Slashdot Mirror
Several European Countries Lay Groundwork For Heavier Internet Censorhip
Gigaom reports that more internet censorship may be on the way, as several European countries' governments do a unity rally of their own, in the wake of the last week's terror attacks in France:
The interior ministers of France, Germany, Latvia, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden and the U.K. said in a statement (PDF) that, while the internet must remain “in scrupulous observance of fundamental freedoms, a forum for free expression, in full respect of the law,” ISPs need to help “create the conditions of a swift reporting of material that aims to incite hatred and terror and the condition of its removing, where appropriate/possible.” ... It seems, to say the least, an awkward reaction to what was in part a free-speech-related attack — the left-wing Charlie Hebdo has itself frequently been accused of hate speech for its portrayal of Muslims and others. On that front, a German newspaper that reprinted blasphemous Charlie Hebdo cartoons of Mohammed in the wake of the attack was firebombed in the early hours of Sunday morning, with no injuries. Others that did the same remain under police guard.
The winners in this case is the ruling class.
This has nothing to do with fighting terrorism, the laws weren't suddenly written last week, they have been planned a long time.
Terrorism is just the scapegoat for taking more control.
I do however admire the reasoning. "Since terrorists try to censor you with violence we are going to protect you by preemptively censor you with the threat of violence."
That is pretty brilliant.
And of course, even where legislation does target "high-risk groups", it often descends into harassment of your minority demographic du jour. Right now, that tends to mean black people and Muslims. When I was child, here in the UK, Irish people in a certain age-band were targeted by police as potential terrorists. A lot of people are happy as long as they're the us that's being protected at the cost of some other "them".
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
Makes me glad the U.S. still has the right to free speech even though we are far down the road to replacing that with the right not to be offended.
Yeah some terrorists are probably supersmart and security concious and would cover their tracks in any event. But most terrorists are idiots - petty criminals and the dregs of society who've fallen under the spell of the movement. These people should be rich pickings if they are allowed to do what they like and given enough rope to hang themselves.
... by censorship!
The governments will be busy chasing Facebook and Twitter "jihadists" while the ones with kalashnikovs will be killing people in the streets. *facepalm*
The hypocrisy of the politicians that "were Charlies" this weekend in Paris and at the same time are calling for more Internet censorship really is staggering.
It's a good thing that not all the world is that crazy. The USA is solidly NOT Charlie. Nobody of any importance showed up at the "world leaders link arms" show of force, and this was no accident. It is consistent with US policy.
Was this really an attack on free speech, or the predictable result of pointless provocation? Defending freedom of expression in the face of oppression is one thing; insisting on the right to be obnoxious and offensive just because you can is infantile. Baiting extremists isn't bravely defiant when your manner of doing so is more significant in offending millions of moderate people as well. And within a climate where violent response however illegitimate is a real risk, taking a goading stand on a principle virtually no one contests is worse than pointless: its pointlessly all about you. USA condemns those heinous killings, but IS NOT CHARLIE.
"The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam."
-- President Obama, addressing the United Nations General Assembly
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Of course, we have to take away freedom of speech in order to protect freedom of speech, don't you get it? Duh....
I know this is not a popular thing to say, and judging on my previous success in this area, I will get modded down to around absolute zero, no matter whether what I have to say actually makes sense, but ...
As I have said many times in the past - there is no such thing as perfect freedom. If one party - say, the state or society - doesn't put some limitations in place, then other parties - like the loudest bullies, for example - will do it by intimidation. This is true for freedom of speech as well, as we can see now in several forms: on one hand, the extremists try to oppress the freedom to criticise their view of the world, and on the other hand, the uproar against them tries in their own way to oppress dissent. In my view, there has to be some form of compromise that strikes a balance between the legitimate needs for all, not just a few, groups in sociaty to be able to express their views, and the need to protect other, just as legitimate interests that contribute to the stability and growht of society.
I don't have the solution to this problem, and I don't think you have it either. But I don't think it is beyond the capabilities of rational, thinking humans to find the solution.
No, freedom of speech is the freedom to offend (or rather, "criticize") your government.
I think you're confusing laws like the 1st Amendment to the USA Constitution, or article 10 or the European convention on human rights with the wider, concept of freedom of speech as an ideal. Even the 1st Amendment goes further than you suggest, but I think you've hit on the original motivation behind it.
As a non-USAian it took me a while to work out that the spirit of the US Bill of Rights is to protect local government, corporations and organised religions against (specifically) the federal government, and that any benefit for individuals implicit in the letter of the law is a nice bonus.
The European convention of human rights, by contrast, seems to be mainly about enumerating all the exceptions to freedom of speech, so that the government can micro-manage your freedoms for you. Sounds cynical, but freedom is a paradox, and if you want to enshrine all human rights in law, that's the tarpit you end up in.
I think it is true, though, that both of these examples only prohibit suppression of free speech by government - they don't specifically oblige that government to prevent others from restricting your free speech (but then that really is a can of worms, and a lot of the people who pushed for Amendment 1 or Article 10 to protect their right to express their views really don't want to eat their own dogfood).
However, you should never rely on the law of the land as the last word on right and wrong, and general freedom of speech (insofar as it can be protected without descending into paradox) is a good thing.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
"but then that really is a can of worms, and a lot of the people who pushed for Amendment 1 or Article 10 to protect their right to express their views really don't want to eat their own dogfood"
This shows a complete ignorance of historic context and is a rather unfair portrayal. The European Convention on Human Rights was drafted in the years that followed World War II and the lessons learnt from that. It was put together explicitly to try to prevent a repeat of things like the persecution of the Jews.
There was an explicit recognition at the time that much of what happened in Nazi Germany happened because the Jews had no external recourse against their own fascist government. The government's word was supreme and there was no higher international power they could appeal to in the face of wrongdoing by government. There was a belief that if you could give the people a last resort against government, a higher international order that held oppressive governments to account, that you could prevent a repeat of Nazi Germany's concentration camps.
Just because that has been perverted somewhat now and attempts at further perversion are growing doesn't mean those in charge have always succumbed to modern authoritarianism. Post-war was a period of relative political enlightenment in the West, but unfortunately due to the weight of the cold war, it was far too short lived. The ideas and intentions of leaders at the time were genuinely quite noble - look at the reasons behind the creation of the European Court of Human Rights too for example, it was all part of the same noble goal - to attempt to give the oppressed by government a voice against government.
It wasn't a complete failure, the European Court of Human Rights still does a great job in many cases of upholding the rights of citizens against overbearing government and corporations using the convention as it's guiding principles. It's imperfect but we can thank it for putting things like Phorm in the UK to death for example calling it out as the blatant widespread invasion of privacy that it was after the government refused to deal with it and instead opted to allow it.
People often cherry pick cases where it protects the bad as well as the good, but it has to, because once you start differentiating between people on fundamental rights it's not long before everyone falls into some exception category rendering the whole thing useless. But it was a good idea, pushed through with good intentions, by people who saw genuine horrors that even they knew must never be repeated. It's for that reason that we should not take it for granted, or belittle it, or claim it as a trap by the elite - on the contrary we should be pushing to keep upholding it and fighting to reclaim it as a charter for everyone, all the time, not just as something that governments can pick up and put down as and when it suits.