Loppsi II: online censorship in France
p2pnet view P2P | Politics:- France and Australia share an important common interest:
They both want to blindfold voters online, allowing them to see only what government censors want them to see.
Australia will introduce a censor-system “just before next year’s election, said p2pnet recently, quoting The Age.
A blacklist of “refused classification” sites will be compiled “using a public complaints mechanism, Government censors and web addresses provided by international agencies,” it said. “A seven month trial in conjunction with internet service providers found the technology behind the filter to be 100% effective.”
In France, lawmakers will “vote next Tuesday on a proposal to filter Internet traffic” with the ‘Bill on direction and planning for the performance of domestic security’, aka Loppsi II, says the IDG News Service.
The government has made the Loppsi II bill a priority so “instead of the usual cycle of four readings, after the National Assembly’s vote, it will go on to the Senate for a second and final reading”, says the story, continuing >>>
The bill, though, is not so much a single direction, as more a patchwork of unrelated measures. It aims to increase the amount the police spend on “security,” multiply penalties for counterfeiting checks or credit cards, increase use of CCTV cameras, extend access to the police national DNA database, and authorize the seizure of vehicles driven without a license.
The bill also seeks to modernize the law to encompass the Internet, criminalizing online identity theft, allowing police to tap Internet connections as well as phone lines during investigations and targeting child pornography by ordering ISPs to filter Internet connections.
The bill requires ISPs to block access to any Internet address if authorities consider that this is required to prevent distribution of pornographic images of minors.
Deputies had sought to amend the text to require blocking only of specific URLs or documents, not of entire sites, so as to reduce “collateral damage,” and to require that a judge review the list of blocked URLs each month to ensure that sites were not needlessly blocked. Those amendments were, however, rejected, as was one making the filters a temporary, experimental measure until their effectiveness was proven.
‘Online malfeasance’
It seems the circle has been completed for France which, at the end of the 1700s, saw a revolution meant to free the people, said p2pnet last spring, continuing, “But now, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity have gone out the window.
“First HADOPI, and now Loppsi 2, meaning 1984 has arrived in France.
‘Nineteen Eighty-Four is the title to the George Orwell novel about a totalitarian regime built on, ‘pervasive government surveillance and control, and government’s increasing encroachment on the rights of the individual’.”
The French government, “fresh from passing its controversial ‘three strikes’ law to boot repeat file-sharers off the Internet, is now prepping its next assault on online malfeasance,” wrote Nate Anderson in Ars Technica, going on >>>
A new bill would legalize government keyloggers, institute ISP censorship of child porn sites, and set up a massive citizen database called Pericles.
Having just passed its super-controversial Creation et Internet “graduated response” law, you might think the French government would take at least a brief break from riling up the “internautes.” Instead, the government is prepping a new crime bill that will, among other things, mandate Internet censorship at the ISP level, legalize government spyware, and create a massive meta-database of citizen information called “Pericles.”
Under Loppsi II, Anderson added, “French ISPs would also need to participate in a Web censorship regime that initially appears targeted at child pornography. Critics like Jean-Michel Planche, who advises the French government on Internet issues, are already calling the new bill the end of an open and neutral Internet.
“Finally, the bill allows for a database called ‘Pericles’ that can pull together information from various existing French databases to create a ’super-dossier’ on people. According to Le Monde, such a database could contain all sorts of crucial, personal information, and sounds certain to set off the same debates that have taken place in the US whenever similar projects have been floated.”
Is it time for another Revolution, this time in France and Australia? Or should their law makers simply move to Communist China, home of the unfree, where’d they’d be welcomed?
Stay tuned.
..… and identi.ca
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi
p2pnet – Australia set to become net censor, December 15, 2009
The Age – Big Brother laws to be brought in for web, December 16, 2009
IDG News Service – French Lawmakers to Vote on Net Filtering Next Tuesday, February 11, 2010
p2pnet – Loppsi 2: time for a new French Revolution, May 21, 2009
Ars Technica – Next up for France: police keyloggers and Web censorship, May 19, 2009
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Net access blocked by government restrictions? Use Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto. Go here for details.
February 12th, 2010 at 12:34 pm
meet ipred or vpn fk censorship
February 12th, 2010 at 12:58 pm
“A seven month trial in conjunction with internet service providers found the technology behind the filter to be 100% effective.”
Funny – I would lay down my entire income for a year on me beating the system in under 45 seconds… Meet my VPN provider…..
February 12th, 2010 at 3:43 pm
” it said. “A seven month trial in conjunction with internet service providers found the technology behind the filter to be 100% effective.”
These guys are taking their dream for reality. Filters are 30% inacurate blocking sites that have nothing to do with what they want to block.
Moreover there is so many possible counter measures to both evade the filters and stay anonymous that this is not even funny.
People in China and Iran are becoming expert at this. So will the French and the Aussies.
February 15th, 2010 at 1:18 am
This is a good time for French and Australian citizens ………
(I stand by my free right to free speech to piss off government assholes.)
By all means, RIAA Hater. And I understand how much you dislike the RIAA. Most of us here do. But enough with the murder and mahem. Alright?
Cheers! – Jon