Israeli Bill Would Allow Secret Blacklists For Websites 132
jonklinger writes with the lead from his report on a move to hamper internet freedom in Israel: "Israel is to attempt, again, to pass a bill that authorizes police officers to issue warrants to Internet service providers to block or restrict access to specific websites involved either in gambling, child pornography or copyright infringement. The bill itself proposes that such administrative procedures shall be clandestine and that court decisions shall be made ex-parte, where some of the court's ruling will not be even dislosed to the owner of the website, and the court may hear and use inadmissible evidence."
Slopes were made for slippin' (Score:4, Insightful)
Oooh secret courts! Censorship! Illegally-obtained evidence!
So much for "never again". We have become our enemy.
Re:Slopes were made for slippin' (Score:5, Insightful)
I like how all of these current politicaly hip ideas " gambling, child pornography or copyright infringement" to regulate are all being lumped into the same bill.
I hate to say this but they are all nothing alike, and the reasons for blocking each individualy differ quite a bit. To make it secret is even worse. Why don't you do the internet a service and educate people about these issues directly.
Should some things be blocked, taken down, raided, removed from the group think, yep, definately child porn, but lets not erode everything else to do it. It can be done responsably.
I suppose you will take down WALL STREET's webs since their all about gambling. Or the myriad content producers who violate their own rules. (disney recently in the news asking google to filter its own results out of the web)
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I understand the desire to keep the list secret -- some people will use a published list as a catalog of sites to visit -- but, as usual, I strongly recommend against building tools of tyrrany. "We won't misuse it" is part of tyrrany's meme spread mechanism.
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You don't think that a determined enough person can find these sites anyway? The lists should never be secret, the cases should always be open.
The idea that even the site's owner won't be notified shows a "guilty with no chance to prove innocence" process. I hate to skirt a Godwin, but this kind of activity reeks of fascism.
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If you were to think of it from the other direction. Construct a list of (website) businesses not allowed to do business in israel, what would they be?
Illegal gambling (that may be all gambling, that may be gambling not under a state monopoly, I'm not sure).
Illegal weapons sales
People smuggling
Terrorism
Hostile state propaganda (Iranian news).
Child pornographers.
Etc.
They're aren't on the list because they're equivalent crimes, they're on the list because the government only has the authority to take the *on
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as in trying to make taking away rights as attractive as possible, pushing people's emotional buttons
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"Germany lost the war, fascism won it." -- George Carlin
I guess it just takes an awful long time for the fallout of that to trickle through the generations.
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Oooh secret courts! Censorship! Illegally-obtained evidence!
So much for "never again". We have become our enemy.
Obviously the RED Scare of the fifties with our lovable Senator Joe McCarthy is lost on the youts today.
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there are no MMO's worth playing atm
i'm afraid you're mostly right about the other thing as well, it's not just israel though it's a generation thing it's not even geopolitical. Afraid to lose control
(imo)
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the jews are now acting worse then nazis all they need do is start a genocide oh wait ..palestinians anyone....
Israel is not just Jews. This story is about the political power in Israel, it has nothing to do with Judaism.
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In other words, people who belong to certain religious group are more equal than others.
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Unless of course you're in the 20% of the Israeli parliament that's Arab or one of the many parties that doesn't care about religion or is anti-religious.
Israel is a Jewish state like America is a Christian country. I.e. they're not really.
Re:hitler would be proud (Score:5, Informative)
The US specifically defines itself NOT as a Christian state.
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By that I guess you mean proportional representation including for those refugees banned from returning by the Israeli congress, hmm, what no, well you gotta be a propagandist troll them! Token representation by a few Uncle Toms is meaningless.
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I don't recall Israel saying they wanted to kill all Palestinians. The converse however is not true.
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"I don't recall Israel saying they wanted to kill all Palestinians."
Of course they don't say it; they're much to smart for that. (Imagine the international repercussions.) Instead, they just methodically take slow steps towards that end, taking West Bank resources and land, effectively imprisoning Gaza, calculating just enough calories to keep Palestinians alive but stunt the physical and brain growth of their children to ensure a stupid and obedient next generation, etc.
Re:hitler would be proud (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't recall Israel saying they wanted to kill all Palestinians. The converse however is not true.
There certainly are extreme factions within the Palestinian community who want to kill all Israelis, just like there are extremists in Israel which want to kill all Palestinians. Wasn't it Rabbi Meir Kahane who called Arabs a "cancer" that had to be cut out of the flesh of Israel? How do his utterances differ from those of the most hateful of the Hamas extremists? The man advocated the abolishment of democracy in Israel in the event that Israeli Arabs became more numerous than Jews to secure the dominance of the Jews because otherwise, by the rules of democracy, the Jews would get outvoted. To me that sounds like a pretty close description of the apartheid state in S-Africa. There are ignorant fanatics on both sides, your attempts to try to convince us that the viewpoints of the most extreme of the Palestinian fanatics are the views of all Palestinians everywhere just serves to highlight how intolerant and ignorant you are yourself.
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You're entirely right, except you missed the part where Israel made Meir Kahane's faction illegal in the country.
Contrast this with Hamas or Fatah where Kill all Jews and destroy Israel is literally in their charter.
It might very well be that the view is extreme, but as long as that is the view of their government, that's the main view you have to worry about.
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You're entirely right, except you missed the part where Israel made Meir Kahane's faction illegal in the country.
Contrast this with Hamas or Fatah where Kill all Jews and destroy Israel is literally in their charter.
It might very well be that the view is extreme, but as long as that is the view of their government, that's the main view you have to worry about.
In 1948 a group of Jewish militia murdered count Folke Bernadotte [wikipedia.org]. This was the same Folke Bernadotte who negotiated with the Nazis for the release of thousands of prisoners form Nazi death camps while most of the rest of the world was refusing to believe these camps existed. Bernadotte then became a central figure in organising a convoy of vehicles [wikipedia.org] to travel from Sweden (running a gauntlet of Allied submarines and naval mines) to collect these people. Clearly these Jewish activists had murdered a man who b
Typical AC (Score:3)
Google Mufti of Jeruzalem. A man much admired by Fatah and its leadership and one of the architects of the holocaust.
Your turn.
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You neglected to read the rest of his statement: "A man much admired by Fatah and its leadership"
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completely wrong. If Israel wanted to eradicate the palestinians they are more than capable of doing so.
Since they haven't it is obvious that that is not their goal.
There is a difference between being able to do something and getting away with it. If Israel really let loose it's extremists and committed large scale pogroms on the Palestinians even the USA could possibly protect them but practically every other country on earth would embargo Israel and freeze it's assets. They got away with the pogroms in Sabra and Shatila because it happened in Lebanon and the people involved were mostly their Lebanese stooges. A Knesset investigation blamed Ariel Sharon and several ar
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas_Covenant - It's official Hamas Policy.
The Fatah charter said it until 2010. Now it doesn't specifically name Israel or Jews, but still outlines the struggles against the enemy that must continue, so take that for what it's worth.
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No however they have been caught sending military memos that dictate that for every Israeli citizen killed they will kill ten Palestinian civilians. All Israelis are valid targets as military service is compulsory, the same does not stand for the Palestinians. Since this has already Godwinned, you really would think that any Jew and every Israeli would know what they are doing to Gaza is immoral and very close to that which they most hate. But that's the problem with post traumatic stress on such a large sc
Re:hitler would be proud (Score:4, Insightful)
Technically correct, and completely symbolic and irrelevant.
Israeli policy in the West Bank has typically been to take land by force and demand that the Palestinians do nothing about it. Israeli policy in the Gaza Strip has been to blockade all shipments to the area and to forcibly prevent anyone from leaving, and then periodically "mow the grass" (this is the Israeli term for their periodic indiscriminate bombing of Gaza).
Any reasonably fair way of looking at the conflict in the Levant acknowledges three basic facts:
1. Both Israelis and Palestinians have been absolutely brutal, including attacking and terrorizing civilians.
2. Israel is currently winning by a wide margin. For instance, in the last dust-up, approximately 1200 Gazans died, and approximately 10 Israelis died. Or you can look at who controls what land [thehypertexts.com]. Or you can look at the casualties over the last 10 years, which give Israel approximately a 6:1 advantage.
3. Neither Israel nor Hamas nor Fatah operate within the bounds of international law.
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Technically correct, and completely symbolic and irrelevant.
Israeli policy in the West Bank has typically been to take land by force and demand that the Palestinians do nothing about it. Israeli policy in the Gaza Strip has been to blockade all shipments to the area and to forcibly prevent anyone from leaving, and then periodically "mow the grass" (this is the Israeli term for their periodic indiscriminate bombing of Gaza).
Any reasonably fair way of looking at the conflict in the Levant acknowledges three basic facts:
1. Both Israelis and Palestinians have been absolutely brutal, including attacking and terrorizing civilians.
2. Israel is currently winning by a wide margin. For instance, in the last dust-up, approximately 1200 Gazans died, and approximately 10 Israelis died. Or you can look at who controls what land [thehypertexts.com]. Or you can look at the casualties over the last 10 years, which give Israel approximately a 6:1 advantage.
3. Neither Israel nor Hamas nor Fatah operate within the bounds of international law.
I know a doctor who has been going to Gaza for years to operate on people injured and crippled in Israeli attacks. According to him, while the Israelis don't block medical shipments, they delay them until medications are time expired and they do things like store delicate medical equipment outside exposed to the elements until it is useless before releasing it or search sealed sterile containers without resealing them properly resulting in equipment arriving full of dust and dirt i.e. useless. If you want t
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> For instance, in the last dust-up, approximately 1200 Gazans died
According to Wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Cloud_Pillar [wikipedia.org] ) this is actually the number of Palestinians *injured*, not killed:
"Between 158 and 177 Palestinians died in the operation, with between 55 and 120 of them being combatants. An additional 1,200-1,300 Palestinians were injured, and between 350 and 700 Palestinian families displaced."
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While jews in general are great peole and to stereotype them as such is is wrong.
The statement that "some Zoinists are becoming worse then Nazi's" may be fairly correct. I know nothing of the ones oversease, but there are a few congressmen and government officials in America who are very fascist in nature.
Of course theres great ones too. Thank god they more or less balance eachother out, however I would like to see more tolerance for everyone in politics. Even the worst of the worst people deserve some comp
This is how it should be... (Score:1, Insightful)
Each nation should be able to legislate and govern internet access in the way it sees fit; and best suite for its citizen's good. What's good for the US may not be good enough for Israel or even the UK, China or India. Just because the internet as it has eveolved so far is inter-operable across nations, does not mean it should be governed by a single set of rules, protocols and conventions.
Re:This is how it should be... (Score:5, Insightful)
While there's potentially merit in your argument, I think most people worldwide would agree that "government censorship through secret court proceedings using illegal evidence" is not a beneficial protocol for... well, any country. This proposal isn't a slippery slope, it's a canyon drop-off, and at the bottom is "government-approved communication" and "arrests without trial for dissenting speech".
Re:This is how it should be... (Score:5, Insightful)
Irony. You'd think that a country home to so many Jews would remember how well that worked in Germany.
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"It's different when *we* do it"
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Irony. You'd think that a country home to so many Jews would remember how well that worked in Germany.
The problem is that Israel didn't become independent by the acts of the Jews who directly experienced the horrors of Nazism, but mostly by those of these guys here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irgun [wikipedia.org]
Holocaust survivors entered the picture more as propaganda boosts than prominent actors, and as a result much of Irgun's mentality carried over into the new independent Israel.
Re:This is how it should be... (Score:5, Insightful)
While there's potentially merit in your argument...
No, there's no merit to censorship. Its all about control and who rules. End of discussion.
Re:This is how it should be... (Score:4, Informative)
The only good news is that I think (hope?) that this proposal has little chance of passing. Past experience with fighting such stupid proposals tells me that we (voice of reason) can usually garner enough support within the parliament to block such stupid law proposals.
Please remember that proposing such laws only require one member of Knesset. Passing them, well, that requires a little more.
Shachar
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and "arrests without trial for dissenting speech"
Only at the beginning. Once people realize there are no consequences, it will just be arrests without trial. This has happened numerous times before, history is full of examples. It will happen again.
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And let /. be the first on that secret list. There can not come any good from discussion, ever, how good or sad it is performed..
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And let /. be the first on that secret list.
If democratically elected officials are following due process, and coming to arbitrary conclusions, their people deserve it, and need to elect someone else. That is a lesser burden on society than unfettered crime on the internet that does not go away.And if /. be deemed to be a dangerous site, so be it.
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I always love the "freedom of speech may work in the US but its not necessarily appropriate for my country..."
Freedom of speech isn't the only thing at issue here; consider a company known to clandestinely distributing malware / legitimate software that monitors user's activities by reporting back to its servers. I'm talking about CarrierIQ which is installed in many mobile devices; reporting back keystrokes, messages etc., getting access to data even before it is encrypted on the device.
There was lots
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And who decides what's "best suited for its citizen's good"?
Democratically elected officials who are trying to get this Bill passed. They have the right to decide what's good for their citizens.
If it's not a superior being then it needs to be voted upon by the citizenry.
Not every single issue merits going through a public referendum. If it's such a big deal, the citizenry could vote out those in power and get a better party in its place.
This is how it should be in a secure state... (Score:2)
Not every single issue merits going through a public referendum.
Atta boy, Adolph!
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How it's going to be, maybe, but surely there are limits to what a govenrment can do to its people's rights and still have it be "the way it ought to be."
Here's the thing: if decisions are made ex parte and in secret, the odds that these decisions will be strictly limited to include only cases of "gambling, child pronography, and copyright infringement" are just about zero per cent.
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Here's the thing: if decisions are made ex parte and in secret, the odds that these decisions will be strictly limited to include only cases of "gambling, child pronography, and copyright infringement" are just about zero per cent.
Fair enough, maybe it was worded that way to make it palatable to the legislators... a bit like SOPA was worded, and later rejected. While Israleis are normally a very clever bunch of people, a sizable number of them might not know what is good for themselves, and might be fal
Re:This is how it should be... (Score:5, Insightful)
>Each nation should be able to legislate and govern internet access in the way it sees fit; and best suite for its citizen's good.
They way you phrased this, someone could interpret you as saying that all governments act in the best interests of the people they govern.
That can't be what you meant, though, because I know nobody's *that* naive in this day and age.
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I tried calling, but nobody picked up...
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"Each clustered local group of dominants should be able create control mechanisms that engender their continuation in power, and I encourage them to use memetic rationalizations that easily spread to the common worker cogs when doing so."
FTFY
Nacht und Nebel (Score:2)
Yes, let the Law have the all liberty it wants, wherever it live.
Wherever their culture draws the thin line... (Score:2)
between "person who blogged about Olmert's overly aggressive war against Lebannon" and "Subversive Hezbollah sympathizer," that line needs to be in clear public view. It is a symbol of a country's bravery in times of fear. Ex-parte, non-disclosed proceedings will make it impossible for people to know the "why" and the balance the court has placed on fighting crime vs. sacrificing free speech. Without that visibility, there is zero chance that the line will be held in place, uninfluenced by politics.
Of al
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this is the problem.
its not that some clear delineation exists between legal and illegal behavior and they just decided to keep it a secret
its a secret because there is no line. there is no distinction between a citizen exercising the right to a reasonable
and polite dissent of policies and a terrorist. if you get to be too much of a pain in the ass you will be silenced.
and if 10 years from now its expedient to circumcise some other behaviors, then you as the government dont need to
worry about any kind of me
Secret? (Score:2)
It's kind of hard to "secretly" block a web site, isn't it?
"Don't tell anyone, but no one can access this web site in Israel..."
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Except if you use ISPs outside the nation? VPN, satellite connections, Tor, etc. etc.
But it is interesting how child porn is now on same level as copyright infringement. Very interesting. What's next stop? You don't agree with Israeli-Palestinian segregation and concentration camps? How about you don't agree with the First-Strike-on-Iran dogma? Those blogs and websites probably will not be available in Israel very long.
One impoertant piece of information is missing (Score:3)
Which MP(s) are behind this initiative?
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This is actually not a private bill, but a governmental bill. Meaning it is not being presented by any specific member of Knesset, but by the government itself.
I am not 100% sure about this, but I believe you are wrong. "Governmental bill" means that the MP who signed off on this atrocity is a member of the government. There is still someone specific to blame.
When I get a chance, I'll go through Knesset site and search for the specific proposal.
Shachar
This is a draft by the ministry of justice (Score:1)
They don't have any elected officials behind this yet.
The government isn't behind this yet either.
We're one month away from the elections.
Literally everything legislative is on hold, which is why this didn't get any media attention in Israel.
The chances it gets started before 2014 are slim.
The chances it gets the approval of Netanyahu is zero.
He routinely kills such laws proposed by back benchers to limit the damage to Israel's reputation only to things he really cares about such as settlements...
Back to wa
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This used to be a joke... (Score:5, Interesting)
block or restrict access to specific websites involved either in gambling, child pornography or copyright infringement.
It used to be a joke when "copyright infringement" was put in the same category as serious offences, see this wonderful video [vimeo.com]. Are these politicians out of their mind, or are these people bought and paid for as the video suggests?
Seriously not flamebait... (Score:1)
Why is 'because holocaust' acceptable to defend deplorable acts of the Israeli government and yet 'because slavery' is not acceptable to rationalize the deplorable acts of a minority of people with a darker skin tone than their European cousins?
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Why is 'because holocaust' acceptable to defend deplorable acts of the Israeli government
Who's saying it is?
the deplorable acts of a minority of people with a darker skin tone than their European cousins?
Which acts by the descendants of slaves are you thinking of?
dislosed? (Score:3)
will not be even dislosed to the owner of the website
And a few consonants will be removed.
Why The Need for Such Secrecy? (Score:3)
If they are trying to do good in a legal way, why does the government need such secrecy?
i.e. If you're not doing anything wrong, what do you have to hide?
There's a theocratic aspect to this (Score:5, Informative)
Note that the proposed law gives the power to censor to the Israeli justice minister. Yaakov Neeman, the current justice minister, is kind of weird. News articles:
There's a sizable ultra-orthodox faction in Israel which wants a political system where rabbis run things. Neeman is from that faction. Israel already has rabbinical courts, but they're currently restricted to ruling on religious issues and divorces. Neeman has said he wants to expand the authority of rabbinical courts, which in Israel are dominated by ultra-othodox rabbis.
Ultra-orthodox groups are very anti-Internet. [nymag.com] This goes way beyond censoring pornography. There are special censored ISPs that only allow a list of 400 approved sites, most of which are religious.
So that's where this may be going, or at least where one faction would like to go. (Israel politics is currently deadlocked worse than US politics. There are many parties, none with a majority, and shifting coalitions. Different factions control different ministries as part of the deals made to put coalitions together. Just because the Justice Minister wants something doesn't mean the Government does.)
Its good to know we are not... (Score:2)
...individuals....
What the Fu& is this nations crap all about..... I'm not a nation and neither are you.
The more open we are about the fact of being individuals the less those in command and control over "nations" have over us individuals.
Who is editing the internet? (Score:2)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/aug/18/wikipedia-editing-zionist-groups [guardian.co.uk]
Secretly blocking a site? (Score:1)
How does that work? Either you can get to the site or you can't. Perhaps the IsItDownForJustMe type sites can be extended: IsItDownForJustOtherIsraelisOrEverythingElseToo.com perhaps?
Per country slashdot? (Score:1)
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Because for some reason, the US seems think everyone should be disproportionately concerned about Israel.
I guess thats an indicator of the degree of Jewish money/power/influence over the government and media in the USA.
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Israel is disproportionally important in technology and in politics. It's one of nuclear club countries. If the World War III starts, it probably will start somewhere around there.
Everyday in denmark since 2005 (Score:3, Interesting)
A piece of non-news... (Score:3)
The summary, as well as the article, contains the sentence "Israel is to attempt, again, to pass a bill ...".
Another way to phrase it is: "The bill did *not* pass last time, and may end up not passing again.".
Sounds less sinister, doesn't it? And non-news....
In other words., unlike some other countries (most notably the U.S.) where laws for taking down Websites have passed and have been used, laws outlawing various behaviors that have nothing to do with copying as "copyright circumvention", laws allowing people to be banished from the Internet have passed etc., - none of this crap exists in Israel. So if anything, the Internet freedom situation is *better* in Israel than in most countries.
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The summary, as well as the article, contains the sentence "Israel is to attempt, again, to pass a bill ...".
Another way to phrase it is: "The bill did *not* pass last time, and may end up not passing again.".
Sounds less sinister, doesn't it? And non-news....
Raising awareness helps ensure it will fail to pass again.
This is what makes it news (or, at least, worth publishing).
Maybe I understand it wrong (Score:1)