchbar.

1. You can generate a custom preference URL (no additional filter, # of search results, etc.) without the use of a cookie and its preference hash is the same regardless of your IP or ISP.
2. You can use their proxy.
3. Google's site:xyz works.
4. You can force SSL for all communication with their site.

I really hope they don't change their policy.

Re:Well, shit

[Bega]

Will they be forced to open a backdoor to the EU?

Well, if you mean with "backdoor" that we're getting buttfucked with this, then yeah.

Re:Well, shit

[Anonymous Coward]

"Ixquick is now the first and only EU-approved search engine." Oh, the irony.

Re:Well, shit

[SoVeryTired]

4. You can force SSL for all communication with their site.

It seems that https://www.google.com/ is in beta testing phase and works now. I immediately changed my homepage when I found it. This may be old news, but I missed any announcements about it. I know SSL has been implemented in gmail for a while.

Re:Well, shit

[EdIII]

Will they be forced to open a backdoor to the EU?

Well, if you mean with "backdoor" that we're getting buttfucked with this, then yeah.

You know I've had this Internet thingy for awhile now and I have notice the buttfucking happens a LOT in the EU. I mean a LOT. Especially in Germany. Man this one picture floating around the net, dear GOD I hope that thing is photoshopped because that dude must have serious problems.

Don't get me wrong. None of this post is complaint, in any way whatsoever.

"Buttfucking. It's a good thing"

Re:Well, shit

[Anonymous Coward]

Pics or it didn't happen!
Where is the link!?

Re:Well, shit

[Cally]

Not really, because this is never going to happen. The headline is completely wrong. A "written declaration by the EU Parliament" does not, in any way shape or form, translate to "EU to..." . It's like the school board in Texas passing a resolution to ban science teaching: it means nothing. Move along, please.

Re:Well, shit

[Rogerborg]

Correct. The EU Parliament is almost completely irrelevant. It's the (unelected, unaccountable) EU Commission that actually controls regulation. And even then, it's generally only the UK that actually implements any of it; the rest of the EU either cherry picks aspects, or ignores it altogether.

Re:Well, shit

[MirzaD]

4. You can force SSL for all communication with their site.

It seems that https://www.google.com/ is in beta testing phase and works now. I immediately changed my homepage when I found it. This may be old news, but I missed any announcements about it. I know SSL has been implemented in gmail for a while.

https://www.google.com/ may encrypt search it self, but as soon as you click on one of the links from the search result you are leaving secure area, and your request for that website can be monitored by third party.

Re:Well, shit

[lennier1]

Goatse 2.0

Re:Well, shit

[Threni]

Yes, but this story is about monitoring searches, not internet use.

Really the solution is for *all* sites to use https all the time. Even then, people know you're reading slashdot. You'd need some proxy site to take a hit on bandwidth and make it look like data is coming from there.

Re:Well, shit

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for explaining how the web works.

Re:Well, shit

[antientropic]

Correct. The EU Parliament is almost completely irrelevant. It's the (unelected, unaccountable) EU Commission that actually controls regulation.

The Commission can only propose legislation. The Council and Parliament must approve it (and can amend it). Also, the Commission is not unaccountable: it can be - and has been - dismissed by Parliament.

And even then, it's generally only the UK that actually implements any of it; the rest of the EU either cherry picks aspects, or ignores it altogether.

[citation needed]

Re:Well, shit

[Ltap]

Or Scroogle, which encrypts search queries.

Re:Well, shit

[Rogerborg]

The Council

Now, now, this is the EU here, it's not that simple. Presumably not the Council of Europe, but would that be the European Council, or the Council of the European Union?

The Commission can only propose legislation.

True, but saliently only the Commission can propose legislation.

The Parliament just gets to scribble "pretty-please" notes in the margins, and the Commission can reject the revisions and tell Parliament to stop being silly or lose the chance to pass the legislation at all.

Re:Well, shit

[SimonTheSoundMan]

4. You can force SSL for all communication with their site.

I'd also use the Force-TLS add-on for Firefox too.

Re:Well, shit

[rtb61]

Another solution is simply to bury real searches under a mountain of fake pretend searches with tools like https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3173/.

So am I legally responsible for profile distorting random searches or not. This addon makes searches at rates from 1 per hour to ten per minute and of course once installed no one can prove what searches you made versus what random searches it made.

Of course with it making searches at hundreds even thousands of time the rate a typical person does, the wider it's the substantially bigger and more pointless those record of searches become. Technically as it currently stands my search profile would indicate that I use AOL, BING, GOOGLE and YAHOO (alphabetical list, google is actually my equal default along with wikipedia) equally. Based upon this , you'd think that M$ would be bending over backwards to recommend this plug in and get it installed on as many computers as humanly possible ;D.

Take off and nuke the Vatican from orbit

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the only way to actually do much of anything about child sexual abuse.

Re:Take off and nuke the Vatican from orbit

[captainpanic]

It's the only way to actually do much of anything about child sexual abuse.

Exactly... and I don't think that many of those old men in the Vatican use the internet.

So, what is this monitoring going to solve anyway?

Re:Take off and nuke the Vatican from orbit

[couchslug]

Given the over ONE BILLION dollars in pedo payoffs worldwide and the ongoing investigations turning up pedo priest after pedo priest, that's no troll.

No one hides a pedo unless they are a pedo. There is no reason for the systematic and effective pedo-shuffling policy of the Catholic Church except rampant pedophilia through the ranks. That they didn't give the pedos to the police, and excommunicate them, proves it beyond doubt.

Latest catch, Google for a vast number of other examples:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/03/world/europe/03briefs-Germany.html

Re:Take off and nuke the Vatican from orbit

[couchslug]

Truth should be a defense against Troll mods.

I DEFY anyone to discredit anything in the above post.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=catholic+abuse+settlements

http://www.bishop-accountability.org/

http://bishop-accountability.org/priestdb/PriestDBbylastName-A.html

http://www.boston.com/globe/spotlight/abuse/

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/01/world/europe/01vatican.html?src=me

Troll?
The only reason for downmodding that post is being an apologist for the Church. How dare you do that?

Re:Take off and nuke the Vatican from orbit

[drinkypoo]

No one hides a pedo unless they are a pedo. There is no reason for the systematic and effective pedo-shuffling policy of the Catholic Church except rampant pedophilia through the ranks. That they didn't give the pedos to the police, and excommunicate them, proves it beyond doubt.

I disagree with your premise. They are trying to hide pedos because their exposure threatens their domination. The only place the Catholic church is growing — indeed, the only place is it not shrinking — is in the third world, mostly in Latin America. But if those types seriously thought there was a risk that their priest would be touching their children you'd see things go the other way real quick. The Catholic church is simply acting in self-preservation mode, there's no reason to believe that their focus is on child molestation, which is pretty much what it would mean if it were all pedos protecting pedos.

All these child molestation revelations couldn't come at a better time for right- and forward-thinking people, which is to say, the enemies of oppressive religions. Catholicism is on the wane in the developed world and I am hopeful that this will provide sufficient nails for the coffin. In the Middle Ages the church actively sought to prevent people from reading the bible so they wouldn't know that it was contradictory and didn't really say what the priests were telling their flock that it said. Today they still want you to accept their interpretations and discourage thinking for oneself, at least about religious issues; you are meant to come to church for guidance in their chosen direction. Today the church is seeking to prevent people from seeing what they are doing, because they are morally bankrupt. Anyone who calls themself a Catholic supports child abuse by supporting their church so long as high church officials do all they can to protect child molesters. Just as shareholders in murder are murderers, believers in child abuse are child abusers.

Re:Take off and nuke the Vatican from orbit

[Anonymous Coward]

oh please! Pedophiles aren't dumb enough to actually google for it. They sit in chat rooms and form 1-1 relationships with like minded people then use P2P to transfer the stuff.

Yeah OK

[Anonymous Coward]

Because pedos are totally going to Google "kiddy porn downloads".

Re:Yeah OK

[Andorin]

Mod this AC up. Channels through which child pornography passes are almost certainly outside the reach of simple monitoring of Google searches.

Re:Yeah OK

[by (1706743)]

Mod this AC up. Channels through which child pornography passes are almost certainly outside the reach of simple monitoring of Google searches.

I think you forgot to check the "Post Anonymously" button...

Re:Yeah OK

[by (1706743)]

Damn slashdot didn't display the original post. Apologies.

Re:Yeah OK

[Anonymous Coward]

First they come for the criminals and the pedos. Then they come for the rest.

As always, it is a shitty job trying to defend privacy and freedom of expression as one always defends the pervs and the criminals. But the laws are always "aimed" at them, but then magically used against everyone else. Just see the 9/11 laws that were only to be used for combating terrorism. :/

Re:Yeah OK

[Andorin]

I know there are those who hype the child porn issue to such an extent that you are labeled a pedo if you post anything less than an extremist attack on child porn, but I'm not so concerned about those people that I need to be anonymous in order to speak out against what I see as retardation incarnate.

Unless you were joking. In which case, lol, i c what u did thar.

Re:Yeah OK

[jornak]

Full infiltration of the TOR network is pretty much necessary if they ever want to catch pedophiles in the act.

I've also got some philosophical issues with the removal of access to this content as well. If you take away CP from a pedo, doesn't it just mean that they're going to turn to alternative methods to fulfill their urges, such as nabbing little kids, and public indecency at parks, etc etc??

Re:Yeah OK

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't wait until they come for those who misuse Niemoller's poem for stupid bullshit reasons.

Re:Yeah OK

[logjon]

I know there are those who hype the child porn issue to such an extent that you are labeled a pedo if you post anything less than an extremist attack on child porn, but I'm not so concerned about those people that I need to be anonymous in order to speak out against what I see as retardation incarnate.

Clearly you aren't thinking of the children.

Re:Yeah OK

[calmofthestorm]

No, they'll immediately revert to being moral, responsible citizens.

Re:Yeah OK

[theskipper]

True, and poisoning the surveillance would be pretty easy through a grass roots effort. Imagine just a few hundred thousand different ips associated with the query "child bestiality porn" entered into the logs each day. The man always seems to underestimate the collective power of disgruntled netizens.

Re:Yeah OK

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. Massive invasions of privacy are such a trivial issue.

Re:Yeah OK

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. These people have something wrong with them and their default position isn't the same as most people. They need help, and taking one outlet away isn't going to help them stop thinking about children like that.

Re:Yeah OK

[Mitchell314]

They came first for my chair
And I didn't speak up because I could stand

Then they came for my mouse
I didn't speak up because I had a touchpad

Then they came for my caps lock key
I didn't speak up because I could still whisper

Then they came for my keyboard
And by that time there was nothing left for me to blog

Re:Yeah OK

[TubeSteak]

As always, it is a shitty job trying to defend privacy and freedom of expression as one always defends the pervs and the criminals. But the laws are always "aimed" at them, but then magically used against everyone else. Just see the 9/11 laws that were only to be used for combating terrorism. :/

Most of the laws in the PATRIOT ACT that are being (ab)used don't say "... and only to be used in cases of terrorism"

That's the basic flaw with most laws.
The legislative intent is one thing, while the actual language of the final law is much broader.
Whether this is a bug or a feature depends on your perspective.

Re:Yeah OK

[Mitchell314]

No they won't.

Re:Yeah OK

[Rusty KB]

Of course they are. Just think of the children! Just think of them, so young and innocent and fresh........and delicious....with syrup.

Re:Yeah OK

[mrsteveman1]

Actually more like "how to molest babby"

Re:Yeah OK

[ae1294]

Clearly you aren't thinking of the children.

Well I AM...

DoH!

Re:Yeah OK

[spitzak]

Whoosh!

Re:Yeah OK

[JockTroll]

What power? Until now "disgruntled netizens" have had absolutely zero effect: the conversion of the Internet into cable TV status is proceeding at full speed with no opposition. In the end, when all will have been said and done, "disgruntled netizens" will simply wring their hands and accept the new status quo because there will be nothing to be done.

If you want to act, act now.

Re:Yeah OK

[Mitchell314]

Read the parent's sig. :P

Re:Yeah OK

[Anonymous Coward]

No problems, they'll still be able to find the pedos -- that'll be the thirty searches a day for "child beastiality porn".

Re:Yeah OK

[metacell]

Actually, here in Sweden, coordinated efforts from bloggers focused attention on a surveillance law our politicians tried to sneak through parlament without anyone noticing. In the end, the law was only delayed and slightly modified, but the newspapers started writing a lot more about the issue and people seem more aware of the problem now.

Re:Yeah OK

[KDR_11k]

The internet would be so much better off if they really came for the caps lock keys...

Re:Yeah OK

[trytoguess]

Not to mention even with TOR down you'll still need to take care of Freenet, Perfect Dark, I2P, and others.

Re:Yeah OK

[Sir_Lewk]

Look up the history of the poem. It was created to be used in situations exactly like this one.

Re:Yeah OK

[blackpaw]

Clearly you aren't thinking of the children.

Damn right I'm not, I'm sick of the little buggers. I just wanna look up my tech and porn thanks very much. Fuck the children - no wait, that's already taken care of.

Re:Yeah OK

[Jafafa Hots]

You're operating under the assumption that the intent of the "Patriot Act" actually had something to do with terrorism.

Re:Yeah OK

[Jafafa Hots]

Actually, here in Sweden, coordinated efforts from bloggers focused attention on a surveillance law our politicians tried to sneak through parlament without anyone noticing. In the end, the law was only delayed and slightly modified, but the newspapers started writing a lot more about the issue and people seem more aware of the problem now.

So you're saying that the effect of the coordinated efforts was that instead of the populace being unaware that they are fucked and there's nothing they can do about it, they're now AWARE that they're fucked and there's nothing they can do about it?

Re:Yeah OK

[Eraesr]

If I'm using the search term "child porn" on Google, does that mean I'm looking for child porn or sites about child porn?

Re:Yeah OK

[Anonymous Coward]

"Channels through which child pornography passes are almost certainly outside the reach of simple monitoring of Google searches."

Well that depends on how broadly they make the definition of "child pornography" really doesn't it?

Re:Yeah OK

[metacell]

I think it also contributed greatly to the Swedish Pirate Party's success in the EU Parlament.

In any case, we're in a better position to do something about it now. That's how politics work: You slowly build up acceptance for your ideas, until you are able to win at the public voting booth/negotiations.

Re:Yeah OK

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, nobody hopes to reform them, just to catch them (according to TFA preferably before they even actually do anything) and put them away. I suppose existence of death camp will be discovered some decades from now.

It is better to do away with hundred possible suspects then to let one pedophile get away. I guess pedophilia is taking over the place of stigma homosexuality once occupied, and more! This is modern days' witchcraft hysteria and it will blow back into our faces pretty soon. Nobody has guts to take stand and say what it is, because that would be political suicide. Agencies and mafia need to have one of those stickers in their bag of supplies. Anyone could be framed for it, anyone could be coerced by threat of being accused of being a pedo.

Re:Yeah OK

[mr exploiter]

Full infiltration of the TOR network is pretty much necessary if they ever want to catch pedophiles in the act.

You are either ignorant or part of the TOR conspiracy.

TOR is almost certainly a trap. Just think, what is an easier method to survey "interesting" communications that convince the targets to use your systems to route them.

You need to infiltrate much less than most of the nodes to compromise the anonymity in TOR. Most communications use only 2 nodes before an "exit" node. Control a good proportions of the exit nodes (they are not so many, so let's say 50%) and 10% of the nodes and they you'll be able to eavesdrop and guess the origin of 50%*10%*10%=0.5% of all communications on TOR.

If you still don't believe me just check who is behind TOR. You'll be surprised.

Re:Yeah OK

[Anonymous Coward]

That's illegal. You're not allowed to think of the children.

Re:Yeah OK

[Anonymous Coward]

For the purpose of anonymously exchanging information, Freenet is much better than tor. However, if your data consists of large files, they'd better be popular, otherwise downloading them will be slow.

Re:Yeah OK

[VShael]

I hate Zombies too. Possibly even more than I hate pedo's. I mean, a zombie could in theory wipe out the human race.
(You can substitute ebola or some other virus if you happen to like zombies)

I would still object to anyone logging all my internet searches because of the Zombie threat.
My objection wouldn't make me a Zombie lover. I just love my privacy more than I hate zombies. (Or Pedos.)

Re:Yeah OK

[surveyork]

I think pedos could use lolicon manga and similar fictional representations of CP to satisfy their urges. This way they could enjoy CP that was made without actually hurting children in any way*. Perhaps then, actual CP and child abuse would lower dramatically.

Furthermore, this new EU measure has lots of misuse potential. One of the main misuses could come from the MAFIAA. In fact, they recently expressed that they love the CP witch hunt because it helps them with their own inquisitorial goals. First CP, then file-sharers.

* Unless in some countries, where fictitious, drawn children must be protected too, and they have far more rights than a libel defendant.

Re:Yeah OK

[jimicus]

And the only reason the newspapers wrote anything at all about it is Rupert Murdoch doesn't speak Swedish.

Re:Yeah OK

[metacell]

Good point. Monopolists are the natural enemies of free speech.

Re:Yeah OK

[Anonymous Coward]

I just feel sorry for the goth band Sex Gang Children. No one in their right mind would google that name.

Re:Yeah OK

[Anonymous Coward]

Also note, that if you're playing The Game, you just lost!

Re:Yeah OK

[Anonymous Coward]

It's worse than that. Psychologists studying the problem in an academic sense or even recovering victims of child abuse looking for help might legitimately search for information about it (although they probably wouldn't be using the terms you've suggested). They'll be caught in the same ill-conceived drag net. Won't that be wonderful for someone to explain?

Re:Yeah OK

[not flu]

Are you suggesting that pedos don't know how to spell the word?

Re:Yeah OK

[Aceticon]

Clearly you aren't thinking of the children.

A good thing too.

It seem nowadays there are a lot of politicians out who often think of children and sex on the same sentence.

It kind of reminds me of all those raving anti-gay politicians that turn out to be gay themselves: often an obsession with a specific subject of a sexual nature is because those that obsess about it have "forbiden urges" themselves.

Re:Yeah OK

[JockTroll]

Yes, because a COUPLE OF SEATS in the EU parliament will change things so much, especially when the majority is strongly pro-business and corporate-friendly. Face it, they could declare the PP illegal and disband it by law as it were a Nazi-like party and that would be the end of it.

Now, compare how some threats from Muslim extremists have put free expression in discussion in Denmark and you'll see why a knife to the throat is mightier than a signature on a piece of paper.

Put your pens away and break out your knives: it's going to get ugly soon.

Re:Yeah OK

[Anonymous Coward]

* Unless in some countries, where fictitious, drawn children must be protected too, and they have far more rights than a libel defendant.

As is the case, for instance, here in Sweden, where such drawings are considered just as bad as the real thing in the eyes of the law.

Re:Yeah OK

[Anonymous Coward]

He knows that, but why let the facts ruin a perfectly good opportunity to show off that he knows the origins of the meme.

Re:Yeah OK

[delinear]

The point is that it was sold as a means to counter terrorism, but it was drafted in such a way as to allow it to do so much more.

Re:Yeah OK

[delinear]

Because of the search logs or just because they... y'know... suck?

Disclaimer: I've never heard of them and no, I'm not Googling them :)

Re:Yeah OK

[networkBoy]

wrong board...
We're discussing Paedo stuff here.
You're looking for the Lecter board, on the Hansel and Gretel thread.

Re:Yeah OK

[ae1294]

I still object to logging my internet searches because of the Zombie threat.

Clearly you don't understand the threat to our nation that the zombie horde truly represents. If you did, then you'd understand why my modest surveillance proposal is so important to ensure the continued safety to our way of life and to protect that of our children's and their children's from the zombie Apocalypse.

Now lets discuss your feelings on my new Anti-Raptor legislation. You do agree that "they" are truly dangerous right?

Re:Yeah OK

[Anonymous Coward]

Insightful? Seriously?

Re:Yeah OK

[hobb0001]

*sigh* If governments are truly concerned about child welfare, sexual abuse and exploitation are in about, oh, I don't know, 32nd place on the list of real problems. Somewhere below domestic violence, child negligence, lack of proper health care for the impoverished, undernourishment, and illiteracy.

I guess the problem is that those can't be addressed by token laws targeting internet surveillance.

Re:Yeah OK

[Anonymous Coward]

I think CP falls under "alternative methods" seeing as how children are abused to make it. Written or drawn content is still legal, though somewhat questionable.

Re:Yeah OK

[dgatwood]

Because pedos are totally going to Google "kiddy porn downloads".

You're close. I think it's more likely that these government types think that child molesters are going to Google, "How do I molest my daughter?" like some murderers have Googled, "How do I kill someone without leaving any evidence?" in previous years. And they're right; a few people actually are that dumb.

On the flip side, for every one person who is stupid enough to ask for advice on molesting a child, they'll also catch hundreds of other people who are looking for ways to evade various taxes, downloading music or movies, trying to get away with various other crimes, etc. And for every one they catch doing something illegal, they'll catch a dozen trying to sow the seeds of political dissent, speaking out against the government or corporations that it protects, digging up dirt on politicians, doing something embarrassing like cheating on a spouse, etc. It's not a question of whether such laws will be abused, but when and how.

Re:Yeah OK

[spitzak]

Good one. For anybody hiding signatures, the original joke had this:

"93rd rule of Slashdot: No matter how obvious my sarcasm is, my comment will be taken seriously by someone."

Re:Yeah OK

[Anonymous Coward]

You, sir, are a hardcore troll. If I had mod points m'boy, you'd be getting them.

Re:Yeah OK

[calmofthestorm]

To think that when I first set up that sig I thought it would become a self-unfulfilling prophecy. How young and naive I was back then. I even read TFAs before discussing.

Re:Yeah OK

[Sean]

Well, obviously they need to do something to CONTINUE to spy on everyone... Now that Google has enabled HTTPS for searches they need to come up with some bullshit pretext to coerce cooperation.

Re:Yeah OK

[Anonymous Coward]

I hear ya. Most of of the k1dd1e pr0n that's being traded around the world is being sent through good ole postal services like FedEx, DHL etc usw. Coppers know this for a looong time, but they are quite tight-lipped about this piece of info since they, along with the government, want the ppl to believe the exact opposite and buy into the "we need to totally monitor the interw3bz" fallacy.

What's the big deal?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're not doing anything wrong, I don't see why you wouldn't want to let the government see what you're doing. In this post-9/11 world, we *have to* to give up some of our personal priveleges, or else the terrorists will win. The sooner we get remove the word "freedom" from the dictionary, the sooner everyone will stop whining.

Re:What's the big deal?

[Andorin]

And yet you post as AC.

Re:What's the big deal?

[Darkness404]

Well of course! After all don't the terrorists hate us because we have freedom? Remove the freedom and the terrorists have no reason to attack us!

Re:What's the big deal?

[Anonymous Coward]

Unsubtle troll is unsubtle.

Re:What's the big deal?

[johnshirley]

What's really scary is that there are people out there who actually believe exactly what you said. In their disturbed little minds, if everybody in the world could just have kind, happy thoughts all the time, then we would all get along.

These self-proclaimed pacifists literally become violent if you don't have the right kind of happy thoughts.

Pacifists scare me.

Re:What's the big deal?

[hoggoth]

http://www.google.com/search?q=citizens+against+MEP+Tiziano+Motti

Hang on, there's a knock at my door.

Re:What's the big deal?

[lordholm]

Actually, several MEPs have already retracted their signatures. They where asked to sign the declaration under false pretences. They where not told that the declaration included clauses about extending the data retention directive.

Though, if Pen and Tellers stunt where they pulled of a petition to ban di-hydrogen-monoxide, taught us anything is that we should not pay to much attention to petitions in general, and we should be a bit careful about what we sign. For MEPs, that include reading the entire declaration before signing, not just signing based on what he petitioner claims it is about.

Re:What's the big deal?

[KDR_11k]

I wish we could FORCE them to watch what we "don't have to hide". Having each member of the govt forced through a tour of all internet shock sites would be an appropriate first step.

Re:What's the big deal?

[ComaVN]

Straw-men scare you? Really?

Re:What's the big deal?

[Anonymous Coward]

right, MEP's obviously sign things (and vote for things) they haven't read (let along understood), cause you know this is politics, who cares about contents

Re:What's the big deal?

[kubitus]

give me the written and signed agreement that I am allowed to read all data about you!

As you have nothing to hide - you should not reject this request - otherwise you are already suspect!

Re:What's the big deal?

[Anonymous Coward]

Erm, how exactly are freedom or privacy issues here? Google can already see what you're doing with its search engine, and so can Microsoft, Yahoo, etc., if you use theirs.

I trust my national, democratically elected government, and even the broadly democratic EU institutions, a lot more than a private American corporation, especially one like Google, which has an extremely poor record of respecting privacy and a shocking degree of arrogance about its 'right' to monitor everyone else and harvest information about them, to sell to its customers (advertisers).

The whole point of democracy is that the citizens control the state. For me, the state is an effective and trusted servant. It knows just about everything about me, but who cares? It doesn't abuse its power, and isn't corrupt. I can't say the same for Google.

Re:What's the big deal?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's sad our representatives are this incompetent. They sign any petition just because some bleeding-heart image of a child. THIS is the more dangerous child abuse because it ruins our children's future - and ours - on a much broader scale.

Re:What's the big deal?

[jimicus]

No, the parent is right.

Little test for you: Go onto almost any non-techie forum and post that this is happening in their "Computers" section (many such forums have computer sections). I bet you anything you like 90% of the responses you get will be along the lines of "anything that catches child molesters is a good thing" - and you'll likely get a few which get really quite vociferous in arguing how anyone who is against it must be child molester themselves.

Re:What's the big deal?

[Anonymous Coward]

But then I cannot get Freedom Fries!

Re:What's the big deal?

[ComaVN]

What does that have to do with pacifists?

Re:What's the big deal?

[jimicus]

That's a very good point. I'm wondering if the OP was using the wrong word there.

Re:What's the big deal?

[Hurricane78]

That is a double-plus-good motion! As a inner party member, I second that!

Please keep in mind

[Anonymous Coward]

Your email will be logged, and you will be noted as a child porn supporter.

Freenet as Insurance

[Anonymous Coward]

In retrospect it was a good idea that Freenet was developed to combat censorship and government control of the internet before it was needed, and before governments could take steps to stop it. I think Freenet, and other similar networks, will become increasingly useful as governments try to clamp down on the Internet.

I used it recently, and it seemed to work well but I wish more development took place on it, and others would fork it to try their own takes on it and/or experiment with different ideas.

Re:Freenet as Insurance

[Andorin]

I've used I2P a little, and it seems like a more mature anonymous network than Freenet, although I've not yet checked out its support for the equivalent of freesites. It also supports things Freenet doesn't, like BitTorrent and IRC. It uses a Tor-like network to relay traffic from node to node.

Re:Freenet as Insurance

[metacell]

Freenet and I2P have different design goals. The unique thing about Freenet is its ability to store data in the network itself. You upload something to Freenet, and the data blocks are spread over the (currently) tens of thousands of nodes in encrypted form. This makes it impossible to stop something from being distributed by shutting down the source, but also makes the programmer's task harder.

Re:Freenet as Insurance

[hairyfeet]

The problem I have with Freenet, and I'm personally glad it exists, is this: Nobody has actually tested their "plausible deniability" in court, have they? I mean lets say for the sake of argument you are running a Freenet node which has 5Gb of cache, okay? Lets say that 1Gb of that cache is CP, which some cop accesses and is able to track the source down to your node. Now as far as I know the law says you have to possess CP or distribute it, NOT that you yourself have to have access to it. If you handed me a safe that I didn't have the combo for and I get pulled over delivering it and they break it open and find CP I'm pretty sure that MY ass will be going to jail, even though I had NO way in hell of knowing what was in it. How is Freenet ANY different?

I have a feeling if the feds decide to shut down Freenet it really will be easy, as I can't remember ever seeing a statute that says you have to have access to the CP, only that you have to have distributed it. Total bullshit I know, but it wouldn't be the first time that someone has rotted in jail from bullshit charges. So has anybody actually tested Freenet or any other caching anonymous style app in court?

Re:Freenet as Insurance

[Kjella]

How is Freenet ANY different?

I think the better question is how Freenet is unlike a distributed version of Rapidshare etc. with passworded files. Even though almost certainly file hosts have files with tons of illegal things passing through them, it'd be complete nonsense to prosecute them for it. Likewise on Freenet without the CHK you haven't got any chance of finding out what's in a file. To have any meaningful effect you'd also have to pass a law saying all files must be "open" for inspection for illegal content.

Re:Freenet as Insurance

[FreenetFan]

Freenet's very structure works like Bittorrent, so there is no need to support it explicitly. If you upload a file, you can advertise it openly, and the more people downloading it, the faster it goes and the more widely it will be spread on the network.

There is an experimental IRC over Freenet. The main problem is the latency that gives you the security doesn't work so well with IRC.

As another poster said, the main different between Freenet and I2P is that Freenet contains its own data storage. So you can connect, upload something, and disconnect (not that this is recommended for general users, but it's an option). With I2P, you have to have a webserver (or whatever) online for the resource to be available. That is a bit of a privacy risk if they knock out your server and can see instantly the "eepsite" go offline.

Freenet really is working quite well these days - people share movies, music, TV shows on it all the time, and there are a lot of interesting freesites.

Re:Freenet as Insurance

[FreenetFan]

You can run Freenet on an encrypted disk. Then it's just the same as storing any data on an encrypted disk, which people do all the time. Some countries have laws to force you to turn over private keys, but this kind of thing has been tested in court often.

Re:Freenet as Insurance

[hairyfeet]

But there are some BIG differences in the two you fail to address: Rapidshare is a for profit corporation and therefor has lots of money for lawyers, whereas your ass is just Joe Schmo that most likely don't have a spare 30-50k lying around for lawyers. Plus while corps may have most of the rights as people now going to jail isn't one of them, not to mention most of those places have a Google style safe harbor where they toss anything they get a complain about and hand over logs to law enforcement, whereas on Freenet you ain't got jack to hand them.

So my point still stands. Unless someone can show me court cases, even one, where someone has had CP they couldn't access and didn't go to jail, then running Freenet you are basically betting your life on the hope that cops, judges, and prosecutors will actually show common sense and listen to reason. Considering the kind of witch hunt we have going for anything to do with CP, that is an awfully dangerous bet to be taking with your life

Re:Freenet as Insurance

[Kjella]

A few points:
1) A criminal prosecution will at least get you a public defender.
2) The standard is "beyond a reasonable doubt", big difference.
3) The Google style safe harbor is part of copyright law, so forget that.

Also, it is quite likely you could get someone like EFF on board. Ask the file hosts to submit support briefs and so on. I couldn't find anything on any freenet hosts being arrested, but there are definitely examples of TOR exit node operators being raided and/or arrested. Examples: 1, 2. Eventually, it was all dropped. Unlike TOR which makes unencrypted exit requests looking just like a normal end user, there's very little grounds for arresting anyone over a Freenet node. I guess you can go for the hypothetical maybes, but many thousands of people in many countries all over the world have run it for years now and I haven't read of a single case yet.

Re:Freenet as Insurance

[Anonymous Coward]

which some cop accesses and is able to track the source down to your node.

To do this on-network isn't easy. You would need to gradually zero in on a node with the key via a "key search attack", then do a correlation attack. This only really works i)on opennet (freenet has a considerably more secure darknet mode) ii)for content that is being actively inserted at the time of the search, with a predictable key. Still, it's a weakness. Premix routing or some sort of tunneling is planned but is technically difficult.

Of course they could just seize your node and check your datastore against a known CP keys list. This might possibly find a few encrypted blocks which, in combination with many others, would make illegal material. However, in a democracy they wouldn't have probable cause to do that - partly because keys you upload/download are explicitly not stored in your datastore, but in a separate "client cache" - and I don't *think* the results would be prosecutable anyway. In less free countries, you run in darknet mode and they never know you're running a node in the first place. (At least that's the idea, steganographic transport plugins are planned to disguise the traffic from the threat of flow analysis.)

if the feds decide to shut down Freenet it really will be easy

Opennet can be harvested, albeit not so quickly and trivially as Tor; they could indeed then take action against the whole open network, if Chinese-style laws had been adopted. Darknet is considerably harder, and intended for exactly that purpose - running in an actively hostile regime.

Still, freenet isn't done yet (it's still v1.0) and the devs will freely admit it has known weaknesses and generally isn't production ready for dissidents. It's being used by them anyway though, since it's arguably better than any of the alternatives at the moment.

Re:Freenet as Insurance

[grumbel]

So has anybody actually tested Freenet or any other caching anonymous style app in court?

No, but open WLANs have been tested in German court recently, not in relation to child porn, just music piracy, but the verdict was that you are basically always guilty for stuff that goes over your connection, even if you never intended to have an open WLAN and it only happened by accident or break-in.

Re:Freenet as Insurance

[grumbel]

They don't have to access your disk to figure out that you distributed child porn, they just have to download child porn from Freenet and then prosecute every Freenet node that submitted a chunk of the final file. I seriously doubt that they will make much of a difference between you forwarding a chunk and you storing the chunk in your datastore, as both happen automatically and are not in your control.

Re:Freenet as Insurance

[grumbel]

To do this on-network isn't easy. You would need to gradually zero in on a node with the key via a "key search attack"

You are not thinking like law enforcement. Law enforcement doesn't care much about the originator, all they care about is to capture somebody in the network chain and that is really trivial. Just download CP and look who forwarded you the datapackage, get his IP and sue him.

Darknet is more tricky, but if they really would care about it, they just install a bit statistic software at the ISP to detect people whose traffic signature looks like Freenet. Also a Darknet is near impossible to actually create in the first place, unless you already have a trusted social network you can build on and if you have that, you could just use rapidshare with passworded files.

However, in a democracy they wouldn't have probable cause to do that

I don't think they care. In Germany somebody was just declared guilty of music piracy on his open WLAN, even so he was on vacation, his WLAN had a random password and was probably even switched off. It just doesn't matter much who commited the crime as long as it happenes over your IP connection or somebody claims that it happens over your IP (IP addresses aren't all that reliable to begin with).

Re:Freenet as Insurance

[grumbel]

I think the better question is how Freenet is unlike a distributed version of Rapidshare etc. with passworded files.

Rapidshare deletes illegal content if you notify them, Freenet doesn't.

Re:Freenet as Insurance

[Weezul]

Freenet hosts are usually the sort of people who'll call the ACLU and EFF if they get dragged into court. And they're the often the sort of people the ACLU and EFF will have a very easy time defending.

Politicians don't usually care about jack shit except for giving tax money to their friends, and being reelected. All the good laws that get passed are mostly just people being inherently good when there wasn't any sacked financial interest against the law. Child porn is conversely an easy tool for being reelected.

If you target Freenet, you'll get a fight from well respected and moderately funded organizations. You'll also risk exposing that your favorite political tools are full of shit to a few more people for negligible political gains because : Freenet hosts are not themselves child porn consumers.

Re:Freenet as Insurance

[hairyfeet]

Dude, you ever actually USE a "public defender"? There is a reason why we call those clowns in the south "public pretenders", it is because if you look at the conviction rates with public pretenders you're better off without a lawyer. I know that my local public pretender's office answer to everything is "plead guilty" so excuse me if that doesn't exactly inspire confidence here.

And did you read the links you provided? Threats to take a man's children away, one drug out of bed in the wee hours and drug off to jail, yeah not exactly ringing endorsements you found there. And in neither case did I see the EFF or anybody else riding to those guy's rescue. Now you can argue that maybe they shouldn't show until the guy gets hauled into court, but how much living hell will you have to endure until then?

My point still stands, and if anything you've simply reinforced it. with today's CP witch hunt ALL they need is your IP address connected to a CP investigation and that's your ass, PERIOD. Sure you may eventually get off, but how much damage will be done by that time? How much hell are you willing to put your family through? Is running a Tor or Freenet node worth a possible 3 years of you life tied up in a legal nightmare, with a possible 30 years hanging over you head like a sword of Damocles?

You can say I'm paranoid, you can say I'm chicken, but we have seen time and time again that sanity and reason have NO place in a CP witch hunt, and as long as they bust somebody most of the time the cops are all too quick not to give a shit about whether its the right somebody or not. Now I've got kids that depend on me, and a GF that was physically abused in the past, and neither of them need the trauma of having the door kicked in by a bunch of jack boots because I ran a Freenet node. No thanks.

This will never fly

[Jerrei]

Universal Declaration of Human Rights Article 12

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

If the EU doesn't uphold this, it's members will.

Re:This will never fly

[Ash-Fox]

If the EU doesn't uphold this, it's members will.

From what I have observed, members don't tend to have much say or power. Look at the whole issue with Greece or even how laws are being steam rolled into the UK with the Lisbon treaty with no way out.

Re:This will never fly

[weicco]

Bah! In Finland government welcomes any new idea to monitor use with open hands. We have already blacklists which are supposed to keep you away from child porn but it is not working very well and for some curious reason it filters out also local Finnish site criticizing the blacklisting. The law enables only to filter foreign sites.

I think I'm already hearing applauding coming from the seat of the government some 150 km south from here...

Re:This will never fly

[Anonymous Coward]

Who defines "arbitrary?" This isn't arbitrary; it's purpose is to prevent child pornography.

Re:This will never fly

[Skal Tura]

Also that site releases a list of kiddy porn sites, which might cause the blacklisting, to right or wrong, there's links to kiddy porn (full blacklist released).

Furthermore, Finnish goverment has quite a track record on refusing all kinds of EU laws & orders etc. Well, at least mostly pertaining to heavy taxation with high refusal to let go of absurdly high taxes.

Re:This will never fly

[phantomfive]

You know, when the Euro was created, all the members signed a treaty saying that if one of the members were to go bankrupt, the others were not to help. Well, guess what just happened to that treaty when it became convenient? I have no hope for your cited Declaration to be upheld by anyone.

We do it that way in the US too; our constitution is free to be interpreted any way we like when it becomes convenient or popular enough.

Re:This will never fly

[KDR_11k]

But if the porn sites are already blocked by the filter why would you need to block a site for listing them?

Re:This will never fly

[metacell]

But the point of publishing the blacklist on a website, was to show that many of the sites are, in fact, not child pornography sites.

Re:This will never fly

[jevring]

As much as I want to believe you, laws and charters will simply be changed to accommodate whatever the collective government wants to push through. Also, who will you take the government to court to? The press? World opinion? The governments of the world have long since stopped acting on behalf of their population. One might wonder who they are acting for, because some of these things seem way to insane for there to be a singular personal interest for...

Re:This will never fly

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, most of finnish ISPs don't even enforce this list.

Re:This will never fly

[Threni]

> If the EU doesn't uphold this, it's members will.

What about the right to a life free from unnecessary apostrophes? Those things could get stuck in the throat of a small child, causing either immediate injury or death, or potentially life-threatening problems later in life.

Re:This will never fly

[Mindcontrolled]

The weird thing is that actually the EU did not force this specific treaty violation down the member's throats - the members offered it themselves, willingly. In particular, our dear German band of polit-clowns. With the even more weird result that Greece does not profit in the first place, but rather the French banks, which hold a shitload of Greek debt. Ah, well... we are fucked anyway.

Re:This will never fly

[phantomfive]

Yeah, my understanding is the bailout was 'secretly' intended for French and German banks........and now that they've gotten their money, I expect now more sympathy or pity or care for the poor Greek citizens.

Re:This will never fly

[zondag]

If the EU doesn't uphold this, it's members will.

From what I have observed, members don't tend to have much say or power. Look at the whole issue with Greece or even how laws are being steam rolled into the UK with the Lisbon treaty with no way out.

Would that be the Lisbon Treaty that was ratified by all the members' national parliaments, and which for the first time formalised how a member can exit the union?

Re:This will never fly

[maxwell demon]

Universal Declaration of Human Rights Article 12

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

If the EU doesn't uphold this, it's members will.

Well, it says arbitrary interference. No doubt they will tell you that monitoring web searches is not arbitrary.

Re:This will never fly

[Anonymous Coward]

You have no reading skills and no writing skills. It's not "it's", it's "its", you idiot. Also, about the other side of my complaint, your nonexistant reading skills, 'arbitrary interference' is semantically null (translation: means nothing).

Happy now? You dork.

Re:This will never fly

[Ocyris]

As a legislature becomes more isolated from it's constituency it begin to more closely resemble an oligarchy.

As long as the courts are allowed to reinterpret a laws meaning these kind of things are inevitable.

Re:This will never fly

[a_n_d_e_r_s]

No no no - you don't understand. Logic has nothing to do with this.

Fighting child porn is pure gut reaction. It has nothing to do with logic.

The reason for having the filters is not to protect the children but to
get in place a filter that can be used to filter other things - which
come later when poeple have accepted the child porn filter. Other sites can
then include hate speach, traficking, drug, illegal sites like
file sharing sites and any site that like to any of the above...

For example many of the sites in the swedish child porn list of blocked sites is residing in the USA. The swedish EU commissioner complained that the countries which host child porn sites refuses to take them down:

"Also, according to worrying information provided by Commissioner Malmström's office at her blog, "A check of the internet by hotlines in 35 countries recently found 144 web sites in the USA, Russia, Ukraine and other countries. One year later, a majority of the sites were still operating."
http://ceciliamalmstrom.wordpress.com/2010/03/29/ett-slag-for-barnens-rattigheter/#comment-589"

Taken from:
http://christianengstrom.wordpress.com/2010/05/30/question-to-eu-commissioner-malmstrom-on-net-censorship/

So yes according to EU; USA is the biggest culprit in spreading child porn.

Re:This will never fly

[Ash-Fox]

Would that be the Lisbon Treaty that was ratified by all the members' national parliaments

In an undemocratic manor as mentioned in this parliament video and many others: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNkRc2OBdCY

Fortunately the entire situation is not screwed and we may have a chance to have a referendum on the issues: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBp4En0Zehc

and which for the first time formalised how a member can exit the union?

Asking the EU for permission to leave the EU, where they officially have three years to decide? Yeah, I'm not really convinced.

This is the same EU that can't even manage it's funds and wants to manage everyone else's: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wANxxNOsfb4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20B12TdWeyo

Re:This will never fly

[SgtChaireBourne]

Universal Declaration of Human Rights Article 12

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

If the EU doesn't uphold this, it's members will.

You might find that certain common software's licensing violates that article.

Re:This will never fly

[UBfusion]

The problem is the definition of "one" (as in 'No one') and the definition of "arbitrary". Are these defined somewhere in the UDHR?

Does "one" include law enforcement entities, companies, association members?

Can not-"arbitrary" mean "we do have a piece of paper with the your name on it"?

EU is no exception to ambiguity.

Re:This will never fly

[Anonymous Coward]

You obviously don't live here

Re:This will never fly

[ChiRaven]

Universal Declaration of Human Rights Article 12

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

If the EU doesn't uphold this, it's members will.

THAT is what is known as groundless optimism!

Re:This will never fly

[Anonymous Coward]

some 150 km south from here

Yeah, right .. Thought I do agree with the sentiment, but .. I can almost guess the set of parties you must have casted your vote to during the last elections. Not that the government make these things understandable, anyway. We have had this Stalinist and literalistic form of bureaucracy since the time of the Oppression and the Soviets. The same sickness is then manifested in EU and other international affairs even irrationally penalizing way. We must be masochists in that way. Of course, the coin has its other side in the form of fighting against the crazy punishments coming from the "terrorizmo" related anal probing by the EU and the Council of Europe.
  The child porn filter is a voluntary list used by the members of the FiCom and fed by the lists from other countries, telecoms, the child protection organizations and the "upright citizen reporting". The law gives the police the right to create the List and for the telecommunications companies the right to use the List to filter the traffic. Unfortunately, as the law requires confidentiality from the employees of the telecoms as well as from the officials, they are probably required to include the criticizing Finish site in the List in order to avoid a potential liability.

Re:This will never fly

[not flu]

Most of the sites blocked contained no CP - I looked at some of the links listed and none of them appeared to have any CP whatsoever. Also the blacklist is voluntary for ISPs to implement - last I checked it wasn't very popular among ISPs...

Re:This will never fly

[weicco]

I can almost guess the set of parties you must have casted your vote to during the last elections

Well, go ahead and guess :)

Unfortunately, as the law requires confidentiality from the employees of the telecoms as well as from the officials, they are probably required to include the criticizing Finish site in the List in order to avoid a potential liability.

That doesn't fly. The law permits only the censorship of foreign sites. It's unlawful to censor local sites. The police has exceeded its rights.

Plus that the confidentiality doesn't concern any outsider, just the police. There is no law that requires every Finnish citizen to keep that list secret. Constitution 1.12 permits this, even though Kimmo Sasi (the guy who should watch that laws aren't against constitution) doesn't give rat's ass about constitution.

Re:This will never fly

[Anonymous Coward]

That doesn't fly. The law permits only the censorship of foreign sites. It's unlawful to censor local sites. The police has exceeded its rights.

It's not so much about the police, as they only have the right to make the list as a reflection of the EU and other contractual responsibilities. The telecoms have the responsibility here. There are using the police provided secret document to preventing access to the sites and they are responsible for keeping the police provided List (obligatory South Park reference) secret. The law, that is the http://www.finlex.fi/fi/laki/ajantasa/2006/20061068?search%5Btype%5D=pika&search%5Bpika%5D=lapsipornografian%20esto*, apparently gives the right to the telecoms to prevent access or reduce the possibility of access to the relevant sites. The law also talks about preventive measures in general and not particularly about the list in its first section.
  The question might be raised whether a telecommunications company have a right to prevent access to a third party site for which the information is not obtained directly from the police provided list. The answer comes from the ambiguous law about the secrecy of the official documents and the data within them. The law references to the official document and the data in an interchangeable way, making it possible to demand from the telecoms in the above referenced law secrecy about the data within the police provided list. That's actually somewhat scary. I guess the general public has the right for independent research to construct a list of prevented sites but if the research is posted on the servers or is available to the public through the network of the service provider, the provider once again has the right (not responsibility) to prevent access to the list by the law. The law was probably written very hastily in response to the EU and the Council of Europe requirements, most likely.

You do know

[djupedal]

...that 50% of the news headlines about how some cp ring was broken up are just fishing expeditions to see who panics and reads the link to see if they're going to be next....

Guess those lost their effectiveness, and this is just the next step. Buyer beware.

Old meets new Europe

[AHuxley]

In the eastern parts of Europe you had to be careful on the phone.
The West smiled when it saw the vast data collection systems and rows of tape.
Now you have to be careful what you type into Bing, Yahoo, Google ect.
Interesting to see the line about "based on the existing system for food safety" [laws].

Re:Old meets new Europe

[BitZtream]

Really? Why do you have to be careful?

I've searched for child porn on Google. Just to see what would happen. I've searched for terrorist type stuff ... just to see what would happen.

I've done some pretty stupid shit, just to see what would happen ... and you know what? Nothing fucking happened, no one falsely accused me of anything, even saying I would kill the president on more than one occasion. Theres a little more too this stuff than your paranoid idea that they are going to come get you because you searched for something that might be construed by a couple people as 'bad'.

I agree with the idea of privacy in general, but the ludicrous idea that when you go do things on public websites that you should be able to have complete and total anonymity is just stupid.

You know how I deal with hiding the stuff that I REALLY don't want anyone else to know about it? I don't fucking use public services.

What the fuck is wrong with people now days? Is there some decease thats causing people to be born without one bit of common sense?

Re:Old meets new Europe

[yyxx]

The West was collecting the same kind of data even back then. And Europe already has data retention directives for phone calls, SMS, and E-mail. This is just one more.

Re:Old meets new Europe

[drinkypoo]

What the fuck is wrong with people now days? Is there some decease thats causing people to be born without one bit of common sense?

If you have a decease when you're born, we call you stillborn, kind of like this comment.

Re:Old meets new Europe

[misexistentialist]

The point of this logging is to start making things happen. I'm sorry the Secret Service hasn't given you enough attention (maybe thinking you are on a watch-list might make you feel better?), but instead of supporting surveillance of the entire internet, why don't you just climb the White House fence.

Apparently

[logjon]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1243625/Businessman-Mirko-Fischer-sues-British-Airwars-treating-men-like-perverts.html Being seated next to a child on a plane also makes one suspect of being a kiddiefiddler. Come on guys, really?

Re:Apparently

[logjon]

http://www.inquisitr.com/29390/jk-rowling-a-potential-pedophile-uk-laws-strike-again/
forgot about this one

Re:Apparently

[AHuxley]

Wow, interesting, ty logjon, add in laptop and body scans. Makes you want to roll out as much optical in your own country and never fly. Teleconference or share time on a small jet.

So we prevent crime by hiding it now?

[Max Romantschuk]

If I see a crime I'm supposed to report it. But this system can't differentiate between someone looking for child porn, and someone who is trying to use their spare time to locate and report people who deal in child porn.

Basically, we're teaching the public to turn a blind eye. Together with the mandatory filters implemented in even my "free" country the problem is just being buried even deeper.

Re:So we prevent crime by hiding it now?

[Anonymous Coward]

I tried that defense in college and it failed :(.

"Officer, I wasn't soliciting you to buy marijuana ... I was just being a good samaritan and was going to call the police as soon as the transaction was completed. I had to make sure it was legitimate contraband."

and just last year :((

"Officer, I wasn't soliciting you for prostitution ... I was just being a good samaritan and was going to call the police ... I do this in my spare time, to rid the streets of prostitutes."

Re:So we prevent crime by hiding it now?

[Anonymous Coward]

Banning child porn does nothing to help abused children. It's really a case of sweeping the issue under the rug. Banning, essentially, even the thought of child sex abuse. How is this productive? Let's just stick our fingers in our ears and go lalalala.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and just say that I think possession of child porn should be completely legal. Looking at pictures hurts no one. Pictures of murder victims are legal and people mostly seem fine with that. So what makes child porn any different. It really is just a hysterical taboo; a cultural phenomenon. Consider the attitudes of Japan in this area as a case study.

If we do this, we remove the boogie man, so to speak and there will no longer be this "think of the children", BS justification for Internet censorship and all the surveillance state crap. The government should really have no right whatsoever to prevent freedom of expression/communication under any circumstances.

Re:So we prevent crime by hiding it now?

[KDR_11k]

Prostitution is illegal where you live? Wow.

Re:So we prevent crime by hiding it now?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are pretty much correct. If I see anything I might suspect might be child porn I go running the other direction. It's too dangerous to investigate and report it.

Re:So we prevent crime by hiding it now?

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe japan is in the process of banning child porn though. A lot of parents are voters, parents worst nightmare is sexual crimes against their kids, pictures of such stuff (ignoring the teens who do their own pics) would be very veryyyy hard to make legal.

They're better off giving free + highly anonymous counselling to people merely looking and not producing, instead of just locking em up n throwing away the key and/or giving them the scarlet letter. But debates and laws surrounding children throw away logic and reasoning and go purely for emotional response.

Re:So we prevent crime by hiding it now?

[Cederic]

Pictures of murder victims are legal

Yet videos of people being beheaded can lead to criminal prosecution: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/4289892.stm

Possession may be legal, but sharing them with someone appears to be a prosecutable breach of the peace - there are other examples.

Re:So we prevent crime by hiding it now?

[gullevek]

I just read today, that the japanese Police lost track for about 220 child molesters. So, probably, as usual, there will be much talk and no action.

Re:So we prevent crime by hiding it now?

[Anonymous Coward]

Police forces spend a lot of money on investigating this stuff, so I'm sure they're very grateful that you'd like to help by throwing the occasional search up on Google, but really, it's probably completely unecessary.

Not surprised at all

[Anonymous Coward]

"The dark night of fascism is always descending in the United States and yet lands only in Europe." - Tom Wolfe

Re:Not surprised at all

[logjon]

The next thing I knew, the discussion was onto the subject of fascism in America. Everybody was talking about police repression and the anxiety and paranoia as good folsk waited for the knock on the door and the descent of the knout on the nape of the neck. I couldn't make any sense out of it. . . . This was the mid-1960's. . . . [T]he folks were running wilder and freer than any people in history. For that matter, Krassner himself, in one of the strokes of exuberance for which he was well known, was soon to publish a slight hoax: an account of how Lyndon Johnson was so overjoyed about becoming President that he had buggered a wound in the neck of John F. Kennedy on Air Force One as Kennedy's body was being flown back from Dallas. Krassner presented this as a suppressed chapter from William Manchester's book Death of a President. Johnson, of course, was still President when it came out. Yet the merciless gestapo dragnet missed Krassner, who cleverly hid out onstage at Princeton on Saturday nights. . . .

Support [for Wolfe's view that fascism wasn't coming to America] came from a quarter I hadn't counted on. It was Grass, speaking in English.

"For the past hour, I have my eyes fixed on the doors here," he said. "You talk about fascism and police repression. In Germany when I was a student, they come through those doors long ago. Here they must be very slow."

Grass was enjoying himself for the first time all evening. He was not simply saying, "You really don't have so much to worry about." He was indulging his sense of the absurd. He was saying: "You American intellectuals — you want so desperately to feel besieged and persecuted!"

He sounded like Jean-François Revel, a French socialist writer who talks about one of the great unexplained phenomena of modern astronomy: namely, that the dark night of fascism is always descending in the United States and yet lands only in Europe.

Not very nice, Günter! Not very nice, Jean-François! A bit supercilious, wouldn't you say! . . .

Perhaps it is our pointing out of this creeping fascism at every available opportunity that is slowing its progress here?

Think of the Children

[Adrian Lopez]

Pedophiles use children for their own self-serving purposes, and now the government wants in on the "fun". They're using these poor children to achieve the government's broader political goals, getting away with things they otherwise could not. "Think of the children", the oldest trick in the book since the Victorian era.

Perverts and legislators -- it's like they're made for each other.

Re:Think of the Children

[metacell]

Much like terrorists and legislators, then.

Going through history, I'm sure you can find plenty of similar odd couples.

Re:Think of the Children

[WCMI92]

The biggest dealer in child porn is government. They retain it and use it in "sting" operations.

Researchers

[Itninja]

God help you if you are researcher (private or government) and search for naughty terms. At my local library they tried this a few years ago and some high school girl almost arrested because she was searching for terms like 'child porn' and 'naked kids'. Turns out she was actually writing a report on how easy it was to find illicit porn online. She even made to the local talk show circuit for a while.

Re:Researchers

[timmarhy]

if she had of been a He, they'd be in jail right now, probably getting molested. oh the irony

Re:Researchers

[Anonymous Coward]

I am quite curious about her findings. Did she find any kiddy porn?

Re:Researchers

[Jugalator]

Ugh :( Pretty crazy that a library has such policies that certain subjects/culture shouldn't even be *studied*.

Re:Researchers

[delinear]

The difficulty is determining who is legitimately studying the topic, and who is using this as an excuse. There must be guidelines that legitimate researchers can follow (notifying the relevant authorities of the intent, purpose and scope of their research, or arranging for an approved overseer to be present during these research sessions, etc). Research does happen without these issues, we only hear of the issues when it's someone who has taken it upon themselves to "conduct research".

Re:Researchers

[Itninja]

No one should have to 'notify the relevant authorities' to research anything. If someone is using research as an excuse to get off looking at dirty pictures, then they are and there's nothing that can done (short of investiaging every researcher). I imagine there are plenty of law enforcement folks that get their jollies 'investigating' illegal prostitution, child porn, or (as is the case in my city) bikini baristas that give big tippers the 'whole show'.

It's a declaration.

[RyanFenton]

This declaration doesn't seem like a law, more like the equivalent to a US Congressional Non-Binding Resolution, having no force of law on its own, and hoping the parties being addressed will react to the non-binding request. In other words, it seems to me like hot air to feed special interests.

Here's the actual text:

---

"I am pleased to inform you that, together with my colleague Ms Anna Záborská MEP, I have submitted
Written Declaration No 29 requesting the establishment of a European early warning system for
paedophiles and sex offenders. A normal childhood for our children means a solid future for our, and
for their, European Union. Any act of violence suffered by a woman or a child is an indelible defeat of
the rules of civilised coexistence. We would therefore be very grateful if, as many other colleagues
have already done, you could support this important Written Declaration No 29 'On setting up a
European early warning system (EWS) for paedophiles and sex offenders'. The proposal does
not involve the establishment of a new European agency but rather greater levels of cooperation
between the public authorities and civil society in order to defend the weaker members of society
and protect the rights of all.
I may be contacted as follows:
Tiziano Motti MEP
ASP 9E209
Tel. 45247
tiziano.motti@europarl.europa.eu
Declaration No 29 may be signed:
- Outside the Hemicycle during the part-sessions
- At the office of the Members' Activities Unit in Brussels, PHS 2A 019
Thank you in advance,
Tiziano Motti MEP"

---

They seem to do these a lot, in terms of declaring a condemnation of Israel, or having a declaration on violence against women - hot air to feel good and influence constituents, without any real legal meaning on its own.

To put it in programming terms, it seems to me they're declaring an intention - not instantiating a law. Bad in terms of intentions towards what little privacy remains, but not yet acting to change law.

My interpretation could certainly be wrong - but that seems to be how the wording strikes me.

Ryan Fenton

Re:It's a declaration.

[logjon]

Ah, that makes a lot more sense. Seems a group of nutty legislators getting a stick up their ass and going with a knee-jerk bass-ackwards response is something you can enjoy regardless of your nationality. Hell, there's a house resolution nearly every year here in the states in favor of a constitutional amendment against flag burning.

Re:It's a declaration.

[lordholm]

A lot of the MEPs signed it without actually reading the text. Some of them have now retracted their signatures.

Re:It's a declaration.

[kevinbr]

http://smile29.eu/doc/DS29_EN.pdf

Re:It's a declaration.

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on, guys, this is vastly blown out of proportion. What they are calling for has nothing to do with google and such - the "early warning system" (like the one for food) is just that - if a contaminated/dangerous product is detected in one country, it gets immediately disseminated to all members so it can be pulled quickly. This is likely going to be the same thing - sharing of information, which is, IMO, a good thing.

On the other hand, if they were calling for new laws, I would be worried. However, there is nothing like that anywhere - you can find the declaration here.

Re:It's a declaration.

[Anonymous Coward]

This declaration doesn't seem like a law, more like the equivalent to a US Congressional Non-Binding Resolution, having no force of law on its own, and hoping the parties being addressed will react to the non-binding request. In other words, it seems to me like hot air to feed special interests.

Here's the actual text:

---

"I am pleased to inform you that, together with my colleague Ms Anna Záborská MEP, I have submitted
Written Declaration No 29 requesting the establishment of a European early warning system for
paedophiles and sex offenders. A normal childhood for our children means a solid future for our, and
for their, European Union. Any act of violence suffered by a woman or a child is an indelible defeat of
the rules of civilised coexistence. We would therefore be very grateful if, as many other colleagues
have already done, you could support this important Written Declaration No 29 'On setting up a
European early warning system (EWS) for paedophiles and sex offenders'. The proposal does
not involve the establishment of a new European agency but rather greater levels of cooperation
between the public authorities and civil society in order to defend the weaker members of society
and protect the rights of all.
I may be contacted as follows:
Tiziano Motti MEP
ASP 9E209
Tel. 45247
tiziano.motti@europarl.europa.eu
Declaration No 29 may be signed:
- Outside the Hemicycle during the part-sessions
- At the office of the Members' Activities Unit in Brussels, PHS 2A 019
Thank you in advance,
Tiziano Motti MEP"

---

They seem to do these a lot, in terms of declaring a condemnation of Israel, or having a declaration on violence against women - hot air to feel good and influence constituents, without any real legal meaning on its own.

To put it in programming terms, it seems to me they're declaring an intention - not instantiating a law. Bad in terms of intentions towards what little privacy remains, but not yet acting to change law.

My interpretation could certainly be wrong - but that seems to be how the wording strikes me.

Ryan Fenton

You're wrong!

Your text is just the email that is sent to EU politicians to ask them to sign the actual declaration.

The declaration is a petitition to harder enforce and extend directive 2006/24/EG. All EU directives have to become LAW in member states, even though, with most EU directives, some states usually deliberately delay the actual implementation.

From the English language(*) PDF containing the actal declaration that the EU parliament members and other people is asked to sign, linked from the site slashdots links to:

Asks the Council and the Commission to implement Directive 2006/24/EC and extend it
to search engines in order to tackle online child pornography and sex offending rapidly
and effectively

EU politicians from The Swedish Christian Democratic Party (actually, despite being "democratic" by name, they are rather fascistoid in general, like most Christain "Democratic" parties of Europe), have already said that they will vote in favor of this extension in the EU parliament.

(*) There are small but important differences between the translations of the document, especially the English one stands out. This may be because not all languages are created equal, few languages make bullshiting as easy as in English (actually, I can't think of any language that is as vague as English, unless the context is more precise of "the level of vagueness"). If you want to know what an EU document is really about, read it in languages (many!) like German, Swedish and Spanish, and avoid vagueness enhancing languages like French (the language of diplomates ==

Re:It's a declaration.

[concreationist]

Apparently delegates often sign petitions and declarations without really understanding them. After media picked up the story, several EU delegates withdrew their signatures from the declaration after realizing that the small-print violates several data-protection laws. I think the EU government largely understands the issues involved here.

Re:It's a declaration.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, it's just a declaration. However, that doesn't chance the fact that it stealthily includes references to data retention and internet filtering.

The thing is, if a declaration like this passes with the majority, it can still cause trouble. If there's someone in the commission who wants to implement a law, having a written declaration which shows that majority of the parliament supports data retention and internet filtering is going to help A LOT in pushing these things forwards. It can be a very strong signal and can influence law making later, even though none of the MEPs signing the thing knew what they were signing.

And yes, they do written declarations a lot ... however, they don't usually have women in high heels and short dresses aggressively urging people to sign a declaration, "for the children", without telling them the contents of the declaration. This one's especially deceptive, taking advantage of the parliament's willingness to protect children to push a hidden agenda.

If you think it's hot air, you might want to tell that to the MEPs that are already withdrawing their signatures after learning what they've actually signed. Check out this letter (in english, although the article is in swedish) from one MEP who admits making a mistake in signing it: http://dekaminski.se/2010/06/den-luriga-eu-politiken-om-smile-29-och-nataktivism/#mepletter

Re:It's a declaration.

[anegg]

It is not blown out of proportion. Using search engine records is a bit like using pre-cognitives to identify pre-crime from the story Minority Report. We don't really have the means to tell what people are thinking (let alone truly predict the future), but perhaps we can get a good idea of what they are thinking by observing what they seek in information from the Internet. And if they are thinking the wrong things, then they are going to commit a crime. And we have to stop them before they do. There! Thought-crime.

Re:It's a declaration.

[delinear]

This seems a strange state of affairs - I'm sure these same delegates have a staff budget for experienced civil servants to read the detail of these things and fully brief them before they sign - why would they ever risk ridicule or public humiliation by signing and then having to withdraw, admitting they failed to read what they'd signed? The conspiracy theorist in me says maybe they were fully aware of the implications but weren't expecting the media attention/public backlash, and a bit of public humiliation is the lesser of two evils...

Could just be governmental jealousy

[jdogalt]

Seems like this might just be the government spies being jealous of the data the search engines (*cough* advertisers) have been collecting for years.

Re:Could just be governmental jealousy

[J.J. Dane]

If the government is jealous of the data the search engines is gathering they could just buy it.I'm sure Google would be more than happy to sell it to them, it's how they make a living after all

They're not [just] stupid...

[calmofthestorm]

CP is just an excuse, not the real thing they want to look for.

Sick and tired of the "pedophiles" excuse

[mykos]

"We need to monitor your internet searches. You know, to prevent pedophilia."
"But I don't want anyone's internet searches monitored without a warrant to monitor them."
"SO YOU'RE PRO-CHILD MOLESTATION AND YOU WANT GRAPHIC SEXUAL DEPICTIONS OF THEM ON THE INTERNET?!"
"What in the hell? That's not what I said at all!"
"Maybe we should be monitoring YOU, pervert."

Re:Sick and tired of the "pedophiles" excuse

[Wizarth]

Ah, the same play book as being used in Australia.

Re:Sick and tired of the "pedophiles" excuse

[DeadboltX]

If their aim is to catch pedophiles then they won't mind if the only IP addresses they keep records of are ones that pertain to pedophilia related keywords.

Re:Sick and tired of the "pedophiles" excuse

[V!NCENT]

"We need to monitor your internet searches. You know, to prevent pedophilia."
If you want to prevent pedophilia, you'll have to raise awareness of the fact that pedophilia is caused by a defective hypophyse and that there are stimula that can treat pedophilia as it is actually a sickness. So you better not fscking monitor my internet searches because that will label you a non-democratic, dictatorial government. Furthermorer-
"But, but-"
Shut the fsck up! I wasn't done talking, mister! Furthermore instead of monitoring searches for chil porn, you'd better spend your time catching and presecuting the people that actually raped these innocent children, mister!
"Errrr... ehmmmm... I..."
Now stand the fsck back from my goddamn internet access, you anti-western activist!

Extra point to somebody who will actually pull this off.

SSL Google?

[beaverdownunder]

Will they ban it?

Re:SSL Google?

[Anonymous Coward]

Has China banned it yet?

stoops.

Re:SSL Google?

[Andorin]

No, because Google can still keep logs of your searches if you use SSL.

Re:SSL Google?

[jmorris42]

> No, because Google can still keep logs of your searches if you use SSL.

That isn't the big problem, it is that your ISP begins to just log everything. They are a lot closer to your local law enforcement and generally wouldn't involve crossing national borders to pry the logs open. If you are in Europe and went to https://www.google.com/ they have to start up an international kerfluffle and Google either caves or fights, either action is page one news and bad PR for everyone.

Re:SSL Google?

[Anonymous Coward]

What about fully homomorphic encryption? Would that be feasable on a large enough scale? I think the best description of it is behind the ACM paywall at http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2010/3/76272-computing-arbitrary-functions-of-encrypted-data/abstract but Wikipedia has some info too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homomorphic_encryption.

Bruce Schneier doesn't seem too optimistic about FHE in http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/07/homomorphic_enc.html but perhaps the algorithm presented in the ACM article does not suffer the same penalty in computing time. It's been a while since I read the ACM article.

Re:SSL Google?

[yyxx]

Why would they care? Under such an EU directive, Google would be required to collect the data on behalf of the government.

That's nothing new, there are already data retention directives in place in Europe for phone calls, SMS, and E-mail. Europeans simply don't seem to mind or care.

So?

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoop de doo.
Google etc already keep logs, they will just be held in 2 places now.
Oh noes

Child Abuse? You lying mother fuckers.

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

Fuck the EU and fuck the children. Fuck the assholes who use "child porn" as an excuse for every thing!!!

When has Google Trends ever listed a single Kiddie Porn search string?

If Kiddie porn was such a problem on search engines, surely it would be right up there on #1 of Google Trends right?

Give me a break.

The child fucking boogieman is not real. Its not the children that are getting fucked... ITS YOU.

Burn your governments down.

Re:Child Abuse? You lying mother fuckers.

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, _usually_, when someone takes a stand against the think-of-the-children brigade, and members of said brigade respond with "Do you want our children molested? In fact, you probably ARE a pedophile YOURSELF!", I consider their argument the basest form of political dishonesty.

Fuck the EU and fuck the children.

In this case, though, I kinda see where they're coming from.

Re:Child Abuse? You lying mother fuckers.

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

Doesnt everyone fuck children?

All I see everywhere, is little kids and adults walking hand in hand... Those adults must be fucking those children! Sometimes theres even a woman and a man holding a childs hand as they walk down the street...

Obviously they fuck children.

We must end this!!!!

Re:Child Abuse? You lying mother fuckers.

[francium de neobie]

Let's send our children to gas chambers so that we can all think of the children while making sure they won't be fucked, ever.

Yes, this is sarcasm, move along.

Re:Child Abuse? You lying mother fuckers.

[Anonymous Coward]

and fuck the children.

Officer, arrest this peedophile.

Re:Child Abuse? You lying mother fuckers.

[BitZtream]

Yes, because being not being #1 on Google trends means its very rare and not really something anyone looks up.

Re:Child Abuse? You lying mother fuckers.

[Anonymous Coward]

Google Trends = censored, as are the others (suggest etc). We'll never know the real world :(

Re:Child Abuse? You lying mother fuckers.

[Anonymous Coward]

fuck the children

Uh, I think that is the problem they are actually trying to prevent ;)

The reasons for socialism/communism are many...

[DrPeper]

The reason against it is one.

Re:The reasons for socialism/communism are many...

[Anonymous Coward]

Is any worse then what the "Beacon of Freedom" is doing? This is not even law yet. This is nothing compared to what the good ol' government of the USA does regarding monitoring the net...

Net neutrality

[bonch]

Question to net neutrality supporters--does this teach you yet that government control of the internet is very, very bad?

Re:Net neutrality

[valros]

As long as the government takes it no farther, net neutrality is great for ensuring that the recording industries and any other interested parties do not obtain control over your connection.

Re:Net neutrality

[Rusty KB]

Without government control of the internet the same search logs would be kept and used against you by the RIAA. Who do you think is "more bad"? Which one do you trust less? Do you honestly think that without government regulation you'd be able to withstand the onslaught of megacorps (or whatever power structure would exit in the absence of said regulations)?

Re:Net neutrality

[jmorris42]

> Question to net neutrality supporters--does this teach you yet that government control of the internet is very, very bad?

No, most of the loudest voices are communists like freepress.net and can't wait until the government puts its boot on our necks. That is their purpose. Remember, lying is second nature for em after a century of losing a race for dogcatcher if voters suspect their actual intentions.

Michigan is trying to license journalists RIGHT NOW.

The Won's FTC is trying to sink government hooks into journalism RIGHT NOW.

It took the SCOTUS to explain to the FEC that the 1st Amendment says what it says. Congress instantly sprung into action to find a way around it proving they still can't grasp the phrase "Congress shall make no law..."

Re:Net neutrality

[angelwolf71885]

and when has the government ever stayed whiten its confines? remember the health care bill it also gave the government control of the student loan industry; besides that Obama appoint 6 RIAA and MPAA lawyers to the FCC so yah net neutrality would work out just dandy

Re:Net neutrality

[Mashiki]

Considering actual net neutrality is a full hands-off approach--where ISP's are what they're supposed to be "dumb pipes"(you remember them right?). No, it doesn't. This is simply an example of the government extending it's hand and tightening it's control. The exact opposite of net neutrality. It doesn't matter what flavor, corporate or government. Either one restricting isn't net neutrality.

Re:Net neutrality

[captainpanic]

First of all, RIAA is American - we're discussing the EU here. Obviously, there are similar institutions in Europe, so the remark is still relevant.

Who says that we are not going to a situation where both the government and the record industry and all kinds of other organizations will control internet logs of everyone? ISP will log it, and distribute it.
They all will find a valid reason to protect the very important interests of something really important (like "Children" or "The Economy" or "Safety").
Anyone who will object to this monitoring of the internet is obviously either a Terrorist, a Child Molester or a Communist.
(I strongly believe that you can't argue with such points, which is why the discussion should be shifted away from single problems, and should instead be about the internet or even information in general).

On a side note, this is an initiative by some members of the European parliament. They sell it to the public as a urgent thing to stop child abuse. The word privacy isn't mentioned anywhere.

Re:Net neutrality

[Rusty KB]

First of, I apologize for any lack of clarity - I'm way too tired to be thinking, let alone posting.

Secong, I just used the RIAA as an example a big nasty megacorp. Substitute whatever. My point wasn't about the **AA, or even any other corporate conglomerate. It's this: the goverment is (at least in theory) us, the people. It's in place to protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority. But also, and more imoprtant in this context: the purpose of government (as perscribed to us by modern political liberal tradition) is to protect the majority from the abuses of the few. Without regulation, we're screwed. With too much regulation, we're screwed. Our only hope is to keep fighting to keep the middle ground.

And yes, unfortunately I do believe we're heading in the direction you're predicting. It's sad, but it's true. Fact is, it's *always* true. Big lords/industrialists/corporations(/substitute whatever) will always try and gain as much power over the populace as it can, down to slavery if possible (been there, done that). Government will *always* try to control to the population, too. Down to slavery, if possible. It's nothing new. Thge solution isn't to abolish regulations. It's to balance out the powers in the most beneficial way. It's tricky, and it requires government regulation. And here my verbal diahorrea stops because I run out of words.

Again, sorry for the incomrehensibleness. (I doubt I made much sense at all.)

Re:Net neutrality

[debatem1]

Hint: people who like the *old* government are called conservatives. People who don't like government at all are called anarchists.

Pick one, and stop giving the other a bad name.

Re:Net neutrality

[P0ltergeist333]

Like fire or any other powerful force, government can help or harm, depending upon how it is applied.

Re:Net neutrality

[Jedi Alec]

No, it doesn't. But that is mainly because I read beyond the inflammatory (as usual) summary and decided to enlighten myself on the actual issue before spouting off.

Feel free to keep banging that drum though. USA! USA! USA!

So how's that broadband rollout going for you guys lately?

Re:Net neutrality

[mdwh2]

Some Government control is bad, therefore all Government control is bad? That's a fallacy.

Why restrict it to the Internet? You might as well ask "Question to healthcare supporters - does this teach you that the Government doing something is very, very bad?"

Re:Net neutrality

[Lunix Nutcase]

remember the health care bill it also gave the government control of the student loan industry;

You do realize that the government already controlled and subsidized all those student loans to begin with, right? All they did was cut out the middlemen that were making the loans more expensive to the students.

Re:Net neutrality

[networkBoy]

I like the US constitution, but not much of the inane laws since then...
What does that make me?

Re:Net neutrality

[GameboyRMH]

No.

As long as you're free to set up servers and get traffic to them, you can set up a "pirate" search engine that doesn't give data to the government. It would be slow as hell, but you'd have options.

In a libertarian utopia, corporations would not allow for search privacy - it would interfere with THEIR monitoring of search traffic (and everything else, no traffic encryption allowed!), because they want a piece of the targeted advertising pie. And with the Internet locked down tighter than the iPhoneOS ecosystem you'd need to build a new one from scratch to break free of this control. Oh wait, Cisco3BroadComDlink, as an OEPC (Organization of Electronics Producing Companies) member, has an exclusivity deal with AT&TVerizonComcastWarner on telco-grade equipment. Better start with the hardware. Anyone have any electronics factories they wanna sell? Oh wait, the OEPC won't sell me one unless I become a member. Bummer. Well guess I better buy a lathe and get to work...

So I argue that the Internet, in its current form, requires government regulation to remain free. Telcos are trying to lock it down, net neutrality is about keeping it open.

Re:Net neutrality

[fishexe]

Anyone who will object to this monitoring of the internet is obviously either a Terrorist, a Child Molester or a Communist.

But if someone's all three, will they cancel out?

Re:Net neutrality

[endymion.nz]

A pussy if you plan to do nothing about it. :P

Re:Net neutrality

[networkBoy]

Dude, I was aiming for 'A Libertarian'.
but yeah, pussy works too I guess...

Be Careful What You Search For...

[Anonymous Coward]

...because what you find may disturb you.

For example, searching for "Tiziano Motti f****ng horses" turned up about 56,700 results. I'm not making this up -- check it out on Google.

Don't think Tiziano isn't into some seriously freaky stuff? Okay, try "Tiziano Motti bl***ng a teenage unicorn".

Man, those EU parliment people are disturbed.

All Sex Must Be Monitored

[Doc Ruby]

Internet searches aren't child molestation. Child molestation is a sex act. So the EU must monitor every sex act to prevent child molestation. Otherwise it's just wasting everyone's time while the real killers run free!

Re:All Sex Must Be Monitored

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a [terrible] idea.

Mandatory implantation of RFID style chips in everyone's genitals at birth, whenever two people come in contact, the chips record the incident for uploading to scanners on the way in to school / shops / etc. To make sure people don't remove them, use them as ID for driver's licences, banks, hospitals, insurance, etc.

Wadda ya got to hide and all that.

Re:All Sex Must Be Monitored

[aix tom]

Hey, it's the dawn of the age of the tinfoil condom.

Re:All Sex Must Be Monitored

[Anonymous Coward]

I always wear a tinfoil condom.

Re:All Sex Must Be Monitored

[Siridar]

Look, I dunno about you, but if they're only recording when our genitals come into contact, they sure won't be capturing 100% of the information...

Will not work and easy to abuse

[DJ Rubbie]

All someone interested in breaking this system at a basic level needs to do is to gain access to some popular server to put some code (plain HTML img tags, or javascript if site is vulnerable) that will automatically do searches based on those "monitored" search terms when a user-agent accesses it. This will incriminate all innocent parties that browse those "infected" pages (as if something like is bad), which naturally flood the monitoring tools with garbage.

Re:Will not work and easy to abuse

[Jugalator]

I agree, and think you just hit the nail on the head as for what will happen among protesters if this would pass in the EU. Massive linkage from 4chan to Google searches regarding child porn. You don't even need web sites that can provide you a custom text different from the URL, thanks to bit.ly and other URL shorteners. This could and would probably take on as a social network-wide protest on Facebook and Twitter. Thousands of hundreds hits will immediately happen, and if targeting social networks, probably even with repeat "offenders", to further complicate things.

Re:Will not work and easy to abuse

[Anonymous Coward]

How about everybody installs the Firefox Track Me Not extension and somebody sets up an RSS feed with suitable keywords? Easiest way to spam them to death.

Only downside is that the searches would come from you. But sometimes you have to drop anonymity to make a political statemen.

Re:Will not work and easy to abuse

[BitZtream]

Yea, cause thats not easy to detect ... you know ... when you get a shitload of searches for kiddie porn with the same referrer ... no one would ever figure it out.

Glad we've got clever people like yourself pointing out the ways to get around this stuff ... the government doesn't stand a chance.

Alternatively

[Hognoxious]

you can help by sending e-mail to the MEPs from your country and explaining the issue to them

Or you can just search for your MEP's name along terms related to paedophilia. And then do it again, and again...

Re:Alternatively

[Anonymous Coward]

My MEP is Christian Engström, PP Sweden, I don't think I need to email him in this particular case :-)

Re:Alternatively

[Hognoxious]

Paedophile Party?

Re:Alternatively

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure. Maybe queue up a script to search for each and every one of them, and any other politician, with pedophilia-related terms. The beauty is, when the police show up at your door you can just say "I wanted to make sure my children were safe from pedophilia-obsessed politicians".

Not really...

[tehdaemon]

Not really, 'cause without net neutrality - I might just be paying more to my ISP, who would be charged by the search engine for the privilege of having the government track my searches....plus costs of course.

What, you thought keeping the government out of net neutrality would also keep them out of this sort of crap???

T

Pedo-Paranoia

[Anonymous Coward]

I almost got kicked out of college because I, from school, googled "6 year old girl in sundress." I was looking for reference images for finishing a photoshop painting of a man walking with his daughter on a beach. I had the beach, I had the man, the ice-cream he was holding and in the middle of class I goggle images of kids because the bone structure of kids is different than adults. 2 days later I'm in the deans office getting a "Letter" added to my records. I'm like WTF? Did they think I was looking at child porn in a room full of twenty three people and the only one who noticed was the IT filter? So it's on my permanent scripts now.

If I go to a 4 year program I have to hope they explained it well enough I'm not just denied for "viewing inappropriate material" on campus. My teacher even backed me up and explained he was in the class with me and that the images where completely harmless, fully clothed, yet they still put it on the record. Pissed me off.

The world has gotten so freaking paranoid about pedos it's crazy. What's next public burnings? This pedo-paranoia has to be screwing up the kids too. When I was a kid we played with all the kids in the area, went where ever we wanted and were pretty damn safe. Now kids have play dates and a small circle of friends. Adults act like kids are made of glass and might break. If we screw up 90% of these kids childhoods with paranoia to save 10% of the kids who are going to get molested how the heck is that good for the human species?

We are going to have whole generations of social cripples afraid to be around each other and eating/drugging themselves to death while they wonder why they can't feel happy. The human race has moved along quite well without fenced in play grounds and cops policing public parks constantly. Kids shouldn't have to live in fear that the boogie man might touch them in their private places. "Keeping the kids safe" is doing more harm than good if you look at it from the big picture. Let them act like kids for Christ's sake.

But I'm sure by posting this I'll be marked as a child stalker. *rolls eyes*

Re:Pedo-Paranoia

[Anonymous Coward]

What's next public burnings?

No, following logically on public lists naming sex offenders, I think the next thing is the stocks. Then maybe public burnings. But you're on the right track with the public part. As they say, don't do the crime if you can't do perpetual public shaming and fear for your life.

Re:Pedo-Paranoia

[Anonymous Coward]

10%? Couple of orders of magnitude too high there I think...

Re:Pedo-Paranoia

[drinkypoo]

If I go to a 4 year program I have to hope they explained it well enough I'm not just denied for "viewing inappropriate material" on campus. My teacher even backed me up and explained he was in the class with me and that the images where completely harmless, fully clothed, yet they still put it on the record. Pissed me off.

You may have a good reason to get a lawyer. Writing a falsehood about someone that someone else may one day see is called libel and as a form of fraud, it may be illegal; 17 states have laws making libel a felony. In others a lawyer is just a way to waste money.

Re:Pedo-Paranoia

[Anonymous Coward]

You're joking, right... I can't believe what you wrote.

If that's really true, world has gone crazy! Or at least your country/city/school!

I'm out of words. That's so unbelievable, unfair and stupid.

This whole censoring and monitoring violates basic human rights and does NOTHING to the actual cause. Internet is not where it *happens* after all and officials and governments aren't really interested in fighting against the actual crimes because it's difficult and all they really want is fame of being the "good guys". Disgusting! And so sad how stupid so many people are...

Re:Pedo-Paranoia

[Anonymous Coward]

How long ago is this? Sue the fuckers in charge for ruining your reputation...

Re:Pedo-Paranoia

[Per Wigren]

10%? Couple of orders of magnitude too high there I think...

10% of the kids who are going to get molested. Not 10% of the kids are going to get molested.

Whoa?

[Asaf.Zamir]

Did Hitler come back? I'm sure I would've heard of it.

Re:Whoa?

[lostsoulz]

He never really went.

Re:Whoa?

[lemmywrap]

I'd google it for you, but i don't want to be flagged a Nazi.

Alternatively

[erroneus]

You can simply search for "{member of parliament} would you please stop doing this? it is a really bad idea and could result in your being voted out of office or some such thing."

you don't have to send directly to your MPEs

[Punto]

just send an e-mail to your mom, they'll read it too.

A sad day

[warrax_666]

It's sad that we're (going to be) relying on corporations to shield us from our governments.

Eh, this is to stop child abuse, not CP

[SmallFurryCreature]

So the google query will be:

• How do I beat my kid, take it to the doctor countless times, have it show up in school with bruises, be investigated for years and yet nobody stops me but monitoring my searches will work.
• How do I rape kids under my care but get my church leaders to cover for me because Christ teaches that pedo's should be protected over children.
• What is the best lube for a 6yr old because if I am going to rape a toddler I want it to slip in easy.

Children, the one-shot-kill for all who want to control the world, because if you are against whatever they propose then you are a pedo.

Two measures can protect children far easier. Kill catholics (a good idea in general) and simply give child services the resources they need to do their job at the lowest level. So a care worker doesn't have to monitor dozens of children in a day which simply can't be done and results in documents just being shoved around instead of just going around with a police escort and checking the living conditions.

But hey, that costs money and doesn't actually allow you to track every other thing.

Re:Eh, this is to stop child abuse, not CP

[Anonymous Coward]

So, basically you are against the current witch-hunt against pedo's, and your solution is a witch-hunt against catholics? It must be nice to be so enlightened.

Re:Eh, this is to stop child abuse, not CP

[PeterBrett]

Kill catholics (a good idea in general)

Why do you want to kill me? What have I ever done to harm you? Last time I checked, I was spending large amounts of my time and money fighting hard to protect people's privacy and freedom of expression. Now you're calling for my death?

Re:Eh, this is to stop child abuse, not CP

[Anonymous Coward]

No, no, no. He meant the other ones.

Re:Eh, this is to stop child abuse, not CP

[drinkypoo]

Why do you want to kill me? What have I ever done to harm you? Last time I checked, I was spending large amounts of my time and money fighting hard to protect people's privacy and freedom of expression. Now you're calling for my death?

The Church is opposed to freedom of expression. Doesn't that make you at best, a bad catholic? I mean, if you disagree with the church's or pope's interpretation of the bible in public, you're a heretic. If you've ever done so, are you really a Catholic?

Re:Eh, this is to stop child abuse, not CP

[mario_grgic]

The Church is here with one and only one mission, to spread the teachings and revelations entrusted to it by its founder Jesus Chirst. It has no other business or reason for existence. But apparently, some criminals found it an apt vessel for their criminal enterprises.

By your logic we should also kill all Americans because after all the Americans are harboring and protecting child murderers (you call them soldiers) and rapists who killed thousands of innocent people in Iraq alone. Not only that but they are glorified as patriots and saviors of the nation.

Re:Eh, this is to stop child abuse, not CP

[PeterBrett]

The Church is opposed to freedom of expression.

Wrong.

Doesn't that make you at best, a bad catholic?

No.

I mean, if you disagree with the church's or pope's interpretation of the bible in public, you're a heretic.

Yes. But I don't think any modern Catholic would argue that you shouldn't be free to choose to be a heretic, if you so wish. It's your immortal soul, not mine. I do of course reserve the right to disagree with you and possibly even to attempt to explain to you where you've gone wrong. ;-)

Re:Eh, this is to stop child abuse, not CP

[drinkypoo]

The Church is opposed to freedom of expression.

Wrong.

Say goodbye to your remaining credibility — two examples relating to Catholicism are trivially located on Wikipedia through google. You didn't even try to be honest.

I don't think any modern Catholic would argue that you shouldn't be free to choose to be a heretic, if you so wish. It's your immortal soul, not mine. I do of course reserve the right to disagree with you and possibly even to attempt to explain to you where you've gone wrong. ;-)

The church has disagreed throughout history. If they had the power I am quite sure that they would make it a criminal act to be a heretic today. The Catholic church has a history of punishing people for unbelief when they are in a position of sufficient power, and there is no reason to believe that they would act any differently today. Given what they do to [a percentage of] believers, which is to say raping them homosexually while preaching that both rape and homosexuality are wrong, I'd say there's every reason to believe that the church hasn't changed its stripes whatosever since high officials are still covering up this abuse, which proves collusion rather than simply implying it. Every time your church hides a child molester, they are condoning child molestation.

Supporting this church is an unconscionable act. Describing yourself as a member of this church is condoning child molestation in the same way that describing yourself as a member of the KKK is condoning lynching and cross-burnings. Furthermore, it is a foolish act, as this is clearly a church that will not hesitate to throw you to the wolves, or even tear you apart themselves if it furthers their goals. Given how Jeshua supposedly treated the money-changers in the temples, he would certainly have been appalled at the gold dripping from Catholic churches while followers starve in the streets — all too common in Latin America.

Re:Eh, this is to stop child abuse, not CP

[fishexe]

Kill catholics (a good idea in general)....

And here I thought Western civilization had advanced since in the last 400 years. Clearly I was wrong.

Re:Eh, this is to stop child abuse, not CP

[Anonymous Coward]

The missionaries at my school pass around a petition to get Roe v. Wade reversed, so while I currently have a right to be a heretic, the representatives of the Catholic Church on my campus are actively pushing to remove my ability to control my own life.

Re:Eh, this is to stop child abuse, not CP

[Anonymous Coward]

1st - Prove me that the religious concept of 'soul' exists, show me evidence of past souls for example, let me talk to them, there must be a staggering ammount, shouldn't be hard to find an example since they are as you were indoctrinated into believing blindly, immortal.

If some day (i firmly believe, never) that's factually and irrevocably proven, i'll stop thinking people like you are and were nothing more than psychologicly abused into non-sense for manipulation purposes under pre-defined and faulty contept of 'good' enforced by an existance of a psychological and irrational fear of hell and a god that condems you to suffering but ironicly lies about himself saying he forgives and loves you very much.

What a weak, incompetent god that is, can't do things for himself and doesn't fix his own creations and even hides from them, no empathy at all, that's a sign of the lack of good, more of indeference, arrogance or simply, ilogical made up non-sense, LIES.

Re:Eh, this is to stop child abuse, not CP

[Hurricane78]

Well, you just declared that you are a mentally insane (religious schizophrenia. the disease where you believe in a made-up delusional reality) dangerous person (those delusions make people act in irrational ways that can hurt and even kill people. See: Inquisitions, terrorist bombers, the pope not being allowed to have sex and therefore doing it with children, George W. Bush justifying mass-murder in Iraq/Afghanistan and of US soldiers with “God” telling him to do it, etc, etc, etc.), and hence you have no place in a healthy society until you are healed.

Now I personally think that there is only one acceptable punishment to all crimes: Separation. (E.g. trough expelling.)
So murder or jail is not acceptable for me. But apparently it was for GP poster. Which means I’d expel him too, until he changed his views to be compatible with mine. (You can also see it all from the other p.o.v. The point is not expelling but separation. It’s based on there not being a absolute right or wrong.)

Luckily you already are in another country. So you can rape children or kill non-believers or whatever you crazy people do, and I will do my thing. Then let’s see who will be more successful in general evolution. Let nature decide... as she always does. :)

Re:Eh, this is to stop child abuse, not CP

[Anonymous Coward]

This shows more than anything else exactly how fucked up your religious belief group is.

https

[idji]

just use https://www.google.com as your search page. it's been available for a few weeks now.

Re:https

[Cederic]

Because Google would never comply with EU law would they.

Oh.

Writing to the MEPS is totally useless in Spain

[viraltus]

We do not have the right to choose them, we live in a fake democracy.

Re:Writing to the MEPS is totally useless in Spain

[Anonymous Coward]

This is one of the reasons why the EU will crumble and fail. The whole union is rotten from the bottom up.

Re:Writing to the MEPS is totally useless in Spain

[drinkypoo]

This is one of the reasons why the EU will crumble and fail. The whole union is rotten from the bottom up.

The EU will fail because it was bullshit from day one. It was never intended to create an actual union, only to achieve certain legal goals, i.e. spreading restrictive laws throughout the region. The proof? The current PIGS controversy. Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain are said to be "dragging the EU down" economically so they want to cut them out of it, at least economically, just literally kick them off the Euro. Problem is that these countries are dragging things down because this is necessary for other nations in the region to profit. All of these nations have basically been the economic bitch of the "leading" nations in the region since at latest WWII, if not earlier. Of COURSE they want to kick them out of the EU, keeping them in and making the whole thing work at the same time would require actually addressing certain inequities in the region, which is not in the best interest of the moneyed classes.

The EU was always a farce and will always be a farce so long as the old guard is still in charge of the battlements.

So, what happens...

[lattyware]

So basically, all the pedophiles (who don't spend thier time doing google searches for 'child porn', I'd hasten a bet) are unaffected, while all the people who search for information on the subject (reporters, worried mothers, hell, anyone looking for information on a subject, which we should be allowed to do in the modern world) gets monitored. Seriously. Great plan.

As usual I don't trust slashdot's summary

[Jafafa Hots]

or the article it's sourced from, so I decided to do a little research on my own to see if this story is true. So I searched google news for the subject matter and what I found was... ... oh wait a second, just a minute someone's at the door.

Rights schmights!

[Mjlner]

This will actually become a HUGE problem for the people of the member states.

Unlike the US, the EU doesn't recognise concepts like "unlawful search", "evidence inadmissible in court", etc. It's up to the member states. And many member states have an attitude that basically boils down to "evidence is evidence, regardless of how it was obtained". If you're arrested in, say, Finland and demand any rights, the response will be along the lines of "You don't have any rights! You've been watching too much television!"

I used to have a lot of anti-US sentiments, but lately I've come to realise what a great document the Bill of Rights actually is.

EU is becoming Thailand.

[Anonymous Coward]

Thailand is blocking access to www.softpedia.com, subdomains like win.softpedia.com are still accessible. It is beyond me why a legal and legitimate software download site is being blocked. I fail to see what this has to do with the lese majeste law or child porn.

If you keep letting your ISPs and governments implement plans like this, then maybe in the distant, or not so distant, future, you will find yourself in the same situation as internet users in Thailand. That one fine day your favorite website is not accessible anymore, because your government decided to block it.

I am posting this as anonymous coward, not because I am a coward, but ... well - y'all know why.

Hey EU!

[gullevek]

Why don't you monitor all the post and telephones too? I mean, someone could write about CP, or even talk about it ... I mean, c'mon! What is this half ass shit. I want everything monitored. I want cameras in my room and on my shitter too!

And I hope you screen the magazines I ordered too, please!

And while we are at it, please make laws so I am not allowed to be in the same bus or train as kids. Ever. Better I have to keep a distance of 500m.

We can do it. we can fight CP. Yeeeah!

Re:Hey EU!

[yyxx]

Why don't you monitor all the post and telephones too?

The EU already has data retention mandates for telephone and E-mail. Supposedly, those are not data-mined, but do you really believe that?

I want everything monitored. I want cameras in my room and on my shitter too!

You may already have them if you're subject to police monitoring based on your suspicious phone calls or E-mails. Drug monitoring for your "shitter" is probably coming too as soon as the technology comes down in price.

Re:Hey EU!

[gullevek]

Now I feel much more safe. Thank EU for protecting me from myself!

Just joking..Really...Honest...I swear...;-)

[rts008]

Imagine just a few hundred thousand different ips associated with the query "child bestiality porn" entered into the logs each day.

Hmmm...Sounds like the perfect job for a botnet, or three....
*grabs Windows install cd*

What? A Beowolf Cluster of badgers?!?!!!!!?

That's going to require lots of zombies....
Hmmmmmm...Installing Linux on a Dead Badger: User's Notesv

[...]Step 8: Invocation/boot procedures. Place badger in center of fireproof surface, making sure ventilation is adequate and all doors are locked. Turn off all cell phones and pagers, and cease using all other unapproved electronic devices. Using the badger's blood, smear a foot-wide pentagram around its body. Place origami code-badger at the top point of pentagram, and light paper while making the boot incantation:

                Suse vivo vixi victum reduco is ea id creatura absit decessus a facultas Linux! Dev root, dev root!
        *
            The paper should burn with green flames. Black or gray means the herbs were improperly prepared. Purple flames indicate kernel panic; douse the flames with the bucket of holy water and abandon installation site immediately. Seek shelter at the nearest church or other consecrated area. You may need to enlist the assistance of an exorcist if you cannot reach shelter in time.
        *
            When you produce green smoke, it should flow over the badger and into its mouth and nose. The badger will awaken as a Linux-powered zombie. Enjoy your new undead badger.
Common Problems
        *
            Reanimation puts most creatures in a foul mood, and the test badger woke up murderously angry, requiring a hasty launch of FleshGolem to get the beast under control. It is highly recommended to have the computer close at hand during the incantation.
        *
            If the badger isn't responding correctly, you may need to make some configuration adjustments via Telnet; instructions are in the VüDü manual.
        *
            If the badger does not respond at all to the boot incantation, call Twisted Faces' tech support. Make sure to try all other troubleshooting options first. After two free calls, tech support will cost you an arm and a leg . . . and they'll only accept fresh, gangrene-free limbs.

Is there anything Linux can't do?!?1 *eleventy one* 11!?

Note:
my emphasis in quote above

Times change, it is today, not yesterday....

[rts008]

...does that mean I'm looking for child porn or sites about child porn?

It means whatever the applicable authorities want it to mean.

Landshark...

[rts008]

Hang on, there's a knock at my door.

*male voice* Avon Lady!

Who?

Uhmmm...Candygram!

Who is this, really?

*???* Uhmm...Landshark?

Oh, quit joking around. *opens door* AAHHHH!!!!

Google settings

[SerpensV]

It might be naive, but if I opt out of Google (or Bing or whatever) remembering my search history, am I safe?

Re:Google settings

[yyxx]

Not if European governments mandate that Google retain your data. Such data retention is already mandated for other kinds of communications. If companies don't comply, they may themselves be taken to court over their lack of compliance.

How is that rule going to protect you.

[Shivetya]

You obviously don't think like a politician. See, their is nothing arbitrary with their action nor is it interference to monitor your use of search engines. Searches are not correspondence, nor do they affect your honor or reputation as only honest government employees will ever see the contents of said searches and only honest government employees will properly review it. Trust the government, they are here to help. After so many are willing to hand over their responsibility for their health care which has far more invasive information about you that your use of a search engine. I have seen people demand free wi fi access in cities and then turn around and scream bloody murder about the idea that someone may restrict how its used. Either do for yourself or quit asking the government to step in all the time, this is what you get, they will protect you because you have already proven to be incapable of so many other things.

Really, people seem to assign importance to things of little import while other times assigning little to those of great importance.

Please explain the FBI warning

[Anonymous Coward]

Please explain the FBI warning. Also Jon Johannsen and TPB.

"based on the existing system for food safety"

[jopet]

Does anyone know what that sentence means in point 3 of the declaration? What is the existing system for food safety?

Please click this link

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.google.com/search?q=Tiziano+Motti+child+porn

The REAL issue with this declaration

[Anonymous Coward]

The big bad thing about this declaration, and the thing that can be used to actually convince MEPs to not sign, or withdraw their signatures, is not that data retention is to be extended to search engines, but that in all the information that has been given to MEPs (which is a lot) this has not been mentioned. At all.

Even in the declaration itself, it's not referred to as 'Data Retention' but by the document reference number.

In other words; not only are they trying to push data retention to search engines by using child abuse as an excuse, but they aren't even upfront about it, and indeed go quite a ways to actually avoid mentioning it.

Let me say that again: MEPs had NO information that they were supporting data retention for search engines, unless they SPECIFICALLY looked up the reference number. Also, written declarations have no legal weight, so the 'barrier of entry' for signing is generally lower.

No one likes being tricked into supporting something they don't. Especially when the issue is such a sensitive and controversial one as data retention.

Scoogle

[stevegee58]

Just use scroogle.org or one of its clones. As long as their servers aren't based in Europistan, the whey-faced bureaucrats won't get ahold of your IP address. Google will only see scroogle.org's server IP addresses and your IP will be purged in 48 hours.

Oh, good. Stupidity _is_ randomly distributed

[smchris]

If it isn't just an Orwellian attempt to record what everyone thinks about everything, one wonders whether the person(s) who sneaked this in really thought through what they intended to _do_ with it.

If it's meant to make police work easier, might it in fact make it more difficult weeding through the false positives?

Do you send the searcher an email, "Dear Citizen, we are concerned for your mental hygiene"? Or a letter to the home to let the wife and kids know? Or perhaps publish a weekly compilation in the local newspaper to give the community a heads up on who is searching beyond the bounds of decorous thought?

Perhaps mandatory pre-emptive counseling is in order?

And, as always, the staffing. Particularly the human staffing for the sexual thought crimes division. Wouldn't do to have the Mayor's wife accused of lesbian incestuous thoughts for searching "telling your daughter about checking her breasts for lumps" now would it?

But, of course, we know it _is_ just an Orwellian attempt to record what everyone thinks about everything.

Multiple Personality Disorder

[flithm]

Going to http://www.startpage.com/ redirects you to the https version.

As an interesting aside, this is from the FAQ page:

On July 14th 2008 Ixquick received the first European Privacy Seal from European Data Protection Supervisor Mr. Peter Hustinx. The Seal officially confirms the privacy promises we make to our users. It makes Ixquick the first and only EU-approved search engine. Both EU Commissioner Viviane Reding and Dr.Thilo Weichert, German Privacy Commissioner complemented Ixquick on its privacy achievements. You can find the press release here.

So... the EU wants privacy, but also wants to monitor everything you do? What a strange place.

Re:Multiple Personality Disorder

[Anonymous Coward]

So... the EU wants privacy, but also wants to monitor everything you do? What a strange place.

Just like the US wants universal health care but also doesn't want it. Or the Middle East want nothing to do with the west or want lucrative deals with the west. Or maybe there are just more than one group of interests existing within any sufficiently large environment?

European schizophrenia

[yyxx]

On the one hand, European media and politicians are tearing Google to shreds for recording street images and publicly broadcast data, on the other hand, European governments want Google and other companies to record something as personal as Internet searches and then do data mining for suspected child pornographers on it.

Google recording public WLAN packets isn't going to hurt you; they aren't going to defraud your credit card or expose your extramarital affair even if you're stupid enough to broadcast it.

European governments, however, are going to hurt you, when they ineptly mine your Internet searches and then conclude that because you were searching for "Lolita" they need to investigate your for child pornography.

People really need to get their priorities straight about privacy. The fact that this can even be proposed at the EU level means that European voters have made seriously bad choices in their politicians. (It's no accident that one of the main candidates for the German presidency is considered the Czarina of Censorship in Germany.)

You don't quite understand 'intent'

[Anonymous Coward]

What they say they are trying to do is one thing.
Their intent is another.
The legislation you end up with accurately reflects the former and not the latter.

If you are wondering how intelligent people could be so lax in the wording of legislation, you are a trifle gullible.

As so often happens

[ThatsNotPudding]

the consequences of a terrible idea perfectly describes the stupidity of DRM.

Welcome to automated monitoring & control

[Anonymous Coward]

In the near future, everyone will conduct their lives online.
Everything you buy, read, watch, listen to will be logged (for many people that already happens.)
With your DNA in the database, your database record linked to your online ID, and CCTV to monitor everyone, you will not be able to move without their machine knowing about it.
Politicians, and more importantly, the civil servants and police who have the task of applying the law, are only now waking up to the possibilities.
They realised, to their amazement, that they could automate the monitoring of the whole population and pro actively track down every criminal. While you are shouting bullshit, they are putting the pieces in place which will allow it to happen.
When they are able to do that, they will introduce more legislation to make more of the things you do a crime and by then it will be too late. It is already difficult to mount effective opposition.

But you are too weak and shy to do anything about it. You keep waiting for someone else to do something about it, and they are waiting for you. You moan when what you ought to be doing is making the legislature aware of your anger, and if it comes to it, making them pay a heavy price for ignoring you.

Organise yourselves, make a plan, carry it out.

Now, I've got to go, America's Got Talent is just starting... yawn.

But you believe their stereotype?

[Brian Ribbon]

"Pedophiles use children for their own self-serving purposes"

I understand the point that you were trying to make with your post, but that's a rather misguided statement. If you think that paedophiles "use children for their own self-serving purposes", you clearly haven't discussed the topic with any paedophiles or other neutral and informed individuals. Most people who are attracted to adults don't hunt adults to "use for their own self-serving purposes", so why do you think that most paedophiles do that? Most people who are attracted to adults obviously try to have sex with people they are attracted to (if both are available, consenting, etc), but for paedophiles there are some very, very good reasons to not act on one's feelings.

As someone who is attracted to children, I know many other people who are attracted to children, both online and offline. Many of the people who I know have friends who are children, but the majority of those people understand the importance of not actually acting upon their feelings towards children (and the others are apparently deterred by potential legal consequences).

Your view of paedophiles is bastardised by the media and the governments whom you are critical of. When everyone accepts the absurd constructed image of "the paedophile", the authoritarian legislators win.

Send one about the techical nightmare too...

[cjb110]

Concerns about privacy they'll have by the dozen...maybe someone should also point out what a technological clusterf**k this would be.

They can't even convert a PDF to an easily accessible HTML page. How the hell would the they manage with the massive amount of raw data from Google, Bing, Yahoo, Ask, (do they even know how many search engines there are?) How would you deal with the false positives alone?

This is just as moronic as the UK government thinking its easy to just 'store' all comms for 3 months, in case the police needed it.

What they should be doing is making sure that the reporting methods are easy and universal accross the EU, that every EU memeber has the wording in its laws to take down host sites and to work with non-EU states to make sure that international sites can also be taken down quickly.

Then it can move to the much much harder issue of properly defining child porn, and making that standard. None of this wishwashy crap that would make Donald Duck illegal because he's got no pants on! Or locking up grandparents from taking photo's of their children.

No need to waste billions of our money on some half-assed badly implemented privacy invasion.

Re:No molestar!

[value_added]

Child molestation is a sex act.

I'd suggest that's a sloppy use of words in the context of a subject where words are regularly abused. From a random source:

molest
-verb (used with object)
1. to bother, interfere with, or annoy.
2. to make indecent sexual advances to.
3. to assault sexually.

Origin:
1325-75; ME molesten - L molestare to irk, deriv. of molestus irksome; cf. moles mass, burden, trouble

--Synonyms
1. harass, harry, trouble, plague, hector, torment. See attack.

Is a "sexual offender" someone who was convicted of forcible rape, convicted of urinating in public, a teenager caught making out, or someone with unsavoury content in his browser's cache? Similarly ambiguous is "child pornography". In rare cases it involve scenes of actual sex, but most of what's found on the intarwebs is cheese-cake photography.

Words should mean something, yes? If not, then you'll have to report my dog to the authorities. He regularly performs sex acts on my knee, and I've seen him do the same to children. And because everyone knows that dogs are predators by nature, you'd have to have to call him a "sexual predator", too.

Down boy!

Let's look at the EC Directive they cite

[solarcatcher]

The text of the declaration would not make sense. They want to extend Directive 2006/24/EC to search engines. But if you read the text of that Directive (http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:32006L0024:EN:HTML) it is absolutely unclear how this could help their cause, as the directive only requires the retention of dates, times, telephone numbers, other identification items. And Article 5 (2) clearly says "No data revealing the content of the communication may be retained pursuant to this Directive."

So under the proposal of the Declaration they would get the times I accessed Google & Co. Big deal. This is how serious this declaration is.

So far the European Parliament has been relatively good at handling issues of freedom and civil liberties (this is why the national governments quickly passed the SWIFT agreement with the US before the new Lisbon treaty came into force which would have required the approval of the European Parliament). Therefore I trust them (for now) that they would not change the meaning of Art. 5 (2) of the aforementioned directive.

Wake up kid

[Snaller]

Most politicians sign papers they don't fully understand - both in Europe and the US. its called politics apparently.
That doesn't mean it doesn't become laws and they won't budge.

The state loves to censor people - since nobody really believes in democracy.

Re:Wake up kid

[Halo1]

The state loves to censor people - since nobody really believes in democracy.

Actually, I do, even though it's obviously not flawless. I've even directly seen it in action. In the European Parliament, in fact.

I do agree that being cynical and just railing against "the man" and "the kids" is much less energy intensive and less likely to result in disappointments though. It's also part of the problem.

Great way to get rich

[Anonymous Coward]

Program a quick bot that continuously searches google for so called taboo words. Sit back and wait until you are arrested on obviously false charges the collect the large settlement.

Re:Great way to get rich

[Fantastic Lad]

Sit back and wait until you are arrested on obviously false charges the collect the large settlement.

In the UK? Just hope that your settlement is larger than the bill. Heck, one guy who was wrongly imprisoned for three years on a false accusation was, upon his release, sent a £12,500 bill for "board and lodging" by the state. And they made him pay it, too.

-FL

They always come for the criminals...

[phorm]

They're just happy to change to definition of what constitutes a "criminal" to suit themselves and their corporate masters. Not enough criminals... make a law that criminalizes something common and make some!

Why do they even need this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Has anyone ever looked at a google URL?

Google passes the search terms as a regular GET string in the url, if ISPs monitor and log traffic in general, they'll have logs of this already.

Re:Oh, good. Stupidity _is_ randomly distributed

[fishexe]

Wouldn't do to have the Mayor's wife accused of lesbian incestuous thoughts for searching "telling your daughter about checking her breasts for lumps" now would it?

Actually, that would be awesome.

child services

[OrangeTide]

"and simply give child services the resources they need to do their job at the lowest level."

Talk about supporting an evil nightmare organization. We could be in an Orwellian dystopia if enough of us would nod our head any time "it's for the children" rhetoric was used.

As always:

[Mashdar]

Expect Google to fight in court, and all other search providers to bow without complaint. Google will lose. Slashdot headline reads: "Google is clearly evil."

Re:As always:

[Wovel]

Google has the option to not allow searches from Europe rather than comply. This all gives me one more reason to chuckle every time some uppity European tries to call the US a police state.

Bush runs the EU?

[Anonymous Coward]

It must be Bush and Cheney's fault, somehow.

Google has https

[Anonymous Coward]

Google has a beta (doh!) of it's more secure search. https://google.com

only use in case of...

[hyperion2010]

The only time "only use in case of" works is with fire extinguishers, and thats because if you use in times of not fire you get thrown out of housing. You look at someone's searches and they arent a terrorist? BAM 20 years incarceration.

Notice also that a fire has to break out FIRST. Not such a good preventative measure, more like something to keep it from spreading which terrorism does all by itself.

Injection attacks against HTTP.

[DamnStupidElf]

And when you go to http://www.startpage.com/ as with www.google.com, your ISP is likely to redirect you to their own search portal or otherwise not forward you to the actual SSL page that you wanted.

Using SSL via an https URL starting from the very first web request is the *only* way to maintain privacy.

And

[mahadiga]

Every citizen is a potential criminal, as per EU.

Written Declarations in European Parliament

[PensivePeter]

Written Declarations in the European Parliament have no weight whatsoever, except as a possible litmus test of Members interest.
Such a declaration has to be signed by a majority of the Members for it to be valid (very few manage this) and even then all they can do is propose that the European Commission take some action - they have no force or mandate whatsover - it is more like a non-binding petition of members, and favoured by Members and Groups with little or no political clout within the institution.
To label the lead story as "EU To Monitor All Internet Searches" is FUD straight from Journalism 101, week 1...