ISPs Wary About ‘Drastic Obligations’ on Web Site Blocking
EU officials want to shutter suspicious websites as part of a 6-point plan to boost joint antiterrorism activities, they said Wed. Ministers representing the Finnish Presidency, the future EU presidencies of Germany, Portugal, Slovenia and France, U.K. Home Secy. John Reid, and EC Vp Franco Frattini said the Internet must be made a “hostile environment for terrorists and those who seek to radicalize young people, spread messages of hate and plan mass murder.” Details won’t emerge until next month, but ISPs are keeping a wary eye on the situation.
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Frattini wants to block websites that incite terrorist action, a Commission spokesman told us. EU legislation would raise free speech, intellectual property and many other issues, he said. Italy already has a law banning “how to make a bomb” websites, but no one is sure how the EU can forbid them, he said. Frattini’s proposal will at least launch a “political debate,” the spokesman said.
Because it’s unclear what ministers actually mean by “tackling the use of the Internet,” the European Internet Services Providers Assn. said it couldn’t comment on the announcement. Nevertheless, said Regulatory Affairs Mgr. Richard Nash, the organization “would be concerned if this means that ministers are considering drastic obligations on ISPs.”
Reid’s comment about cracking down on terrorist sites (WID Aug 17 p5) is a broad statement that could relate to communications traffic data retention or content issues, an ISPA U.K. official said: “We don’t know what the Home Office has in mind.” In any case, ISPs must not be made “corporate censors” responsible for deciding what content should be removed or hosted, he said.
A 2nd part of Frattini’s proposal calls for the collection of more personal information on airline passengers. As in the EU/U.S. Passenger Name Record agreement, e-mail addresses, phone numbers and other information would be transferred, the EC spokesman said. But the idea raises data protection issues that must be resolved before any such system can be adopted, he said.
Meanwhile, the plan to force communications services providers to store Internet and telephony data to assist terrorism and criminal investigations suffered a setback in Germany this week. Lawyers for the German Federal Parliament’s Lower House said they're seriously concerned that requiring a 6-month mandatory data retention period for all carriers, ISPs and other e-communications providers would be unconstitutional, a leaked memorandum said.
The rules may be too broad to pass muster with Germany’s data protection laws, the experts said. They also voiced doubt that the EC and European Parliament have jurisdiction over data retention for law enforcement purposes, an argument raised by Ireland and Slovakia in their challenges to the directive in the European Court of Justice (ECJ) (WID July 12 p7).
The memorandum raises such questions as whether a “quick freeze of traffic data, rather than a general retention regime, is less burdensome to reach the same goals,” said attorney Axel Spies on behalf of the German Competitive Carriers Assn. (VATM). It also underlines once again that “monitoring calls, Internet and e-mail traffic for law enforcement purposes is a task vested in the government,” which must reimburse carriers and providers for retaining the data, he said. The legal debate about data retention at the national level “is far from over,” Spies said. It’s likely German courts will rule on its constitutionality long before the ECJ does, he said.