Aaaaaaand, they've surrendered.
Posted on 02/28/2015 8:39:18 AM PST by Altura Ct.
France’s government is looking to adopt a tough new stance on online racism, anti-Semitism and other hate speech that would allow authorities to shut down offending websites amid a recent rise in hate crimes in the country.
Justice Minister Christiane Taubira has said she will push for legal reforms that would help French authorities crack down on racism and anti-Semitism online in much the same way they do with paedophilia. The proposals include empowering French authorities to shut down websites hosting content that is deemed illicit without prior court approval.
“Crimes recognised in public spaces must also be recognised as such on the Internet,” Taubira told a French Jewish student group on Sunday, echoing other recent statements on combating terrorism. “Our challenge is to find the most appropriate responses, but we are determined to wage an unmerciful battle against racism and anti-Semitism on the Internet.”
The declaration of war against online hate speech has raised questions about possible violations of civil liberties and the curtailing of due process as France struggles to find a way forward after a wave of deadly violence and anti-Semitic hate crimes in the country.
An Islamist gunman in January targeted a kosher supermarket – killing four people and taking hostages – as part of a string of attacks that terrorised the French capital for three days and started with a bloodbath at the office of satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo that left 12 dead.
France saw a sharp escalation in anti-Muslim acts immediately after the Paris killing spree, which was carried out by assailants claiming allegiance to al Qaeda in Yemen and the Islamic State jihadist group. A French group that monitors Islamophobia said it recorded 199 anti-Muslim acts in January alone, more than those reported in all of 2014.
Last week more than 250 tombs were vandalised by a group of teens at a Jewish cemetery in eastern France, sparking what appeared to be copycat acts in other non-Jewish cemeteries in Normandy and the Pyrenees in the following days.
Amid the compounding tensions, and real fears over the radicalisation of young people via the Internet, Taubira and other authorities want the legal means to counter racism, anti-Semitism and Islamist extremism on the web. But blocking ubiquitous online hate speech could be a thorny task for officials.
‘Protecting’ civil liberties
Some people are applauding France’s aggressive approach. The Simon Wiesenthal Center, an international rights group researching the Holocaust and hate crimes, says it has observed a steady rise in racist and anti-Semitic speech online since it began studying the phenomenon 20 years ago. The increase has been exponential since the advent of social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.
“France’s efforts must be congratulated,” Shimon Samuels, who heads the center’s Europe office, told FRANCE 24. “If child pornography and paedophilia have no place on the Internet, if advertising for things like alcohol and tobacco are controlled because they are considered noxious to children, then what about hate?”
Samuels downplayed the dangers of curtailing free speech or privacy as a result of Taubira's proposed reforms. He pointed out that nowhere are free speech laws an unlimited privilege, and that we constantly forfeit our right to privacy to online advertisers without batting an eye.
“I see this as a way of ultimately protecting civil liberties,” Samuels said. “Of course the measures need to work within the framework of the law, of course there has to be oversight so that they are not abused. A healthy debate is arising about freedoms, but that is part of democracy.”
Borderless cyberspace
But other experts are not as convinced about the wisdom of France’s more aggressive approach, nor about whether it will ultimately pay off.
“Other countries have already adopted very restrictive measures, some really go to the limits of what is acceptable in terms of freedom of expression,” noted Bridget O’Loughlin, the coordinator of the Strasbourg-based No Hate Speech Movement, a campaign funded by the Council of Europe.
O’Loughlin said what her campaign and others are finding is that, while pushing governments toward uncharted legal terrain, repressive measures are extremely difficult to implement because of the anonymity of web users and the borderless nature of cyberspace.
“There are real limits on what legislation can do,” she said.
French officials are aware of their own limits. While championing tougher online hate speech legislation at home, they have also embarked on a campaign abroad to bring other governments into the fight.
Harlem Désir, France’s state secretary for European affairs, urged world leaders gathered at the UN in late January to support the international regulation of social networks in order to crack down on racist and anti-Semitic propaganda.
French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve last week took a rare trip outside the country to Silicon Valley, where he reportedly urged the heads of Facebook, Apple, Twitter and Google to help his government identify and block online content defending acts of terrorism and hate speech.
Wake-up call
It is unclear whether France will get what it wants from other countries and the Internet giants, with whom it has clashed in the past. In the meantime, it has launched an Internet site where citizens can report worrying content to police, and launched a multimedia campaign to expose the recruiting methods and myths used by jihadists.
Samuels and O’Loughlin agree that more also needs to be done on the education front.
Parents in both Jewish and Muslim communities need to be better informed about the kind of content children are encountering on the Internet, and be encouraged to have frank – even uncomfortable – discussions with them about what they see, said Samuels.
O’Laughlin said people who have become blasé about the vitriol they encounter regularly on the web need to be woken from that stupor and given the tools to identify and report online hate speech.
“Our methods of education and research focus on young people, between the ages of 13 and 30,” she said. “But what we keep hearing is that we need to be talking to kids who are even younger than that.”
Wait...whut?
Radical Muslims will use this law against the rest of us within 3 years.
Restrictions on speech backfire... thugs love control...
It starts with removing “hate” speech and shortly moves on to eliminating all references to Christianity and traditional marriage.
Speech control...Now in America.
26 February, 2015
Written into unreleased FCC Internet Control Rules.
The worst will be used during the 2016 elections, when it will be too late to fight back.
So who decides what's illicit and what isn't??? The Government? The ruling party? Politicians? Religious leaders? The intelligentsia?
A truthfully informed electorate is essential to the functioning of representative government.
Obviously the French people don't want to be truthfully informed.
Note tagline.
Hate speech will be defined as ANY criticism of Muslims. Gays. Illegal aliens. Liberals.
And Domestic Terrorism will be criticism of the government in any way.
Furthermore, embarrassing news items about Federal overreach and corruption will be banned news. You will never hear about it.
Here's the test: We know the government in the US is out of control.
If, suddenly, you hear no more about excesses and abuses, you can be assured that the excesses and abuses did not stop, but that the reporting about them is being suppressed.
They would be well advised to expend a little more of this energy and zeal policing the chief haters (and murderers, too, for that matter) of the Western World - Moslems - who now reside in extremely large numbers right in the heart of France.
“Hate Speech”
What a crock.
God views governments as ‘beasts’ as we’re shown in the Book of Daniel and in Revelation, where four different ones represent the final overlay of authorities that will be allowed on the Earth.
Our evil government wants the same power and authority as France, that is, to control the message its people will be allowed to consider.
I’m frankly surprised governments haven’t rushed headlong toward this end even faster than they have. I have to wonder if its merely because of the lasting influence the (once free) USA has held over the internet since its beginnings. This Obama administration is a demonic beast and this is the reason it wants to release any control to outside generic UN etc., authorities, to those that don’t have those same constitutional freedoms inherent that could restrict his evil desires.
These kinds of power grabs are always made to go down easier by coupling it with events or purposes we all can agree with, “its for your own security” its for the children or whatever,
The day is coming when my above opinion will be met with oversight and could then be deleted or even this entire website removed for no other reason than it did not conform to the opinion of some political hack or government ‘ministry of truth’ reviewer,
Evil times are coming and online freedoms are about to disappear, this is a beast increasing its powers over the backbone of this media, the frontal assault will come when all of this behind the scenes legalese has been firmly established.
We seem to lose our rights in the name of reigning in Islamic terrorism and hate. Then, the extraordinary police powers turns away from Islam and onto everyone else.
She is the first African to be the Justice Minister of France.
Everyone should note that the people of Martinique are predominantly the descendants of slaves, rioted just a few years ago over white ownership of property in the islands, and generally would like to be independent of France...but can't survive without the cash.
Tell me what Taubira wants to criminalize on the net.
Hint: it ain't radical Islam.
I don’t 100% agree. In WWII, we wouldn’t let someone recruit for and spread Nazi ideology here. We wouldn’t let Nazi clubs meet without interning their sorry rear ends.
Restricting their ability to conduct business is the only sane response. If the moslems find a way to gain control and then want to use those same laws against us, then we shoot rifles at them.
But its insane to let the enemy use our freedom as a weapon against us. Would we have let the Japs take out advertising and buy newspapers and radio stations in America in 1943? If they wanted to broadcast Tokyo Rose, or Joseph Goebels here in the states, do you think we had a right to prevent that? Its the same thing.
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