Posted: 13th Sep, 2007 By: MarkJ
The European Union's Justice and Security Commissioner, Franco Frattini, has called on ISP's to censor Internet searches or risk terrorists being able to gather information:
Frattini said in a telephone interview with Reuters that freedom of information should take second place to denying terrorists access to bomb making instructions or other information that could be useful.
"I intend to carry out a clear exploring exercise with the private sector on how it is possible to use technology to prevent people from using or searching dangerous words like 'bomb', 'kill', 'genocide' or 'terrorism'," he said.
"Instructing people how to make a bomb has nothing to do with freedom of expression, or the freedom of informing people. The right balance is to give priority to the protection of absolute rights and, first of all, the right to life."
What Frattini doesn't appear to realise is that ISP's don't have control over the content delivered by search engines, we don't live in China and those search words are also used for many more legitimate reasons, such as news.
Frattini has confirmed that the idea is part of his strategy meant for official presentation to EU member states in November. More @
VNUNet.