Argument: Internet regjulation is a euphemism for censorship

Governments are trying to control what citizens can and can’t say online and what they can and can’t access. This can vary from France and Germany requiring Google to suppress Nazism in search results [1] to the Great Firewall of China, where the Chinese government almost fully controls what’s said and seen on the internet and has an army of censors. [2]

This type of internet censorship is bad because citizens should have freedom of speech and uninhibited access to information, [3] a right so fundamental that we have enshrined it in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights [4] and reaffirmed by the participants of the World Summit on the Information Society in 2003. [5]

[1] Zittrain and Edelman, Localized Google search result exclusions, 2005

[2] Internet censorship in China, 2010

[3] Free Speech Debate, 2012

[4] article 19, Universal Declaration of Human Rights

[5] Declaration of Principles, article 4, 2003

Candidate 1: "With the government as final decision-maker, at least the citizens and consumers have some say

Regulatory capture does sometimes happen and when it does, it’s bad. But the risk of regulatory capture isn’t a sufficient argument to keep the government away from regulating the internet, because governments can also protect citizens and consumers from big companies.

An example is the net neutrality debate. Content providers could have started paying Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to have their websites load faster than any other website (paid prioritization). Entertainment companies that also provide internet are currently being investigated for not allowing their competitors in the entertainment segment access to their network as internet provider. [1] This threatens the freedom of choice of the consumer, which is why governments have stepped in to ensure that companies aren’t allowed favour some websites. [2] If the government wouldn’t have been involved in regulating the internet, it couldn’t have stood up for consumers’ and citizens’ rights like this.

[1] DOJ Realizes That Comcast &amp; Time Warner Are Trying To Prop Up Cable By Holding Back Hulu &amp; Netflix, 2012

[2] Voskamp, ‘GOP Attempt to Overturn FCC’s Net Neutrality Rules Fails in Senate’, 2011"
Candidate 2: "‘Spying on the internet’ is nothing different from a normal police investigation

Obviously, governments also use the internet and social media to investigate suspects. But when they’re doing this, they’re only using information that’s publicly available online. The technical term for this is ‘OSINT’, which stands for ‘Open Source Intelligence’, which means that it’s the kind of information that anyone with access to Google and a lot of spare time could have found. [1]

When police investigations turn up more severe suspicions, then more extreme methods can be used to obtain evidence if needed, sometimes even actively asking hackers for help. [2]

But methods like these are not necessarily bad: their disadvantages in use have to be weighed against their significant benefits. And governments are doing this, as is for example shown in Canada’s ‘Technical Assistance for Law Enforcement in the 21st Century Act’: governments try to extend the principles of due process and probable cause to the internet, but at the same time they need to be able to defend their citizens from harm. [3]

[1] Wikipedia, ‘Open source intelligence’, 2012.

[2] ‘NSA chief seeks help from hackers’, 2012

[3] ‘Technical Assistance for Law Enforcement in the 21st Century Act’, 2012"
Candidate 3: "Internet regulation isn’t an effective and legitimate means to create a safe internet

Setting up CERTs aren’t an effective means to create a safer internet, because most of the threats are a result of ‘social engineering’, which means that hackers use social cues to con people into believing frauds. People usually fall for this because of their own gullibility and naïveté, like in Nigerian email scams. [1] The most effective means of combating these threats is to educate citizens directly, the FBI already does this with Nigerian email scams. [2] People and corporations are primarily responsible for their own actions, which includes taking care of their own internet security by obtaining anti-virus software, and which also includes corporations making sure their websites are safe to use or else face liability charges if they turn out not to be.

Moreover, CERTs are illegitimate. They are illegitimate because they facilitate the sharing of information on specific persons across private and public organizations and because they are hard to control democratically. For example: the US-CERT is an agency residing under the department of Homeland Security. Through the sharing of information with private parties, these private parties, unwittingly, run the risk of becoming one of the government’s watch dogs. Moreover, this sharing of information is hard to control democratically: much of the information could be classified as secret, which means that citizens have no way of verifying whether public and private organizations are complying with data sharing regulations.

[1] Plumer, ‘Why Nigerian email scams are so crude and obvious’. 2012.

[2] FBI, ‘Nigerian letter or “419” fraud’."
Candidate 4: "As in the offline world, free speech isn’t unlimited

Even in free societies, free speech isn’t always free. Free speech can be demeaning and hurtful to certain people or can even incite hatred and violence. [1] The first reason is why, under internet libel law, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are asked to remove defamatory material and blogs take to moderating their comments more, [2] and the second is why Germany and France have outlawed Holocaust denial and Nazism.

As in the previous arguments, accountable governments are attempting to strike a balance between free speech and where this can harm others. [3] A carefully struck balance between rights in the offline world shouldn’t have to be abolished, just because we’re now in the online world. [4]

[1] Waldron, ‘The harm of hate Speech’, 2012

[2] Alibhai-Brown, ‘Freedom of speech can’t be unlimited’, 2009.

[3] Minister: The UK “emphatically” supports free speech online but there are limits, 2012

[4] Schellekens, “What holds off-line, also holds on-line?”, 2006"
Candidate 5: "Battling hideous crimes shouldn’t lead us to draconian and ineffective policies

Everyone is against child sexual abuse material. But in their drive to battle it, governments might go too far. For example, granting the police the right to search without (full) warrant is a harm to citizens’ basic right to privacy and freedom from unwarranted government surveillance. [1]

The automatic internet filtering and data retention are possibly an even worse infringement on basic civil liberties: it designates all internet traffic and therefore all internet using citizens as suspect, even before a crime has been committed. This overturns the important principle that people are presumed innocent until proven guilty.

Moreover, instead of the police and prosecution changing their behavior, internet filters hardwire these new assumptions into the architecture of the internet itself. [2] This means it is more all-pervasive and less noticeable, thus constituting an even worse violation.

These draconian measures might even seem worth it, until you realise they don’t work: blocking and filtering technology makes mistakes and can be circumvented easily. [3]

[1] ‘Online surveillance bill critics are siding with ‘child pornographers’: Vic Toews’. 2012.

[2] Lessig, ‘Code is Law’. 2000.

[3] ‘Why government internet filtering won’t work’. 2008."
Candidate 6: "Government shouldn’t interfere with the internet economy

It almost never ends well when governments interfere with the internet economy. The graduated response policy against the unauthorized downloading of copyrighted content is one example: it violates the same principles as a filter against child sex abuse material, but it also doesn’t succeed in its’ goal of helping content businesses innovate their business models, which is why France is considering discontinuing it. [1] Also, other businesses are slowly replacing the old fashioned music-industry, showing that companies on the internet are fully able to survive and thrive by offering copyrighted content online. [2]

When governments do become active in the internet economy, they’re likely to run very high risks. IT projects are very likely to fail, run over budget and time, [3] especially when it concerns governments. [4] This means that governments shouldn’t be ‘going digital’ anytime soon, as the data governments handle is too sensitive. The case of digital signatures is a good example: when the provider of digital signatures for tax and business purposes, DigiNotar, was hacked, it not only comprised the security of Dutch-Iranian citizens, [5] but also hampered government communications. [6]

[1] ‘French anti-p2p agency Hadopi likely to get shut down’. 2012.

[2] Knopper, ‘The New Economics of the Music Industry’. 2011.

[3] Budzier and Flyvbjerg, ‘Why your IT project may be riskier than you think’. 2011.

[4] ‘Government IT Projects: How often is succes even an option?’. 2011.

[5] ‘Fake DigiNotar web certificate risk to Iranians’, 2011.

[6] ‘Dutch government unprepared for SSL hack, report says’, 2012."

As in the offline world, free speech isn’t unlimited

Even in free societies, free speech isn’t always free. Free speech can be demeaning and hurtful to certain people or can even incite hatred and violence. [1] The first reason is why, under internet libel law, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are asked to remove defamatory material and blogs take to moderating their comments more, [2] and the second is why Germany and France have outlawed Holocaust denial and Nazism.

As in the previous arguments, accountable governments are attempting to strike a balance between free speech and where this can harm others. [3] A carefully struck balance between rights in the offline world shouldn’t have to be abolished, just because we’re now in the online world. [4]

[1] Waldron, ‘The harm of hate Speech’, 2012

[2] Alibhai-Brown, ‘Freedom of speech can’t be unlimited’, 2009.

[3] Minister: The UK “emphatically” supports free speech online but there are limits, 2012

[4] Schellekens, “What holds off-line, also holds on-line?”, 2006
