ENDitorial: "Frattinising" isn't the only threat

So there’s a new verb in Europe: to frattinise. It first appeared in German,
soon after in French and in Italian, it may creep around in other languages.
Or it may be replaced by another one, next time someone else jumps on the
same hideous bandwagon.

On 10 September 2007 (quite deliberately, one day before the anniversary of
“September Eleven”) European Commissioner Franco Frattini declared to
Reuters: “I do intend to carry out a clear exploring exercise with the
private sector… on how it may be possible to use technology to prevent
people from using or searching dangerous words like bomb, kill, genocide or
terrorism.”

As far as I can tell, there wasn’t much reporting of this statement in
mainstream media. But there was immediate reaction online, starting with
ALCEI’s press release “Repression and censorship. The ghost is still around
in Italy and in Europe. A distressing statement by European commissioner
Frattini leads to a devastating form of censorship: the prohibition of words
or concepts. The way is open for punishing who dares to “think” too much.”

The “threat” per se is so stupid that it could be brushed off as sheer
nonsense. Mr. Frattini didn’t even notice that, by following his suggestion,
his own statement would be censored and removed from any accessible source.
But, unfortunately, this isn’t a joke.

Would it work? Of course not. Thousands or millions of perfectly legitimate
pages could be removed from networks, or made “unsearchable”, just because
they contain one of the “forbidden words” (or any other content assumed to
be “dangerous”.) While criminals could easily bypass the problem by not
using “revealing” terminology… it is quite easy to write instructions on
how to make disruptive weapons and call them “how to repair a vacuum
cleaner.” Or, even more easily, to “disguise” words so that no automatic
system can detect them. Once again, all sorts of “authorities” don’t
understand how the internet works. Or deliberately choose to ignore
realities, in order to gain control.

But… is crime prevention the real objective?

Since the very beginning of networking, there have always been attempts to
censor, regulate, prohibit, filter, profile, centralise, spy etc.
“Frattinizing” is just one of many ways of interfering with free opinion and
communication, with all sorts of excuses and disguises.

Terrorism and violent crime have always been one of those false pretences.
Of course “how to make a bomb” can be found by anyone in simple chemistry
manuals. But it’s easy to play on “scare” and thus obtain political and
“public opinion” support for actions that are useless for that purpose,
while they “justify” all sorts of abuses. And, of course, that has been
getting worse after the “September eleven” tragedy.

Other “classic excuses” are “pornography” (or an even more vague definition
of what is considered “decent”), child abuse (or, more broadly, “protection
of minors”), “copyright” etc.- as well as deliberate “misunderstanding”, by
law enforcement bodies, of civil rights-related computer forensics and other
investigative tool issues, such as an online DNA database built for the sake
of “crime prevention” (see the Prum Convention text).

Time goes by, it has been proved countless times that repression of freedom
does not solve these problems, while it causes countless abuses, but the
same mistakes (or deliberate distortions) are happening over and over again.

A bit of “history.”

ALCEI was founded in August, 1994. Some people, at that time, thought that
it was a reaction to the infamous “Italian crackdown.” It wasn’t. From its
very beginning, it intended to be a permanent watchdog for continuing
presence, not just short-lived reactions to specific episodes.

The 1994 crackdown was, to some extent, misunderstood internationally. It
was described as “the largest police seizure of bulletin board systems in
world history.” But it wasn’t aimed at hackers or (assumed) terrorists. It
was originated by a search for unregistered software, expanded to a
grotesque extension by a few overzealous and technically ignorant
magistrates. In following years there were no single events of such
overwhelming size, but countless cases of similar abuses, based on an
Italian law that treats as “criminal” the use of not fully registered
software (or the unauthorised reproduction of music etc).

“Protection of minors” was used as an excuse for several extended
“crusades”, de facto scarcely aimed at arresting those who produce infamous
content, and even less at identifying people guilty of actual violent
crimes – while aggressively investigating thousands of individuals (and
their families) who were often totally innocent, or were “guilty” of such
“crimes” as looking at a few sexy pictures of girls who were (or appeared to
be) under 18 years old.

Of course innocent people, eventually, are acquitted in court. But,
before that, they are submitted to persecution, defamation, disgrace etc.,
that are not remedied by the fact that they are not found guilty. In several
cases, defendants just negotiated a “guilty” verdict – abdicating their
right to defend themselves in court – in exchange for a lighter sentence,
not having the strength (in terms of money and psychological endurance) to
face a long and uncertain criminal trial.

In many instances the Italian interpretation of European Union directives,
as well as locally produced legislation, was warped by politicians’ desire
to assuage (existing or assumed) “public concern” (thus not risking their
privileged positions) as well as satisfying specific lobbying interests.
One of many examples is the infamous “Peppermint case”.

What is “behind” all this? In 1996 I wrote a short article called Cassandra.
It was soon “adopted” by ALCEI, and also published by the Electronic
Frontier Foundation in the US as a statement with international value.
Eleven years later, things haven’t basically changed.

Other reports in English on the general situation in Italy are two
presentations at the 2000 Computers, Freedom and Privacy convention
and an article in Cyberspace and Law.

There are a few critical words in Commissioner Frattini’s threat that
deserve some specific analysis “an exploring exercise with the private
sector”. This isn’t a new trick, and it’s very dangerous. Some obnoxious
forms of repression can be obtained in parliament, by getting legislation
though when watchdogs aren’t watching, or are deliberately ignored – and by
using “popular” excuses such as terrorism, crime, “protection of minors”,
copyright etc. But there is a faster and (unfortunately) easier way.

It’s unlikely (or so we can hope) that search engines will be persuaded to
censor keywords. But service providers can be conditioned in many ways (they
may even “voluntarily” comply just to “stay out of trouble” – and that has
already been happening.) Not only individual pages, but entire websites can
be wiped out with all sorts of excuses – and that, too, has already been
done. We may not care abut some specific cases. We can live without one more
offering of illegal gambling, kinky sex, or maybe “miracle medicine” or
other fake stuff. We would be actually pleased if some spam, especially
scam, could be removed (but very little, if anything, has been done
effectively in that direction.) The problem is that, once the principle is
accepted that “something” can be removed, blacklisted, censored or
“filtered”, by immediate execution of an authority’s decree or by so-called
“voluntary compliance”, that concept can be used to interfere with any
information or opinion that displeases some controlling power.

Even in countries, such as Italy and all of the European Union, where
freedom of opinion is an unquestionable constitutional right, manipulation
of fear, or distaste for obnoxious content, can lead to censorship and other
abuse in many disguised forms – with “public opinion” being tricked into
believing that such abuses are “acceptable.”

The “Frattini threat” is just one of many such dangers. They have been there
for many years and they will not come to an end. That is why we need
watchdogs such as EDRi, and our associations in each country, to keep
watching and, when necessary, biting. We can’t stop them altogether, because
whatever we do they will come up with some other trick. But we can prevent
them from completely prevailing.

Postscript – More of the same – Perseverare frattinicum (22.10.2007)
http://gandalf.it/free/refratt.htm

Web search for bomb recipes should be blocked: EU (10.09.2007)
http://www.reuters.com/article/internetNews/idUSL1055133420070910

ALCEI Press Release – Sept. 11 2007 (11.09.2007)
http://www.alcei.org/?p=28

Prum Convention text (7.07.2005)
http://www.ictlex.net/wp-content/Prum-ConventionEn.pdf

An update on the Peppermint affaire (15.05.2007)
http://blog.andreamonti.eu/?p=26

Cassandra (06.1996)
http://gandalf.it/free/casseng.htm

The network society as seen from Italy (6.04.2000)
http://gandalf.it/free/cfp2000.htm

http://gandalf.it/free/monticfp.htm

Internet freedom, privacy and culture in Italy (and the activity of NGOs)
(02.2000)
http://gandalf.it/free/ifp.htm

EFFI: Search engine censorship is an absurd proposal (13.09.2007)
http://www.effi.org/en/julkaisut/tiedotteet/pressrelease-2007-09-12.html

An explosive idea – download frattinizzare.js
In Italian
http://www.sclerosi.org/frattinizzare.php

In German
http://www.spreeblick.com/2007/09/15/bombenidee/

In French
http://www.spreeblick.com/2007/09/15/une-idee-de-bombe-frattinizerjs-a-telecharger/

(Contribution by Giancarlo Livraghi – EDRI-member ALCEI -Italy)