First hacking tools, now key words are outlawed
Summary: Reading this Reuters report is a trip to the Twilight Zone. Or, maybe, it is an Onion-esque spoof on reality.
Reading this Reuters report is a trip to the Twilight Zone. Or, maybe, it is an Onion-esque spoof on reality. The EU is going to force search engines to block access to bomb-making sites? Huh? What are these guys thinking?
EU Justice and Security Commissioner Franco Frattini said in an interview.
"I do 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," Frattini told Reuters.
So, OK. How do you do that? There are over 84 million web pages with the word bomb in it. Wikipedia has great articles on bombs. Do you set up a department of information control and have them peruse all web pages and decide which ones are harmful? It *is* almost possible. A staff of several hundred with the help of automation can get you 80-90% of the way there. Then all you need are massive filtering devices on every backbone and access point.
There is so much evidence that regulators and government officials are woefully ignorant of technology. Maybe they should just turn off the "Internets". That should stop terrorism.
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Talkback
Son of ECHELON
And I thought the US government was clueless...
This idea is going to BOMB faster than...
oops...
Try to do any research on wars...
Yeah, Duh.
Why try to fix a symptom...
Create disensentives as well
RE: First hacking tools, now key words are outlawed
You're still just looking at the symptom
Governments don't want to fix the underlying problems, because that would remove their [i]raisons d'etres[/i] - if you leave the problems festering, then you always have something to throw money at. Modern government is not about solving problems, it's about creating them, and then milking them for political and monetary gain.
RE: First hacking tools, now key words are outlawed
Would that include the dessert known as bombe, or "it's da bomb!" or blonde bombshell? Maybe they should outlaw putting those words in dictionaries, too. Oh wait, the French already do that with English words. Is this terrorism by government? Threatening to kill language? Haha, I kill me!