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EU Proposal Would Encourage Web Users To Flag Suspicious Web Pages
littlekorea writes "Web surfers in Europe might soon be asked to 'flag' for law enforcement follow-up any web content they suspect incites terrorism, under an plan a group of EU governments has put to the internet industry. The plan asks for ISPs, search engines, web hosts and everyday users to play a larger role in identifying suspect content. Google already has a similar feature on YouTube — will we see it in the browser?"
Who wants to bet that the top of the list of "flagged" sites will be comprised of EU government and law enforcement sites? I guess we'll only know for sure if they refuse to release a list of the top sites flagged. In fact, I dare say that the list will be so cluttered with joke flaggings that it will be difficult to determine what, if any, sites identified are actually "inciting terrorism" (not helped by the fact that one man's terrorist is another man's political leader).
But then again, I suspect the goal of this really isn't to actually identify terrorist sites. I suspect that this is just more of the same sort of security circus show that has the TSA making me take off my shoes at the airport, even as they load a hundred suitcases of largely unscrutinized baggage on the same plane. It could also be another step in getting Europeans used to the idea of law enforcement dictating terms to ISP's and of "flagged" websites being blocked--almost all of which will of course end up being torrent sites, proxies, Wikileaks and other leak sites, etc. that have nothing to do with terrorists.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
...at what the deeper roots of the current and ongoing security craze are ?
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
Please saviour, saviour, show us
Hear me, I'm graphically yours
Someone to claim us, someone to follow
Someone to shame us, some brave Apollo
Someone to fool us, someone like you
We want you Big Brother,
Big Brother
If they publish the list of flagged sites, we might actually find something worth reading. At this rate, the "approved" content on the 'net will be MN's coverage of Kardashian plastic surgery, and the Daily Mail fawning over gong distribution.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
- soon to be followed requests to report by child abuse, drug trade, piracy, and general critique of the EU and government.
We are slowly learning from the US laws.
I suspect that this is just more of the same sort of security circus show that has the TSA
Well, in awkward defense of this plan (I don't think it will work either) I must point out that this is probably several orders of magnitude cheaper than what those TSA actions cost you as a tax payer. I mean, we have right now on the local level a report-to-the-police then police-investigate system complete with repercussions if that system is abused. And that sometimes works well so why wouldn't a similar plan work for the web on a larger level and be way cheaper than TSA groping and cancer dosing at airports?
TSA making me take off my shoes at the airport
The difference between these two things is that the article makes it sounds like you can opt in to report pages for terrorism. Nobody would be making anyone do anything in this EU scenario. I don't see any threats of failure to report citations or whatever you would do to enforce this.
even as they load a hundred suitcases of largely unscrutinized baggage on the same plane.
That's not true, the screen every bag. I had a lot of olive oils and mustards (two of my favorite condiments) as Christmas presents that I flew back with from MSP to IAD and when I arrived and got my luggage there was a little note in my bag saying the contents had made them hand search it after it was screened.
It could also be another step in getting Europeans used to the idea of law enforcement dictating terms to ISP's and of "flagged" websites being blocked--almost all of which will of course end up being torrent sites, proxies, Wikileaks and other leak sites, etc. that have nothing to do with terrorists.
They pretty much said that in the article (except that would be a separate system left to nation by nation laws):
This could be combined with a ‘notice and take down’ system under which law enforcement agencies would assess flagged web pages and forward take down notices to ISPs if the content is believed to contravene national laws.
I don't think they're like the United States in that respect but I guess only time will tell. I think it'd be smart of the EU to stay out of petty things like copyright infringement as the cost and infrastructure would be far too high and there are bigger problems like terrorism, sex trafficking, etc to target.
My work here is dung.
Then I'll start flagging whitehouse.gov, fbi.gov, tsa.gov, mpaa.org, riaa.org, etc.
Honestly -- it's a great idea. This will be a "teachable moment" for the techno-illiterates in government. They should also be required to write up a report on what they will do to address the concerns of the citizens when a web site reaches a certain high-water mark. Nothing like writing up a report on how the government will address citizen concerns about how the UK MoD or the DE CDU are inciting terrorism.
Flagging the White House Web Site.
Well the salvation army are obviously paramilitary
Just like in 1914 we had a German spy mania. Also some busybody (a Jeremy Vine listener no doubt) will report the Asian family next door neighbor because they got a new wheelie bin from the council.
This will be the 21st century Cones Hotline
This makes no sense. I can understand a "request" by government officials to report "suspicious" behavior while driving down a highway (motorway?) or common street. I have to pass by things, places along the way. The internet is not like that. I don't consciously stop by web sites that may promote terrorism, I don't actively look for web sites that incite violence; just like I don't drive down dark alleys or bad sections of town on purpose. If I did want to go to sites like that, the last thing I'd do is report it. The web is my instant teleporter to where I want to go and the last place I want to visit is a web site that may state "blow up buildings for God". Were I even displayed a page like that (because of a typo) I would hope that the bloody billions we spend on monitoring bad guys would have already flagged said site.
The world economy is getting dismantled by greedy assholes, the environment is being systematically abused for energy consumption and what a government has to offer to its population for concern is "if you see a web site of stuff you don't like", report it.
I'd like to report these dim-bulb officials as terrorists against intelligence.
Life is a great ride, the vehicle doesn't matter
Which will work out splendidly, as first shown on SNL.
Seems pretty trivial to write a firefox plugin to add a "report terrorist" option to the right click menu. It's pretty much guaranteed to be simpler and more effective than whatever their committee came up with in their "draft manifesto".
This could be up and running before anyone even gets around to reading their proposal.
There are many former Stasi informers who are probably more than happy to apply their organizational and informant skills to this new challenge.
Lets say they manage to get people to report stuff they see. How are they going to deal with the influx of all the reported sites? Presumably the people reading terrorist sites support those views, so there's not going to be a lot reports of them. Meanwhile slashdot, facebook, etc are going to have tons of people reporting them. You can't just filter out those sites because there is so much user content that could potentially be from a terrorist.
... until you start thinking about it.
So how are you going to find the 1 report for bob.terrorshack.com among the 1500 reports of facebook comments that someone didn't like? There's just going to be so much noise that the analysis is going to be a massive waste of man hours. And it seems like the easier they make the reporting process, the more noise there will be. The whole thing sounds like a good idea
I propose that European Union pages that mention the accounts be flagged for investigation, as the accounts have not been signed off as accurate due to the level of fraud and corruption for 16 years in a row.. 16 years of fraud accounts
Maybe someone will eventually be arrested, charged, and convicted over these frauds and corruption. I won't hold my breath.
Take Nobody's Word For It.
And you don't know who is watching.. sounds a lot like nazi germany was .
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Snitch.
Just sayin'
"any web content they suspect incites terrorism"
From the eprspective of the US bullying their way : whitehouse.gov
Web of Trust already provides a very valuable service in flagging suspect and malicious websites. It's a mix of both automated systems and user input.
Very useful, very effective and very easy. The only thing it "lacks" is the ability to report something to the "authorities", but I don't consider that to be a fault.
[End Of Line]
First, you can expect us griefers to flag the government sites, police especially, of any nation we have a burr under our saddle about. Then the site of whatever corporation just sold us s defective product, tainted food, or just whatever we think *other people* should not be buying. McDonalds anyone?
Then move on to flag your competitors' sites, etc.
And while they're at it, why not flag your ex, their kids, etc. Jilted lovers will make good use of this feature.
Seriously? They think this stuff up? All in the name of what, copyright?
A pox on them all. Maybe the non-EU nations will resist this and ignore any such flagging.
And yes, I know this is about 'terrorism'. Abuse will abound. Pointless.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
It is not like it is not possible to warn the authorities about serious bad stuff on the internet at the moment.
Make the process too easy and you will only be swamped with false positives (people not having a clue, trying to settle scores, etc).
This will probably drown the real information, which they then also will not receive via other means anymore.
....Or any web content the particular pack of yahoos currently in power just happens to not agree with?
Regards;
hoplophobia
I had to look up this word. It means "fear of weapons" (I thought a Hoplon was a shield, not a general weapon). Somehow some some Americans think weapons are perfectly safe and normal, even in an environment where you don't need them for the dangerous wildlife. How sick must you be to come up with such a word?
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
I'm flagging 4chan and /b/ ... the best and the worst of the web.
What websites could you flag that would seriously be promoting terrorism that haven't already been shut down. I'm relatively certain that AlQaeda.com has already been shut down, along with DieYouInfidels.com and GoCompare.com. Or maybe the terrorists are learning, and have called their websites Americanpatriots.com and Welovecutelittlebunnies.com. I mean who's going to flag a website for terrorism if it's got cute bunnies on the cover page?
1) Build web crawler (man, nobody talks of them nowadays)
2) Crawler flags all visited sites
3) Publish crawler code so that others can also run it on their own sites
Result: the input channel gets flooded with a neverending stream of random false positives.
Flagging concentrated on a few main corporate sites won't do it since they can just remove them from the list, and then go after the first unknown remaining site. But distributed automatic notifications would make human flags dissapear inside the noise.
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
First it was the DMCA, then SOPA and PIPA. Now it looks like Europe is likewise adopting the model of taking down content based on claims of infringement/illegality rather than actual infringement or illegality. From TFA: "This could be combined with a ‘notice and take down’ system under which law enforcement agencies would assess flagged web pages and forward take down notices to ISPs if the content is believed to contravene national laws."
There's also a major flaw in this plan: Crowdsourcing is only as good as your crowd, which in this case is likely to consist mostly of idiots.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
From TFA:
"Law Enforcement Agencies of all countries should actively flag and encourage the use of flagging among end users as much as possible as a way of notification to the ISP that they are hosting content which might be illegal or unwanted."
Pressure the ISP to remove speech, and you don't have to bother with those annoying free speech questions.
Common carrier or catalyzing oligarchy -- binary options. We know which side the government is going to come down on, so it's going to be an uphill battle. Sooner we get started, the sooner it's over.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Where can I go and flag all articles about this sort of 1984-esque activity?
Check your premises.
Assuming they have a provision in the law about "it is a crime to terrorist-flag a site that you do not suspect of terrorism" - then I could imagine viruses that do the chaff-flagging for you. In fact, purposely installing such a virus would allow you to help thwart such a law while giving plausible deniability.
We had that in Germany, in the east block. There were people that can go to the police or directly to the Stasi and get suspicion people arrested, their home searched, etc. That leads to nice paranoia, so you can't trust your neighbor or your family anymore. It's some kind of creepy that we go down that road again.
For more information please read Ministry of State Security of the GDR
Between 1950 and 1989, the Stasi employed a total of 274,000 people [...] along with 173,081 unofficial informants inside GDR. In terms of the identity of inoffizielle Mitarbeiter (IMs) Stasi informants, by 1995, 174,000 had been identified, which approximated 2.5% of East Germany's population between the ages of 18 and 60.
What is wrong with the current politicians? They are suppose to be have knowledge in history, and they are suppose to abide morally and democracy.
We really need more punishment and accountability for politicians. I'm all for a three-trike system for politicians. After the last strike you cannot do any political work anymore and you lost all your pensions.
http://www.mueller-public.de - My site http://www.anr-institute.com/ - Advanced Natural Research Institute
Exactly why is this a good thing? So, if someone vehemently disagrees with content on a website that can just flag it as suspicious for law enforcement review? The language is too vague. Someone could be simply expressing an opinion, which in turn could be misunderstood or purposely misconstrued as terroristic in nature. This is definitely not a good thing at all.
You can read the full draft proposal of CleanIT project here: http://www.cleanitproject.eu/CLEAN%20IT%20DRAFT%20DOCUMENT%2002.doc Although the draft itself seems bad, this CleanIT is basically wishful thinking by some police organizations. It's far from becoming a law, or even a proposal for a law.
This is one step closer to have the population investigate itself, a required step for world domination. We'll be seeing alot of crowdsourced intelligencegathering in the feature, just to make the populus used to the idea. The quality of the reported material is not as important as the aspect of the action.
http://www.irs.gov/ makes me want to blow something up every time I see it.
Have gnu, will travel.
So from now on whenever a website gets disappeared, it will be because it was "the Will of the People that the blight be erased?"
Tyranny, take one steps forward.
Accountability, take two steps back.
The good thing is that it would be impossible to abuse this.
"Inciting terrorism"..
How about "inciting hatred against the state or a legitimate political party?" (inciting hatred against an 'illegitimate' political party is naturally so good that even the leading politicians of the legitimate ones will do it).
How about "inciting hatred against groups of people"?
How about "inciting nationalist sentiment"?
How about reporting sites that "portray the European Union with a negative and inaccurate bias", so that balancing "facts" can be legally required?
Sometimes I think there are too many politicians that really HAVE crazy, crazy Machavellian One-World-Order thoughts in their head.
“Law Enforcement Agencies of all countries should actively flag and encourage the use of flagging among end users as much as possible as a way of notification to the ISP that they are hosting content which might be illegal or unwanted.”
So Law Enforcement Agencies will have a list of content that is illegal, and a list of content that is legal but unwanted. They will encourage the population in general to report both. They obviously would not encourage that flagging of something if it is crystal clear that it never would be removed - hence logically we must conclude that the system somehow presupposes that ISPs would also remove "legal but unwanted" content.
'Soft power', or 'mailed fist in a velvet glove'.
The funny thing is, the biggest threat to Europe is now from a small number of politicians. Probably only a few hundred individuals.
The title is misleading. It is not the EU that is proposing that, but the members of a project that is currently funded by the EU:
http://www.cleanitproject.eu/abouttheproject.html.
That is not the same.