Italian MEP Wants To Eliminate Anonymity On the Internet 223
m94mni writes "The European Parliament wants to monitor your Internet searches for child porn offenders, as previously reported. The declaration was adopted yesterday, and in an interview with the Swedish news outlet Europaportalen.se, the Italian MEP behind the declaration, Tiziano Motti, shares his views on the Internet and anonymity. In essence, Motti wants to completely eliminate anonymity on the Internet. 'Each upload of text, images, or video clips must be traceable by the authorities', says Motti. This is in line with the secretive UN initiative Q6/17, revealed two years ago." The doublespeak here seems to go beyond the imprecision of automated translation.
for "child porn"... (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course, It's the best excuse [youtube.com]...
Re:Solve Problem by Legalizing Child Pornography (Score:5, Interesting)
What about the people producing child pornography? I absolutely agree that simple possession of an image should carry no legal penalty, but I also think there should be a punishment for causing a person to engage in something potentially psychologically damaging before that person has reached the age to make an informed decision about whether to do so. However, I do think that the age of consent to appear in porn should be lowered to 15 or so.
Also, "this wasn't illegal for a long time, and society did fine!" is a bad argument. Hundreds of years ago, most people lived in abject poverty without what we would consider today to be the most basic standard of food, housing, education, or health care. It's only because in rich countries we've mostly solved those problems that we can turn our energies to comparatively minor issues like child pornography.
Re:Solve Problem by Legalizing Child Pornography (Score:1, Interesting)
If informed consent is all that matters, and if there really is a huge demand for kiddy porn, can I take pictures of children, keep them in a bank vault, and when they reach the age of majority they can either burn the images or sell them for college money? Everyone is happy, nobody is hurt, everyone's life is improved. ... I kind of think we all agree on that pretty much anyway.
The most elementary principles of justice seem to me to be that you can enter into a contract of your own free will, and that if nobody is hurt then there was no crime. To the extent that our governments attempt to deny this they are the criminals and the majority of the people in prison are the victims of a rather large kidnapping and extortion racket.
But
Re:Fighting child porn justifies anything (Score:5, Interesting)
Rule of thumb: take out "on the internet" when you're discussing civil rights (or ... well, anything, really.) In other words, the question is not "is anonymity on the internet a fundamental right?" but simply "is anonymity a fundamental right?" And the answer of history is "yes, it is." From the run-up to the American Revolution to samizdat in the USSR, the cause of freedom has always been better served when those who would be persecuted for speaking out can keep their identities secret from the persecutors.
The need for a scapegoat (Score:5, Interesting)
"Child pornography" is the current excuse for oppression in the US. "Communist infiltration" stopped being a serious concern around 1975 or so. Terrorism has been slow lately. Militant Islam isn't getting any significant traction in the US. (Some European countries have real problems there, but the US doesn't seem to.) The "war on drugs" had a good run, but it's turning into a real war in Mexican border cities, and that focuses attention on real problems, not rhetoric.
The excuse has to be for something that doesn't have complaining parties who want their cases solved. Where law enforcement has to deal with victims who report crimes, law enforcement performance is measured by the percentage of crimes solved. This keeps cops focused, and they don't get to set their own agenda.
It's significant that the FBI's "child pornography" enforcement operation hasn't been involved in the Catholic child abuse scandals. There don't seem to have been any cases where the FBI actually caught a priest abusing a child. Yet, given the statistics, that's an obvious place to look.
Note what we don't have. There's no "war on financial fraud". There's no "war on tax cheats". There's no "war on polluters". There's no "war on employers of underage kids".
Re:Crying wolf (Score:2, Interesting)
Governments are only going to get so much mileage out of crying wolf by invoking "Because...well...BECAUSE...CHILD PORNOGRAPHY".
If they keep this up, it's going to dilute honest, real efforts to fight child pornography because people will be conditioned to equate "child pornography" with "government power grab".
I really wish I could share your optimism, but I seriously doubt that will happen.
Even if they do run out of the ability to initiate it at the legislative level, there's always the option to astroturf a community of "concerned parents who really'd like it if you'd think about the children and consider signing this petition to make the internet "safe again" by making sure that anyone who traipses onto any site deemed inappropriate, by any means, will be shot." And it'll work, because child porn really is one of those things that pretty much everyone can agree is a bad thing that we'd like to not exist anymore, and it's easy to rally people for it.
Re:Sounds like drugs (Score:3, Interesting)
Like drugs, It works perfectly... your just looking at it from the wrong angle. Prosecuting an endless supply of people who happened across the wrong image online, helps clock up points that enable careers in law enforcement to advance, secures more funding for the department to expand, enables the political bosses enact new laws to restrict rights, AND makes the general population feel warm and fuzzy (without needing drugs) when they read in their local papers "50+ Sex/drug offenders prosecuted this year alone, 60% increase over last year" in the headlines. Go after the dealers??! Are you nuts!? That would put an end to the endless parade.
Re:GNAA RULEZ! (Score:3, Interesting)
So apparently he wants every 'content provider', which from my reading seems to be the same as 'hosting platform', or basically, anywhere you can upload content, to retain information about the uploader and make this information available to the 'proper authorities'.
Since i have zero control on what a "content provider" logs right now, I assume that they are logging all this information right now. How exactly can we assume that a web site *isn't* logging your details when posting/uploading content?
Fuck this guy. (Score:4, Interesting)
...Also, while we're at it - I wish there was a way to eliminate form office any politicians who uses any of the following rhetoric:
"think of the children"
"if you don't have anything to hide, then there's no reason to worry about monitoring/spying/us analraping your privacy"
"the constitution* was written over 200 years ago, it's no longer valid for our times." (*if we're talking about non-US entities, then change that to whatever law/document/convention gives people their rights).
This isn't about the children at all....The goal is the same as it's always been, regardless of the argument: Control. They want control, they don;t like people being able to anonymously share information and organize - and if I were them, trying to do a lot of the things these people are doing, I would feel the same way - because they're basically criminals - they want to manipulate us out of our freedoms and protections with scare tactics.
In this day and age people should be educated enough about history to recognize these ploys and know what they mean..Unfortunately (particuarly in the US) the majority aren't.
Emotion is not behind "Think of the children" (Score:3, Interesting)
Logic and reason are behind "think of the children." It's really "think of the profit losses." The corporations that cannot make a profit off the internet have decided to fundamentally change the nature of the internet itself to rig the game. When album sales aren't good they never think that maybe album sales drop when the economy is bad. They never take note of the fact that when the economy is doing good the album and movie sales rise. They only look at the internet as something they cannot control and they don't like it when you and your friends download mp3s or avi's. So they want to monitor the entire internet so they know who to sue.
While there are pedophiles and terrorists, the majority of individuals on the internet are not pedophiles or terrorists. In fact I'm willing to bet that less than 1% of people on the internet are pedophiles or terrorists. On the other hand probably more than half of the internet is downloading mp3s and avi's. And it's the very young college aged individuals who do this the most.
So what would the result of this surveillance be? More young people being punished and either locked up in prison or sued into even deeper debt. It's another way to keep young people in debt. I suppose if you were smart enough not to take out college loans, and smart enough not to use credit cards, you still might have been dumb enough to use bearshare or limewire.
It's ultimately not a solution to increase surveillance unless it's TRULY going to be done in a way that the results of this unlimited surveillance does not result in increased criminal prosecutions. If the increased surveillance is supposed to result in an increase in crime and an increase in criminal prosecutions, this means an increase in the amount of prisons being built, which means there will be a need to fill them up, and you'll have the same "War on Drugs" type of situation in Europe via these laws that the USA has.
Get ready to have a million + prisoners. If they are SERIOUS about going after terrorists then they need to limit the scope of when this technology can be applied. If they basically apply it to every kind of possible crime then the results will be obvious and this will be bad for the economy of Europe and for the "children." as they say.
Re:Crying wolf (Score:3, Interesting)
If they keep this up, it's going to dilute honest, real efforts to fight child pornography because people will be conditioned to equate "child pornography" with "government power grab".
It's already been diluted beyond recognition. The original intent behind child pornography laws was to try and cut off the market for pictures and videos of children engaged in sex acts. Now there is virtually no market to speak of, and thousands of people each year are arrested for simple possession without having engaged in any financial transaction to buy the stuff. Not to mention the teenagers being arrested for taking pictures of themselves in the mirror. And the penalties are completely out of line. In most jurisdictions, you're much better off facing a criminal charge of actually molesting a child then you are facing any sort of child porn charge (which can inevitably be prosecuted on the federal level).
People have inundated with the "child porn = worst evil evar on earth" propaganda for so long that they only weakly question if an upskirt pic of 17 year old Miley Cyrus taken in public should be considered child pornography: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/06/17/earlyshow/leisure/celebspot/main6590770.shtml [cbsnews.com]
Whether an actual child is being exploited is no longer of any concern. It's simply the easiest way for governments and law enforcement agencies to have some control over the flow of information on the internet.
Re:Dirty Move (Score:3, Interesting)
"I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man. We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Hmm.. while I agree in principal that your statement applies to almost any government, I'm curious to understand why you single out the US gov., when there are many more egregious governments out there. Aside from the obvious target that our government makes by its size, the Gov. of N. Korea essentially holds its populous in slavery and actively seeks to develop nuclear weapons and promotes subversion, same as Iran. The Republic of the Congo and other governmental bodies of various N. Africa nations murders their own people, and China has shown that it is willing to brutally suppress dissent. In light of those realities your statement is simply a pale mockery of a country you obviously jealous of, or owe a lot of tax to.
Re:Dirty Move (Score:2, Interesting)
I've seen that "open container" law applied to people picking up aluminum cans along the roadway.
A friend of mine got pulled over speeding on his way to the grocery store to return bottles and was then cited for violating the open container law. Apparently the police officer was too dense to realize the difference between a beer open that's half full sitting in the cup holder and a rinsed out bottle that's been packaged for return.
Thankfully it got tossed when he went to court but it was still bullshit to begin with.
Re:Hitler was real at least. (Score:3, Interesting)
talk about the pedophile elite on the other hand, what evidence do they have that this pedophile elite even exists?
It's called the Catholic Church's program of relocating child molesting priests, heard of it? In fact the pope has been implicated in having personally been involved in relocating molesters. How much more elite does it get?
The law gets tweaked for political reasons, think of the drug laws which were tweaked in the 80s and resulted in over a million prisoners in the USA.
I think you mean "Economic reasons". Or did we not notice the coincidence of prison privatization?
There might be a few elite pedophiles but there is no "pedophile elite." There is a difference. And the Prison Industrial Complex I see in the same way and light as I see racial slavery. It's no accident that most of the millions of prisoners are black and brown. This is just a way to make people work for free in a prison type camp.