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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."
Oooh secret courts! Censorship! Illegally-obtained evidence!
So much for "never again". We have become our enemy.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
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".
Irony. You'd think that a country home to so many Jews would remember how well that worked in Germany.
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.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
block or restrict access to specific websites involved either in gambling, child pornography or copyright infringement.
It used to be a joke when "copyright infringement" was put in the same category as serious offences, see this wonderful video. Are these politicians out of their mind, or are these people bought and paid for as the video suggests?
When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.
>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.
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
Note that the proposed law gives the power to censor to the Israeli justice minister. Yaakov Neeman, the current justice minister, is kind of weird. News articles:
There's a sizable ultra-orthodox faction in Israel which wants a political system where rabbis run things. Neeman is from that faction. Israel already has rabbinical courts, but they're currently restricted to ruling on religious issues and divorces. Neeman has said he wants to expand the authority of rabbinical courts, which in Israel are dominated by ultra-othodox rabbis.
Ultra-orthodox groups are very anti-Internet. This goes way beyond censoring pornography. There are special censored ISPs that only allow a list of 400 approved sites, most of which are religious.
So that's where this may be going, or at least where one faction would like to go. (Israel politics is currently deadlocked worse than US politics. There are many parties, none with a majority, and shifting coalitions. Different factions control different ministries as part of the deals made to put coalitions together. Just because the Justice Minister wants something doesn't mean the Government does.)
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.
This is bullshit. Israel defines itself as a Jewish state. It demands that other people recognize it as such.
The US specifically defines itself NOT as a Christian state.
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beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his mind he dreams himself your master