EU Commissioner for Home Affairs Malmstr öm la unches censorship arms race

[Cees Binkhorst]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

Dus wat ze in Zweden NIET mocht doen probeert ze nu op EU-nivo.
Koppig ;)

Groet / Cees

PS. Misschien moet de Commissie haar duidelijk maken dat er geen ruimte
is voor verborgen agenda's?
Anders lijkt me dit een uitgelezen kans voor het eerste referendum.

1. Commissioner Malmström launches censorship arms race
============================================================
Commissioner Malmström has been explaining to the European Parliament
and to the press that her Internet blocking proposals are "only" about
child abuse websites and "only" the kind of blocking that is in place in
countries such as Sweden. At the same time, however, her officials have
been convincing the EU's national home affairs ministries to agree in
principle to measures to develop legal powers to destroy web resources
outside the EU anywhere in an area covering the majority of the northern
hemisphere.

Buried in the Commission Communication on the Stockholm Programme
adopted in June 2009 was a proposal to allow the EU to launch unilateral
attacks on Internet resources in countries that rely on the RIPE NCC
regional Internet registry in The Hague. Internet access or hosting
providers considered to be involved in "criminal" activities (which
would include alleged intellectual property infringements if the planned
IPRED II Directive is adopted) anywhere in the RIPE area, which covers
south-western, central and northern Asia as well as all of Europe, could
be completely removed from the Internet under the measure.

After her own government rejected the proposal to include this policy in
the Stockholm Programme, Malmström's services successfully pushed to
have it included in the "Council conclusions concerning an Action Plan
to implement the concerted strategy to combat cybercrime" adopted on 26
April. The text is very light on details at the moment, referring only
to the adoption of "a common approach in the fight against cybercrime
internationally, particularly in relation to the revocation of Domain
Names and IP addresses".

The free speech dangers of countries giving themselves unilateral powers
to destroy foreign web resources were very clearly illustrated in 2008.
A British citizen living in Spain had been providing tourism services to
Cuba for almost ten years. From one day to the next, all of his web
resources disappeared. On further investigation it turned out that the
United States had exploited the fact that he had registered his domain
names through a US company to delete his entire web presence. While the
EU's plans would allow this type of attack also, they go much further,
as they would permit the destruction of entire ISPs, including all of
their websites and all of their internet connections.

"I get very upset about being accused of censorship" - Commissioner
Malmström in an interview with Europaportalen.

Interview with Cecilia Malmström (only in Swedish, 22.04.2010)
http://www.europaportalen.se/2010/04/malmstrom-om-censuranklagelserna-det-ar-helt-vansinnigt

Interview with Cecilia Malmström (translated, 25.04.2010)
http://interfax.werebuild.eu/2010/04/25/censilia-interview-translated/

Commissioner Malmström's response to EDRi's open letter on blocking
(26.04.2010)
http://www.edri.org/files/malmstroem.pdf

A Wave of the Watch List, and Speech Disappears (4.03.2008)
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/04/us/04bar.html

Council conclusions concerning an Action Plan to implement the concerted
strategy to combat cybercrime (26.04.2010)
http://www.consilium.europa.eu/uedocs/cms_Data/docs/pressdata/en/jha/114028.pdf

Commission Communication on the Stockholm Programme
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=COM:2009:0262:FIN:EN:PDF

RIPE coverage map (yellow area)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/95/Regional_Internet_Registries_world_map.svg

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