Re: Feasibility of censoring and jamming pronography and racism in informatics

17 Dec 2003

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At 09:54 PM 8/29/97 +0200, Ulf Möller wrote about:
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A European parliament study evaluating `Feasibility of censoring and
jamming pronography and racism in informatics':
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7.1.2 It is concluded that available technology does no and is
     not likely to provide any satisfactory means for
     automatically classifying such material. Such judgements
     will therefore have to be made by humans.
The perfect kind? (One wonders what sort of humans would be drawn
to such a job, and which humans will choose or be forced to pay
them?)

...
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- it can not be absolutely guaranteed that Internet
       anonymity services can not be used to frustrate
  detection of offenders in certain circumstances.
Ahh, the double-negatives of understatement.

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7.2.9 It is concluded that only implementation of the most
     intrusive surveillance technology could be exspected to
     impact heavily upon abuse of the Internet on committed
     offenders (because of their ready access to strong
     encryption and covert communication technologies). To
     enable this policy scenario, it would be necessary for
     access providers to constrain the equipment used by
     subscribers to access the Internet to be such that:
- no content could be removed;
- all content and processing could be subject to
       automatic and manual surveillance.
Achtung, information-Juden!
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7.2.10 The technical and economic feasibility of the necessary
     technology is evidenced by the emergence, with purely
     commercial motivations, of technical systems which privde
     the basic facilities required to implement the necessary
     measures. It is notes that this coincidental emergence of
     such systems may raise siginificant privacy issues
     outside of the scope of this study. The economics of
     manual surveillance, however, can not be assessed.
How 'bout "tax-and-spend"? That's an assessment.

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Detecting offenders
7.2.13 If access providers and service providers maintain
     proper subscriber authentication systems and system
     management environments, offending actions at the site to
     which the subscriber authenticates can be traced to the
     offender. Detection of offenders committing offences 'at
     a distance' (ie a subscriber in a country committing an
     offence in another), however, would require:
- access and service providers to take steps to ensure
       subscriber identity information is carried in their
  transmissions;
- monitoring of services provided on the Internet to
       prevent subscribers misusing anonymity services to
  remove such information.
This kind of monitoring, were it actually possible to implement,
would mean the effective end of anonymity services. Thankfully,
it is presently merely a statist pipe dream.
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7.2.14 Whilst a variety of means exist to attach identity
     information, detection of anonymity services is not
     straightforward. However, monitoring such services would
     be exspected to limit the number available for overt, eg
     to transmit offensive material to innocent parties,
     offensive use.
Translation: "Shut as many of 'em down as possible."
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7.2.15 Legally, handling offences detected through voluntary
     authentication would be relatively straightforward as the
     offending subscriber would be resident in the country
     where the offence was committed. However, offences can
     only be detected through forced identification, ie those
     committed 'at a distance', would currently be subject to
     extradition arrangements and it is not clear that new
     opportunities for prosecution would arise in practice.
Oh boy - "opportunities for prosecution," WHEEE!
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Meanwhile, it may be that the social implications of
     forced and general identification of Internet subscribers
     would leave subscribers open to a variety of forms of
     intrusion on privacy and discrimination.
Oh, but "we" can trust Craig Livingstone, Louis Freeh, Aldrich
Ames, and the rest of the spies, can't "we."

Why am I feeling so worried these days, anyway?
JMR

Jim Ray

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