Filtering Proposed by EC Justice and Security Commissioner
It was recently reported that European Commission Justice and Security Commissioner Franco Frattini is interested in finding ways to filter the Internet for terrorism-oriented activities, including searches for them.
In an interview with Reuters, Frattini stated, “I do intend to carry out a clear exploring exercise with the private sector ... on how it is possible to use technology to prevent people from using or searching dangerous words like bomb, kill, genocide or terrorism.”
If implemented perfectly, such technology would block sites that include bomb-making guides and would block such sites’ potential readers from finding and accessing them. It appears that Frattini intends to explore ISP-level filtering options.
Frattini’s announcement has been met with worry by some over privacy and derision by others because of the difficulty of creating a system that could filter with this level of sophistication. Frattini and his team do not yet know how they would address issues such as the fact that sites are often mirrored very quickly, and that users can use circumvention tools. Still others worry that their work may be crippled by the blocking, as in the case of German NGO the Society for Threatened Peoples (GfBV), which provides information on human rights crises. "If expressions like 'bombs', 'genocide' or 'terrorism' can trigger off police activity the work of international human rights organisations will be made impossible," said GfBV General Secretary, Tilman Zülch.
On his own website, Frattini clarified his intent, stating, “My idea starts from the assumption that technology can improve the way police/intelligence services oversight the web in order to check whether a terrorist activity is carried out; thanks to these technologies, a site can be detected as carrying out such an activity (this cannot be done by technology itself; you need human intelligence), only at that stage, i.e. when a concrete threat is detected, a technological tool could help [by] blocking access to these websites and only at that stage, if necessary, identifying those who are using the site for clear terrorist purposes.”
ONI’s testing has shown, that around the world, states and international organizations increasingly look to Internet surveillance and filtering to track and combat the activities of terrorists. Addressing privacy and concerns over personal freedoms remains a significant challenge.
