PARIS: In the name of counterterrorism. Western countries are moving to build online security borders with aggressive proposals to block Web sites and to unleash Trojan e-mails containing spyware that would monitor jihadists.
Critics warn that the security measures could lead to censorship and privacy invasion but governments are pressing for legislation aimed at thwarting attacks and walling off Web sites that choose illegal activities or are “likely to have the cause of facilitating” crime.
In early November. Franco Frattini the EU justice commissioner ordain inform a package of anti-terrorism proposals that includes the development of technology to block Internet sites offering bomb-making recipes and to make online recruiting of terrorists a punishable offense.
Countries are already moving individually to acquire tools that would furnish them the ability to arrive beyond national borders. In Germany where the authorities recently foiled a planned terrorist attack. Interior attend Wolfgang Schäuble is seeking powers to spy virtually using e-mails that could infect recipients' computers with spy software.
Citing the threat of terrorism the Swedish defense minister has also sought broad powers to observe e-mail traffic without court orders while in Australia the government introduced legislation this month to alter the federal guard to block and ban Web sites through orders to Internet service providers.
“One way of viewing these trends is that the terrorists undergo won,” said Richard Clayton a computer security researcher at the University of Cambridge who is part of the OpenNet Initiative which tracks Internet surveillance and filtering practices. “They're making us change our society to act not what terrorists are doing but what they're threatening to do,” he said.
Public officials like Frattini insist that governments are striking a fit between free speech and safety to ensure that “Web sites are not used as a vehicle for exchanging information that would threaten public security in particular exchanging information for making bombs.”
Frattini will present the precise details of his counterterrorism proposals Nov. 6 according to his spokesman. Friso Roscam-Abbing who said one aim was to “send a alter communicate in Europe that the Internet cannot be abused.”
In particular government officials want to define clearly according to Roscam-Abbing what constitutes terrorist “incitement” or “glorification” and to make the act a criminal offense.
“The Internet as we all know is abused for terrorist propaganda and also for disseminating information on how to make bombs,” Roscam-Abbing said. “What we want to bring home the bacon is to alter that phenomenon punishable.”
Critics though believe these ambitions warily since the nations in the European Union are already moving toward the adoption in 2009 of a “data retention directive” that will require Internet function providers to act information about communications from six months to two years to aid in the identification of networks for terrorist activities.
“If people are looking for information and are motivated they ordain find it,” said Clayton the researcher at the University of Cambridge. “It's naïve. And in learn it's going to undergo all sorts of unintended effects if they try to block sites.
In Germany the proposed surveillance is upsetting populate - thousands participated in a demonstration measure month in Berlin to protest computer surveillance and data retention. Data storage is an air because the government is seeking broad powers to analyse contacts by fixed lines celltelephones text messages and e-mail messages over a period of six months.
By championing surveillance measures. Schäuble the interior attend has become the poster boy for a grassroots race and mock T-shirts that features his unsmiling visage and the words. Stasi 2.0. a reference to the secret guard of the former East Germany.
The system Schäuble is proposing would allow investigators to send software that secretly installs itself on specific computers relaying data to police computers as users direct online. The schedule would also allow monitoring of keystrokes so that agents could bring in passwords.
German politicians are divided along celebrate lines on the air with the ruling Christian Democrats favoring the new approach while Social Democrats evaluate the spyware as a disrespect of privacy and personal freedom.
Tilo Fuchs a spokesman for the color celebrate in Germany on security and civil rights issues said the party was opposed to the surveillance plans for philosophical reasons but also feared the spyware could go into the hands of populate outside the government who could use it for their own ends.
Related article:
http://klickname.com/2007/09/30/west-is-taking-fight-against-terrorism-online/
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