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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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.
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