Calls For European ISPs To Filter Content Could Be Illegal

jfruh writes Last week, justice ministers from EU countries called for ISPs to censor or block certain content in the "public interest." But a legal analysis shows that such moves could actually violate EU privacy laws, since it would inevitably involve snooping on the content of Internet traffic to see what should be blocked.

Comments

I hope it works

[houghi]

I hope that they will not block said content. I understand the fear for certain content. However I think it is better to allow it as it will otherwise go underground.

Re:I hope it works

[Kkloe]

what I understand is that ISP's already "voluntary" block content, that content mostly involves sites with child pornography, that thing people can understand is blocked, but to begin to block hate messages content could lead to "voluntary" blocking of peoples opinion that a state/eu doesn’t like

Re:I hope it works

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, that's not true in the Netherlands (as far I know, anyway)..

Our ISPs were once forced to block access to the pirate bay and they "fought" back quite hard and eventually won the case and they unblocked it. This was a while ago and I'm not sure about the current state of affairs but so far, I've heard of nothing being blocked.. (of course... I may have just missed a few headlines or perhaps, any post concerned censorship may have been censored...)

Re:I hope it works

[skovnymfe]

They don't actually block content. If you use your ISP provided DNS service then lookup requests for certain domain names will be hijacked, and redirect to a "This page done bad" website.

As the article states, actually blocking content requires snooping on content and that's not just expensive, it's legality is questionable. As such, if you want to torrent and whatnot, you are still free to switch to a public, unfiltered DNS service á la Google or OpenDNS.

Re:I hope it works

[Kkloe]

Telenor press release about that matter: http://www.telenor.com/media/p...

Re:I hope it works

[Sir_Substance]

Diverting DNS is also snooping. If you're diverting the traffic to a third party server, then the third party server can see when people are attempting to access blocked content.

Re:I hope it works

[TheRaven64]

Depends. It's only snooping if they do it for recursive DNS lookups or DNS cache queries to third parties. If you set your DNS to 8.8.8.8 (Google's public DNS server) or OpenDNS or similar, then modifying this requires inspecting (and hijacking) traffic intended for a third party. Most of the time, however, users will have their DNS config set to whatever DHCP provides, which means that queries will go to an ISP's server. This doesn't require any interception or inspection of traffic, it just requires sending responses that don't match. If more places would roll out DNSSEC then this would be much easier to spot.

Re:I hope it works

[houghi]

I run my own DNS. I think it is strange that there is no easy DNS server available for Windows. And by basic I mean Install and forget (perhaps point your DNS to 127.0.0.1). So no additional settings. Just a very basic caching server for a single user.

I know I would love to have something much simpler then what is available now under Linux.

OTOH for me running a DNS server makes it easy to use domain filtering to filter out advertising domains (and facebook)

Re:I hope it works

[Cley Faye]

I hope too. Even with the best intention in the world, doing this would only have negative consequences (and not the expected one).

• Filtered content would still exist and grow happily with at most the small annoyance of hiding it slightly. Or simpler yet use a vpn that even a grandma could set up nowadays and proxy to an unfiltered ISP.
• People responsible for "drawing the line" of what is forbidden will go haywire. Any situation where the lines are fuzzy need dedicated examination and reaction, not a handful of guys saying "hey, block me this just 'cause".

But I'll admit I might be a bit optimistic trying to use logic and basic thinking about what will be a political discussion.

Re:I hope it works

[AmiMoJo]

It started with child pornography, although in the UK the system used (Cleanfeed) has no oversight or accountability and occasionally blocks legitimate sites such as Wikipedia. It isn't DNS based, it actually intercepts HTTP requests. Of course, it is very easy to bypass.

The system is now being abused on a massive scale. In the UK for example, the BPI (music industry body) has managed to get some ISPs to start blocking sites it does not like, mainly torrent sites. Again, the blocks are easy to bypass, but the point is that once the technology is in place they were able to argue that since blocking child porn is possible the ISPs are a) able to block The Pirate Bay and b) have a responsibility to do so.

Re:I hope it works

[AmiMoJo]

The system used in the UK, Cleanfeed, does not use DNS blocking. It intercepts HTTP requests. The justification is that it is automated and (the claim) does not log, so is not interception. They may have a point, legally speaking, as things like caching proxies are legal and likely immune from both claims of interception and copyright infringement.

Re:I hope it works

[Imrik]

More likely, a voluntary blocking of opinions that the ISP doesn't like.

Re:I hope it works

[TheRaven64]

It's quite difficult to argue that something that is a transparent cache and will always provide the requested data, just sometimes from a local copy, is equivalent to something that either requests or does not request the remote data and instead substitutes something else based on some external policy are equivalent.

Re:I hope it works

[TheRaven64]

I run my own DNS. I think it is strange that there is no easy DNS server available for Windows. And by basic I mean Install and forget (perhaps point your DNS to 127.0.0.1). So no additional settings. Just a very basic caching server for a single user.

Doesn't Windows come with one of these built in? I might be remembering from the Server version, as it's quite a few years since I last ran Windows, but in Windows 2000 it was something you could enable in the services management interface.

Re:I hope it works

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows Server does. Windows 7/8? Not so much.

Re:I hope it works

[MrL0G1C]

could lead to "voluntary" blocking of peoples opinion that a state/eu doesnâ(TM)t like

It's already happening I tried to visit http://www.gilad.co.uk/ on my mobile and was surprised that it is blocked by default by O2, to view this page I was supposed to prove to the provider that I was 18 in order to get this site of a musician and political commentator unblocked. Gilad's crime - being Jewish and not supporting Israel.

We are more than half way down the slippery slope.

Re:I hope it works

[monkeyzoo]

Hmmm. Turns out it is difficult to censor free speech *legally* in countries that have laws establishing freedom of speech, press, privacy, etc.
Imagine that!
Those pesky liberties!!!

Re:I hope it works

[davydagger]

I think I've since come to the conclusion that "child porn", and "children watching porn", is political doublespeak for "opinions I don't like", and "ability to hunt down my otherwise law abiding enemies".

the use of the concept of "child porn", is that its so morally objectable, you can rely on the entire breadth of the political spectrum to instantly fork over their rights, to avoid any association with child porn. I used to agree with this when I was younger, but as I got older, I somewhat realized what was going on. All speak is political

Re:I hope it works

[AmiMoJo]

Perhaps true, but such transparent filtering proxies have also been in use for a long time. Around 1998 my university had one for ad filtering - Privoxy was it? In any case, the fact that there is substitution doesn't seem to affect the arguments being made here, it's the interception that is in question.

Re:I hope it works

[Opportunist]

I'd rather side with pedos than with censors. Simply out of opportunistic self interest, there is exactly zero chance that pedos will ever target me.

I'm too old for that shit.

Re:I hope it works

[CanadianMacFan]

Oh come on, it's got lad in the domain name. It's obviously a site for child porn!

Legal?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when have EU corrupts (or any politician in power) given a rat's ass about legal?

Our EU commission boss is a corrupt tax haven patron. Our national leaders are busy trying to make forget people what's in for them because they can't do anything about greedy capitalism eating into everything. And "legal"?

Legal -- illegal -- scheissegal (as the extreme left used to say, at another century, over here in Germany).

Re: Legal?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm curious. Does it hurt when your knee jerks like that?

Re: Legal?

[TheRaven64]

If you think moving to China gets you away from greedy capitalism, then I can only imagine that the last time you saw any news from China was some time around 1960.

Re:Legal?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Greedy capitalism" is what causes countries with capitalist systems to be so much wealthier than countries with other systems.

Re: Legal?

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem for people who don't like capitalism is that they are running out of countries to move to. Almost every country that tried something else for an extended period of time failed in the end and (re)turned to a capitalist economy.

Re:Legal?

[Opportunist]

Illegal is ... getting caught and not being able to buy a get-out-of-jail card.

Re: Legal?

[Opportunist]

China? Of all countries on the planet you want someone to move to CHINA if he wants to get away from capitalism? China is the current poster child of unfettered capitalism. Crony capitalism, sure, but what other kind is there?

Re: Legal?

[Anonymous Coward]

Here in Amurica we support the freedoms of the Chinese, Iranians, Koreans, and Cubans from having their commie guberment interfere with their Internet. Huh? What you mean Europe? Hey mah, that ain't where they were dem turbans? What? What you mean? Oh that ain't terrorism its democracy. Oh that's Ok then. God bless Amurica.

Good for a chuckle, anyway.

[Anonymous Coward]

If only this turns out to be the actual case. A beautiful reversed Catch-22 on the bureaucrats.

Of course, it's all hypothetical for now. Given the proclivity of governments and NGOs to ignore inconvenient laws when it suits them, I give it less than one in five odds of actually preventing the censorship the governments crave.

Is that cynical? You bet. History breeds cynicism in the critical eye.

Re:Good for a chuckle, anyway.

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

Of course, the politicians and security beaurocrats are the ones defining which content is "certain" content. But what's really laughable is that actions like this _might_ be precluded by privacy rights, rather than freedom-of speech rights. Sure, I know it's Europe, so muzzling some ideas is deemed OK, theorecically to prevent another Nazi uprising (or whatever).

Bureaucrats defining "public interest"

[Severus Snape]

Here is a crazy idea, don't block any content and let the public decide as individuals what content they want to look at, and what content they don't. That would actually be the definition of the phrase itself so lets not get our hopes up.

Re:Bureaucrats defining "public interest"

[Anonymous Coward]

Such thoughts will bring only trouble, citizen. Here, drink your nice Kool-Aide. Big Brother loves you.

Re:Bureaucrats defining "public interest"

[Anonymous Coward]

Now that's crazy talk!

Freedom of speech should be paramount

[Anonymous Coward]

It drive me nuts that the European Convention on Human Rights makes censorship so easy. Article 10 starts off so well:

Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.

But it then proceed to open the door to all sort of restrictions:

The exercise of these freedoms... may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.

Man, you can drive a truck through that. "for the protection of morals" - whose morality? Who defines it? "for the protection of the reputation or rights of others" - what the hell does that mean?

We need to resist this creeping censorship - stomp on it whenever some idiotic politician brings it up.

Re:Freedom of speech should be paramount

[Anonymous Coward]

The exercise of these freedoms... may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.

In these cases the authorities should be forced to prove the necessity of these measures especially if claiming the 'protection of morals' reason.

Re:Freedom of speech should be paramount

[Anonymous Coward]

Do not forget that the ECHR and indeed the EC(/EEC/EU) were merely ways of bringing Germany into the fold to provide a barrier against the Soviets. They were nothing to do with freedom and everything to do with the appearance of freedom with the purpose of ensuring post-war Western economic recovery. To be clear: economic health is not synonymous with freedom - see China. This meant a lot of treaties written which appeared to herald an enlightened age ("'cos we're not like them backward Russkis"), but with so many gotchas, caveats and exceptions that everyone could effectively carry on as before.

The US Constitution is a much better document than the ECHR and the EU's TEU and TFEU. The latter are wishy-washy in the style of constitution of the USSR, which could be interpreted in any damn way any official pleased. Part of the problem is the civil law system of European countries, which allows this constant reinterpretation to suit the times such that no sufficiently complex law really has much meaning, and is nothing like as just as the common law jury system that spread from the British Isles.

Re:Freedom of speech should be paramount

[TheRaven64]

Every single article in the ECHR looks like that. They're all basically of the form 'Governments may not do X, unless they really want to'.

Re:Freedom of speech should be paramount

[AmiMoJo]

It's an attempt to pre-empt the decades, centuries of arguments over the US constitution's limits. For example, you have free speech, but documents can be classified and made illegal to reprint or to read out in public. You can't legally name protected witnesses or victims of certain crimes if due legal process says so. There are a whole number of restrictions that had to be decided by the Supreme Court.

I don't like the exceptions either, although even with them the benefits have been huge. It's also worth noting that the European Court of Human Rights, which has ultimate say over these matters, tends to be very strict when it comes allowing exceptions for things like national security or protection of morals. It's not quite the gaping hole it appears to be, but it is still unfortunate.

Re:Freedom of speech should be paramount

[LainTouko]

It's really more "the courts get to decide when government may do X", modulo cases needing to get to court and so forth.

Re:Freedom of speech should be paramount

[LainTouko]

"Who defines it?" - the courts define it, whenever a case is put before them.

Re:Freedom of speech should be paramount

[Kjella]

in the interests of national security

Distribution of classified information?

territorial integrity or public safety

Not sure what the former is, shouting "fire" in a crowded theater?

for the prevention of disorder or crime

Threats? Fraud? False advertising?

for the protection of health or morals

Obscenity? Showing porn to minors?

for the protection of the reputation or rights of others

Libel and slander? Copyright?

for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence

Doctor-patient privilege, attorney-client privilege?

maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary

Judges can't bias the jury? I don't know.

Seems to me most these loopholes are alive and well in the US too, despite the constitution not having any exceptions whatsoever. Yes, it's really hard to come up with a constitution that properly captures all the small details that "speech" is not simply "opinion".

Next headline...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Calls for European laws to be changed"

"Laws disappear into oblivion err, what laws?" ... need I go on?

captcha: monitors...

Who gives a shit

[Anonymous Coward]

Recording all phone metadata is illegal too, but they still did it, out in the open. And let's not pretend that they stopped or that they restricted it to metadata. Modifying data in transit is illegal as well, but there is hardly a mobile network provider that doesn't "optimize" pages as they pass through their systems. A unique identifier added to every request? Come on, they're just trying to help you get better ads. The home network providers can't be far behind. The law is for the meek and small.

VOIP?

[rtb61]

Voice over internet protocol, basically private phone calls via the internet. So filtering content, censoring person to person phone calls and deleting speech the corporations disagree with. Exactly where does the limit on internet censorship reach, apparently right in your home. Hey, why stop at deleting people's speech, why not replace the deleted speech with approved speech, the US government already does it with seized web sites. Why stop there, why replace person to person speech upon a individual basis, computers can do it quite readily.

Re:VOIP?

[copsi]

Doesn't the US government replace seized website with a notification that the site/domain has been taken down by agency X? Or are there examples where they have actually changed the contents of the site instead of taking it down?

Re:VOIP?

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

Careful citizen, you're skirting dangerously close to thougtcrime.

Our superiors

[Anonymous Coward]

"He was referring to plans by EU justice ministers to work closely with ISPs in order to quickly remove online material that “aims to incite hatred and terror” in the wake of shootings at the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris."

Word don't incite hatred, its the truths underlying them that incite hatred. Suppressing free speech just escalates arguments made of words, into acts and deeds. Lies and falsehoods are easy to counter with truth and evidence, and its not for them to decide what is 'right' and what is 'wrong'. What can be read and what ideas cannot be read.

Terror is not caused by words but by deeds, and the deeds are already illegal.

The idea that *they* can decide what information *we* can read, in order to protect *us* from being influenced by those words in ways *they* define as 'incitement of hatred', is to assume that *they* and *we* are different species. Not equals, they are somehow superior intellect and we are inferior intellect. They decide for us, what our intellect can cope with.

This is a basic attack on equality more than privacy.

Basically, shut the fuck up EU, and stop using every excuse to take away freedoms. We're sick of it.

Re:Our superiors

[Bengie]

Lies and falsehoods are easy to counter

You make a huge assumption that most people are rational, they are not.

Your own petards

[3.5 stripes]

Heisted by them you have been..

Re:Your own petards

[3.5 stripes]

Hoisted... nooooooo

What legality would do for the Fascists?

[Anonymous Coward]

Then 'experts' can tell you that this ain't legal that ain't legal but to the fascists in Brussels all they want is to grab power

That is what they want

Re:What legality would do for the Fascists?

[davester666]

It's only illegal if a SWAT team shows up at your house, blows your front door up, hits your child with a tear gas cannister, and shoots you for resisting arrest. This is how you can be sure what you are doing is illegal.

Acrylic

[Pussers]

Acrylic DNS works well for me

http://mayakron.altervista.org...

Our work DNS is sometimes very laggy. Using Acrylic even with the default configuration fixes that instantly.

IPs and Domains

[Anonymous Coward]

blocking IP's and domains is ok?

No problem

[manu0601]

EU has no problem violating its own fundamentals. It praises democracy, bit ignored the results of referendums on EU constitution held in France and Netherlands in 2005: The constitution treaty was re-engineered as Lisbon treaty, which is almost equivalent according to lead writer Giscard d'Estaing.