January 7, 2015 will go down in French history. Terrorist gunned down French newspaper Charlie Hedo headquarters, killing 12 and injuring 11 others. Now, French lawmakers are taking action.
Moves are being made for France to block terror sites. They’re blocking child abuse sites as well. This bill is a revised version of 2011’s Loppsi Act. But these revisions give French cyber police authority to force Internet service providers to block certain sites within 24 hours, whether they have a court order or not. Blocked sites will be replaced by a page from the government telling them why the particular website is blocked. The system will be checked quarterly to see if sites are appropriately blocked. This bill isn’t without criticism. The criticism in France is led by Felix Treguer, leader of a French free speech group. Treguer and others say this bill leads to censorship and could be an enemy to free speech. Mr. Treguer said, “Website blocking is ineffective since it is easily circumvented. It is also disproportionate because of the risk of over-blocking perfectly lawful content.?
I want to believe the French government is trying to do right and prevent terrorists and child predators from spreading propaganda. But Felix Treguer has a point. First off, if they can’t do it online, the bad guys are going to try the old fashioned way, like pamphlets. And if you give cyber cops this kind of power, then who are bad guys? Are they terrorists and abusers? Or are they the blogs that criticize the French government? Or are they the websites that are too ‘controversial’??This bill just opens the floodgates to censorship. I’m all for fighting these kinds of evil. But will this do any good? Are they going to go after the true monsters or use this as an excuse to shut down other websites? Or worse, are they using tragedy to exploit other peoples’ freedom of speech?