EDRi sends open letter to EU Commissioners to oppose Internet blocking

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Deutsch: [EDRi sendet offenen Brief an die EU-Kommission und lehnt Internetblockaden ab | http://www.unwatched.org/node/1755]

EDRi’s letter was sent to Commissioners Cecilia Malmström (Home Affairs),
Viviane Reding (Justice and Fundamental Rights) and Neelie Kroes (Digital
Agenda).

The letter congratulates the Commissioners for their nominations and
approval in their new portfolios. It welcomes the positive statements made
by all three Commissioners on the need to respect fundamental rights and to
insist that legislation is “evidence based”. EDRi warns in the letter that
the nature of the arguments surrounding Internet blocking is such that this
positive approach will be under pressure right from the start, due to the
pending re-launch of the “Proposal for a Council Framework Decision on
combating the sexual abuse, sexual exploitation of children and child
pornography, repealing Framework Decision 2004/68/JHA”. That proposal, when
originally launched in 2009, contained the populist, but profoundly flawed
suggestion that Internet access providers be required to “block” access to
illegal websites.

The issue at stake – child exploitation and child abuse images published
online – is too serious to have policy based on headlines rather than
effectiveness. As a result, EDRi’s letter stated that, in order to develop
an effective strategy, a thorough and diligent analysis needs to be done.
Such an analysis would consider:

– The nature of the problem being tackled;
The proposal seeks to address illegal websites. These sites are almost all
based in the territories of the EU’s major trading partners. As a result, it
is clearly inappropriate to adopt a strategy of blocking, which leaves the
material online, criminals uninvestigated and victims unidentified.

– The legality of the measure being proposed;
Research undertaken by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in
Europe (OSCE) and a team of experts funded by the Open Society Institute in
the last twelve months have highlighted major legal questions about the
legality of imposing blocking obligations on Internet access providers or
coercing them into this activity.

– The scope, scale and nature of possible unintended consequences;
Internet blocking creates several dangers simultaneously. On the one hand,
by creating the illusion of activity in the area of online child abuse
websites, political pressure will be reduced and real international action
to deal with the problem properly will become even less likely than it
currently is. Secondly, as is obvious from the recent plague of orders in
the EU to block (sometimes perfectly legal) gambling websites, once blocking
is introduced, it will be used for more and more purposes. Thirdly, as
current blocking technologies work very badly, there will be more and more
calls for increasingly intrusive technologies to be employed to provide more
effective blocking. Finally, more efficient blocking technologies will also
be more effective at permitting Internet access providers to discriminate
between the amount of access offered to different online resources, creating
a non-neutral Internet, to the detriment of European consumers and to
European innovation.

– The availability of less intrusive measures.
The EU’s strategy of hotlines and “notice and takedown” needs to be rolled
out internationally. This approach has been proven to work for the type of
material being addressed in this context. Furthermore, it is time, at last,
to fully respect the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, particularly
with regard to the obligation on states party to take “all appropriate
national, bilateral and multilateral measures to prevent the exploitative
use of children in pornographic performances and materials.” Finally, the
European Financial Coalition on Child Pornography must be rescued from its
inertia and paralysis, restrict itself to undertaking the same activities as
its US counterparts (and not, for example “developing a framework to
circumvent data protection regulations, bank secrecy codes, criminal
legislation and contract law across the EU” as reported in one newspaper).
EDRi stressed, however, that
“industry “self-regulation” should never be used in a way which circumvents
legal protections, democratic decision-making or places private business
priorities ahead of those established by democratically-elected
governments”.

The European Commission plans to re-launch the legislative proposal at the
end of March.

Banks urged to expose child porn money trails (9.11.2008)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/nov/09/child-porn-money-trials

EDRi’s letter to the European Commission
http://www.edri.org/files/edri_open_letter.pdf

Proposal for a Council Framework Decision on combating the sexual abuse,
sexual exploitation of children and child pornography, repealing Framework
Decision 2004/68/JHA
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:52009PC0135:EN:NOT

Impact assessment to a Proposal for a Council Framework Decision on
combating the sexual abuse, sexual exploitation of children and child
pornography, repealing Framework Decision 2004/68/JHA (25.03.2009)
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=SEC:2009:0355:FIN:EN:PDF

Report of the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media on Turkey and
Internet Censorship
http://www.osce.org/documents/rfm/2010/01/42294_en.pdf

OSI-funded research: Internet blocking balancing cybercrime responses in
democratic societies – Executive summary (10.2009)
http://www.aconite.com/sites/default/files/Internet_Blocking_and_Democracy_Exec_Summary.pdf

OSI-funded research: Internet blocking balancing cybercrime responses in
democratic societies – Full report (10.2009)
http://www.aconite.com/sites/default/files/Internet_blocking_and_Democracy.pdf