CyberLaw Blog

Government will spy on every call and e-mail - Times Online

Government will spy on every call and e-mail - Times Online

From The Sunday Times, October 5, 2008 (David Leppard)

Ministers are considering spending up to £12 billion on a database to monitor and store the internet browsing habits, e-mail and telephone records of everyone in Britain.

GCHQ, the government’s eavesdropping centre, has already been given up to £1 billion to finance the first stage of the project.

Hundreds of clandestine probes will be installed to monitor customers live on two of the country’s biggest internet and mobile phone providers - thought to be BT and Vodafone. BT has nearly 5m internet customers.

Ministers are braced for a backlash similar to the one caused by their ID cards programme. Dominic Grieve, the shadow home secretary, said: “Any suggestion of the government using existing powers to intercept communications data without public discussion is going to sound extremely sinister.”

MI5 currently conducts limited e-mail and website intercepts which are approved under specific warrants by the home secretary.

Further details of the new plan will be unveiled next month in the Queen’s speech.

The Home Office stressed no formal decision had been taken but sources said officials had made clear that ministers had agreed “in principle” to the programme.

Officials claim live monitoring is necessary to fight terrorism and crime. However, critics question whether such a vast system can be kept secure. A total of 57 billion text messages were sent in the UK last year - 1,800 every second.

Porn posted on Damilola web forum

Porn posted on Damilola web forum: “A website dedicated to murdered schoolboy Damilola Taylor has had pornographic links posted on it, it is revealed.”

(Via BBC News.)

Eurasia Daily Monitor: Turkish authorities step up censorship of Internet web sites

Eurasia Daily Monitor: Turkish authorities step up censorship of Internet web sites

By Gareth Jenkins, Friday, October 3, 2008

In the early hours of October 4, 2005, Turkey officially began accession negotiations with the EU. Over the previous four years, in order to secure a date for the opening of negotiations, successive Turkish governments had eased many of the restrictions on freedom of expression in the country. Since October 2005, however, the process has ground to a halt. Indeed, in some areas, it appears to have gone into reverse, particularly in the increasing attempts to censor the Internet.

The Turkish authorities have long sought to block Internet users in Turkey from accessing websites associated with militant groups that espouse violence, such as the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). Over the last 18 months, however, there has been a rapid rise in the censorship of websites, purely because they contain material that expresses values or opinions deemed unsuitable for the Turkish public.

Until May 2007, there was no legal framework in Turkey specifically designed to regulate the content of Internet websites. In practice, the judicial system tended to apply the same laws that were used to regulate traditional media outlets such as newspapers and television channels. On May 4, 2007, however, the Turkish parliament passed Law No. 5651, which was specifically designed to regulate Internet content and prevent websites from being used for crimes such as “encouraging suicide,” “the sexual exploitation of children,” “facilitating the use of narcotics,” “obscenity,” “prostitution,” and “gambling” (Law No. 5651 of May 4, 2007, published in the Official Gazette No. 26530 of May 23, 2007). The law also provided for the prevention of access to websites that violated other Turkish laws, such as anti-terrorism legislation or the law that forbids insulting the memory of the Turkish Republic’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (Law No. 5816 of July 25, 1951, published in the Official Gazette No. 7872 of July 31, 1951). In addition, under Article 24 of the Turkish Civil Code (Turkish Ministry of Justice website, www.adalet.gov.tr), individuals can apply for access to be blocked to a website that they feel is “infringing on their personal rights.”

YouTube censors Pat Condell’s latest video | EuropeNews

YouTube censors Pat Condell’s latest video | EuropeNews: “YouTube censors Pat Condell’s latest video

October 01 2008

The outspoken English comedian Pat Condell (official web site here) has had his latest video blocked by YouTube. You can watch it here, below the break.

The most urgent message in his video is this: If you live in Britain please sign this petition against the creeping poison of sharia law before October 4th when it closes.”

PayPal to refund shoppers defrauded on eBay - Times Online

PayPal to refund shoppers defrauded on eBay - Times Online

See also Online shoppers: ‘Buying isn’t entirely safe’

From The Times, October 4, 2008

Rebecca O’Connor

PayPal, the payment service used by 20 million online shoppers in Britain, has given in to consumer demands to offer full refunds to buyers defrauded on eBay.

Previously, anyone using PayPal to buy items such as a laptop or furniture risked losing hundreds of pounds on something that might not work or even arrive.

Consumers who buy an item worth more than £150 using PayPal on eBay will now have protection.

The decision to remove the present limits comes after years of pressure from PayPal users, who make up more than half of all UK eBay members. They felt that the previous limits were unfair and made eBay shopping less safe than buying on the high street.

Daily Mail: Civil servant charged over porn-site blog which describes kidnap, rape and murder of Girls Aloud

Civil servant charged over porn-site blog which describes kidnap, rape and murder of Girls Aloud | Mail Online: “”

By Paul Revoir, Last updated at 10:02 PM on 02nd October 2008

A civil servant who allegedly wrote an internet article imagining the kidnap and murder of pop group Girls Aloud is being prosecuted under obscenity laws.

The prosecution of Darryn Walker, 35, is regarded as a historic test case which could affect censorship of the internet.

Walker allegedly described the kidnap, mutilation, rape and murder of the girl band in a 12-page ‘murder blog’ posted on a fantasy pornography website.

Experts are claiming the action is one of the most significant obscenity cases since the trial over the novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover.

It is expected to be the first test of the law since pornography became easily available online and is one of the first involving the written word in recent years.

The blog, headlined Girls (Scream) Aloud, is said to have been written about band members Cheryl Cole, Nadine Coyle, Sarah Harding, Nicola Roberts and Kimberley Walsh.

Fantasy Sex Blog Author on Trial in U.K.

Fantasy Sex Blog Author on Trial in U.K.: “Darryn Walker, a 35 year old British civil servant is at the center of a historic obscenity case that could affect Internet censorship in the U.K.”

Key trial can be key to define online pornography in Britain

By Christopher Karwowski, Saturday, Oct 4, 2008

LONDON — Darryn Walker, a 35 year old British civil servant is at the center of a historic obscenity case that could affect Internet censorship in the U.K.

According to a report in the Daily Mail, Walker allegedly detailed the kidnap, mutilation, rape and murder of pop band Girls Aloud’s five members. The post to his blog, which ran twelve pages, is the subject of a closely watched prosecution by Scotland Yard.

Britain’s Obscene Publications Act deems material that “tends to deprave and corrupt” is illegal. The act is usually enforced only in cases of explicit depiction of genitalia in print or on television or DVD.

The Girls Aloud case is seen by many experts as one of the most significant obscenity cases since the 1960s trial of D. H. Lawrence’s “Lady Chatterly’s Lover.” In that case, a not guilty decision defined Britain’s modern permissive publishing environment.

The Walker case, however, has taken center stage in the country’s legal community. It is the first case to test the act’s application to Internet publication.

The blog was maintained on a server located outside the U.K., but prosecution is permitted due to Walker’s British citizenship.

Walker was charged on July 10 and has subsequently entered a no plea and was granted bail.

(Via XBIZ.com | News & Articles.)

Max Hardcore Sentenced to 46 Months in Federal Prison

Max Hardcore Sentenced to 46 Months in Federal Prison: “A federal judge today sentenced Paul F. Little — aka Max Hardcore — to 46 months in prison and fines of more than $1.4 million.”

(Via XBIZ.com | News & Articles.)

The Guardina: Should we extradite Holocaust deniers?

Should we extradite Holocaust deniers? | Politics | guardian.co.uk

What should we do about Dr Fredrick Töben, detained at Heathrow this week under a fast-track EU arrest warrant issued by the district court in Mannheim?

Dr who? I know, it’s been a busy week, and I hadn’t heard of him either until he popped up to be remanded in custody by Westminster magistrates. By the time you read this he may be on a plane to Germany – or home to Australia.

Töben is a 64-year-old German-born historian who runs something called the Adelaide Institute. He denies frequent accusations that he is a Holocaust denier, but judging by some of the things he says and writes he makes a pretty good job of passing himself off as one. Phrases like “Holocaust racketeers, the corpse peddlers and the Shoah business merchants” characterise some of his scholarship.

In other words he believes that the six-million-dead German Holocaust which took place during the 1933-45 Hitler regime, a well-documented narrative accepted by most historians, did not occur, or did so on a much smaller scale. If you challenge the Holocaust you must expect persecution and abuse, he says.

Well, plenty of people, not all of them Jewish, have pursued him during a teaching career on three continents – from New Zealand to Nigeria. In 1999 he served nine months in a German prison for breaching the Holocaust law there that forbids the “defaming of the dead” in this way. Needless to add, Töben attended the Holocaust revisionist conference held in Tehran in 2006.

A nasty piece of work by the sound of it, and some nasty websites are exercised on Töben’s behalf.

Irving supports Australian ‘Holocaust denier’ - ABC News

Irving supports Australian ‘Holocaust denier’

Irving supports Australian ‘Holocaust denier’

Controversial historian David Irving has jumped to the defence of Gerald Frederick Toben, the Australian man who was detained by British police earlier in the week on a German arrest warrant.

Germany alleges the Australian denies the mass murder of Jews by the Nazis in World War II.

Denying the Holocaust is an offence that carries a five-year jail sentence, and the German authorities are seeking his extradition.

Toben set up the Adelaide Institute in 1994, an organisation that is considered to be a Holocaust denial group.

Overnight the South Australian appeared in a London court where he fought against his extradition, and there to support him was Mr Irving.

Mr Irving says the prosecution of people he calls revisionist historians is a direct attack on free speech.

‘I think it’s a contagion that’s going around the world. It began in Australia, it began in Canada,’ he said.

‘I think if you have one version of history that is government-approved then all society suffers.

‘It’s the job of us, the revisionist historians, to ask questions, even if they’re awkward questions, questions that governments don’t like.’

Despite his show of support, Mr Irving is not holding out much hope for the extradition fight and he expects Toben to come before a German court.

‘What scandalises me is that this is obviously a political offence that he is being charged with, and you cannot be extradited for political offences,’ he said.

‘This used to be one of the great securities of the human rights. But under the legislation in Europe now people who criticise aspects of holocaust history are denied the protection of the Human Rights Act in Europe.’

Mr Irving has offered to have Toben stay at his house and to guarantee his appearance at any subsequent court dates.

Toben will reappear in court next Friday.