Saturday, March 24, 2012

French President Sarkozy sees oppurtunity for internet censorship after terror attack and seizes it...

In the wake of a horrific rampage, in which Mohamed Merah (now dead after a 32-hour standoff with police) reportedly murdered three French soldiers, three young Jewish schoolchildren, and a rabbi, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France has begun calling for criminal penalties for citizens who visit web sites that advocate for terror or hate. "From now on, any person who habitually consults Web sites that advocate terrorism or that call for hatred and violence will be criminally punished," Sarkozy was reported as saying.

Apart from the obvious flaws in Sarkozy's plan--users, can, of course, use anonymizing tools to view the material or simply access it from a variety of locations to avoid appearing as "habitual" viewers--there are numerous other reasons to be concerned about criminalizing access to information.

First, there's no guarantee that criminalizing access to hate speech or terrorist content will end the very real problems of hate crime and terrorism. Extremist violence didn't start with the Internet and it won't end with it, either. Full story...

Related posts:
  1. France on the verge of becoming "an enemy of the internet"
  2. Sarkozy attempts to "civilize" the Internet; Internet fights back...
  3. France halts ‘three strikes’ IP-address collection after data leak...
  4. Internet freedom: Estonia the best, Iran the most repressive...
  5. Caught in the ACTA: More angry protests break out in Poland...
  6. The Perfect Storm of internet censorship...
  7. The return of Gladio and the rebirth of terror under French tyrant Sarkozy...

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