Germany’s Online Crackdowns Inspire the World’s Dictators

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Angela Merkel to German Parliament: We Have to Take Away your Freedom of Speech or We Won’t Be Free

Chancellor Angela Merkel delivered an emotional speech to the German Budestag this week on the need for limiting freedom of speech: ''For those who claim they can no longer express their opinion, I say this to them: If you express and pronounced opinion, you must live with the fact that you will be contradicted. Expressing an opinion does not come at zero cost. But freedom of expression has its limits. Those limits begin where hatred is spread. They begin where the dignity of other people is violated. This house will and must oppose extreme speech. Otherwise our society will no longer be the free society that it was.''

twitter:

ezralevant twitterde op vrijdag 29-11-2019 om 00:13:28 Watch till the end. Angela Merkel says: we have to take away your freedom of speech, or else society won’t be free. https://t.co/Y3qROvDQXg reageer retweet

https://www.thegatewaypun(...)-or-we-wont-be-free/

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Germany’s Online Crackdowns Inspire the World’s Dictators

An anti-hate speech law written in Berlin has been copy-pasted by authoritarian regimes from Caracas to Moscow.

The German government has responded to a recent spate of right-wing extremist violence with a commitment to enact tough new measures against online hate speech. These would expand Germany’s existing efforts along these lines—but seemingly without any consideration of the pernicious effects they’ve already had around the world. As our new report shows, Germany’s ongoing crackdown on online speech has been closely watched, and copied, by authoritarian governments eager to curb political dissent.

The crackdown began after 2015, when Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to welcome more than 1 million refugees and asylum-seekers was greeted with a tidal wave of protest ranging from derision to visceral hatred on social media. The anger migrated from the online trolling and memes of keyboard warriors into actual attacks on refugee centers across Germany.

Sensing a loss of control, then-Minister of Justice Heiko Maas wrote a stern letter to Facebook warning the tech giant that, despite the need for free speech, “The internet is not a lawless space where racist abuse and illegal posts can be allowed to flourish.” Maas demanded much stricter policing of content violating German law and Facebook’s own community standards. Facebook and other tech companies agreed to a voluntary deal under which they would remove content deemed illegal within 24 hours.

Facebook’s removal rates failed to satisfy Mass, however, and he decided that legally binding measures were necessary to curb the flood of online hate. In 2017, the government introduced the Network Enforcement Act, which was adopted that same year and entered into force early 2018.

The law imposes so-called intermediary liability for social media networks with over 2 million registered users. Any content, which is “manifestly unlawful” must be removed in a time frame of 24 hours. For all other “unlawful” content, the deadline is seven days. Failure to remove illegal content is punishable by fines of up to 50 million euros, about $55 million.

The Network Enforcement Act’s detractors argue that it delegates to the private sector the role of cybercop with little transparency or due process. This encourages social media companies to over-implement by providing an incentive to err on the side of caution to avoid fines. While no new offenses were crafted for the law, some of the existing definitions of “unlawful” are problematic in themselves.

This includes most glaringly Germany’s approach to the offense of “defamation of religions,” which violates international human rights standards. Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights guarantees freedom of expression including the “freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers.” In 2018, the United Nations’ independent expert on freedom of expression expressed concern about the new act and other state-imposed models of intermediary liability as potential violations of Article 19.

The Network Enforcement Act has woven itself into the landscape of internet governance at a time when many states worldwide are pushing for increasing regulation to fight online threats, both real and imagined. The critics of the law who warned that the act might legitimize a model of online censorship that can readily be adapted to serve the ends of authoritarian states have been proved right. Our new research shows that in less than two years the law has essentially been copy-pasted by governments around the world—most of which do not match Germany’s commitment to democracy, the rule of law, and human rights.

Since the adoption of the new German law, at least 13 countries—in addition to the European Commission—have adopted or proposed models of intermediary liability broadly similar to the act’s matrix. According to Freedom House’s 2019 assessment of freedom on the internet, four of those countries are ranked as being “not free” (Venezuela, Vietnam, Russia and Belarus, Honduras is not surveyed but is ranked as “not free” on press freedom), five are ranked “partly free” (Kenya, India, Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines), and only three are ranked “free” (France, the United Kingdom, and Australia). With the exception of India, Kenya, Vietnam, and Australia, all these countries—as well as the European Commission—have explicitly referred to the Network Enforcement Act as an inspiration or justification for their models of intermediary liability.

Moreover, several of these countries, including Venezuela, Vietnam, India, Russia, Malaysia, and Kenya, require intermediaries to remove vague categories of content that include “fake news,” “defamation of religions,” and “anti-government propaganda,” and many of them include overly broad definitions of hate speech that go much further than the German law. A Russian bill signed into law by President Vladimir Putin in March is a good example. It defines “unreliable information” as follows:

“Socially significant information disseminated under the guise of reliable messages, which creates a threat to life and (/or) the health of citizens or property, the threat of mass disturbance of public order and (/or) public safety, or the threat of creating or impairing the proper operation of vital elements of transport or social infrastructure, credit institutions, energy facilities, industry or communications.”

https://foreignpolicy.com(...)sia-venezuela-india/

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Op zaterdag 30 november 2019 18:42 schreef heywoodu het volgende:
Maar dat zegt ze helemaal niet. Wel leuk van die Ezra Levant: net een héél klein beetje verdraaien waardoor het nog wel redelijk lijkt op wat ze zegt, maar toch een significant andere betekenis heeft.

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Op zaterdag 30 november 2019 18:56 schreef heywoodu het volgende:
Wat ze zegt is dat 'extreme speech' (zoals oproepen tot haat, wat ze letterlijk aanhaalt) bestreden moet worden.

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Op zaterdag 30 november 2019 19:15 schreef illusions het volgende:

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En het bestrijden van oproepen tot haat is slecht?

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Op zaterdag 30 november 2019 19:19 schreef illusions het volgende:

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Het lijkt me pas zorgelijk als er echte wetsvoorstellen op tafel liggen die niet sporen, zoals the patriot act.