Tag Archive for: Parliament

EU Parliament Votes To Require Internet Sites To Delete ‘Terrorist Content’ In One Hour (By 3 Votes)

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A bit of deja vu here. Once again, the EU Parliament has done a stupid thing for the internet. As we’ve been discussing over the past few months, the EU has been pushing a really dreadful “EU Terrorist Content Regulation” with the main feature being a requirement that any site that can be accessed from the EU must remove any content deemed “terrorist content” by any vaguely defined “competent authority” within one hour of being notified. The original EU Commission version also included a requirement for filters to block reuploads and a provision that effectively turned websites’ terms of service documents into de facto law. In moving the Regulation to the EU Parliament, the civil liberties committee LIBE stripped the filters and the terms of service parts from the proposal, but kept in the one hour takedown requirement.

In a vote earlier today, the EU Parliament approved the version put for by the committee, rejecting (bad) amendments to bring back the upload filters and empowering terms of service, but also rejecting — by just three votes — an amendment to remove the insane one hour deadline.

Since this version is different than the absolutely bonkers one pushed by the European Commission, this now needs to go through a trilogue negotiation to reconcile the different versions, which will eventually lead to another vote. Of course, what that vote will look like may be anyone’s guess, given that the EU Parliamentary elections are next month, so it will be a very different looking Parliament by the time this comes back around.

Either way, this whole concept is a very poorly thought out knee-jerk moral panic from people scared of the internet and who don’t understand how it works. Actually implementing this in law would be disastrous for the EU and for internet security. The only way, for example, that we could comply with the law would be to hand over backend access to our servers to strangers in the EU and empower them to delete whatever they wanted. This is crazy and not something we would ever agree to do. It is unclear how any company — other than the largest companies — could possibly even pretend to try to comply with the one hour deadline, and even then (as the situation with the Christchurch video showed) there is simply no way for even the largest and best resourced teams out there to remove this kind of content within one hour. And that’s not even touching on the questions around who gets to determine what is “terrorist content,” how it will be abused, and also what this will mean for things like historical archives or open source intelligence.

This entire idea is poorly thought out, poorly implemented and a complete mess. So, of course, the EU Parliament voted for it. Hopefully, in next month’s elections we get a more sensible cohort of MEPs.

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European Parliament Moves Forward With ‘Terrorist Content’ Regulation That Will Lead To Massive Internet Censorship

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Last week we wrote (not for the first time) about the really dreadful Terrorist Content Regulation making its way through the EU regulatory process. As we noted, this is Article 13 on steroids. Everything that’s bad about Article 13 is worse in the Terrorist Content Regulation, even though it’s getting much less attention.

Perhaps because it’s getting so little attention it just sailed through an EU Parliament committee’s approval process. This was in the LIBE Committee, which is supposedly in charge of protecting civil liberties. And yet here, it seems to be stamping them out.

The text, as it was adopted, states that an authority (administrative or judicial) can order any actor of the Internet to remove a content under one hour. This unrealistic obligation will destroy small and medium platforms and, in contrast, reinforce Google and Facebook which are already working together with States to enforce mass and unchecked censorship – this is the very purpose of the Regulation proposed last September by the European Commission.

Once again, the European Parliament has proved that it was unable to resist from the pressure of the European Commission and governments. After the adoption of the Copyright Directive two weeks ago, this vote is a new and even more aggressive step towards mass and automated censorship.

Apparently, the LIBE did strip out some of the other problematic elements of the Regulation — including its attempt to effectively weaponize terms of service to be legally binding on platforms to take down content even if it’s legal. However, it leaves in the 1 hour takedown demand, which is concerning. Also, some in the EU Parliament supposedly plan to offer amendments to add back in the awful stuff that LIBE took out.

The text will now go before the entire EU Parliament, perhaps as early as next week.

La Quadrature du Net has put together a campaign page to help EU citizens contact their MEPs to educate them about what a disaster this regulation will be. Unfortunately, with the issue receiving so little public attention (especially compared to things like the EU Copyright Directive), there’s an unfortunate chance this thing just sails through. It’s the type of thing where politicians who don’t understand the issues at all will see something to stop “terrorist content” and assume “that sounds good.” The fact that the EU Commission and now the Civil Liberties Committee just let this move forward is a travesty. But, as we’ve noted, the EU seems intent on stamping out every nice thing about the internet, so it’ll just throw this one on the pile.

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Internet Blackout Coming To Show The EU Parliament It’s Not Just ‘Bots’ Concerned About Article 13

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Last week Glyn mentioned that the German Wikipedia had announced plans to “go dark” this Thursday to protest Articles 11 and 13 of the EU Copyright Directive. And now it appears that a whole bunch of other websites will join in the protest (including us). While we won’t go completely dark, we’ll be putting up a banner in support of the many websites that do plan to go dark — and we’ve heard that an awful lot of websites will be joining in. Supporters keep trying to dismiss these complaints as just being “bots” or the big internet companies, but lots of others will be showing that this is about the broader internet this Thursday. This is just one of many protests happening this week, with in-person protests happening all through the EU this coming weekend as well. Meanwhile there are lots of efforts to get MEPs to pledge to vote against Article 13 that has been gaining momentum as well. I have no idea if these kinds of protests will be as effective as the blackday back during the SOPA fight, but I can say that Article 13 will be way worse for the internet than SOPA ever would have been.

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The cyber attack on Parliament was done by a ‘state actor’ — here’s how experts figure that out – ABC News

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The cyber attack on Parliament was done by a ‘state actor’ — here’s how experts figure that out  ABC News

Whether it’s hackers stealing files from defence contractors or Federal Parliament’s computer network being undermined, Australia has for years come under …

“cyber warfare news” – read more