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EU "Clean IT" Project Considers Terrorist Content Database
schliz writes "Internet users could contribute to an official blacklist of suspected terrorist content under a budding 'Clean IT' project, backed by the European Commission. Participating governments are putting together 13 proposals in a text that commits web hosts, search engines and ISPs to helping to weed out content that incites acts of terror. From the article: 'Among those 13 courses of action is a proposal for a system that will allow users to "flag" content they believe to be illegal when surfing the web. These alarms would be sent for review to the service provider and in turn, a government agency.'"
All that is needed is malware that randomly flags sites. The amount of submissions would create so much noise the system would be unable to serve its purpose. Game over.
Users... the only thing keeping 1st level support from being the bottom feeders.
It's broken even without needing someone to write malware that abuses it.
Have you interacted with some of the people on the Internet? They're fucking insane already.
Giving them an opportunity to flag anything they disagree with for "governmental review" would result in them flagging just about everything.
If one, by way of a thought experiment, imagines that there existed a corrupt, secular, society ruled by satanic decadence, impious appetite, and foreign policy injustices, could it theoretically be argued that jihad would constitute a duty under certain historically extant strains of abrahamic divine command theories of ethics?
Flag or no flag, team EU?
In all seriousness, this seems like a dreadful idea both on just about every level.
Cultural? I'm trying to think of ways to make more of a mockery of the sort of Enlightenment ideals that Europe managed to produce at one time. I'm having a hard time thinking of one. Yeah, why not build a massive system of sniveling, anonymous censors in order to combat a 'threat' that kills fewer people than seasonal hot/cold snaps by at least an order of magnitude. Good plan there.
Practical? Well, let's see here: As with the relentless 'zOMG Craigslist prostitution!!!' moral panics, what better place for those who wish you harm than shouting about it on the internet? Highly visible, way less anonymous than it feels unless you really do it properly, and comparatively easy to see which fish are biting. You want to drive them away from the venues where your pet geeks can monitor at wire speed and into more clandestine locations where you need to groom human intelligence assets with convincing beards and accents? Dumbass.
Technical? Bots will probably be programmatically flagging things in order to downrank them more or less as enthusiastically as keyword comment spam is currently deployed to uprank things. Never mind the less relentless; but more dangerous and focused, potential for assorted political/commercial/psycho ex/psycho roommate drama.
Legal? Say hello to endless wrangling about what is and isn't 'incitement', most likely with clumsy overreactions against the harmless, clueless, and impolitic, along with free traffic in assorted slang, inuendo, and more or less subtle dog-whistle stuff.
This plan has holes that(where one to be so inclined) a truck bomb could be driven through...
From TFA:
“So why not try and create a database where internet companies can check it to see if it's known illegal material? There are many known YouTube videos, for example, with content like be-headings. You don’t need to watch them to know if they are illegal or not.”
So what is the answer? Is a beheading video illegal? Why? What is the law that makes a beheading video illegal? What happens if it's legal in one country, but not in another? Does this magic content filter know where a user is watching content? Is it illegal if it's in a depiction of a beheading from a movie? How about if I stage a fake beheading of my own in my back yard, but I claim it's real, is that illegal? Likewise, what if I post a beheading and claim it's fake.... but it's so well done, no one knows if it's fake or not. Is that illegal?
(I'm ignoring the obvious questions like, what happens if my movie promo with a fake beheading gets flagged as illegal (even if it's not), and now suddenly it's banned from the internet and I can no longer show my promo)
The point isn't to prevent terrorists. Governments create terrorists.
The point is to use terrorism as an excuse for censorship, in the same way terrorism is used as an excuse for resource wars and political oppression.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Of course they have. They found Facebook like buttons, Google +1 buttons, they like it and want in on the deal.
"Carefull there, I will +Terror your post. See you at Gitmo loser."
And that's why the girls don't like you.
Usually when illegal material is found on a server hosted by an Internet company and is removed,
If content can be illegal and be removed, the system is already broken.