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While
Europeans were busily preparing for the festive season, Brussels quietly
published a document that will have far-reaching consequences for everyone's
ability to see what they want on the internet.
The plans
contained in the CleanIt Project are supposed to create a clean internet
without any terrorists or extremists. The new blueprint for the internet is a
dangerous development.
The CleanItProject is a European public-private partnership that fights "the illegal
use of the internet by terrorists and extremists" from the perspective of
counter-terrorism. Because governments, entrepreneurs and businesses cannot
agree on measures to 'keep the internet clean, tidy and safe', Cleanit's
proposals are an attempt to impose an agreement on cleaning up the internet.
Concerned parties can simply implement the proposals on a voluntary basis. The
proposals are not anchored in legislation but are a framework of general principles
and best practices.
European
point of view
It is
difficult to find political and cultural nuances in the proposals. CleanIt
contains the well-known list of 'threats to a clean and safe internet'. The
threats stem from a limited European idea of reality. Internet crime,
discrimination, illegal software, child porn and terrorism are all trotted out
and displayed as threats that ordinary, decent folk need to be protected
against in their everyday internet use.
Political
threats come from every level of society: extreme-left, extreme-right, animal
rights extremists, environmental extremists, racists and religious fanatics.
Governments have already prohibited the dissemination of violent images,
propaganda material and training handbooks for terrorist activities.
It is an
uncomfortable truth; the democratisation of the internet has led to a gradual
erosion of liberties. Very few people want violent images or child pornography
on the net but banning such content is not a solution, it will only go
underground.
Murky
waters
The think
tank behind the proposals, which is partially funded by EU money, maintains
that existing national laws prohibiting illegal use of the Internet by
extremists and terrorists are more than adequate to counter the threats posed
by 'dangerous individuals or organisations'. However, one can debate the
veracity of that statement: should the WikiLeaks cables be considered
subversive and a threat to national security? Should the Ku Klux Klan be
allowed to have a website? Is an instructional video uploaded by a Dutch animal
rights activist a call to violence? The answers all lie in the eye of the
beholder.
Western
governments praised the Arab Spring - the uprisings across much of the Arab
world that were driven by social media - but at the same time they demanded
strict controls over the selfsame social media in order to block 'unwanted'
content. The Egyptian authorities agreed wholeheartedly and simply cut all
internet links during the first demonstrations on Cairo's Tahrir Square.
Vigilant
The CleanIt
document predicts a far from happy future; it's not easy to create a clean
world wide web. Everybody has to be vigilant; not only governments and
companies but also internet providers, human rights organisations, churches,
social and cultural organisations... the list goes on and on.
Ordinary
people can also join the vigilantes: according to CleanIt: “individual users
can help by warning providers and police about internet use by terrorists and
extremists.” Welcome to North Korea.
The
proposals have to be viewed alongside the increasing calls for prohibiting
people from using the internet anonymously. Chinese authorities in several
cities already force people using Weibo - the Chinese version of twitter - to
register under their own name. Google+ doesn't allow pseudonyms and Facebook is
doing its level best to get rid of people using pseudonyms as well.
Terrorist
or freedom fighter?
CleanIt
emphasises that the proposals are not anchored in law and only serve as
guidelines. But as time goes on, these sorts of guidelines can sometimes assume
the authority of actual legislation.
If the
European Union decides that extremist views do not belong on the internet; will
then be all right for China, Indonesia and Syria to come to a similar decision?
Every country will be able to ban what it decides are extremist views.
Indonesia can quietly continue working on its own internal code of conduct that
every internet user will be forced to adhere to.
The
guidelines are not only poorly thought out, they also gnaw away at the
unregulated and uncontrolled access that makes the internet such a glorious,
free place that users love and want to preserve. Everyone who believes that it
is possible to bend the chaotic internet into a neat and tidy, well-mannered
place, falls into the same trap.
It is
impossible to promote internet access as a human right, which is high on UN
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s agenda, and at the same time try and restrict
and regulate it. The best policy is no policy.
(jric/tt)
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