Gros frère veut vous surveiller, enormement
Today’s SOS from La Quadrature du Net (Squaring the Net), the spokesblog for a growing band of internet-hip French people who reject their country’s bureaucratic tyranny, gives warning of what we can expect from the UK’s civil servants, should they choose to follow suit.
The blog reports a “Trust Online Charter” that the Ministry of the Interior requires French ISPs to sign today (10 June). The charter includes content filtering, data requisition, an extension of ISP obligations for data retention, automatic deletion of content, and labelling of website content.
“The goal of the French government is not to fight crime using measures that are necessary, appropriate and proportionate,” said Quadrature co-founder Christophe Espern. “It is about controlling by any and every means, the only free media which don’t conform to the old order.”
“There is something especially despicable about using the fight against child pornography as an alibi to Big Brother,” Espern continued. “The police units working in this area do not ask for these types of measures. To call it ‘trust online’ in this context, is nothing more than spin from the PR-men.”
Big Brother? Spin? Using child pornography as an excuse for blanket censorship? Couldn’t happen over here – could it?
