La Quadrature du Net

12 September 2018 - This morning, as everybody was looking at the Copyright Directive adoption, the EU Commission released a proposal for a Regulation on the censorship of terrorist propaganda.

This proposal would impose new obligations to hosting service providers, including the removal in less than an hour of the reported content. This proposal trivializes police and private censorship as well as the circumvention of justice. Automated filters, which play a crucial role in the debate on the Copyright Directive, are becoming the core component of censorship regimes in the digital era1.

• 1. According to the proposal, every hosting service provider on the Internet, whatever its size or its operation, would have to remove terrorist content within one hour upon receiving a removal order by a national authority (Article 4). These authorities would also be able to impose censorship, based not on national law but on the terms and conditions of these providers (Article 5). Finally, providers are invited to take proactive measures, including through automated means, to scan online contents and block those they consider a terrorist content (article 6)

Millions of people face the prospect of being scanned by police facial recognition technology that has sparked human rights concerns.

The controversial software, which officers use to identify suspects, has been found to be “staggeringly inaccurate”, while campaigners have branded its use a violation of privacy. [...]