EU plans ban on bomb-making info on websites

Freedom of anything nowadays?

Surely the prevention of the spread of any knowledge in this manner is a sure fire way to open up the floodgates of censorship??

We don't live in China. If we want to find out how to build a bomb, why shouldn't we be able to? The crime is only committed when the bomb is built and used - something that any ardent terrorist will have resourced from places elsewhere than the internet.

At the end of the day, we "have" the right to do or say anything we chose, so long as we are ok with suffering the consequences. This is just another retarded, knee-jerk step towards Big Brother ruling...

Sound and fury, signifying nothing.

"identity fraud, child abuse and terrorist propaganda"

Ah of course. Draconian measures to protect me from the well known triumvirate of evil, crims, kiddy fiddlers and terrorists.

He forgot to mention immigrants, some oversight on his part, surely.

"think about "what we have in common [with the US]""

Obesity, arrogance, criminal foreign policy, a totalitarian regime bent on removing our few remaining meaningful freedoms ?

Yeah, it's a long list.

Too late

I can already make home made dynamite, napalm, thermite, use readily available chemicals as poisons, and kill people with far less inventive means, like stabbing them.

Why don't I? Last time I checked, the military might of the western world didn't bomb the shit out of my country because they didn't like the way the dude they put in power ran the joint.

Nice one, folks.

Anyone ever heard of a concept called freedom?

I'm sure, when I was in school, they talked about this thing called "freedom" -- apparently my grandparents fought against this bloke called Hitler who wanted to take it away from us, thousands o0f people, lots of them innocent, died in the conflict.

If anyone knows what this "freedom" thing is, and if there's any around now, I'd be interested to hear from you -- from what I remember older folk saying it was a really important thing to have, worth dying for, in fact.

Didn't the NAZIs loose?

Can we also expect gangs of brown-shirts to raid libraries and burn unacceptable books in the town square?

Believe it or not...

It is entirely possible to fight terrorism without restricting our rights.

There are two ways to do this. The first is to actually be competent and go after terrorist funding organisations... which our government doesn't because they're a bunch of idiots. The second is to do like the EU and simply re-define the meaning of the word "rights" to be "privileges that are bestowed by the state", which is quite obvious from the wording of the human rights act and the directive that spawned it.

Our rights, as defined in the bill of rights 1689, and magna carta before that, are quite clearly innate, not granted, but in recent years we've been educated to believe that all our rights extend from the patronage of the state. The state serves to protect our rights, not define them, and frankly I think they need reminding of that.

Bomb making?

Oh so its the websites is it, and not as I would have thought after my mis-spent youth the old chemistry books in the library which have thermite spelled thermit and sulfur spelled sulphur that teach you how to make bombs...

I remember one book I was reading when of a young age described the processes for RDX, HMX, TNT, Amatol and Anfos for the high order explosives with starter compounds including lead azide and others in great detail, the kind of detail which isn't difficult to follow with a make-do kind of attitude.

You cannot protect people from information, human knowledge belongs to the world and no matter how it is controlled it still exists. This is why we don't ban or burn books.

Apart from the fact that banning anything could just as easily motivate people to pursue violent extreme behavior towards the government. I know I'd rather the information be on the internet than not, regardless of its content.

Quick ban methamphetamine making instructions, it'll fix the meth problem!

Quick, if we ban instructions on making methamphetamine from the internet it will fix our drugs problem! It's so easy, I wonder why we didn't think of it before! Why we could stop smoking in a second by banning instructions on rolling you're own tomatoes! It's not really tomatoes you use in cigarettes, but I can't tell you what they're really made of because it's now banned. Bet you can't guess!

Reality check:

You CAN make a secret into public information by revealing it. But you CAN'T make public information into a secret by UNrevealing it. Time works forward and information entropy means information always spreads out.

Especially when you're only UNrevealing it on the Internet while keeping the same information in books and people heads and printed papers.

Frattini is the King Canute of information.

I suspect the Internet *didn't* do it, it's just relatively new, and new things are always blamed when new problems arise. A convienient quick non fix that makes he look busy.

too late

I already downloaded the jolly roger cookbook over tor.

@ Nomen Publicus: Yes, the Nazis are loose.

And running at least the US and UK.

However... "Terrorists, said Frattini, seek new technology, could deploy bioterrorism with devastating effect, "

Aside from the fractured English there (is the writer really Welsh, and named Gumby?), all the terrorists need do is order a load of chicken from the St. Hubert restaurant chain in Quebec. That stuff is boring to the point of deadly. A bout of salmonella might add some interest to it.

@Graham Dawson

The Human Rights Act simply incorporates into UK law the European Convention on Human Rights, which has nothing to do with the EU.

As the UK has been a signatory to the convention since its inception, the only difference the introduction of the Act made was to make it easier to get a domestic remedy without having to go to the European Court.

They're already doing it

Have you tried to find ******** or ***** or even ***** genomes on the iNet? No? You won't find them, at least not anymore. Some of the stuff the fringies have looks suspiciously like vaccinia.... or maybe honey in a honeypot.

Generate a few trillion copies of the Real Thing, eventually one folds up correctly, stuff them all in capsids and and genie escapes from the bottle in the freezer without physically leaving the freezer. Kiddie script stuff off eBay, well, if you are much smarter than a typical suicide bomber handler anyway. (Oh NOOOO! Now eBay will be banned as a tool of the terrorists!)

Creating something new under the sun, from scratch, now that is beyond the current pale.

@Graham

"The state serves to protect our rights, not define them, and frankly I think they need reminding of that."

I'll drink to that.

hacking is much better

I already know how to make bombs doesn't suit me take a few chemistry courses you lazy terrorists better than that though I usually know a few months ahead of the rest of the world about security vulnerabilities in the products I use I can't help it I notice shit. Anyway try to tell these pandering idiots what sort of hell they are capable of being in and they won't comprehend a thing but it does worry me.

Now you've done it

You do realise that all you posters who have complained in this thread are being tracked down as I type by the NSA. Have a look out of the curtains, go on... see the van parked across the road....

Maybe we should ban the instructions for flying planes too (9/11). Oh hang on, I can see a problem with that - doh!

Title

To quote a favourite movie:

"People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people."

Defense of freedoms

Comments in this string reflect the strength and the validity of opinions opposed to these EU proposals. What is troubling is the implicit begrudging acceptance of this state of affairs. The mentality behind the Frattini remarks needs to be challenged intelligently and systematically. It will not likely be challenged at all by the representatives of national governments, like the UK, when discussing these proposals, because they will be coming from the police and security authorities of national governments.

Where will the good governance angle come in? Where will the thoughtful questioning of means and objectives take place? Injecting something like rational discourse into the consideration of the adoption of these proposals would seem like a no-brainer in order to find the right balance between protecting our rights and freedoms and fighting identity fraud, terrorism, etc.

Magazines like The Economist forthrightly criticise Frattini-type ideas with logical arguments but they are unlikely to influence the adoption procedure at EU level.

Americans (some - not all) were induced into accepting curbs on personal freedoms and privacy by repeated governmental invocations of protecting the country from terrorists. This is exactly the same type of strategy as Frattini is now using to justify his proposals.

Some kind of citizens' activism in the EU seems appropriate, if the Frattini-type mindset is not to prevail. Unfortunately, it may already be too late to reverse the trend. But it's surely worth a try. Perhaps we should join or support EFF (the Electronic Frontier Foundation at http://www.eff.org/).

@Sandra Keegan

I was just thinking what a decent comment that was, until I read the last sentence :

"Perhaps we should join or support EFF (the Electronic Frontier Foundation at http://www.eff.org/)."

Then I nearly wet myself laughing. I applaud your conviction, but you need someone more credible than the EFF to help you express it.

Good Idea Frattini! Apart from...

1 Your stupidity would knock Wiki offline, together with at least 20 other online encyclopedias who describe the basic construction (bottle filled with a mixture of gasoline, sand and soap suds, with a burning rag in its mouth) of a Molotov Cocktail

2 publishing that paragraph has just condemned el reg to the censorship bin

3 define "bomb"

4 If I'm actually intent on being or encouraging bombers, the last place I'm going to publish my guidance is in a publicly available online website

5 But that doesn't stop me providing all the gory details in a password protected site or forum

6 If I want a bit of free publicity for my website, I could simply publish a number of bomb making guides, wait for the challenge and make a public fuss about the censorship for long enough to attract the traffic, then gracefully concede (and get a little bit more publicity for the concession)

7 Even if such rules were implemented in the EU then, despite being a UK citizen, they couldn't (for example) touch my own website and its comprehensive bomb making guide because it's hosted in the States (where the 1st Amendment protects it!)

8 You are a bloody good advert for Assassination Politics.