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New “Terrorist Content” Regulations: A Grim Day for Digital Rights in Europe

150 points by DiabloD3 8y ago

DiabloD3 8y ago
Silly question: so, terrorist regimes often do everything possible to censor the Internet and forms of speech that can be critical of their actions... Would reporting news of said new regulations be considered "terrorist content", as it is identical to what terrorists do to victims?
- cabraca 8y ago
  with a filtering infrastructure in place its definitly a posibility. first it was only for copyright, not they want to filter "terrorist content". next we know, a political leader is censoring the opposition.
  - Someguywhatever 8y ago
    Who defines what "terrorist content" is? Maybe if the incumbent party is getting "terrorised" in the polls in a run-up to an election, their challengers may suddenly find themselves guilty of producing "terrorist" content? I can definitely see something like that happening.
    - krapp 8y ago
      > Maybe if the incumbent party is getting "terrorised" in the polls in a run-up to an election, their challengers may suddenly find themselves guilty of producing "terrorist" content? ... because no one who interprets laws does so with any regard to their purpose and therefore all laws which govern speech will be enforced arbitrarily and inevitably lead down the slippery slope towards maximum tyranny and censorship? >I can definitely see something like that happening. I can definitely see that not happening, or at least not succeeding when it's attempted, because it could happen now with hate speech laws, yet politicians haven't successfully had their opponents arrested merely by declaring their opponents' speech to be hateful. Corrupt politicians and corruptible laws laws do exist, but outside of a totalitarian regime, obvious misuse and misinterpretation of the law (particularly where free speech and politics are concerned) tends to be challenged by the system, because people within that system have a vested interest in maintaining a balance between societal stability and personal liberty.
      - repolfx 8y ago
        politicians haven't successfully had their opponents arrested merely by declaring their opponents' speech to be hateful It happens in Europe quite frequently. Geert Wilders is a popular Dutch politician (popular with voters) and has been arrested and taken to court several times for "hate speech" (i.e. criticising immigration and Islam), being found guilty the last time albeit the court refused to punish him. Marine Le Pen has also been arrested and taken to court for hate speech, although the court decided she was not guilty. As for your faith in the fair application of EU law. That is nice. The EU courts are staffed by judges selected for their pro-EU ideology and reliably pro-EU judgements. The ECJ routinely throws out things put in plain English into the treaties themselves or re-interprets apparently straightforward language to mean something entirely non-obvious, always to the benefit of the EU itself. What sort of people rise to the top of this political project? Here is a selection of quotes by the head of the European Commission, the man who really matters in the EU because only he and his directly selected employees can change the law. "When it becomes serious, you have to lie." "I'm ready to be insulted as being insufficiently democratic, but I want to be serious ... I am for secret, dark debates." “If it's a Yes, we will say 'on we go', and if it's a No we will say 'we continue’" (in reference to a referendum on EU policy) I will say, for all his faults, Juncker is at least willing to tell it like it is when it comes to the motivations and powers of himself and his comrades.
      - Someguywhatever 8y ago
        >... because no one who interprets laws does so with any regard to their purpose and therefore all laws which govern speech will be enforced arbitrarily No one does not necessarily beget the other. But I would say that "power corrupts" is very true. If you give somebody power over who can talk, that's very tempting to misuse. So why give anyone that power? It's too powerful to be used with restraint in the long run IMO. >I can definitely see that not happening, or at least not succeeding when it's attempted, because it could happen now with hate speech laws Honestly if it did actually happen, what would you do about it? Would you complain in the newspaper? Online? What if your complaint was classified as "terrorist" content? I mean does it really actually HAVE to happen IRL for you to see that this type of power should not be held by politicians?
- mar77i 8y ago
  Only if it "plagiarised" other news sites on that same "terrorist content"... :) It's silly. It's especially silly as it targets at the scale of the biggest, while leaving everyone with any budget less than Google's wondering what they're supposed to do now.
chooseaname 8y ago
The terrorists are winning by just sitting back watching us do it all to ourselves.
- gambiting 8y ago
  The terrorist goal was never to have this happen. Terrorist(as long as we're thinking of Osama Bin Laden for example, and not say IRA) goal was to get the people in western countries to think why they are being attacked, look into it, and realize that it's happening because of attrocities commited by their own governments in middle East. Osama Bin Laden has himself admitted that the attacks on America have failed to achieve those goals, because Americans have collectively refused to ask "why" they were being attacked - it was sold as brown people hating freedom , with no deeper context to the whole issue.
  - creaghpatr 8y ago
    >get the people in western countries to think why they are being attacked, look into it, and realize that it's happening because of attrocities commited by their own governments in middle East I get that you're paraphrasing here but that seems incredibly naive for someone who was fairly educated on foreign affairs edit: talking about Osama being naive not GP
  - travisoneill1 8y ago
    > it's happening because of attrocities commited by their own governments in middle East This narrative again. Specifically which atrocities are you talking about? And where are all the Japanese, German, and Vietnamese terrorists attacking in revenge for the atrocities of WWII and Vietnam?
    - raverbashing 8y ago
      Of course, that narrative is a farce. But it plays on "look at how the western world is evil" and other forms of "white guilt". No wonder Stockholm Syndrome is a western thing. Sadists don't need a reason, they just need a "reasoning"
rasengan 8y ago
The internet was always the best tool for us to finally be on equal grounds with our overlords. - When religion overpowered us, we were helpless and had to obey. - When guns came into play, we were helpless and had to obey. - When TV and Radio began, the narrative was controlled and we were brainwashed to obey. The Internet is like the power of TV and radio in the hands of the people, and the power of the people is beyond guns and religion. This is too much for those who wish to stifle the power of the people. So they have been passing small laws left and right leading to a slippery slope of laws removing our rights and freedoms (and essentially the power of the people). Now that we have become desensitized (they proved it with the “internet world control” move known as GDPR that proved they control the internet) they wish to make the final controversial blow. Make no mistake, this has always been a fight for control of our freedom. The internet and decentralized technologies like it as well as the many built on top of it are the only chance we have to maintain freedom as people and society. Censorship has always been about maintaining their narrative. Luckily we no longer have to sit back and get whipped anymore. Now we have tools like cryptography that can allow us to create systems that cannot be controlled by a single person. That said, even with the tools, if we don’t use them, then we are “tools.”
- coldtea 8y ago
  >The Internet is like the power of TV and radio in the hands of the people, and the power of the people is beyond guns and religion. What makes people powerful is coordination. The public space for conversation on the web are a handful of platforms - and those can easily be controlled. The rest can still exist (personal webpages and so on), but they will remain fringe. >Censorship has always been about maintaining their narrative. Well, first they came for Alex Jones, but I didn't do anything, I wasn't a conspiracy nut...
  - rasengan 8y ago
    It’s funny how hard they went on Alex Jones as that can pretty much summarize to us all whether they were afraid of his rhetoric or not. They were very afraid.
pweissbrod 8y ago
I havent been following this closely but the notion of "speedy shutdown of content by the ISP" sounds strikingly similar to the late [SOPA bill](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act) in the US (2011). Is this effectively similar to SOPA?
rdtsc 8y ago
> emptive copyright filter for content-sharing sites, as well as the idea that news publishers should have the right to sue others for quoting news items online I don't understand the justification for this. If you quote them to either point out the news or the errors they can turn on you if they want to and sue you. > “removal order”, which will oblige hosting service providers to remove content within one hour of being ordered to do so. Something tells me there is a lobbyist out there for a company which sell automated removal of "infringing" content. > EU now wants to expand that to defining the limits of political speech too. That seems scary, I hope EFF is exaggerating. This to me seems like very a authoritarian move. I wouldn't have expected it from EU at least.
- girvo 8y ago
  As much as I think the EU is mostly a force for good, they also have very different opinions on what free speech entails compared to say the US. Australia, where I’m from, even more so. Im unsure how we fight this.
- repolfx 8y ago
  The EU - as distinct from European countries themselves - has a pretty consistently authoritarian direction of travel. It is after all a project to massively centralise all power in an unelected bureaucracy in Brussels, removing it from the democratically elected politicians in the national governments. You probably aren't aware of this because the EU gets consistently good press from journalists rather enamoured of the whole project, but there are reasons the UK chose to leave.
- paulie_a 8y ago
  I'm wondering why the EFF doesn't just address the elephant in the room. A large portion of the internet can blatantly and outright ignore these new EU regulations and laws.
bitcharmer 8y ago
Suddenly Brexit doesn't seem to have been such a bad idea after all.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- girvo 8y ago
  Except the UK has attempted to pass similar power grabs a number of times. Sadly.
- confounded 8y ago
  The British government’s thirst for authoriatarian control of the net is just about the strongest in a democracy; much stronger than that in the EU. In fact, the EU is currently making the UK’s investigatory powers act less extreme, as they’ve ruled that state-surveillance of the population at that scale, is incompatible with the human right to privacy. I’m not the biggest fan of the EU, but they are a moderating force on the UK’s repressive tendencies.
  - repolfx 8y ago
    Whilst true that under Theresa May the UK government is rather keen on controlling the internet, as the EU is demonstrating there's no real difference in terms of their desire for power. The relative disinterest by the EU in surveillance is more because they associate fighting terrorism = fighting Muslims = fighting immigrants = borders = bad. Quoting Juncker again, "Borders are the worst invention ever made by politicians." Doesn't really get clearer than that. The UK government is unfortunately keen on surveillance partly because people are keen on it, and it is ultimately a democracy. Opinion polls pretty consistently show that terrorism is one of the top two concerns citizens have, across the whole of Europe. The EU ignores these concerns completely; this may seem superficially beneficially democratic but as the cookie law, GDPR, copyright, hate speech, link tax laws etc show, this is not due to lack of desire for control over the internet.
- switch007 8y ago
  You have to ignore the May's time as Home Secretary and PM for that to be even remotely approaching a reasonable opinion.
swingline-747 8y ago
It's likely a first shot among many chilling-effects that will have consequences opposite to those intended. Silencing debunk-able ideological debate volunteers to hand power over Machiavellian criminals.
- towelr34dy 8y ago
  Why do we always assume little people do things for their self benefit with no regard for their 'reasoning/explanations', but when it comes to big guys we instantly assuming their stated reasons have no ulterior motives? The law is really blatant in it's intention; this was a move against free speech. The 'unintended consequences narrative' is so blatantly false, I'm dumbfounded how it could be seriously quoted by otherwise logical and reasonable people.
  - leppr 8y ago
    Faith (in governments) is stronger than logic.
    - towelr34dy 8y ago
      I had never thought of it. But with the decline of religion, it seems faith is now directed at authority, mostly of the political but also the 'scientific' kind. Great point, thank you.
      - leppr 8y ago
        Yes, it's sad how common it is for people to be extremely critical of individuals or even whole institutions (e.g. Trump, Conservatives, cops, the prison system, the NRA, Google, Comcast), yet still have a strong unspoken belief that behind all that, the government and the law as a whole are Good Things made to care for them and their families. Took me a long time to realize I was even thinking like that myself.
        towelr34dy 8y ago
honkycat 8y ago
How is this different than the censorship people lambast the Chinese for?

150 points by DiabloD3 8y ago

Silly question: so, terrorist regimes often do everything possible to censor the Internet and forms of speech that can be critical of their actions... Would reporting news of said new regulations be considered "terrorist content", as it is identical to what terrorists do to victims?

cabraca 8y ago
with a filtering infrastructure in place its definitly a posibility. first it was only for copyright, not they want to filter "terrorist content". next we know, a political leader is censoring the opposition.
- Someguywhatever 8y ago
  Who defines what "terrorist content" is? Maybe if the incumbent party is getting "terrorised" in the polls in a run-up to an election, their challengers may suddenly find themselves guilty of producing "terrorist" content? I can definitely see something like that happening.
  - krapp 8y ago
    > Maybe if the incumbent party is getting "terrorised" in the polls in a run-up to an election, their challengers may suddenly find themselves guilty of producing "terrorist" content? ... because no one who interprets laws does so with any regard to their purpose and therefore all laws which govern speech will be enforced arbitrarily and inevitably lead down the slippery slope towards maximum tyranny and censorship? >I can definitely see something like that happening. I can definitely see that not happening, or at least not succeeding when it's attempted, because it could happen now with hate speech laws, yet politicians haven't successfully had their opponents arrested merely by declaring their opponents' speech to be hateful. Corrupt politicians and corruptible laws laws do exist, but outside of a totalitarian regime, obvious misuse and misinterpretation of the law (particularly where free speech and politics are concerned) tends to be challenged by the system, because people within that system have a vested interest in maintaining a balance between societal stability and personal liberty.
    - repolfx 8y ago
      politicians haven't successfully had their opponents arrested merely by declaring their opponents' speech to be hateful It happens in Europe quite frequently. Geert Wilders is a popular Dutch politician (popular with voters) and has been arrested and taken to court several times for "hate speech" (i.e. criticising immigration and Islam), being found guilty the last time albeit the court refused to punish him. Marine Le Pen has also been arrested and taken to court for hate speech, although the court decided she was not guilty. As for your faith in the fair application of EU law. That is nice. The EU courts are staffed by judges selected for their pro-EU ideology and reliably pro-EU judgements. The ECJ routinely throws out things put in plain English into the treaties themselves or re-interprets apparently straightforward language to mean something entirely non-obvious, always to the benefit of the EU itself. What sort of people rise to the top of this political project? Here is a selection of quotes by the head of the European Commission, the man who really matters in the EU because only he and his directly selected employees can change the law. "When it becomes serious, you have to lie." "I'm ready to be insulted as being insufficiently democratic, but I want to be serious ... I am for secret, dark debates." “If it's a Yes, we will say 'on we go', and if it's a No we will say 'we continue’" (in reference to a referendum on EU policy) I will say, for all his faults, Juncker is at least willing to tell it like it is when it comes to the motivations and powers of himself and his comrades.
    - Someguywhatever 8y ago
      >... because no one who interprets laws does so with any regard to their purpose and therefore all laws which govern speech will be enforced arbitrarily No one does not necessarily beget the other. But I would say that "power corrupts" is very true. If you give somebody power over who can talk, that's very tempting to misuse. So why give anyone that power? It's too powerful to be used with restraint in the long run IMO. >I can definitely see that not happening, or at least not succeeding when it's attempted, because it could happen now with hate speech laws Honestly if it did actually happen, what would you do about it? Would you complain in the newspaper? Online? What if your complaint was classified as "terrorist" content? I mean does it really actually HAVE to happen IRL for you to see that this type of power should not be held by politicians?
mar77i 8y ago
Only if it "plagiarised" other news sites on that same "terrorist content"... :) It's silly. It's especially silly as it targets at the scale of the biggest, while leaving everyone with any budget less than Google's wondering what they're supposed to do now.

chooseaname 8y ago

The terrorists are winning by just sitting back watching us do it all to ourselves.

gambiting 8y ago
The terrorist goal was never to have this happen. Terrorist(as long as we're thinking of Osama Bin Laden for example, and not say IRA) goal was to get the people in western countries to think why they are being attacked, look into it, and realize that it's happening because of attrocities commited by their own governments in middle East. Osama Bin Laden has himself admitted that the attacks on America have failed to achieve those goals, because Americans have collectively refused to ask "why" they were being attacked - it was sold as brown people hating freedom , with no deeper context to the whole issue.
- creaghpatr 8y ago
  >get the people in western countries to think why they are being attacked, look into it, and realize that it's happening because of attrocities commited by their own governments in middle East I get that you're paraphrasing here but that seems incredibly naive for someone who was fairly educated on foreign affairs edit: talking about Osama being naive not GP
- travisoneill1 8y ago
  > it's happening because of attrocities commited by their own governments in middle East This narrative again. Specifically which atrocities are you talking about? And where are all the Japanese, German, and Vietnamese terrorists attacking in revenge for the atrocities of WWII and Vietnam?
  - raverbashing 8y ago
    Of course, that narrative is a farce. But it plays on "look at how the western world is evil" and other forms of "white guilt". No wonder Stockholm Syndrome is a western thing. Sadists don't need a reason, they just need a "reasoning"

rasengan 8y ago

The internet was always the best tool for us to finally be on equal grounds with our overlords. - When religion overpowered us, we were helpless and had to obey. - When guns came into play, we were helpless and had to obey. - When TV and Radio began, the narrative was controlled and we were brainwashed to obey. The Internet is like the power of TV and radio in the hands of the people, and the power of the people is beyond guns and religion. This is too much for those who wish to stifle the power of the people. So they have been passing small laws left and right leading to a slippery slope of laws removing our rights and freedoms (and essentially the power of the people). Now that we have become desensitized (they proved it with the “internet world control” move known as GDPR that proved they control the internet) they wish to make the final controversial blow. Make no mistake, this has always been a fight for control of our freedom. The internet and decentralized technologies like it as well as the many built on top of it are the only chance we have to maintain freedom as people and society. Censorship has always been about maintaining their narrative. Luckily we no longer have to sit back and get whipped anymore. Now we have tools like cryptography that can allow us to create systems that cannot be controlled by a single person. That said, even with the tools, if we don’t use them, then we are “tools.”

coldtea 8y ago
>The Internet is like the power of TV and radio in the hands of the people, and the power of the people is beyond guns and religion. What makes people powerful is coordination. The public space for conversation on the web are a handful of platforms - and those can easily be controlled. The rest can still exist (personal webpages and so on), but they will remain fringe. >Censorship has always been about maintaining their narrative. Well, first they came for Alex Jones, but I didn't do anything, I wasn't a conspiracy nut...
- rasengan 8y ago
  It’s funny how hard they went on Alex Jones as that can pretty much summarize to us all whether they were afraid of his rhetoric or not. They were very afraid.

pweissbrod 8y ago

I havent been following this closely but the notion of "speedy shutdown of content by the ISP" sounds strikingly similar to the late [SOPA bill](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act) in the US (2011). Is this effectively similar to SOPA?

rdtsc 8y ago

> emptive copyright filter for content-sharing sites, as well as the idea that news publishers should have the right to sue others for quoting news items online I don't understand the justification for this. If you quote them to either point out the news or the errors they can turn on you if they want to and sue you. > “removal order”, which will oblige hosting service providers to remove content within one hour of being ordered to do so. Something tells me there is a lobbyist out there for a company which sell automated removal of "infringing" content. > EU now wants to expand that to defining the limits of political speech too. That seems scary, I hope EFF is exaggerating. This to me seems like very a authoritarian move. I wouldn't have expected it from EU at least.

girvo 8y ago
As much as I think the EU is mostly a force for good, they also have very different opinions on what free speech entails compared to say the US. Australia, where I’m from, even more so. Im unsure how we fight this.
repolfx 8y ago
The EU - as distinct from European countries themselves - has a pretty consistently authoritarian direction of travel. It is after all a project to massively centralise all power in an unelected bureaucracy in Brussels, removing it from the democratically elected politicians in the national governments. You probably aren't aware of this because the EU gets consistently good press from journalists rather enamoured of the whole project, but there are reasons the UK chose to leave.
paulie_a 8y ago
I'm wondering why the EFF doesn't just address the elephant in the room. A large portion of the internet can blatantly and outright ignore these new EU regulations and laws.

bitcharmer 8y ago

Suddenly Brexit doesn't seem to have been such a bad idea after all.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
girvo 8y ago
Except the UK has attempted to pass similar power grabs a number of times. Sadly.
confounded 8y ago
The British government’s thirst for authoriatarian control of the net is just about the strongest in a democracy; much stronger than that in the EU. In fact, the EU is currently making the UK’s investigatory powers act less extreme, as they’ve ruled that state-surveillance of the population at that scale, is incompatible with the human right to privacy. I’m not the biggest fan of the EU, but they are a moderating force on the UK’s repressive tendencies.
- repolfx 8y ago
  Whilst true that under Theresa May the UK government is rather keen on controlling the internet, as the EU is demonstrating there's no real difference in terms of their desire for power. The relative disinterest by the EU in surveillance is more because they associate fighting terrorism = fighting Muslims = fighting immigrants = borders = bad. Quoting Juncker again, "Borders are the worst invention ever made by politicians." Doesn't really get clearer than that. The UK government is unfortunately keen on surveillance partly because people are keen on it, and it is ultimately a democracy. Opinion polls pretty consistently show that terrorism is one of the top two concerns citizens have, across the whole of Europe. The EU ignores these concerns completely; this may seem superficially beneficially democratic but as the cookie law, GDPR, copyright, hate speech, link tax laws etc show, this is not due to lack of desire for control over the internet.
switch007 8y ago
You have to ignore the May's time as Home Secretary and PM for that to be even remotely approaching a reasonable opinion.

swingline-747 8y ago

It's likely a first shot among many chilling-effects that will have consequences opposite to those intended. Silencing debunk-able ideological debate volunteers to hand power over Machiavellian criminals.

towelr34dy 8y ago
Why do we always assume little people do things for their self benefit with no regard for their 'reasoning/explanations', but when it comes to big guys we instantly assuming their stated reasons have no ulterior motives? The law is really blatant in it's intention; this was a move against free speech. The 'unintended consequences narrative' is so blatantly false, I'm dumbfounded how it could be seriously quoted by otherwise logical and reasonable people.
- leppr 8y ago
  Faith (in governments) is stronger than logic.
  - towelr34dy 8y ago
    I had never thought of it. But with the decline of religion, it seems faith is now directed at authority, mostly of the political but also the 'scientific' kind. Great point, thank you.
    - leppr 8y ago
      Yes, it's sad how common it is for people to be extremely critical of individuals or even whole institutions (e.g. Trump, Conservatives, cops, the prison system, the NRA, Google, Comcast), yet still have a strong unspoken belief that behind all that, the government and the law as a whole are Good Things made to care for them and their families. Took me a long time to realize I was even thinking like that myself.
      - towelr34dy 8y ago

honkycat 8y ago

How is this different than the censorship people lambast the Chinese for?