The EU Justice Commissioner, Franco Frattini, is pushing his colleagues to consider making 'misuse of the internet' a punishable offense. Mr. Frattini explains:
"My intention is ... to introduce sanctions against those who disseminate terrorist propaganda or instruct on websites how to make a bomb. This has nothing to do with freedom of expression."
This is yet another entry in the battle between security and protection of rights in the Western world.
Anybody out there have any thoughts on whether governments should be able to restrict the spread of this kind of material or not?
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
EU Considering Limiting Internet Access
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2 comments:
Do forgive me, Greg, for possibly starting some beef yet again, but I have three arguments why this is the worst idea ever.
Sustainability: The Internet is massive, and this kind of censorship requires a large-scale international effort to make the prosecution of these offenses more than just an arbitrary gesture towards beefing up Western security. Where are the money and the resources to come from for this kind of campaign? And after one website is shut down and one accused person prosecuted, do you really think another ten websites won't pop up?
Legal Questions: When it comes to punishment, are the accused parties to be prosecuted by the country that first discovered the propaganda, the country of an intended target, or the country of citizenship of the offender, where all of these nations are different? And as long as we're on the topic of legal questions, what constitutes "terrorist propaganda?" Does Islamic fundamentalist information--purely in a religious, but not a political sense--constitute terrorist propaganda? What happens if the monitoring agency finds out that a website is actually maintained outside of the European Union? Does that mean that European Union can only prosecute if a bomb of similar construction is found within EU territory? Does the European Union have the right to track the IP address of users of certain sites, e.g. can't prosecute the guy who created the site in Canada but can bust the guy who looked at the site in Berlin?
Cost-Benefit: Should we really be focusing on making bombs? If we're going to devote all that time and all those resources to prosecuting potential offenders of heinous crimes in Europe, shouldn't we go for something more common: like child pornography or human trafficking\illegal immigration? They're not as hot-button, but they're far more common than making bombs and consequently, affect more Europeans' daily lives.
Parting Shot: Are we to look to the Chinese for instruction on how to censor the public in a cost-effective manner? They might have some solid suggestions. Just sayin'.
Whoa, whoa, I'm just the messenger, don't shoot! I agree that this is ridiculous.
As an addendum to your rant - who gets to determine what is considered 'terrorist' activity? We can probably all agree that the ETA and IRA are terrorists, but what about other separatist groups, like the Flemish nationalist parties in Belgium?
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