New “Terrorist Content” Regulations: A Grim Day for Digital Rights in Europe
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Would reporting news of said new regulations be considered "terrorist content", as it is identical to what terrorists do to victims?
... 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.
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.
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?
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.
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
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?
No wonder Stockholm Syndrome is a western thing.
Sadists don't need a reason, they just need a "reasoning"
I don't want you to be under an impression that I agree with this reasoning - I do not. I'm just saying that you getting patted down by TSA or EU implementing restrictions on internet speech was never the terrorist goal, not even according to themselves.
For example, read about the various Lebanese wars, and take note of the Sabra and Shatile and Qana massacres. You also have to understand that Since the US supplies almost all the arms to the IDF, the two are synonymous in their eyes.
He dives into the evidence based data supporting the actions of terrorists which is in complete contradiction to popular narratives. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4HnIyClHEM
The message was not intended for the general western john doe. Instead, it was a message for the average unhappy muslim. The message for them was:
* The west is damaging the muslim vision of the world
* We can beat them
* So join our cause
In some more detail: The whole world is being amerified: Culturally by Hollywood, economically by the WTO and comparable organizations, military by the American army, covert actions by CIA, by the NATO, politically .
Until recently, muslim-extremist terrorism did not happen in the western world. The planes, however, hit the most powerful western country, and hit the power centers of economy (WTC), military (PENTAGON), and politics (The white house, averted). Even if the actual damage was fairly minimal for terrorism standards, the propaganda value was enormous.
Join our cause was a way to tapping into forgotten muslim community. Before 9-11, muslim immigrants in non-muslim european countries were background noise. The attacks gave a way to channel, unify and organize these people. Our own news organisations told them where they could find interesting terrorism groups like ISIS. I remember how the Brussels-attackers learned Islam from a 'for dummies' book, and didnt know much of the basics.
Nobody around Osama gave any care about what a non-muslim would think. Maybe some of them hoped we would cower, but that's about it. I don't think any of them suspected we might destabilize our own power and values, and would help and legitimize their organisations in the process. We gave them far more than they could hope for.
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.
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.
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.
Took me a long time to realize I was even thinking like that myself.
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.
"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.
- 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.”
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...
They were very afraid.
Not to mention that a lot of very true shit going on is indeed conspiracies -- it just doesn't involve aliens and illuminati, but established powers (e.g. the white establishment having FBI follow and discredit MLK and other civil rights activists), state agencies, rich private interests buying politicians and forming cartels, powerful elites pushing their agendas, big industries promoting their crap (e.g. big food and big tobacco buying their own "scientific research" and then promoting it in through the magazines they advertise in) and so on...
Well that is simply not true.
For example, the Sandy Hook harassment brigade caused real harm, eg: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-florida-crime-sandyhook-i...
I'd say the problem lies more with people that find it acceptable to harass others, whether their actions are based on a true story or a hoax.
I agree there are many other things which are also harmful.
Someone wanting to harass someone else can do it over a true story (person X did X) just as well as over a conspiracy story (aliens made person Y did Z).
The fault lies with the harasser (who is acting badly) not with the reason why they harass.
Or maybe you think that if a story is true then it's OK to harass people over it?
I think we agree that isn’t true.
Both the harasser and the person encouraging it can be at fault.
You can throw in all the strawmen you like.
Trolling has been a problem for internet platforms since the Usenet days. The solution has always ended up being banning that individual from the place they are doing the harassing.
That's just sensible community management.
No, they are not a single entity. No they aren't perfectly coordinated. No, they aren't a single group conspiring in a smokey room.
But they are a social group. They go to the same schools, live in the same ZIP codes and vacation in similar places. They marry overwhelming among themselves. There are a few thousand families in the US with that level of power. New families reach these power levels and other families fall off, it isn't a fixed thing.
But you'll know who they are because you and I aren't invited to their clubs.
They are the people who own the country. They are the people who are invited to the Bilderberg meetings. They are those who fund think tanks. They are the people whose kids are guaranteed a seat in an Ivy league school, regardless of merit. They are also VERY unlikely to face jail time when they are accused of a crime; which is rare.
This sounds unlikely, since these are the people who are least affected by people like Jones. I'd also note that many of these people are also the ones making noises about a conspiracy against conservative voices in silicon valley.
The people who banned Jones are more like people like me. People who hate the lying, disrespect and trolling he represents.
That's the same whether it's the USA or some Latin American country with 5 wealthy families enjoying politicians in their pockets.
"What's good for the country is good for General Motors"-style...
Free speech is a concept, not just the bare letter of the text of the bill of rights. [1]
And there are examples of private companies being forbidden from censoring or removing people.
For example, the courts ruled that a private airport was forbidden from kicking out people who were there to hand out flyers. [2]
And, do you seriously think it is ok for the private electricity company or the postal service to deny access to their network because they disagree with your politics? Is it really ok, just because "property rights"?
The first telegram network was a total monopoly, and was used as a tool by the wealthy to manipulate elections and tamper with commodities prices.
It was because of this that we got common carriage laws.
Back then, would you have defended the telegraph company banning journalists who criticized labor practices in coal mines? Why not? It's their private property after all. Those labor organizers and human rights activists should have thought about the consequences of their actions before attempting to expose child labor.
[1]: http://magaimg.net/img/5yri.png
[2]: https://blogs.wsj.com/law/2007/12/26/ca-supremes-give-free-s...
No it absolutely cannot be argued that. The 1st amendment clearly applies to the government, and there is no legislation requiring the same for private companies/citizens. There would need to be a law equating corporations to government (there is not) at a federal level.
No, it can't First Amendment rights apply only to federal government action.
Equivalent rights are interpreted as applying to State government action under the incorporation doctrine tied to the 14th Amendment.
You could possibly make an argument that the 14th Amendment applies to corporate (or LLC, but not sole proprietorship) action based on a theory that a state-chartered corporation’s actions are, ipso facto, state actions, but that's very out of line with basically all US legal precedent.
Say company “X” runs a comms medium, and either an official office channel or an official with a private channel is contrary to the views of that entity, can that private entity legally censor government communication?
GDPR is not about controlling the internet but allowing users of the internet to control their privacy even against big companies.
As if before guns opposing trained swordsmen was an easy task.
That is to say, we have achieved decentralised internet so to speak, and we have the web which is a means to broadcast information, but we do not yet have the decentralised web.