In early February, the French government passed a decree
aimed at countering terrorist propaganda and recruiting. The decree, which was
in the works for a while, and came back into focus and was passed after the Charlie Hebdo shooting, allows the French
government to order ISPs to take down sites it deems as in violation of
anti-terror laws. In this way, it is similar to the proposed PIPA and SOPA legislature
that caused much uproar here in the US. Unlike SOPA and PIPA, which required
court orders for websites to be blocked, the French decree bypasses the
judicial process and allows government officials to directly order ISPs to
block infringing websites.
The backlash against SOPA and PIPA, from individuals and
corporations alike, revolved around concerns such as free speech. In
particular, there was great concern that once such a system was in place, it
could be abused to censor and block websites for reasons not originally covered
by the legislature, or block access to non-offending sites in cases of mistake.
Similarly, when the French decree was passed, some expressed the same sentiments.
As The Verge article points out, “Felix
Tréguer, of the French online rights group La Quadrature du Net, says the
decree risks ‘over-blocking perfectly legal content.’”
This past week, the French government used its new power to
block a handful of websites that supposedly condoned terrorism. Users visiting
these web are redirected to a French government website with the message “You
are being redirected to this official website since your computer was about to
connect with a page that provokes terrorist acts or condones terrorism
publicly.”
It seems that the fears of the decree being used in an
overly broad context have been realized. One of the sites, according the owner
of it, did not support or condone terrorism in any way. The owner has,
according to the techdirt.com article, “specifically avoided topics that might
be misinterpreted to suggest that he supported terrorists,” and has “denounced
a Syrian fighter who argued for attacks on Europe, saying that such things
would reflect poorly on Muslims in Europe.” This surely does not seem like it should
considered one of the websites the decree was meant to prevent access to, and yet
it was blocked anyway. Certainly, it seems that the law was misused, perhaps
mistakenly, and that the fears of something like this happening were not
unfounded.
There are a few aspects of this issue which I wonder about.
Should governments that protect and guarantee freedom of speech have the power
to legally block access to websites? Perhaps it's necessary to an extent. If governments should have this power, I think it should be
incredibly difficult do be able to exercise it. Any attempt to block access to a website should go through due process and extensive court review. This would hopefully prevent such blocking powers from being used excessively, and misused at all. It is,
however, a slippery slope.
http://www.theverge.com/2015/2/9/8003907/france-terrorist-child-pornography-website-law-censorship
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150318/06273130352/french-government-starts-blocking-websites-with-views-govt-doesnt-like.shtml
In my opinion, there is too much power lying in the hands of the French government here. The ability to bypass a court order means there are no checks and balances in place: the government's interpretation of content that violate anti-terror laws could be very broad and they could even block content that doesn't violate those laws, but would help further their agenda, politically-speaking. With a court order and justification system in place to ensure that the website does in fact violate anti-terror laws, there would be more balance in the decision-making process. Blocking access to websites that condone terrorism is a good idea, but it must be dealt with not by one deciding party, but multiple decision-makers.
ReplyDeleteThe biggest issue, however, to justify to the public is how the government is not inhibiting their freedom of speech. That right is a very broad one: where do you draw the line? How does one determine what is terrorism versus "venting" or voicing your opinion? Would the hacker group Anonymous be considered terrorism for their cyber hacking efforts? This is why multiple parties in the decision making process are needed to determine what sites to block. Having only 1 party do so could compromise freedom of speech and provide too much power to the government.