Google 'genocide' while you still can
As all the Establishment nerds who read Slashdot already know, the EU Commissioner of Justice and Security recently suggested EU-wide censorship of searches for ‘dangerous words’ like ‘bomb, kill, genocide or terrorism’. No word yet on the legal status of searches for ‘tyranny’, ‘censorship’, or ‘authoritarian thug’.
The exact quote is:
I do intend to carry out a clear exploring exercise with the private sector … on how it is possible to use technology to prevent people from using or searching dangerous words like bomb, kill, genocide or terrorism
When asked if this infringed upon freedom of expression, the commissioner opined:
Frankly speaking, instructing people to make a bomb has nothing to do with the freedom of expression, or the freedom of informing people.
The right balance, in my view, is to give priority to the protection of absolute rights and, first of all, right to life.
Other interesting bits to the story:
Frattini said there would be no bar on opinion, analysis or historical information but operational instructions useful to terrorists should be blocked.
He said European legislation would spell out the principles of blocking access to bomb instructions. The details would be worked out by each EU country.
So, there you have it. If you can think of a way information or speech could hypothetically threaten someone’s life, the EU Commissioner of Justice and Security seems willing to ban it for you.
But maybe you’re not convinced. Maybe you too think bomb making instructions should not be available on the Internet. Samuel Adams and I are inclined to tell you to fuck off, but before you do, think about this: how would a ban on bomb making information be implemented? Would a legal framework be put into place to take down offending sites? Would possession of the information be banned as well? What about sites outside the EU? Would filtering software be installed at the EU’s net borders, along the lines of the Great Firewall of China? Would European customs agents search the hard drives of visitors for forbidden information the way Saudi Sharia police scan tourists’ laptops for porn? How long after this infrastructure is put in place will it be used to censor other speech, possibly including speech you agree with?
Whatever classically liberal European forces gave birth to the Enlightenment and modern secular Western civilization seem to have atrophied away, leaving meddlesome nanny-state authoritarians ascendant. You Europeans may have eliminated violence with gun control, sickness with socialized healthcare, and poverty with confiscatory taxes, but at least I can Google ‘bomb’ without the Thought Police stomping my rebel ass.