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Italian MEP Wants To Eliminate Anonymity On the Internet
m94mni writes "The European Parliament wants to monitor your Internet searches for child porn offenders, as previously reported. The declaration was adopted yesterday, and in an interview with the Swedish news outlet Europaportalen.se, the Italian MEP behind the declaration, Tiziano Motti, shares his views on the Internet and anonymity. In essence, Motti wants to completely eliminate anonymity on the Internet. 'Each upload of text, images, or video clips must be traceable by the authorities', says Motti. This is in line with the secretive UN initiative Q6/17, revealed two years ago." The doublespeak here seems to go beyond the imprecision of automated translation.
"And hand over all your freedom"
Why does that work?
We are all God's parents.
It is a sad state of our societies that child pornography can be invoked to justify absurd and highly unethical changes that would infringe of fundamental rights. It is almost certain that these would fail to successfully deter those seeking child porn but conveniently would be easy to use by the police and political system to silence dissent.
But I'm sure that fact is just a coincedence...
Governments are only going to get so much mileage out of crying wolf by invoking "Because...well...BECAUSE...CHILD PORNOGRAPHY".
If they keep this up, it's going to dilute honest, real efforts to fight child pornography because people will be conditioned to equate "child pornography" with "government power grab".
It is interesting to point out that child sex offenses have an average sentence in 2009 of 41 years, where first degree murder has an average sentence of 34 years.
There are over 300 people serving "indefinite civil confinement" for child pornography. Many states adopted these rules for sex offenders during the last 15 years, and in many of these states NOBODY has EVER BEEN RELEASED after being placed in such a confinement. This is de facto "life sentence" for possession of digital images.
I won't even BEGIN to argue that the creation of child porn is a good thing, but I will strenuously argue that its mere possession does not warrant a life sentence, regardless of what sort of doublespeak you can come up with about which sort of non-human that person is and what sort of evil deeds they "might one day do".
Will they let us see everything that politicians do?
Or is this surveillance all one-way?
I am anarch of all I survey.
They put more effort into hunting down the "addicts" than the "dealers". This does not work.
It is pretty amazing but not suprising just how misguided the above poster is.
It is indeed a very a good question asked by the gp, where does it say anonymity on the net is a fundamental right.
Because WE declare it so? Who is this WE? Because part of "WE" seems to want this anonymity to end.
Entitlement only works if you are willing to fight for your entitlements. Not just shout very loudly about them on some nerd forum.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Basically Berlusconi via a proxy, Motti, is using a classic "Think of the children..." argument in order to convince people of the need to remove anonymity from the internet when really he wants to eliminate anonymity to be able to track down political adversaries. It's classic misdirection. I'm just surprised that he thinks the rest of the world does not see through his ruse, but then again, like Putin, he is a very arrogant man accustomed to acquiescence.
At least as low as the people who have used DWIs/gun-violence/terrorism/boobies/other-boogiemen-of-the-day to infringe on our rights?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
...and certain sites like Wikileaks, which uses its own private Tor-based network.
So right now we have the USA crying over "national security" and Italy weeping for the children. That covers the "Terrorism" and "Child Porn" buzzwords. Soon we will learn that drug lords and illegal immigrants use the Internet, too...
what if....
what if you've got a 'speed' up plugin for your browser that spiders and preloads loads of stuff, there could easily be links to all kinds of stuff and it would/could look like your browsing, and the files will be stored and cached on your computer.
and anyone not wanting to get caught will use one of the many ways of proxying yourself, or a public connection, or a hacked connection / proxy.
gees, some one needs to give the people that run the world an education, or at least pass a law making it a requirement that all laws are run by several experts, hobbyist and professionals in the field for the obvious and not so obvious errors and pointlessness or even counter productiveness of the legislation being passed. Maybe even run a few fake trials based on the legislation and see what kind of prosecution vs defense comes up.
I would expect that the defense side have an open forum so that anyone can contribute and discuss the prosecution and so aid the defense, we want our laws to be as good as possible and waste as little time as possible. And we want as few of them as possible.
Time spent making them in the first place is time and money saved later down the line, and it would also give some people a little 'respect' in the only profession that comes lower than lawyers and bankers when it comes to honor and decency.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
The issue is not the current directive (which is bad enough as it is, though... Would you like to have the same kind of registration of regular mail?) but the Written Declaration that mr Motti authored, and which was adopted by the Parliament on Thursday.
The Written Declaration calls for an extension of the Directive to search engines in order to combat 'pedophiles' and child abuse. In the interview linked, he states that this was unintentional, but that 'everyone knows what a search engine is, but no one knows what a 'content provider' is'. So apparently he wants every 'content provider', which from my reading seems to be the same as 'hosting platform', or basically, anywhere you can upload content, to retain information about the uploader and make this information available to the 'proper authorities'.
There seems to be quite some confusion about exactly what the Declaration implies, since the reference to the data retention directive is indirect (reference number only, no explanation as to what it is), and has been completely omitted in the huge promotion effort which has seen the EP flooded with posters, pamphlets and pretty girls imploring the MEPs to sign. Add to this Mottis failure to acknowledge the problematic implications, and his inconsistent attitude towards the reference in the Declaration, and you have a proper political mess, which no doubt will be used by the Commission as both an affirmation that Parliament supports the legality of the data retention directive, and as a tool to initiate further extensions.
And as for the difference between 'what sites I visit' and 'what I do on those sites'.. The difference is not as big as one would like. And again, compare this to similar conduct away from the internet and you get a pretty frightening society.
Captcha: repeal, how fitting.
So yeah, right, war against the pedos... When the government of Berlusconi, of all people, says it, it's a lie.
That man likes himself some barely legal girls in parties, and while nothing confirms he goes with actual minors, suspicions have been raised.
Of course we'll never know if it's true, or if the denied claims are the effect of his political power.
Shame this wonderful tool can't be used against politics by the citizens (politicians who like dirty play *will* abuse it for sure against rivals).
I bet many politicians will surely regret this eventually. Power is not forever and precisely politicians are the type to have bizarre fetishes.
I suspect a lot of the politicians voting through these laws are old people who haven't really taken up Internet usage. They have people who bring them printed out reports and do the typing up of their notes for them. They get their news from papers or television and they communicate with their friends by meeting up or telephone. For people like this, it may not have even sunk in that Internet is a part of people's everyday communication with each other and that's what they're snooping on. They probably think of communicating by Internet as some sort of aberration or tool for criminal behaviour. After all, it's a method of communication and socialising used by other people.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Even if Hitler was 60+ years ago, he actually did try to take over the world. The talk about the pedophile elite on the other hand, what evidence do they have that this pedophile elite even exists? And even if it does exist somewhere, it's probably not going to be in the sort of numbers that would require this level of surveillance.
I know there are pedophiles, rapists, and generally sick individuals in the world. But most estimates are that it's less than 5% of the population. Even in prison it's less than 5% of prisoners. So we are getting into a frenzy over a fear that isn't based on any known statistics.
If they come out with a statistic that 20% of the people on the internet are rapists, pedophiles, terrorists, or just all around dangerous individuals, then maybe putting surveillance on the internet to protect the children makes sense. But to do this level of surveillance without there being millions of dangerous criminals, risks creating an environment where the technology itself and the political pressure PRODUCES the criminals AFTER the fact.
Do we expect them to built the technology, the prisons, and hire a bunch of cops, and not use it against us? Once the technology, the prisons, and the cops are in place, then it's just a matter of tweaking the laws so as to generate as many or as few criminals as they want.
That is the problem. The laws create the criminals, the technology and cops catch the criminals, and the prisons house them. Usually the technology comes first, then the prisons get built, then the cops get hired, and finally the laws are tweaked so that it looks like the cops are doing their jobs. The law gets tweaked for political reasons, think of the drug laws which were tweaked in the 80s and resulted in over a million prisoners in the USA.
If only they would take away the right to drive petrol powered vehicles. Many lives would be saved.
Views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the author.
I say we need to invert these things: the drinking age should be 16, the driving age 21. People should learn how to drink from their parents, and that includes how to drink at restaurants and bars, and teenagers should not be driving cars.
Palm trees and 8
At its finest. Citizens need no anonymity or privacy from their government, if they aren't doing anything wrong. And those that speak out and complain need to be investigated more closely as they are a threat to the stability of their government.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
> Are you sure of the age of *every* picture in your porn collection? For each picture can you direct an investigator to the appropriate Custodian
> of Records? And are you sure the model didn't lie about their age to get the gig?
Well, why wouldn't you assume that to be the case. Afterall, I am sure that there has never been a well known public case of a girl who was a porn star underage, and then whose real age came out. Never! Ever!
You don't even need an internet connection to end up with "Child Porn" and not even realize it, its been happening for years.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
One of the MEPs who started this initiative Mr Motti is an interesting figure. After the vote on the Telecoms package - one of the MEPs who initiated this topic - Mr Motti already foreshadowed his intentions:
Also notable is, how much he is is interested in anonymity and blogs:
In another speech Mr Motti also addressed freedom of speech in Italy, i guess this points in the same direction like what is happening currently in Italy regarding google.
On an ironic side note Mr Motti also seems to be highly interested in setting up cameras in kindergartens:
and
It's ironic, how someone fighting pedophilia wants to setup cameras in childcare centers.
all his debates are available, also his parliamentary questions
...if the Romans had had the power to seek out those who fail to keep their thoughts and speech within the bounds of what is condoned by "the State"? If the Romans had had the power that today's politicians seek? One message on the web, and John...Paul...all of 'em would have been crucified, right quick. Poof...no Christianity.
Fitting, that an Italian MEP should seek to be the new Pontius Pilot - V2.0, as it were. Or would he be 4.0, after Mao and Stalin?
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
It's a movie quote from Sneakers.
Whistler: I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
Bernard Abbott: Oh, this is ridiculous.
Martin Bishop: He's serious.
Whistler: I want peace on earth and goodwill toward men.
Bernard Abbott: We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Martin Bishop: You're just gonna have to try.
Bernard Abbott: All right, I'll see what I can do.
Whistler: Thank you very much. That's all I ask.