Takedown: Free Speech
It seems that my blogmaster over at SpyBlog has spotted yet another threat to liberty and free speech.
When talking about the new "takedown notices" - empowered under the recently passed Section 3 of the Terrorism Act 2006 - wtwu comments about the new laws:
They have worldwide scope and penalties up to 7 years in prison (i.e. severe enough for extradition procedures to apply) for not complying quickly enough with a "takedown notice" (2 working days) and thereby being deemed to agree or approve of the internet content, in question. This might deemed to incite or glorify terrorism or be classed as "disseminating a terrorist publication" or providing training material in the use of noxious substances
What I want to know is this: If I am an author researching cyber-warfare, information terrorism, asymmetrical warfare and the New Cold War - and I access and/or store a whole bunch of documents in my working day - and then share my working documents with other people via a social bookmarking scheme - do I then become responsible for my links if they are subsequently found to "promote terrorism"?
It's worth considering - if I tag everything in del.icio.us for my New Cold War research - does the act of tagging make me a security threat because I flag too many keywords that are flagged by the CIA/NSA/FBI/MI6 databases?
Right now I feel like a sitting duck for any computer program that searches for patterns in keyword searches - my keyword cluster units are so specific they can only be attributed to a terrorist - or a writer who is researching terrorism.
Anyone who thinks computers are the solution will just look at the facts - and come to the conclusion that I am a security threat.
But then why should I worry - I have nothing to hide and nobody relies on computers to do their work for them anymore - or do they?
Tags: new cold war jihad terrorism paranoia free speech cointelpro big brother social bookmarking