Archive for November 2008
Thai Netizen Network press conference
แถลงข่าวเปิดตัว เครือข่ายพลเมืองสื่ออินเตอร์เน็ต
ขอเรียนเชิญร่วมงาน
แถลงข่าวเปิดตัว เครือข่ายพลเมืองสื่ออินเตอร์เน็ต และ เสวนาโต๊ะกลม เรื่อง
“สิทธิพลเมืองเน็ต และ เสรีภาพสื่อออนไลน์: ปัญหา ข้อท้าทาย และทางออกที่ควรจะเป็น”
จัดโดย เครือข่ายพลเมืองสื่ออินเตอร์เน็ต
Thai Netizen Network
ณ ห้องประชุมอิศรา อมันตกุล สมาคมนักข่าวนักหนังสือพิมพ์แห่งประเทศไทยถ.สามเสน
วันที่ 2 ธันวาคม พ.ศ. 2551 เ วลา 13.00 – 17.00 น.
กำหนดการ
13.00 น. ลงทะเบียน รับเอกสาร
13.30 น. แถลงข่าว เปิดตัว เครือข่ายพลเมืองสื่ออินเตอร์เนท โดย คณะกรรมการดำเนินงานฯ
– ใครคือ เครือข่ายพลเมืองสื่ออินเตอร์เนท
– จุดยืนเรื่อง สิทธิพลเมืองเน็ต และ เสรีภาพสื่อออนไลน์
– ข้อเสนอต่อรัฐและสังคม ต่อเรื่อง การกำกับดูแลสื่ออินเตอร์เน็ตและการบังคับใช้กฏหมาย
14.00 – 15.30 น.
เสวนาโต๊ะกลม เรื่อง “สิทธิพลเมืองเน็ต และ เสรีภาพสื่อออนไลน์: ปัญหา ข้อท้าทาย และทางออกที่ควรจะเป็น”
1. สิทธิของพลเมืองเน็ต : สิทธิการเข้าถึงข้อมูลข่าวสาร เสรีภาพในการแสดงออก สิทธิความเป็นส่วนตัว และสิทธิตามกระบวนการยุติธรรม
เปิดประเด็นโดย สฤณี อาชวานันทกุล สุภิญญา กลางณรงค์ สุนิตย์ เชรษฐา
2. เสรีภาพสื่อออนไลน์: เสรีภาพการแสดงออกและการกำกับดูแล ความเสมอภาค และความรับผิดชอบร่วมกันของสังคม
เปิดประเด็นโดย จีรนุช เปรมชัยพร ดร.จิตต์ทัศน์ ฝักเจริญผล อาทิตย์ สุริยะวงศ์กุล
3. กรณีศึกษาเรื่อง ผลกระทบจากการใช้ พระราชบัญญัติว่าด้วยการกระทำความผิดเกี่ยวกับคอมพิวเตอร์ พ.ศ. 2550 ต่อสิทธิพลเมืองเน็ต
นำเสนอโดย นายศิริพร สุวรรณพิทักษ์ (กรณี 212 cafe) และ คุณภูมิจิต ศีระวงศ์ประเสริฐ
15.45 – 17.00 น. เปิดเวทีถกเถียง เสวนา แสวงหาทางออก
Cyber-Liberty=Access+Expression+Privacy+Responsibility+Common Property
สอบถาม 02-6910574 freethainetizen@gmail.com
Thai Netizen Network press conference
You’re warmly invited to join
Press Conference for the opening event of
“Thai Netizen Network” & round-table discussion on
“The netizens’ rights and liberty of online media:
Problems, Challenges and Recommendations”
Organized by Thai Netizen Network
At Isra Amantakul seminar room, Thai Journalists Association, Samsen Road
Tuesday, December, 2, 2008 at 1-5 pm
13.00 – Registration
13.30 – Press conference for the opening event of “Thai Netizen network” by the Working Committees on topics;
– Who are we?
– Stands for netizens’ rights and liberty of online media
– Recommendations to the authorities and public on Internet regulation and law enforcement
14.00-15.30 – Round-table discussion on “The netizens’ rights and liberty of online media: Problems, Challenges and recommendations”
1. Netizens’ rights: The Rights to access, Freedom of expression, Rights for privacy and Rights under judicial process.
Presented by Ms.Sarinee Achawanuntakul, Ms.Supinya Klangnarong, Mr.Sunit Shrestha
2. The Liberty of online media: Free speeches and fair regulation, Net Neutrality, and Social responsibility.
Presented by Ms.Chiranuch Premchaiyaporn, Dr. Jittat Fakjaroenpol , Mr.Arthit Suriyawongkul
3. Case study: The ramification of Computer Crime Act B.E.2550 on the netizens’ rights. Presented by Mr.Siriporn Suwannapitaka <212 cafe case> and Mrs.Poomjit Srirawongprasert
15.45-17.0 – Open discussion
Cyber-Liberty = Access+Expression+Privacy+Responsibility+Common Property
Contact 02-6910574 Email: freethainetizen@gmail.com
Porn causes HIV!-The Nation
[FACT comments: So teenaged girls getting HIV and unmentioned teen pregnancies are the fault of Internet porn which should therefore be censored. Common sense, people! Didn’t teenagers get HIV and “fall” pregnant before there was an Internet? Duh!]
More teenaged girls getting HIV infection
Pongphon Sarnsamak
The Nation: November 25, 2008
http://www.nationmultimedia.com/2008/11/25/national/national_30089295.php
The Health Ministry has expressed concern over the increasing incidence of HIV infections among young girls between 15 -19 years old who could access porn magazines and media which publish articles and pictures on real sexual experiences, erotic short stories and novels.
The Health Ministry has expressed concern over the increasing incidence of HIV infections among young girls between 15 -19 years old who could access porn magazines and media which publish articles and pictures on real sexual experiences, erotic short stories and novels.
Deputy of Public Health Minister, Vicharn Meenchaiyanant said the recent ministry’s survey had found that about 48 per cent of young girls have watched pornographic videos while 35 per cent have visited porn sites on the Internet.
The Public Health found that only 39 per cent of young girls use condom regularly. The number of HIV infections in young women is two-fold higher than that of young men.
Since the first case of HIV/AIDS was reported in Thailand in 1984, the incidence of HIV infections has increased steadily. So far 1,115,415 adults have been infected. Of this number 585,830 have died of AIDS while 532,522 adults are suffering from HIV or AIDS. New infections affected 12,787 adults and children this year.
The World Health Organisation last year found that over 30.8 million people around the world have been infected with HIV while 2.1 million have died during the past year. About 2.5 million new cases of HIV have been reported.
The health agency estimated that about 6,800 people per day or five people per minute would be infected with HIV. Of this total, 40 per cent are teenagers aged 15-24 years old.
Africa is the most infected area with 25 million people living with HIV while South Asia and South East Asia are the second most affected area with 8 million HIV patients.
In a bid to combat HIV, the health ministry has collaborated with relevant agencies to launch a massive campaign against HIV among teenagers.
The campaign, aimed at raising awareness among teenagers about safe sex and the use of condoms, will include mini concerts, parades and exhibitions to draw attention of the public to the dangers of HIV.
The campaign will start on December 1 to commemorate World AIDS Day.
The theme highlights both the political leadership needed to fulfil commitments that have been made in response to HIV/AIDS – particularly the promise of universal access to prevention, treatment, care and support – and to celebrate the leadership that has been witnessed at all levels of society.
Patani and separatism-Bangkok Post
[FACT comments: Not only is the political will lacking but Bangkok’s farce in the streets takes all the news space. After all, Bangkokians are educated, wealthy, and urbane. By contrast, people in Patani, even though they are Thai citizens, are just a little too foreign, eating different food, speaking a different language, worshipping a different religion. It looks like most Thai people just don’t care much. PULO is still a “banned” organisation and its Thai leaders live in foreign exile; any websites supporting PULO or even PULO’s appeals to the United Nations are banned by our government. But read this article carefully: they are not separatists, though we have certainly given them great cause to be so.]
Political will lacking to deal with south problem
Don Pathan
The Nation: November 25, 2008
http://www.nationmultimedia.com/2008/11/25/opinion/opinion_30089296.php
For the past three decades, old man Fadel has met and talked with Thai security officials about what seems to be a never ending dispute between the Malay historical homeland of Patani and the Thai state.
Not much has changed over the years. If anything, the situation seems to be getting worse if one takes into consideration the level of violence in the southernmost border provinces where more than 3,200 have died since January 2004.
Fadel (not his real name) is a key leader from one of the longstanding separatist groups that emerged in the late 1960s to carve out a separate homeland for Malays in Thailand’s southernmost border provinces. Like many Patani exiles, Fadel lives a quiet life in Malaysia under the watchful eyes of the state security and intelligence agencies. Kuala Lumpur has been working quietly with Bangkok to facilitate some of these meetings that Fadel said hasn’t made much progress. He blamed the lack of sincerity and the absence of mandate on his Thai counterparts.
Since his last interview to The Nation, early last year, Fadel has lost a tooth and his hair has greyed more. But his stance remains unchanged.
Like other leaders of long standing groups – Patani United Liberation Organisation, Barisan Revolusi Nasional – Congress, Gerekan Mujahidin Islam Patani (GMIP), Barisan Islam Pembangunan Patani (BIPP) – Fadel has dropped the demand for an independent Patani.
Echoing other old guards from these long standing groups, Fadel maintained that before true and lasting peace can be achieved, Thailand must first recognise the historical fact that the Malayspeaking region was once an independent sultanate. Moreover, the use of Malay must be permitted as a “working language” alongside the “official” Thai.
“This is not about separating Patani from Thailand. It’s about the dignity of the Malays of Patani,” explained Fadel.
Thai security officials have said rewriting history and having all sides come to terms with the past will not go well with conservative elements who see the current nationstate boundary as something next to divine revelation. But the demands from the old guards can be met as long as the will is there from the political leaders, they said.
Like everything else, it seems, the devil is in the details.
In recent months, Fadel has been watching with some discomfort the various initiatives by key Thai political and regional leaders to broker a peace deal with groups who claimed to be representing the people of Patani.
These key Thai political leaders include Chavalit Yongchaiyudh, Chettha Thanajaro, Surayud Chulanont and last but not the least, Indonesian Vice President Yusuf Kalla. Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim has also expressed concern and interest in working towards peace as well.
But good intentions are not necessarily good policy. Many stakeholders have questioned the true intention of these socalled mediators and the merit of their action. In fact, some of these recent initiatives were billed as, at best, bad planning, and at worst, a hoax.
Two months ago Chavalit publicly said an everlasting peace would be achieved by December 5 this year. He has less than two weeks left. Before that Chettha announced an end to the centuryold resistance. Kalla, on the other hand, was left high and dry when the Thai government said it was not aware of his initiative.
While these dialogue tracks continue to attract the attention of the exiled leaders, there is a growing consensus among concerned parties that in spite of these talks, Thailand and Patani separatist groups are as far apart as ever.
“I have got to the point that these discussions, dialogue or negotiations have become pointless. This is because the Thai side has always sent men, usually soldiers, who have no real mandate,” said another exiled leader, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Malaysian officials who helped facilitate some of these meetings echoed the same sentiment, saying there is no continuity from the Thai side and the participants see these meetings as an intelligence gathering exercise rather than as part of an effort to come up with a sound policy.
This is not to say that the Thai government has never been in constructive dialogue before. In December 2007, then prime minister Surayud met secretly with a top PULO official during a stopover in Bahrain.
But the foundation that Surayud laid was not built on. “Everything at the official level is more or less at a standstill at the moment,” said the Malaysian officer.
Well, not exactly. Surayud’s effort was replaced by individual initiatives from various camps, namely Kalla, Chetta and Chavalit. All reached out to the old guards but so far, nothing meaningful has come out of their efforts.
While no one doubted the historical role of these old guards, the biggest question that is eating up the Thai side is what kind of influence the exiled leaders have over the new generation of militants operating on the ground.
Old guards said they have regular dialogue with the new generation and maintain that they can bring them to the negotiating table if and when a formal negotiation is kicked off.
Others in the exiled community are quietly singling out the Barisan Revolusi Nasional – Coordinate as the one long standing group that has any real influence on the new generation operating on the ground. Locally, the new generation of militants is referred to as the juwae, which means fighter in local Malay dialect.
For the time being, Bangkok’s official position is to deny any involvement with these “private initiatives” in spite of financing some of them. The Thai government is also keeping the international community away from what they have consistently billed as a domestic issue.
Observers and frustrated officials on the ground say Thai security agencies have too much to hide – the torture, a culture of impunity, corruption and the use of government death squad. Certainly, they can do without the headache from the international community, much less the debate on the legitimacy of the Thai state in the Malays’ historical homeland.
Unless there is political will from Bangkok to push for real change in the deep South, said old man Fadel, violence will continue unabated.
“We don’t mind being part of Thailand,” Fadel said. “But it has to be on our own terms.”
Australia's "clean feed" debate-Online Opinion
[FACT comments: When governments allow any censorship, there’s always more. What about the lobby group who doesn’t like some cartoons?]
The perplexing Internet debate
Mark Newton
Online Opinion: October 30, 2008
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=8098&page=0
Ever since public computer networks burst onto the scene in the 1980’s, the subject of online content regulation has been a controversial one.
Successive governments of all stripes have considered the issue, and largely looked upon the free-ranging exchange of networked content with disapproval, if not outright disdain. Nearly 20 years ago the Senate Select Committee into Online Services produced a frightening raft of predictions about the societal decay that’d naturally extend from the public’s exposure to material common in the BBS (Bulletin Board System) world, and various repetitions of the effort have drawn the same conclusions ever since.
Unfortunately for the censorship advocates, our own experience tells us that all the predictions of doom, destruction and despair have been wrong.
We’ve now experienced 20 years of ubiquitous access to the Internet, and have brought up a whole generation of jacked-in kids, who have grown up into responsible parents themselves.
These people are completely comfortable with the Internet, having grown up using Google to assist with their physics homework, keeping in touch with their friends all over the world with email, exchanging happy-snaps of their holidays on blogs and Facebook, and inhaling information from the inexhaustible reservoir of sometimes crass, but often invaluable content on the World Wide Web.
The Australian public has acclimatised themselves to the Internet, and adapted both their lives and the network itself to suit their lifestyles. Australian parents are comfortable with the Internet, barring some background-radiation levels of anxiety, quelled by means of a straightforward dose of supervision and PC filtering software. In a world which has featured nearly three decades of uncensored access to online services, to advocate for handing it over to government control is a radical position.
Which is why this latest resurrection of the online censorship debate is so perplexing.
When Senator Alston last raised the issue in 1999, the Internet was still a scary place that hardly anyone had experienced. Nobody in Australia had seen a URL on a bus ad, or posted their baby videos on YouTube. It was easy to stir up “moral panic” about Internet content because hardly anyone knew what it was, and the speakers with the loudest megaphones were the politicians doing the stirring.
But in 2008? Not so much.
Senator Stephen Conroy, Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, has brought the issue up again, and much to his apparent surprise it doesn’t seem to be tracking as well as it has in the past.
Not only does everyone know that the Internet isn’t frightening or uncontrollable; not only do the population’s own experiences clash with the Minister’s hysterical allusions to unrestricted access to child pornography; but, much to the Minister’s apparent astonishment, he doesn’t even have the loudest voice anymore.
In the past, politicians have been able to shut-down debate by casting McCarthyist slurs which compare opponents to child pornographers: but when Mr Conroy used the same tactic in Senate Estimates on October 20, the blogosphere’s incredulous ridicule seeped through into the commercial media, yielding headlines about the Minister’s disgraceful debasement of the public discourse.
In the past, politicians have been able to monopolise the debate by having disproportionate access to media. Not so for Mr Conroy, who has been so thoroughly discredited by the controversy that his press office has refused to comment to media outlets since October 24, while the new media represented by the blogosphere is atwitter with fulminating dissent.
In the past, politicians have had message-control; but this time it’s different, with the online community pre-empting the Minister with their own talking points, their own arguments, their own technical and financial analyses, and boundless quantities of embarrassing ridicule on the Minister’s position. The Minister has been caught flat-footed without a response, and, as reported by Asher Moses in The Age on October 24, his first and most public reaction has been to try to silence my opposing political views by exercising inappropriate political pressure on my employer.
Every broken promise is coming under scrutiny. Every debating point is being disassembled and debunked. Every piece of emotional extremist rhetoric emanating from the Minister’s office is being deconstructed for political jargon, turned around, and aimed right back at its originator. And new supporters who join the Minister, such as Family First and Senator Nick Xenophon on October 27, are instantly associated with the same criticisms.
The online community’s argument is a simple one:
- there’s no problem to solve because actual illegal material on the Internet is so rare that nobody ever finds it;
- even if there was a problem to solve, there’s no serious public demand to solve it;
- even if there was a public demand to solve it, none of the solutions proposed by the ALP will be effective, and the Government has handily provided original research to decimate their own case;
- even if they were effective, they’ll slow down Internet access and reduce Internet reliability, as shown by the same original research released by the Minister on July 22;
- even if the proposed solutions had perfect performance and reliability, none of them are affordable;
- even if they were affordable, they’ll be implemented terribly by the same underclass of bureaucrat that deemed Mohammad Haneef a terrorist, or Bill Henson a pornographer. The salivating of hangers-on like Family First and Nick Xenophon, lobbying to have the blacklist expanded before it’s even in force, demonstrate perfectly how open the system will be to political manipulation and lobbying;
- even if they were implemented perfectly by perfect administrators, the blacklists will inevitably leak, be published on the Internet, whereupon they’ll fall into the hands of nefarious individuals and consequently enable child abuse all over the world, with the direct assistance of the Commonwealth of Australia; and
- there’s no possibility that the blacklists won’t leak. Finland’s list has already leaked, CyberPatrol’s encrypted blacklist is cracked every six months or so. It’s delusional to believe that Australia will be any better at securing its officially sanctioned list of Child Porn and Terrorism sites than anyone else. It might take a month, a year, five years, ten years, or two hours. But it will leak, secrets always do. Pressing it into service will be like setting a ticking time bomb, and when it explodes there’ll be a thronging multitude of critics pointing at Senator Conroy and saying, “I told you so, you were warned, but you did it anyway”.
This isn’t a complicated argument. To justify the ALP’s policy, cogent, successful arguments against each and every one of those independent points will need to be mounted.
The Minister’s behaviour isn’t likely to encourage the production of such arguments. Aside from the four days of “radio silence” coming from his department post October 24, we’ve seen him malign critics by accusing them of “speculating” about details he’s refused to provide, label proponents of these entirely reasonable arguments as “extremist lobby groups”, and attack his questioners by comparing them to child pornographers.
While it’d be nice to pretend that we could have a grown-up discussion about these issues, the topic’s political history doesn’t lend much hope.
Is this time going to be different?
Australia’s “clean feed” debate-Online Opinion
[FACT comments: When governments allow any censorship, there’s always more. What about the lobby group who doesn’t like some cartoons?]
The perplexing Internet debate
Mark Newton
Online Opinion: October 30, 2008
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=8098&page=0
Ever since public computer networks burst onto the scene in the 1980’s, the subject of online content regulation has been a controversial one.
Successive governments of all stripes have considered the issue, and largely looked upon the free-ranging exchange of networked content with disapproval, if not outright disdain. Nearly 20 years ago the Senate Select Committee into Online Services produced a frightening raft of predictions about the societal decay that’d naturally extend from the public’s exposure to material common in the BBS (Bulletin Board System) world, and various repetitions of the effort have drawn the same conclusions ever since.
Unfortunately for the censorship advocates, our own experience tells us that all the predictions of doom, destruction and despair have been wrong.
We’ve now experienced 20 years of ubiquitous access to the Internet, and have brought up a whole generation of jacked-in kids, who have grown up into responsible parents themselves.
These people are completely comfortable with the Internet, having grown up using Google to assist with their physics homework, keeping in touch with their friends all over the world with email, exchanging happy-snaps of their holidays on blogs and Facebook, and inhaling information from the inexhaustible reservoir of sometimes crass, but often invaluable content on the World Wide Web.
The Australian public has acclimatised themselves to the Internet, and adapted both their lives and the network itself to suit their lifestyles. Australian parents are comfortable with the Internet, barring some background-radiation levels of anxiety, quelled by means of a straightforward dose of supervision and PC filtering software. In a world which has featured nearly three decades of uncensored access to online services, to advocate for handing it over to government control is a radical position.
Which is why this latest resurrection of the online censorship debate is so perplexing.
When Senator Alston last raised the issue in 1999, the Internet was still a scary place that hardly anyone had experienced. Nobody in Australia had seen a URL on a bus ad, or posted their baby videos on YouTube. It was easy to stir up “moral panic” about Internet content because hardly anyone knew what it was, and the speakers with the loudest megaphones were the politicians doing the stirring.
But in 2008? Not so much.
Senator Stephen Conroy, Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, has brought the issue up again, and much to his apparent surprise it doesn’t seem to be tracking as well as it has in the past.
Not only does everyone know that the Internet isn’t frightening or uncontrollable; not only do the population’s own experiences clash with the Minister’s hysterical allusions to unrestricted access to child pornography; but, much to the Minister’s apparent astonishment, he doesn’t even have the loudest voice anymore.
In the past, politicians have been able to shut-down debate by casting McCarthyist slurs which compare opponents to child pornographers: but when Mr Conroy used the same tactic in Senate Estimates on October 20, the blogosphere’s incredulous ridicule seeped through into the commercial media, yielding headlines about the Minister’s disgraceful debasement of the public discourse.
In the past, politicians have been able to monopolise the debate by having disproportionate access to media. Not so for Mr Conroy, who has been so thoroughly discredited by the controversy that his press office has refused to comment to media outlets since October 24, while the new media represented by the blogosphere is atwitter with fulminating dissent.
In the past, politicians have had message-control; but this time it’s different, with the online community pre-empting the Minister with their own talking points, their own arguments, their own technical and financial analyses, and boundless quantities of embarrassing ridicule on the Minister’s position. The Minister has been caught flat-footed without a response, and, as reported by Asher Moses in The Age on October 24, his first and most public reaction has been to try to silence my opposing political views by exercising inappropriate political pressure on my employer.
Every broken promise is coming under scrutiny. Every debating point is being disassembled and debunked. Every piece of emotional extremist rhetoric emanating from the Minister’s office is being deconstructed for political jargon, turned around, and aimed right back at its originator. And new supporters who join the Minister, such as Family First and Senator Nick Xenophon on October 27, are instantly associated with the same criticisms.
The online community’s argument is a simple one:
- there’s no problem to solve because actual illegal material on the Internet is so rare that nobody ever finds it;
- even if there was a problem to solve, there’s no serious public demand to solve it;
- even if there was a public demand to solve it, none of the solutions proposed by the ALP will be effective, and the Government has handily provided original research to decimate their own case;
- even if they were effective, they’ll slow down Internet access and reduce Internet reliability, as shown by the same original research released by the Minister on July 22;
- even if the proposed solutions had perfect performance and reliability, none of them are affordable;
- even if they were affordable, they’ll be implemented terribly by the same underclass of bureaucrat that deemed Mohammad Haneef a terrorist, or Bill Henson a pornographer. The salivating of hangers-on like Family First and Nick Xenophon, lobbying to have the blacklist expanded before it’s even in force, demonstrate perfectly how open the system will be to political manipulation and lobbying;
- even if they were implemented perfectly by perfect administrators, the blacklists will inevitably leak, be published on the Internet, whereupon they’ll fall into the hands of nefarious individuals and consequently enable child abuse all over the world, with the direct assistance of the Commonwealth of Australia; and
- there’s no possibility that the blacklists won’t leak. Finland’s list has already leaked, CyberPatrol’s encrypted blacklist is cracked every six months or so. It’s delusional to believe that Australia will be any better at securing its officially sanctioned list of Child Porn and Terrorism sites than anyone else. It might take a month, a year, five years, ten years, or two hours. But it will leak, secrets always do. Pressing it into service will be like setting a ticking time bomb, and when it explodes there’ll be a thronging multitude of critics pointing at Senator Conroy and saying, “I told you so, you were warned, but you did it anyway”.
This isn’t a complicated argument. To justify the ALP’s policy, cogent, successful arguments against each and every one of those independent points will need to be mounted.
The Minister’s behaviour isn’t likely to encourage the production of such arguments. Aside from the four days of “radio silence” coming from his department post October 24, we’ve seen him malign critics by accusing them of “speculating” about details he’s refused to provide, label proponents of these entirely reasonable arguments as “extremist lobby groups”, and attack his questioners by comparing them to child pornographers.
While it’d be nice to pretend that we could have a grown-up discussion about these issues, the topic’s political history doesn’t lend much hope.
Is this time going to be different?
Australia's "clean feed" smoke-and-mirrors-IIA
NSW Parliamentary Research: Mandatory ISP filtering is not what it seems.
Internet Industry Association: November 19, 2008
http://www.iia.net.au/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=687&Itemid=32
The NSW Parliamentary Library Research Service has issued an E-Brief on Internet Censorship and Mandatory Filtering. Its authors Tom Edwards and Gareth Griffith survey the local and international position and conclude that mandatory ISP level filtering is not a feature of many of the countries it reviewed. In place, rather, are voluntary ISP filtering schemes designed to prevent accidental access to a defined list of illegal sites containing child pornography.
The report notes that Italy and Germany may be exceptions.
Comment: The IIA’s understanding is that Italy’s decree is in fact subordinate legislation – not law per se. It gives effect to an agreement that was previously reached by ISPs and the relevant regulator.
To that extent, Italy has not enacted mandatory ISP filtering, either.
Germany has regulation agreed within the Federation which attaches to search engine providers, not ISPs, and again it was implemented by agreement.
The report’s concluding observation is that:
“In terms of the practicality of ISP-level filtering, various issues arise including the potential impact on internet speed and the indiscriminate blocking of innocuous material. There is also the point that URL based/index filtering only blocks access to pages on a pre-determined list. In other words, access would only be blocked to material that has been identified as prohibited by the ACMA.”
“According to Senator Conroy, the Rudd Government’s plans are at an early stage. The details of any mandatory filtering scheme remain to be determined.”
The E-brief can also be obtained directly from the NSW Parliamentary Research’s website.
Australia’s “clean feed” smoke-and-mirrors-IIA
NSW Parliamentary Research: Mandatory ISP filtering is not what it seems.
Internet Industry Association: November 19, 2008
http://www.iia.net.au/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=687&Itemid=32
The NSW Parliamentary Library Research Service has issued an E-Brief on Internet Censorship and Mandatory Filtering. Its authors Tom Edwards and Gareth Griffith survey the local and international position and conclude that mandatory ISP level filtering is not a feature of many of the countries it reviewed. In place, rather, are voluntary ISP filtering schemes designed to prevent accidental access to a defined list of illegal sites containing child pornography.
The report notes that Italy and Germany may be exceptions.
Comment: The IIA’s understanding is that Italy’s decree is in fact subordinate legislation – not law per se. It gives effect to an agreement that was previously reached by ISPs and the relevant regulator.
To that extent, Italy has not enacted mandatory ISP filtering, either.
Germany has regulation agreed within the Federation which attaches to search engine providers, not ISPs, and again it was implemented by agreement.
The report’s concluding observation is that:
“In terms of the practicality of ISP-level filtering, various issues arise including the potential impact on internet speed and the indiscriminate blocking of innocuous material. There is also the point that URL based/index filtering only blocks access to pages on a pre-determined list. In other words, access would only be blocked to material that has been identified as prohibited by the ACMA.”
“According to Senator Conroy, the Rudd Government’s plans are at an early stage. The details of any mandatory filtering scheme remain to be determined.”
The E-brief can also be obtained directly from the NSW Parliamentary Research’s website.
UK seeks media censorship-Independent
[FACT comments: The entire concept of what constitutes “national security” is the root of the problem.]
MPs seek to censor the media
Kim Sengupta
The Independent: November 10, 2008
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/mps-seek-to-censor-the-media-1006607.html
Britain’s security agencies and police would be given unprecedented and legally binding powers to ban the media from reporting matters of national security, under proposals being discussed in Whitehall.
The Intelligence and Security Committee, the parliamentary watchdog of the intelligence and security agencies which has a cross-party membership from both Houses, wants to press ministers to introduce legislation that would prevent news outlets from reporting stories deemed by the Government to be against the interests of national security.
The committee also wants to censor reporting of police operations that are deemed to have implications for national security. The ISC is to recommend in its next report, out at the end of the year, that a commission be set up to look into its plans, according to senior Whitehall sources.
The ISC holds huge clout within Whitehall. It receives secret briefings from MI5, MI6 and GCHQ and is highly influential in forming government policy. Kim Howells, a respected former Foreign Office minister, was recently appointed its chairman. Under the existing voluntary code of conduct, known as the DA-Notice system, the Government can request that the media does not report a story. However, the committee’s members are particularly worried about leaks, which, they believe, could derail investigations and the reporting of which needs to be banned by legislation.
Civil liberties groups say these restrictions would be “very dangerous” and “damaging for public accountability”. They also point out that censoring journalists when the leaks come from officials is unjustified.
But the committee, in its last annual report, has already signalled its intention to press for changes. It states: “The current system for handling national security information through DA-Notices and the [intelligence and security] Agencies’ relationship with the media more generally, is not working as effectively as it might and this is putting lives at risk.” According to senior Whitehall sources the ISC is likely to advocate tighter controls on the DA-Notice system – formerly known as D-Notice – which operates in co-operation and consultation between the Government and the media.
The committee has focused on one particular case to highlight its concern: an Islamist plot to kidnap and murder a British serviceman in 2007, during which reporters were tipped off about the imminent arrest of suspects in Birmingham, a security operation known as “Gamble”. The staff in the office of the then home secretary, John Reid, and the local police were among those accused of being responsible – charges they denied. An investigation by Scotland Yard failed to find the source of the leak.
The then director general of MI5, Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, was among those who complained to the ISC. “We were very angry, but it is not clear who we should be angry with, that most of the story of the arrests in Op Gamble were in the media very, very fast … So the case was potentially jeopardised by the exposure of what the story was. My officers and the police were jeopardised by them being on operations when the story broke. The strategy of the police for interrogating those arrested was blown out of the water, and my staff felt pretty depressed … that this has happened.”
The ISC report said the DA-Notice system “provides advice and guidance to the media about defence and counter-terrorism information, whilst the system is voluntary, has no legal authority, and the final responsibility for deciding whether or not to publish rests solely with the editor or publisher concerned. The system has been effective in the past. However, the Cabinet Secretary told us … this is no longer the case: ‘I think we have problems now.'”
The human rights lawyer Louise Christian said: “This would be a very dangerous development. We need media scrutiny for public accountability. We can see this from the example, for instance, of the PhD student in Nottingham who was banged up for six days without charge because he downloaded something from the internet for his thesis. The only reason this came to light was because of the media attention to the case.”
A spokesman for the human rights group Liberty said: “There is a difficult balance between protecting integrity and keeping the public properly informed. Any extension of the DA-Notice scheme requires a more open parliamentary debate.”
DA-Notice: a gagging by consent
The D-Notice system was set up in 1912 when the War Office (the Ministry of Defence in its previous incarnation) began issuing censorship orders to newspapers on stories involving national security.
In 1993 it became known as a DA-Notice with four senior civil servants, with an eminent military figure as secretary, and 13 members nominated by the media to form the Defence Press and Broadcasting Advisory Committee.
Contrary to popular conception DA-Notices are a request and not legally enforceable. Civil servants fear making the agreement legally binding would lead to hostility from the media. There would be apprehension among journalists about new restrictions, as the committee has in recent times been robust in resisting pressure from the Government to send DA-Notices if it thinks the motives are political. At present most DA-Notices are issued regarding military missions, anti-terrorist operations at home and espionage.
Obama's A-G supports 'net censorship-Evening Star
Eric Holder Supports Internet Censorship
NM Evening Star: November 22, 2008
I want to note two of Obama’s appointments to his Federal Communications Commission Review team.
Susan Crawford and Kevin Werbach, both of whom are harsh critics of the Bush Administrations policies in the past year, are strong advocates of net neutrality. They would have assured that Byron Dorgan’s planned bill on net neutrality would have received strong support from the administration. But while I was researching that item for my “list of things that Obama has done right”, I found evidence that Eric Holder, Obama’s choice for Attorney General, may not support it. In fact, Mr. Holder advocates internet censorship.
As reported by NPR’s Morning Edition no May 28, 1999, following the Columbine shootings and reports that the perpetrators had learned how to construct bombs from the internet, Mr. Holder said,
“The court has really struck down every government effort to try to regulate it. We tried with regard to pornography. It is gonna be a difficult thing, but it seems to me that if we can come up with reasonable restrictions, reasonable regulations in how people interact on the Internet, that is something that the Supreme Court and the courts ought to favorably look at.”
Given that Mr. Holder also has backed other forms of thought control through “hate crimes” legislation, even to the point of supporting the prosecutions of people who were later acquitted, internet users may find themselves in a world that is less free once Obama becomes President.
With “three freedoms” (free speech, free viagra for 6 months, and free ”entertainment”) the internet provides us with the last freedoms we have in the world, and they are quickly being encroached upon by both corporations and government.
We must make sure that Obama doesn’t go down the path which stifles free speech (1, 2). We elected him to protect our freedoms, not to take them away. (Note also that when Holder was a U.S. Attorney, he advocated much tougher prosecution of marijuana ”crimes’‘.)
FACTback - Freedom Against Censorship Thailand (Backup) 