Slashdot Mirror
UK Risks Over-Blocking Content Online, Warns Human Rights Watchdog (arstechnica.co.uk)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The UK is at serious risk of over-blocking web content, the Council of Europe has warned in a scathing report. "Governments have an obligation to combat the promotion of terrorism, child abuse material, hate speech and other illegal content online. However, I am concerned that some states are not clearly defining what constitutes illegal content. Decisions are often delegated to authorities who are given a wide margin for interpreting content, potentially to the detriment of freedom of expression," said CoE secretary general, Thorbjorn Jagland. The 32-page report also concluded that some British practices may be in breach of the case law of the European Court of Human Rights, and that the current framework seems more concerned with protecting ISPs from liability, than the general public's freedom of expression. The study singled out the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) whose job it is to police online child abuse material. The IWF has existed in some form since 1996, but is not a government body or law enforcement agency, but instead, a registered charity, funded by the European Union and the wider online industry, including big players such as Google and Microsoft. Although the report noted that "the IWF has taken a number of steps to better ensure that its operations are transparent and proportionate, in the absence of legal safeguards against over-blocking, the threshold for the kind of material which may be subjected to removal is therefore much lower than that which might otherwise be set out in law."
Any blocking is over blocking.
Governments know they can't ever hope to effectively block all of those things. They also know they can very effectively use them as an excuse to block things that are politically inconvenient.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
I live in the UK. My ISP blocks the pirate bay and other similar pirate sites. No big deal, I just use Tor to get around the blockade.
"Governments have an obligation to combat the promotion of terrorism, child abuse material, hate speech and other illegal content online. However..."
No they don't. This is a classic fake "opponent" trick, who "opposes" while actually setting the baseline of an argument. In this case setting a bunch of things Govenments are OBLIGATED to censor. And that baseline is so broad they didn't even enumerate it: "other illegal content".
They HAVE an obligation to permit free speech. Everything below that is a BAD thing.
I'd rather they have overblocking than underblocking, and have nasty stuff like child porn being shared and accessed...
Nope, you can't be more wrong !!
When China blocks their internet it is known as Censorship but when it is England, or France, or any of the Western so-called 'democracies' the Net-blockage is called 'protection'
but we saw clear signs back in 2013, as reported here: http://bsdly.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-uk-porn-filter-blocks-kids-access.html (also slashdotted at the time, I think. Running a blacklist requires quite some care, and even transparency. Unfortunately at least the transparency part is sometimes sadly lacking. And yes, in other columns I have talked at length about these concerns (just follow the link, then browse).
Seriously, block cloudflare. Nearly all the reachable illegal content is behind it, so block Cloudflare and you block access to pretty much all of it.
In case you're wondering why so many people don't support outlawing hate speech, this is one of countless examples. Not a damn thing done to the perp because he is in the "right group." And countless people will come out of the woodwork to declare him a "marginalized person of color" or some shit that excuses why he gets to beat up a random person at another party's rally and brag on Twitter and not even get his account banned, let alone prosecuted.
That's not a bug, it's a feature. Which is why "other illegal content" is in the banned list. In other countries that includes dancing in public, criticism of the monarchy, defilement of religious figures, advocating communism and adult pornography.
Decisions are often delegated to authorities who are given a wide margin for interpreting content ...
Welcome to delegated laws; where trial by jury, proof of guilt, and assumption of innocence don't exist. The bigger government gets, the more these are used to 'protect' the people. It's an attempt to make government relevant, flexible and responsive but often devolves into nit-picking minor infractions of the law. Worse, delegated law often, itself contains delegated law. The best and most common example is "if it's a crime in that country, it's a crime in this country". The USA, a country with a state department famous for ignoring the laws of other countries, contains departments using this catch-all in their delegated laws.
Now we know why.
The UK didn't warn anyone!
Mission: To provide products that consume time and energy as entertainingly as permitted by the laws of thermodynamics.
I can certainly confirm this. I activated sky broadband shield, in the hope of blocking porn (kids using internet). A few weeks later I followed a link from slashdot to some "climate change is bunk" website, only to have it blocked as "hate speech". Thanks big brother.
Oh, you mean telling the TRUTH!
You mean telling the truth about Jews, and their usury, creating money out of thin air (www.positivemoney.org), creating a fictional 'Holocaust' story so that nobody can question anything they do (www.codoh.com), and enacting laws to take away free speech from their 'cattle' (goyim) thus preventing anybody from NAMING THE JEW (http://balder.org/judea/Hate-Speech-Laws-Immigration-Jewish-Influence-Britain.php).
...the children! Will nobody think of the CHILDREN!!! And what about terrorism, porn, and drugs?!!
Seriously, someone needs to drive a stake through the heart of Britain's purse-lipped mother-in-law attitudes like those espoused ad nauseum in the Daily Mail.
There are an awful lot of amateur images out there of girls that very likely could be under 18, which is technically child porn although not of the elementary school age child porn variety.
I don't know how you would block for it, because the age is entirely ambiguous.
This is the sort of thing that Europe does right. The IWF's reaction is interesting. There is the first, knee-jerk "Nonsense! Britain has the finest tradition of free speech in the world!" speech. This is followed by a gradual retraction, and policy change. Nothing dramatic, but enough to do the job.
Some say the UK should get out of Europe for the sake of the economy. There are people who could make savings if we did not have Europe's about laws, anti-pollution regulations, employment law, human rights regulation, or green policies. Their businesses and investors would be better for it, locally and in the short term; and the rest of the population can go hang. These people already have too much influence over our lives though their money, and they always want more. It's not about immigrants filling up our A&E departments, taking our jobs, and/or living on the dole. They like migrant labour. But they see a chance to cut costs.
If you are in the UK, please don't vote more power to these people.
Calling the Council of Europe a Human Right Watchdog sounds odd
The later term is usually used for Non Governmental Organizations, and Council of Europe is an International Organization, which stems from an international treaty the UK has signed.
That makes me wonder whether brexit is only about exiting European Union, or if Council of Europe and its Europe Human Rights Court is also in the balance.