Leaked document: EU Presidency calls for massive internet filtering

It wouldn't be news that Estonian politics is delving into censorship/surveillance; tacking on "EU Presidency" just ads faux-gravitas.

Never underestimate that.

[0] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/11/20/40-of-millen...

The ECHR Article 10 recognises this:

"1. Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. This article shall not prevent States from requiring the licensing of broadcasting, television or cinema enterprises.

2. The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary."

.. which is how Germany can have its ban on Nazi symbols.

China thinks it should be illegal to say something that threatens the stability of the governing party as an institution, so they control information more heavily. But it's not yet clear what they've proven in the past 60-odd years. Remember that their centralized system did also lead to things like the 'Great Leap Forward'...

People still call the 250-year-old USA an experiment, and apparently it still has some surprises up its sleeve. So what does that make the upstart PRC? Certainly not a bedrock reaching back to Neo-Confuscionism and beyond.

The west is an example of a region that can succeed without "western" liberal freedoms. "Western" liberal freedoms in the west were things attained after becoming wealthy and stable.

However, freedom is not. Freedom is well defined. The right to travel. The right to exchange your currency, or your work value. The right to buy and sell stuff with foreign countries (ie: trade).

Think your country ban travelling for 6 months to save up on hard currencies. Think your country banning certain imports (luxury)

China might be good for the average and bottom person but not for the freedom seeker.

I agree that it's perceived that way by many, and perception is reality to a great extent.

However, the jury is still out. Many countries have advanced to China's level of development while remaining authoritarian. S. Korea and Taiwan did it from roughly the 1950s to the 1980s. But it's hard to name one that advanced beyond that without adopting democracy.

It's also interesting to look at in historical context (all of the following is based on memory from reading Chinese history; probably a few details are off): Before the Opium Wars in the mid-19th century, China saw itself as the center of the world, far superior to all other nations, and had been using the same political system, under a variety of rulers, since roughly 250 BC (with many long interruptions).

The economic and military superiority of the Western powers was a shock, and China tried to adjust by changing as little as possible in order to maintain the culture and political system (and political power of the elite, of course). The steps they took were something like the following: First they tried to just buy the weapons, but that didn't work - you need skilled people to maintain them, supplies, etc.; you need skilled commanders and training; and you need to build them yourself or be dependent on foreign powers. Then they tried just hiring, then training a few people. Then realizing they needed the foundation of Western intellectual resources (science, open inquiry, etc.) to use Western tech effectively and to compete, IIRC they tried to open Western education to just a few. ... None of the half-measures were nearly effective enough, and in 1911 the Qing dynasty collapsed and a period of civil war began which ended in 1949 when the Communists conquered the country. Due in part to the horrible behavior of the Western powers and of others such as Japan, who all took advantage of China's weakness (remember that the UK actually controlled a major Chinese city until 1997), the period from the Opium Wars to 1949 is called the Century of Humiliation by some.

The recent attempt to adopt a Western economy without a Western political system seems, in a way, to be a continuation of the 19th century policies; I'm not sure it will be successful. The Communists are like the Confucian dynasties in other ways too. For example, the focus on corruption fits perfectly; a well-known theory of the cycle of the dynasties includes them collapsing under corruption. The Communists are fighting hard not to have history repeat itself, but IMVHO, it's no coincidence: A great advantage of democracy is the great reduction of corruption (though there still is too much); the free press reveals it, opposing parties harp on it, and the corrupt get voted out of office. Imagine the corruption of a U.S. political party that had been in office since 1949, couldn't get voted out of office, had no opposition, and controlled the press.

I'm sure China would happily adopt "western liberal freedoms" if didn't mean opening their citizens to brainwashing by western media and all their data being accessible to the CIA.

But in recent decades, as technology has made it easy for individuals to produce copies, this has shifted into a couple of large entities vs the individual.

The first few moves in that direction (copiers, analog tape recorders) were largely ignored or papered over by exceptions because policing them were a practical impossibility.

But with the net every home have a implacable snitch. And thus there is a policing potential emerging that may well make STASI look like keystone cops.

When corporations are allowed to enforce the rules, they bend them so that the corporation profits. They also then 1984 the whole situation by using double-speak to explain the situation.

I once worked for a company that announced they were doubling our conmission rates from 5 to 10 percent.

They couldnt be happier to tell us all about how they were going to pay us more, so we quickly suspected something weird was going on.

Well that all was slowly revealed when 3 months later, commissions on deals were being "denied" in full. "Deal is too large." "Deal is not in your territory." "Deal is not on a commission elligible product."

So the rates were doubled. But 2x of $0 is still $0.

Yups. Exactly this is what's going on in my opinion as well.

Direction-wise, this is true, connection-wise, it's not. There is no active connection initiated from the server to the client; it's one long connection that is client->server, only the direction of the data changes.

That is because instead of building mesh networks out of our routers, mobile phones, home servers, raspberry pis, we, in Europe, are waiting on the {government,council,leadership,isp,bigco} to do it for us. It would be more than possible to build city-wide networks in the UK and cross-city connections with, for example, long range ubiquity, without and ISP or corporation or BT involved, but nobody seems interested, because nobody care any more. Virgin blocked a few more sites, "meh".

I know this sounds like a rant, but I'd really love to see a worm which turns every wifi capable device into gigantic mesh network and see how ISPs panic.