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

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: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)

This used to be a joke...

[CanEHdian]

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?

There's a theocratic aspect to this

[Animats]

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:

• "A glimpse at the life of Israel's controversial justice minister" (Haaretz)
• "Yaakov Neeman, Israeli Justice Minister, Says Jewish Law Must Become Binding " ""Step by step we will bestow religious law upon the citizens of Israel and transform religious law into the binding law of the state,"
• Israel's justice minister advises rightists on how to seek pardons for Jewish terrorists (Haaretz)

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.)