Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Security China Microsoft United States

More Than 50 Nations Launch 'Paris Call' To Fix Hate Speech and Cyberattacks; China and Russia Not Among Signatories, Trump Administration Reluctant To Sign (reuters.com) 313

French President Emmanuel Macron on Monday launched a push to regulate the internet. France and U.S. technology giants, including Microsoft, are pushing for governments and companies worldwide to sign up for a new initiative aimed at establishing regulations for the internet, to fight such online threats as cyber attacks, hate speech and online censorship. A report adds: With the launch of a declaration entitled the 'Paris call for trust and security in cyberspace,' French President Emmanuel Macron is hoping to revive efforts to regulate cyberspace after the last round of United Nations negotiations failed in 2017.

In the document, which is supported by many European countries but, crucially, not China or Russia, the signatories urge governments to beef up protections against cyber meddling in elections and prevent the theft of trade secrets. The Paris call was initially pushed for by tech companies but was redrafted by French officials to include work done by U.N. experts in recent years. [...] In another sign of the Trump administration's reluctance to join international initiatives it sees as a bid to encroach on U.S. sovereignty, French officials said Washington might not become a signatory, though talks are continuing.

This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

More Than 50 Nations Launch 'Paris Call' To Fix Hate Speech and Cyberattacks; China and Russia Not Among Signatories, Trump Admi

Comments Filter:
  • by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 12, 2018 @04:27PM (#57632924)

    So the idea is to censor the internet, in order to prevent censorship???

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Nobody ever claimed Europeans were smart.

    • by sizzlinkitty ( 1199479 ) on Monday November 12, 2018 @05:02PM (#57633216)

      Your absolutely right, it will be impossible to have a uncensored internet free of hate speech, as the act of removing hate speech is censorship. I would rather have an uncensored web over something free of hate speech.

      • by shaksys ( 3777257 ) on Monday November 12, 2018 @05:07PM (#57633260)
        The system to remove hate speech will certainly be used to remove other speech.
        • by taustin ( 171655 ) on Monday November 12, 2018 @06:41PM (#57633874) Homepage Journal

          When you hate seeing opinions you disagree with, everything removed will, obviously, be hate speech.

        • Irrelevant. The issue is more fundamental than that: How do you define hatespeech.

        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          It's a bit more complex than that. Taking the US as an example, it has relatively strong freedom of speech protections but also still has laws criminalizing certain forms of speech. Divulging official secrets, credible threats, harassment, violating medical confidentiality and so forth.

          Naturally the government takes the position that the laws it passes should be enforceable, which means the ability to prosecute and remove that speech with due process.

          In other words, no country has absolute unrestricted spee

        • It only starts with removing speech; speech will [eventually] remove you.
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Kaenneth ( 82978 )

        Hate speech is great, it lets you know who the assholes are so you can fire them, expell them, shun them, etc.

    • by Tokolosh ( 1256448 ) on Monday November 12, 2018 @05:13PM (#57633302)

      "It became necessary to destroy the town to save it." -- U.S. major justifying bombing and shelling civilian areas in Bán Tre.

      "Internet media should spread positive information, uphold the correct political direction, and guide public opinion toward the right direction," the state-run Xinhua news service reported in April, summarizing the instructions of Mr. Xi, who "stressed the centralized, unified leadership of the Party over cybersecurity."

      • by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Monday November 12, 2018 @05:24PM (#57633376)

        The difference between Europe and China is that in China the censorship is pure, while in Europe it is diluted with hypocrisy.

        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Tuesday November 13, 2018 @05:13AM (#57636028) Homepage Journal

          It's not hypocrisy, it's a different understanding of what freedom is.

          In the US freedom is mostly about not being preventing from doing what you want. Most of the limits are to prevent harm to other people.

          In Europe freedom also includes the opportunity to do things you want to do. So for example education is considered a human right, because without education you are severely limited in your ability to pursue your goals and to pursue happiness. The US has some of this, e.g. education is mandatory and parents can't prevent their kids getting any entirely.

          So in this case it's clear to Europeans what they mean. Speech that limits the freedom of others, e.g. by inciting violence against them and making them afraid to live their lives as they wish is anti-freedom. Again, the US does recognize that to a lesser extent with laws against threats.

          If you read TFA the main focus is actually not on such speech, it's on the fact that right now it's mostly corporations deciding what speech is acceptable. Many on Slashdot have been calling for companies like Facebook and Twitter to be forced to allow all legal speech rather than just what they wish to tolerate on their sites, so in theory should support this.

        • Spot-on but should I prefer that censorship be in its "pure" form (i.e. full strength) or greatly weakened by "hypocritical" efforts to hide it??
      • "It became necessary to destroy the town to save it." -- U.S. major justifying bombing and shelling civilian areas in BÃn Tre.

        Quotes like these are evidence that fake news is not a recent phenomenon. The New York Times made that one up in 1968.

    • by nmb3000 ( 741169 ) on Monday November 12, 2018 @05:22PM (#57633368) Journal

      So the idea is to censor the internet, in order to prevent censorship???

      Exactly. It's like rain on your wedding day, or a free ride when you've already paid.

      Unfortunately more and more people eat this shit up. The only thing missing is "think of the children".

      "The internet [is] not governed. So now that half of humanity is online, we need to find new ways to organize the internet," an official from Macron's office said. "Otherwise, the internet as we know it today -- free, open and secure -- will be damaged by the new threats."

      Do these people even hear themselves talk? "We need to regulate the internet to keep it free and open." This is the exact definition of doublespeak.

      • Its only an example of doublespeak if you define 'free' to mean 'free of regulations'.

        I don't! For me, 'free' means free for me and others to go about our business. I have that freedom in many regulated public spaces - beaches, piazzas, parks, national forests, streets - and it's usually the regulations that have preserved the public space as one amenable to doing my activity in them.

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        It would make more sense if you hadn't cut off the first sentence of that quote:

        âoeThe internet is a space currently managed by a technical community of private players. But itâ(TM)s not governed. So now that half of humanity is online, we need to find new ways to organize the internet,â an official from Macronâ(TM)s office said.

        âoeOtherwise, the internet as we know it today â" free, open and secure â" will be damaged by the new threats.â

        He is clearly talking about corporations owning the internet, the end of net neutrality and businesses getting to decide what is acceptable online and what isn't.

        In other words he is advocating free speech protection from corporation censorship, what many on Slashdot have been demanding.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      EU bureaucrats will decide what speech is and who to report for judicial and police investigation.
      No freedom of speech online. No freedom after speech.
      Think tanks, NGO and EU governments will report users content and comments.
      No funny comments about French politics. No comments about Catalan independence.
    • at establishing regulations for the internet, to fight such online threats as cyber attacks, hate speech and online censorship

      I suppose they could be lying though. But there's plenty of folks in America complaining about Alex Jones or Gab getting censored. And if China's not signing on then I'm inclined to think they're serious about combating online censorship.

    • The Burning Legion follows a similar philosophy.
    • Link to article with the full text: https://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr... [diplomatie.gouv.fr]

      Text:
      Cyberspace now plays a crucial role in every aspect of our lives and it is the shared responsibility of a wide variety of actors, in their respective roles, to improve trust, security and stability in cyberspace. We reaffirm our support to an open, secure, stable, accessible and peaceful cyberspace, which has become an integral component of life in all its social, economic, cult

  • Ummm... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by nwaack ( 3482871 ) on Monday November 12, 2018 @04:29PM (#57632932)

    "aimed at establishing regulations for the internet, to fight such online threats as cyber attacks, hate speech and online censorship"

    Anybody else see a problem with that statement?

    • Re:Ummm... (Score:5, Informative)

      by lgw ( 121541 ) on Monday November 12, 2018 @04:31PM (#57632956) Journal

      I think the intent is clear: censorship by the good guys is a praiseworthy protection against hate speech. Censorship by the bad guys is deplorable. Doublethink is key to duckspeak.

    • Re:Ummm... (Score:5, Informative)

      by magzteel ( 5013587 ) on Monday November 12, 2018 @04:32PM (#57632974)

      They can call it whatever they like that sounds noble.
      The end result will be legally enforced censorship.

      • post a threat to kill the president of the United States and see how long until you get a visit from Uncle Sam and his G-Men.

        There's nothing wrong with censoring threats of violence, and I saw nothing in the articles to indicate anything more was being proposed. Now, to be fair both articles were lite on substance but we could do with a bit more of a swing in the other direction. Where I am (America) we've got bi-weekly mass shootings and daily shootings, many of which are racially motivated. I'm gettin
        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward

          1. We don't censor.
          2. The crime of an actionable threat of violence is in the intent of violence, not speaking about it.

        • post a threat to kill the president of the United States and see how long until you get a visit from Uncle Sam and his G-Men.

          There's nothing wrong with censoring threats of violence, and I saw nothing in the articles to indicate anything more was being proposed. Now, to be fair both articles were lite on substance but we could do with a bit more of a swing in the other direction. Where I am (America) we've got bi-weekly mass shootings and daily shootings, many of which are racially motivated.

          Should criticizing Muhammad be a criminal act in the USA too?
          https://www.newsweek.com/calli... [newsweek.com]

          I'm getting more than a bit nervous and I'm a white guy. I don't want us being the next Reich

          No idea what this is supposed to mean.

          • to incite violence yes and it is. What matters is intent. How do you prove intent? With a jury. That's censorship. Facebook, OTOH, banning users they don't like isn't censorship. If you'd like it to be you need to nationalize Facebook.

            And I don't think I could have been much clearer, but here's trying: I'm afraid we're going to start killing Jews. Or Muslims. Or Blacks. Or some other minority when the economy gets bad enough. It's not just about normalizing violence and racial hatred, it's about the eco
        • We legally enforce censorship all the time post a threat to kill the president of the United States and see how long until you get a visit from Uncle Sam and his G-Men.

          Do they actually force you to remove the threat? It was my understanding that they don't. The Secret Service just wants to know if you're a credible threat or not. Your speech isn't censored. It just has consequences. And if you're not actually a credible threat, the consequences amount to momentary inconvenience. And your name on a list. I assume it's difficult to get a Top Secret clearance if you've posted a threat to kill the president, though I don't actually know. It just seems like something t

          • That's not really forcing the threat to be removed per se, but, well, it might as well be. BTW, the same is true if you do the same to your spouse (man or women). You'll then have a bail hearing to decide if you're a present danger and if you are you'll be jailed and possibly referred for psychiatric evaluation.
    • Anybody else see a problem with that statement?

      Yes. It was made. That's a problem.

    • I've never seen a sentence fight so hard with itself for meaning.

    • I did. I also noticed that /. somehow forgot the censorship and YRO icons, as they often do on certain stories.
    • Came here to say the same thing.

    • Re:Ummm... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by guruevi ( 827432 ) on Monday November 12, 2018 @04:52PM (#57633134)

      Exactly, since the EU Supreme Court just decided that the historic facts Islam is based on is "hate speech" there is no need for anyone to sign this agreement.

      • Re:Ummm... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Monday November 12, 2018 @05:45PM (#57633546)

        Exactly, since the EU Supreme Court just decided that the historic facts Islam is based on is "hate speech"

        Their ruling is based on the principle that if people get offended and react violently, then it is hate speech.

        NOT hate speech: Mohammad had sex with a 9 year old girl. -- This is a widely accepted historical fact.
        NOT hate speech: Men who have sex with 9 year old girls are pedophiles. -- This is a noncontroversial fact.
        HATE SPEECH: Mohammad was a pedophile. -- This is a logical syllogism of the previous two facts, but is hate speech because people got offended.

        NOT hate speech: Jesus was a pedophile. -- This is ok, because Christians don't get offended easily.
        NOT hate speech: Joseph Smith was a pedophile. -- Also ok, because Mormons don't riot.
        NOT hate speech: Buddha was a pedophile. -- Buddhists don't riot either.

        So in Europe, if you want your right to not be offended enforced by the courts, you need to be willing to get violent, vandalize cars, and burn some shops. Some bombings will bring you even more respect.

        • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

          That's a pretty horrifying way of framing the issue. But you're probably correct on the message it sent.

        • James Lileks once wrote that John Stewart was able to mock Christians and Jews with impunity because they were "less likely to chase him and the producer around the studio with a scimitar."
        • by f3rret ( 1776822 )

          NOT hate speech: Mohammad had sex with a 9 year old girl. -- This is a widely accepted historical fact.

          No.
          Pretty sure the "fact" just is that the dude married a 9 year old.
          Marriage back then meant something entirely different.

          • NOT hate speech: Mohammad had sex with a 9 year old girl. -- This is a widely accepted historical fact.

            No. Pretty sure the "fact" just is that the dude married a 9 year old. Marriage back then meant something entirely different.

            He married her when she was six. They consummated the marriage when she was 9. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    • aimed at establishing regulations for the internet, to fight such online threats as cyber attacks, hate speech and online censorship"

      Anybody else see a problem with that statement?

      You mean besides how you stop both hate speech and online censorship?

      The internet should not be regulated? I agree that it shouldn't. If you are offended by something, then don't view it.

      Fighting online attacks sounds great, but I don't' see how that's even a possibility. Hell, the US can't seem to stop this, I'm not sure how this could be done without a hell of a lot more oversight, to the point of neutering the internet as we know it.

      There's no such thing as hate speech? Granted, there are hateful thing

      • Reading over you comment, do you have a distrust in the public? You want censorship to not be a thing, yet you do not want to trust the public with making that decision for themselves. What if the vast majority of the public wants hateful things gone? Additionally, if the vast majority want it gone, then who is indeed in power here? I'm not saying you're wrong, but you are hitting on an existential problem with your own argument here.

        It's a nebulous term and the thought of laws for such a thing being defined by who's in power is scary as hell.

        The reason it is scary is because you aren't the one in power. If you

    • Parent post is hate speech and must be removed.

    • I don't (Score:2, Troll)

      by rsilvergun ( 571051 )
      Hate speech, e.g. outright calls for violence, is and should be illegal in all civilized societies. Making threats, including thinly veiled ones, illegal isn't so much censorship as preserving public order.

      If you want to have a conversation about something but you can't do it without threats of violence then be prepared to give up the rest of the trappings of civilized society. Sometimes that's necessary (like a revolution) but most of the time it's just political violence and terrorism.
      • Re: I don't (Score:4, Insightful)

        by c6gunner ( 950153 ) on Monday November 12, 2018 @05:56PM (#57633604) Homepage

        Hate speech, e.g. outright calls for violence, is and should be illegal in all civilized societies. Making threats, including thinly veiled ones, illegal isn't so much censorship as preserving public order.

        This is clearly the far-left strategy:

        1. Pretend to be against violence.
        2. Ban violence.
        3. Claim that speech you don't like is violence.
        4. Ban any speech you don't like.
        5. Beat the living fuck out of anyone saying things you don't like (after all, it's just self defense).

        It should really have been obvious all along, but it wasn't until they rolled out the concept of "microagression" that people really started to clue in.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by nwaack ( 3482871 )
        You seem to think that hate speech = threats of violence. That may have been the case back in the day, but now that we're living in PC social justice hell, hate speech isn't just threats of violence, it's anything that offends people. If the world is going to censor "offensive stuff" on the internet, then we might as well just shut the whole thing down right now.
    • Not the people who are complaining all over American Democrat web sites that Trump is a nazi for not wanting to sign it.
  • by XxtraLarGe ( 551297 ) on Monday November 12, 2018 @04:29PM (#57632938) Journal
    They'll have to make up their minds, they can't have both.
  • by UnknownSoldier ( 67820 ) on Monday November 12, 2018 @04:30PM (#57632944)

    Speech is NOT an emotion. There is no such thing as "hate speech"

    Either you have free speech or you don't.

    Trying to label "some" speech as hate speech is nothing more then censorship. PERIOD.

    --
    Only children censor.
    Adults discuss and even laugh at "taboo" subjects.
    Ignoring the problem doesn't make it go away.

    • by jwymanm ( 627857 )
      This is just more big gov and big biz land grab. The more things are regulated the harder it is for competition to keep up. Every little % helps. Google and co do not care that they are stripping humanity out of anything and everything they do. They just want to make sure the playing field is only level for themselves. This will just turn everyone towards a newer hidden web. Hopefully distributed and free of their control.
    • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

      Think of the children? And adult people we want to treat like they're children?

  • by willoughby ( 1367773 ) on Monday November 12, 2018 @04:30PM (#57632946)

    So we're going to fight "hate speech" and at the same time fight "online censorship"? Oh, this should be good....

  • hate speech (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Who decides what is hate speech?????

  • by najajomo ( 4890785 ) on Monday November 12, 2018 @04:49PM (#57633104)
    France and U.S. technology giants .. are pushing for governments and companies worldwide to sign up for a new initiative aimed at establishing regulations for the internet, to fight such online threats as cyber attacks, hate speech and online censorship

    And they're going to do this by censoring the Internet.
    • by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      Some interconnected social credit between users over the large US social media brands?
      Create the wrong kind of funny political video and all big brand social media gets a report on that EU user?
  • banning hate speech / online censorship is an 1st amendment issue.

    And it's way to easy for political ads to fall under hate speech that would rocket the case up to the us supreme court.

    • by geek ( 5680 )

      banning hate speech / online censorship is an 1st amendment issue.

      And it's way to easy for political ads to fall under hate speech that would rocket the case up to the us supreme court.

      It's the entire reason for the 1st since the only speech that needs protecting is unpopular speech, in this case "hate speech".

      The words "hate speech" are like the words "inner beauty", they can mean anything so they mean nothing.

  • Thanks Trump (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 12, 2018 @05:04PM (#57633226)

    Thankfully Trump's distrust and dislike of them will block this from taking hold in the US. This is a classic example of a power grab "for the greater good" by nation's that do not believe in the freedom of speech.

    To censor hate speech, they will need to put people in charge of what is hate speech, which naturally they will define to increase their power. And to enable those people to take action, they'll have to have a controlling stake of key parts of the internet.

    As for calling out China for not people a part of this, why the hell would they care? They already enforce such behaviors in their nation to great effect. I can only wonder if this request was modeled after such a disgusting setup.

  • It all goes back to education, when a person with a well rounded education (including liberal arts/history...) sees bad information it is like seeing red blinking text in a WEB Page.

    Since education quality and funding has been reduced to bare bones in the US and with some countries worse off, you get many people believing every sensational/outrageous thing on the net. How about giving people a good education now. Eventually even the teachers will be no-educated at the rate we are going.

    • by geek ( 5680 )

      It all goes back to education, when a person with a well rounded education (including liberal arts/history...) sees bad information it is like seeing red blinking text in a WEB Page.

      Since education quality and funding has been reduced to bare bones in the US and with some countries worse off, you get many people believing every sensational/outrageous thing on the net. How about giving people a good education now. Eventually even the teachers will be no-educated at the rate we are going.

      What they hell are you talking about? We spend over 600% more on education today than we did in the 80's. Tuition to 4 years is up something like 800% in the same time period. WTF are you smoking with this "bare bones" bullshit?

      • He also appears unaware of the state of ed schools. His 'eventually' happened 40 years ago. The very bottom of the student barrel goes to ed, where they get average GPAs near 4.0.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • When the "one world order" types regulate the internet, it will STIFLE freedom, not promote it. It's just more of a way of SHUTTING DOWN those that don't have the same views as the "new world order" types.
  • Honestly, the incels and Nazis have had decades to prove that legally forbidding hate speech is not sufficient deterrent anyway. They just don't fear it enough.

    Fear of ostracism for their beliefs, now that puts enough fear in them to drive them under. Give legal protection to the unmask-and-ostracize folks if you really want to stop all this.

  • by Tom ( 822 ) on Monday November 12, 2018 @09:47PM (#57634844) Homepage Journal

    The problem with "hate speech" and all the other SJW stuff is that they use flexible definitions of their subject. What exactly "hate speech" means, can easily change and already changed multiple times since the term "hate speech" was invented.

    Unfortunately, this does a massive damage to the cases where it actually happens. This is even more clear with "rape". Nowadays, anything from a brutal gangrape with violent penetration into multiple orifices to accidentally touching someones breast is called "rape". There have even been a few cases where pure thought has been labeled with that term. It does nothing but disservice to actual rape victims, who cannot use a clearly understood term anymore to communicate a clear matter without going into details. These days, if you are a victim, you have to describe that penetration was involved or people will think you're just a snowflake who thinks a stupid joke is the same as physical violence.

    We will see the same development with "hate speech" as soon as it becomes actionable. Everything even slightly objectable will get the label, until it becomes meaningless.

  • Why not start with something we can all agree on, e.g. Cyber Attack and Election Meddling.

Before Xerox, five carbons were the maximum extension of anybody's ego.

Working...