Global surveillance companies in Britain, ACTA, and the EU

I have three posts in one here. Three issues, the last being a selling out of sovereignty in Europe, have or are about to take away freedom of speech in many countries. The West is blind. These speech issues have hit the technology industry in England. In case you have not been following this here are two links here and several more below. The problem is surveillance and a government's right to follow cellphone calls, tweets, and other global networking. Remember last year when Obama stated that no cell phone call was private? Well, he is "technically correct". Of course, my concern would be that any tyranny could instantly take away freedoms we take for granted in the West. It is already and has happened in the East.


On the ACTA, a law Obama wants passed and an agreement he has already signed with the UN.

Global Internet censorship is here.  SOPA and PIPA have been stopped (at least for now) in the United States, but a treaty known as ACTA (the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) is far worse than either of them.  ACTA was quietly signed by Barack Obama back on October 1st, 2011 and most Americans have never even heard of it.  But it could mean the end of the Internet as we know it.  This new treaty gives foreign governments and copyright owners incredibly broad powers.  If you are alleged to have violated a copyright, your website can be shut down without a trial and police may even show up at your door to take you to prison.  It doesn't even have to be someone in the United States that is accusing you.  It could just be a foreign government or a copyright owner halfway across the world that alleges that you have violated a copyright.  It doesn't matter.  So far, the U.S., the EU and seven other nations have signed on to ACTA, and the number of participants is expected to continue to grow.  The "powers that be" are obsessed with getting Internet censorship one way or another.  The open and free Internet that you and I have been enjoying for all these years is about to change, and not for the better.

So how come the U.S. Senate never voted on ACTA?  Doesn't the U.S. Constitution mandate that all treaties must be approved by a two-thirds vote in the Senate?

Of course it does.

But Barack Obama has gotten around this by calling ACTA an "executive agreement".....

One of the big problems with ACTA is that it is way too broad and way too vague.

Vague language allows authorities to "interpret" the law any way that they see fit.

This can often lead to selective enforcement.  Websites that authorities like will be left alone, while those that they don't like will be harassed or completely shut down.

ACTA was written in secret and it has been pushed through very, very quietly.  The following comes from a recent CNN article....

Like many trade agreements, ACTA is a confusing mess. Even its signatories don't agree on how it's supposed to work. The way it's been pushed forward has also been unruly -- talks have been held in secret, without any kind of legislative oversight or input from citizens or public-interest groups. The public only became aware of it in 2008, a couple of years after discussions began, when Wikileaks published a discussion paper. Since then, drafts of the pact have been released to the public, each successively less onerous to critics. Reportedly, though, big media and pharmaceutical lobbyists have been privy to the talks all along

And, last but not least, EU Governments have stepped into the censorship business. READ this. 
The document is aimed at child porn, a good thing, but the problem is two-fold. First, it gives control of the Internet to a Council not a sovereign nation, and two, this type of censorship never works and has not worked.I might add that many pedophiles have been arrested and convicted because of online activity. This will force them underground and the problem will continue. However, censorship will be in place to be used against other things, such as so-called "hate speech". When it comes to censorship, the Catholics should be very, very concerned....


Paris, June 8th, 2012 - In an unanimous decision, EU Member States have decided to promote website censorship at the global scale under the pretext of tackling child pornography. This dangerous initiative must be denounced by lawmakers and citizens: Europe cannot give up on its commitment to the rule of law by legitimizing Net censorship internationally...The Council of the EU adopted conclusions on "a Global Alliance against Child Sexual Abuse Online". Due to a last-minute addition, the document calls for:

"facilitating measures to remove or, where appropriate, block websites containing child pornography".

So far, thanks to the EU Parliament, the EU had successfully avoided promoting website blocking as a tool against child abuse, these measures being inefficient and even counterproductive. The Parliament even imposed important safeguards on Member States who did choose to implement at the national level.

This new initiative marks a dangerous regression: regardless of the goals invoked, website blocking is extremely dangerous for freedoms online, leading to collateral censorship of perfectly legitimate content, and runs counter to the most important principles of the rule of law1.


"It is baffling to see that no EU government opposed the adoption of these conclusions, which legitimize Internet censorship across the world and will therefore have disastrous consequences for freedoms online. In spite of the strong reservations expressed by the European Parliament, governments choose to force through website blocking with the adoption of this document. Such censorship is ineffective for its stated aim and paves the road for other damaging attacks against the free Internet. Only through citizen mobilization will we be able to make our governments accountable and eventually safeguard a universal Internet." said Jérémie Zimmermann, co-founder and spokesperson of the citizen advocacy group La Quadrature du Net.