Pirates say ‘Narrgh’ to EU Terrorism Censorship
Written by Ben Jones on October 03, 2007Pirate Parties around the world are protesting against a recent Net censorship proposal by EU Justice Commissioner Franco Frattini. Frattini has recently been urging ministers at the European Union to consider censoring certain search keywords in a bid to curb terrorism.
Commissioner Frattini’s plans are based upon the ‘hidden knowledge’ method. In a nutshell, he hopes that by banning certain words from being searched on the internet, within the EU, it will reduce the ability of would-be terrorists to carry out attacks. Suggested keywords to be filtered include “bomb”, “kill”, “genocide”, and “terrorism” whilst any attempt to get around these restrictions, by using a proxy, for instance, will be met by criminal action.
This proposal has come under fire however, by Pirate Parties all around the world. The Chairman of the Austrian Pirate Party, Florian Hufsky, stated “it’s a tyrannical attempt to curtail useful knowledge from the general public on par with policies of China, Saudi Arabia and North Korea. Thus, whilst ineffective as a measure, it is a strong deviation from the principles of the open society.”
With the various Pirate Parties aiming for the European Parliament in 2009, there is not a voice that can easily be discounted, and with the incumbents making these gargantuan faux-pas, it may seem that they are in with a shot of success
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61 Responses
I can’t believe how extremely idiotic someone must be to think that they can stop people from attacking them by banning a few words from google or something. You have to look at the reason they want to attack you, and if it is something bad you do, stop doing that bad thing.
That’s completely ludicrous. Banning certain words? Words that could lead to investigations, to research?
Completely insane and moronic. Do they honestly believe that by restricting information acquired via the internet, people won’t be lead to acts of terrorism instilled in them by culture, tradition, or even just plain lunacy?
As if the internet could bring some kind of remedy to any human-induced fault. Ha! Restricting information is the strategy of a fascist rule, what a moronic approach, honestly.
The problem with censorship like this is that it only hides the bad part of it, while blocking all news relating to the subject and hindering other material that is completely unrelated to the intented censorship.
Free is free, once you add an * to any part of it, everything is lost.
*L* Well, I know a certain Commish who won’t be getting many votes next time around…
Sounds like Soviet Russia or Nazi Germany, in all honesty. Way to go, EU!
It’s a suggestion by some idiot who coincidently is a politician.
It’s not like that idiot is our president or something.
“Childerns do learn!”, heh.
I don’t see the point…like you said that censorship can be easily bypassed using a proxy and if they are planning on killing people and don’t care about lost lives….I doubt they care about the law. So basically this is only hurting the general population.
Also what happens if I google “how to kill wasps” or basically I’m running a search on how to kill common house pests…does that mean I’m now a terrorist or a criminal?
They really need to think things through
So, what if a bomb goes off somewhere – say London again and everyone wants to find out what’s going on. They search on Google and are then considered criminals?
Won’t the evil terrorists do something really clever like using the word “package” instead of the word “bomb”?
Am I aiding and supporting terrorists by writing this?
Yeah Ed you probably are.
Terrorist would have never been able to think of such a clever solution. I mean criminals always use dictionary suggested words, don’t they? They are probably so stupid they have to look it up first.
Of course this is a bad unworkable proposal but at least they’re trying to come up with something. What’s teh pirate partys ideas for curbing terrorism? Give them free moviez and warez.
Combining lethal knowledge with a madman is a dangerous combination. It would be beneficial to limit terrorist materials available of the internet.
I think the best way would be to use government sponsored hacking teams to DoS these terrorist training sites. This way the wider public don’t have to suffer.
Why has terrorism, or the potential for terrorism, caused the lost of freedom among democratic, or formerly democratic, countries? This is what the terrorists want. They want a world just like theirs, where every thing is censored and there is no such thing as freedom in any form. Pathetic.
So coming up with the worst idea possible is better than having no idea, how?
And yeah lets fight crime with crime… or more popular right now lets just redefine what crime is.
Dude media brainwash seems to have worked for you.
My comment was directed at #10.
And yeah ScytheNoire you are right!
g e n o c i d e?
trabpvqr?
???
Sounds like the same thing BlueTack is doing, just in a different perspective. But hey… in due time they all get their dose of karma in the end…
You know, An0num0s, I hadn’t thought about it that way.
You are entirely right though, as both involve some big illogical jumps, and then attempt to block segments of the net from being accessed for completely arbitary reasons, whilst being incredibly simple to circumvent. The end result is that its something the administrators of it can bluster about ‘being usefull and effective’ and yet to actually being as functional as a chocolate teapot, or fishnet contraceptive
Bloody Hell, where are we going to this way? Privacy is being raped everyday more and more by some chimps who aren’t even acquainted enough with a computer. Them bastards politicians aren’t happy enough with the amount of dough they’re getting eh? The plague rages on, it’s about time we did something, life is becoming very repulsive if you ask me.
Children of the future, blame your parents for not doing anything RIGHT NOW!
Soon they will ban words in real life like in Orwells 1987 novel. Welcome to the facist police state. Enjoy, u never cared about anything else than beer and sex and your ego.
I like this idea. It should be expanded to many more words, though. Anything “bad” should not be allowed. This way the web stays clean and pure, which is the way everything should be. I think once its made illegal to use these words, then we should monitor secretly for awhile all people who ignore the law. Once the list gets to a certain size, they should all be arrested.
I bet the EU commisioner has never used the internet before in his life….
This is insane. Where is the reference article for this? I can’t believe this was actually proposed.
This story was first reported 4th July 2007.
If its a slow news day, fair enough.
If the pirate parties just noticed now, 3 months later…
well i’m sure the more traditional politicians of the European Union must be quaking.
Apparently, Franco Frattini is responsible for “Freedom, Security and Justice”.
Can’t you tell how great that works out?
Article 11 of the European Charter of Fundamental Rights should take care of this whole sorry mess pretty easily.
[quote]Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to [b]receive and impart
information and ideas[/b] without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.[/quote]
Another great proposal from the Morons in the EU.
So glad my country not a part of that sesspool.
many more can be found at the blackangelproductions.co.uk.
I actually think that this will work perfectly. Think about it. How much violence was there before the internet? None! We lived in perfect agreement with one another. Then the internet came along and taught us how to kill. Bad bad internet!
[quote comment="179733"]They want a world just like theirs, where every thing is censored and there is no such thing as freedom in any form.[/quote]
Ever heard of domestic terrorism? *cough*oklahoma*cough*
One man’s “terrorist” is another man’s freedom fighter.
[quote comment="179954"]Another great proposal from the Morons in the EU.
So glad my country not a part of that sesspool.[/quote]
Another great comment from the morons outside EU. So glad I’m not part of that cesspool.
[quote comment="179668"]Sounds like Soviet Russia or Nazi Germany, in all honesty. Way to go, EU![/quote]
It hasn’t (and most likely won’t) been approved yet, perhaps you should bother reading the article, and not just the headline.
[quote comment="179668"]Sounds like Soviet Russia or Nazi Germany, in all honesty. Way to go, EU![/quote]
Let me remind you that it’s still just a proposal. And I’m pretty sure it will stay that way.
It’s time to stand up against them limiting our freedom. The governments don’t give a damn about us! The governments are limiting our freedom! War on terrorism is a big damn lie!
Everyone should wake up and see what is going on, soon we will become slaves.
did all our politicans get off the short bus?
lets ban these words as well Freedom, Liberty, Justice, Earth, free speech, human rights, peace, love, kindness, compasion, why not the word “bed” as well
if your afraid of terrorists, STOP slapping the little brown people around and they wont want to go blow up your city, simple aint it?
if u ban the word “bomb” then terrorists will use “package” or “car” or something. Words are not the problem, its the nazis in power that are.
They made a wasteland and called it peace.
~ Tacitus
What a fucking retard, but understand, dear readers that this guy and the people behind these things aren’t doing or suggestings these measures for the reasons they claim, or because they think it will do anything to curb terror.
The goal they have is to set the precedent of censorship on the net. Large governments and corporations (in the western world it is often indestinguisable as far as who is really calling the shots)have wanted to get control of the net for a long time now. They see it as providing too much freedom, too much free information that isn’t going through the corporate media (which is the tool the government uses to control the masses) too much power givien to anybody to organize or to get a message to the masses.
They will not stop, and they eventually will find a way to put controls in place; likely taxes too…And of course, if they are successful at doing this the way they do everything else, they might even have the people asking for it…after all, it’t “for your protection and safety.”
Nice to see that politicians are idiots who havn’t bothered to remember how l33tsp34k developed nor have they ever heard of the Streisand Effect.
The EU aren’t the only ones who want control of the net:
http://tinyurl.com/39n7my
Anyway, everyone knows that in soviet russia, terrorism searches you!
I remember back when i was young, AOL was doing this kind of censorship.
What happened ? Our much beloved 31337 7alk.
Welcome to our new friends :
b0mb
k1ll
gen0c1de
terr0r15m
Old people who cant figure out technology need to die quickly.
[quote comment="179842"]I like this idea. It should be expanded to many more words, though. Anything “bad” should not be allowed. This way the web stays clean and pure, which is the way everything should be. I think once its made illegal to use these words, then we should monitor secretly for awhile all people who ignore the law. Once the list gets to a certain size, they should all be arrested.[/quote]
You have been protected all your life havent you? There is nothing pure about this world we live in. Allowing a bill like that to pass will only cause problems for future generations.
[quote comment="180067"]
if your afraid of terrorists, STOP slapping the little brown people around and they wont want to go blow up your city, simple aint it?[/quote]
HA!! lol sorry… just found that humorous..
not only could we use leet speak, but other languages, sscypers, heck even binary if needed, not only that if words like genocide are banned get rid of the word on the site switch to video or audio and it makes no difference, what this is is a waste of time, money, effort, and our patience.
If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.
~ Noam Chomsky
hey i’m italian and yes frattini is a moron. Like many other politicians here in italy. nowadays he is Commissioner for Justice, Freedom and Security.
This guy was also our Foreign Minister.. it’s pretty sad..
I’m sure terrorists are searching IN ENGLISH for “terrorism.” to get instructions on how to make bombs.
I think something should be done about those fishnets breeding with abandon. If contraceptives can be shown to be effective, then why shouldn’t they be trialled upon isolated fishnet populations?
how to make a bomb, find something flamable and light it up, BOOM.
not hard to do, so why even try to censor anything.
Filtering SEARCH keywords?? Thats the dumbest thing… i’m sure every wannabe terrorist googles “genocide” when they’re feeling mischievous!
Do we have a source on him saying this?
I wouldn’t have thought anyone would be this absurd.
English is such a bouncy language:
“It went down a bomb”
“Gonna kill some time”
“It was fashion terrorism”
i couldn’t find an alternative phrase to obfuscated genocide, perhaps that is because genocide is an act of government
Right because no songs or movies or anything have the words “genocide” or “kill” or “murder” in their names
why do governments do such a fucking shit job.
Them politishites call themselves civilized individuals and expect the common people to treat them with respect while listening to their scum proposals …. Unfortunately, one thing a lot of people tend to forget though: they are FUCKING you with respect actually, got my point?
Wake up!
“u have to look at the reason they want to attack you, and if it is something bad you do, stop doing that bad thing.” WTF, So i guess i should stop being British ???
This is also a great favor to Nazis and fascists – in a few years they will be able to claim the holocaust never happened as the searches about it will return nothing. It’s no surprise this idiotic proposition came from a guy from Italy, which has given Benito Mussolini (responsible for the genocide in Africa and on the Balkans during WW2) to this Earth.
And there is also a different aspect to this – instructions on the internet are said to be very unreliable so Mr. Frattini probably wishes terrorists would use more reliable sources such as chemistry books.
Wait, we should ban reading and punish all that can read and write. That would do it, if you can’t read, you cant read chemistry books. Brilliant.
This post has been deleted by authority of the government.
Welcome to the EUSSR
Hes real enough:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco_Frattini
Download b o m b here:
http://draves.org/bomb/
Strange how you americans get all hot and bothered. Even if it passed it would only apply to people in the EU. And we have the right to censor our Internet any way we want. But of course censoring this is just silly. However the anti-childporn filter many European countries have *is* working.
[quote comment="180144"]I’m sure terrorists are searching IN ENGLISH for “terrorism.” to get instructions on how to make bombs.[/quote]
Actually that would only be *one* of the languages they would censor (in Europe). Because the article mentions the words in your language does not mean it is limited to that language. It would probably involve *every* language in Europe and then some. Not that this stupid idea will come about.
i will KILL every bugger in EU parliament RAPE every woman of them, set BOMBS on their every vehicle, and launch a TERRORIST ATTACK on their headquarters, and have a shit on their every house as soon as that freaking bill was passed. AM I a damn criminal? if so, tell them to arrest me. my address is there at my web site http://bkthambugala.spaces.live.com
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