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Spain's Crackdown on Catalonia Includes Internet Censorship (internetsociety.org)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the damage-to-be-routed-around dept.

Spain's autonomous Catalonia region wants to hold a referendum on independence next weekend. Spain's Constitutional Court insists that that vote is illegal, and has taken control of Catalonia's police force to try to stop the vote. They're deploying thousands of additional police officers and have seized nearly 10 million ballots. And now the Internet Society has gotten involved, according to an announcement shared by Slashdot reader valinor89: Measures restricting free and open access to the Internet related to the independence referendum have been reported in Catalonia. There have been reports that major telecom operators have been asked to monitor and block traffic to political websites, and following a court order, law enforcement has raided the offices of the .cat registry in Barcelona, examining a computer and arresting staff.

We are concerned by reports that this court order would require a top-level domain (TLD) operator such as .cat to begin to block "all domains that may contain any kind of information about the referendum."

7 of 363 comments (clear)

  1. Generalismo Fransico Franco by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Ain't dead yet!

  2. Well that is one way of ensuring a loss by Carewolf · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Trying to suppress people's freedom is the surest way of pissing them off. How many went from pro-union to pro-independence due to this nonsense?

    1. Re:Well that is one way of ensuring a loss by valinor89 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Quite a lot of people are very enraged by the actions of the government that were not thinking of voting.

  3. This is the slippery slope by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you start condoning Internet censorship for political reasons (for example, what has been going on with the Daily Stormer), it will never stop where you think.

  4. Not smart, but it is right by alexborges · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Cataluña has no reason to secede. Nationalists, who are basically localist fascists are the ones pushing for an impossible exit of cataluña from the Spain, when by the way, they werent anexed. Cataluña entered Spain voluntarily, more than 500 years ago. Now the spanish government though is anything but smart. Prime Minister Rajoy could almost qualify as a sea sponge if we are talking about intelligence. This is why this move on the Spanish part is sad, stupid, but not unforseen. It plays into the hands of the fucking cataluña nazis, which is what nationalists are.

    --
    NO SIG
    1. Re:Not smart, but it is right by elrous0 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It plays into the hands of the fucking cataluña nazis

      Witness the new political norm in action, people. Just label your opponents Nazis or fascists and then anything you do to them--be it censorship, assault, or even murder--then becomes justified. Such is modern political discourse.

      --
      SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
  5. The US had no reason to secede from the Empire by ffkom · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Driven by local nationlists, the north American territories of the British Empire did absolutely illegal things when they seceded. How could those people dare to question the legal rule of their central government?

    And by the way, lot's of European countries would still be under the despotic rule of some emporer far away in Rome, had they not been "disobedient" to Roman law.