Israeli Bill Would Allow Secret Blacklists For Websites

jonklinger writes with the lead from his report on a move to hamper internet freedom in Israel: "Israel is to attempt, again, to pass a bill that authorizes police officers to issue warrants to Internet service providers to block or restrict access to specific websites involved either in gambling, child pornography or copyright infringement. The bill itself proposes that such administrative procedures shall be clandestine and that court decisions shall be made ex-parte, where some of the court's ruling will not be even dislosed to the owner of the website, and the court may hear and use inadmissible evidence."

Comments

Slopes were made for slippin'

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Oooh secret courts! Censorship! Illegally-obtained evidence!

So much for "never again". We have become our enemy.

Re:Slopes were made for slippin'

[flayzernax]

I like how all of these current politicaly hip ideas " gambling, child pornography or copyright infringement" to regulate are all being lumped into the same bill.

I hate to say this but they are all nothing alike, and the reasons for blocking each individualy differ quite a bit. To make it secret is even worse. Why don't you do the internet a service and educate people about these issues directly.

Should some things be blocked, taken down, raided, removed from the group think, yep, definately child porn, but lets not erode everything else to do it. It can be done responsably.

I suppose you will take down WALL STREET's webs since their all about gambling. Or the myriad content producers who violate their own rules. (disney recently in the news asking google to filter its own results out of the web)

Re:This is how it should be...

[CosmicMuse]

While there's potentially merit in your argument, I think most people worldwide would agree that "government censorship through secret court proceedings using illegal evidence" is not a beneficial protocol for... well, any country. This proposal isn't a slippery slope, it's a canyon drop-off, and at the bottom is "government-approved communication" and "arrests without trial for dissenting speech".

Re:This is how it should be...

[RabidReindeer]

Irony. You'd think that a country home to so many Jews would remember how well that worked in Germany.

Re:This is how it should be...

[interval1066]

While there's potentially merit in your argument...

No, there's no merit to censorship. Its all about control and who rules. End of discussion.

Re:This is how it should be...

[Blue Stone]

>Each nation should be able to legislate and govern internet access in the way it sees fit; and best suite for its citizen's good.

They way you phrased this, someone could interpret you as saying that all governments act in the best interests of the people they govern.

That can't be what you meant, though, because I know nobody's *that* naive in this day and age.

Re:hitler would be proud

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't recall Israel saying they wanted to kill all Palestinians. The converse however is not true.

There certainly are extreme factions within the Palestinian community who want to kill all Israelis, just like there are extremists in Israel which want to kill all Palestinians. Wasn't it Rabbi Meir Kahane who called Arabs a "cancer" that had to be cut out of the flesh of Israel? How do his utterances differ from those of the most hateful of the Hamas extremists? The man advocated the abolishment of democracy in Israel in the event that Israeli Arabs became more numerous than Jews to secure the dominance of the Jews because otherwise, by the rules of democracy, the Jews would get outvoted. To me that sounds like a pretty close description of the apartheid state in S-Africa. There are ignorant fanatics on both sides, your attempts to try to convince us that the viewpoints of the most extreme of the Palestinian fanatics are the views of all Palestinians everywhere just serves to highlight how intolerant and ignorant you are yourself.