UK Parliament Watch

Angela Rayner, the shadow education secretary, has said at the Labour Party Conference that social media companies should stop letting people post abuse from anonymous accounts. Speaking at a Guardian fringe meeting, she said:

One of the first things they should do is stop anonymous accounts. Most people who send me abuse me do so from anonymous accounts, and wouldn't dream of doing it in their own name

Offsite Comment: More harm than good

26th September 2018. See article from theguardian.com by James Ball

Angela Rayner became the latest in a long line of politicians to suggest that anonymous social media accounts should be banned in an attempt on Sunday to crack down on abusive and threatening behaviour online.

There is no doubt Rayner is sincere, and that the problem she refers to is a serious one, of which she and her colleagues have first-hand experience. The reality for many MPs and public figures is that social media is a constant barrage of abuse and threats that is far worse for women , and especially for women of colour or trans women.

Given that extensive experience of the harm caused by these accounts, it's easy to see why calling for a ban seems a reasonable thing to do. However, in reality it would do harm to a greater number of people than it would help.

... Read the full article from theguardian.com

Parliament needs to stop creating piecemeal laws to address content online -- or which make new forms of speech illegal.

Index is very concerned about the plethora of law-making initiatives related to online communications, the most recent being MP Lucy Powell's online forums regulation bill, which targets hate crime and "secret" Facebook groups.

Powell's bill purports to "tackle online hate, fake news and radicalisation" by making social media companies liable for what is published in large, closed online forms -- and is the latest in a series of poorly drafted attempts by parliamentarians to address communications online.

If only Powell's proposal were the worst piece of legislation parliament will consider this autumn. Yesterday, MPs debated the Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill, which would make it a crime to view information online that is "likely to be useful" to a terrorist. No terrorist intent would be required -- but you would risk up to 15 years in prison if found guilty. This would make the work of journalists and academics very difficult or impossible.

Attempts to tackle online content are coming from all corners with little coordination -- although a factor common to all these proposals is that they utterly fail to safeguard freedom of expression.

Over the summer, the Commons Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport issued a preliminary report on tackling fake news and the government launched a consultation on a possible new law to prevent "intimidation" of those standing for elections.

In addition, the government is expected to publish later this year a white paper on internet safety aimed " to make sure the UK is the safest place in the world to be online." The Law Commission, already tasked with publishing a report on offensive online communications , was last week asked to review whether misogyny should be considered a hate crime.

Jodie Ginsberg, CEO of Index, said:

"We're having to play whack-a-mole at the moment to prevent poorly drawn laws inadvertently stifling freedom of expression, especially online. The scattergun approach is no way to deal with concerns about online communications. Instead of paying lip service to freedom of expression as a British value, it needs to be front and centre when developing policies".

"We already have laws to deal with harassment, incitement to violence, and even incitement to hatred. International experience shows us that even well-intentioned laws meant to tackle hateful views online often end up hurting the minority groups they are meant to protect, stifle public debate, and limit the public's ability to hold the powerful to account."

A review is to take place into whether misogynistic conduct should be treated as a hate crime, following Labour MP Stella Creasy's call to change the law.

The move was announced during a debate on proposed legislation to criminalise upskirting in England and Wales. On Wednesday, MPs approved the Voyeurism Bill, which would ban the taking of unsolicited pictures under someone's clothing, known as upskirting, in England and Wales.

'Justice' Minister Lucy Frazer said the Voyeurism Bill was not the right vehicle for seeking such a change in the law but said she sympathised with Creasy's views. She said ministers would fund a review into the coverage and approach of hate crime laws.

The Law Commission will now review how sex and gender characteristics are treated within existing hate crime laws and whether new offences are needed. This review will include how protected characteristics, including sex and gender characteristics, should be considered by new or existing hate crime law.

Update: Governments should not be policing thought

7th September 2018. See article from indexoncensorship.org

The Law Commission will review how sex and gender characteristics are treated within existing hate crime laws and whether new offences are needed.

Index does not believe the UK needs new laws to protect women from abuse and violence.

The UK already has dozens of laws on its books that make criminal the kind of abusive actions that are disproportionately targeted at women: rape, harassment, stalking. Despite this, the most egregious crimes against women frequently go unpunished. In the case of rape, conviction rates are woeful. A report published in 2017 found that only one in 14 rapes reported in England and Wales ended in a conviction.

Creating new laws that make misogyny a hate crime will do little to change this, as lawyers argued earlier this week . Nor are they likely to help change attitudes. In fact they can do the opposite.

Laws that criminalise speech are deeply problematic. In a free society, thoughts should not be criminal no matter how hateful they are. Yet laws that make hate criminal -- in a well-meaning but misplaced effort to protect minorities and persecuted groups -- are on the rise.

We should all be worried about this. As the US delegation noted in a United Nations Human Rights Council meeting in 2015, hate speech laws are increasingly being abused by those in power to target political opponents or to persecute the very minority groups such laws are meant to protect.

In addition, they do little to improve tolerance or treatment of such groups: Such laws, including blasphemy laws, tend to reinforce divisions rather than promote societal harmony, the US delegation said. The presence of these laws has little discernible effect on reducing actual incidences of hate speech. In some cases such laws actually serve to foment violence against members of minority groups accused of expressing unpopular viewpoints.

As if to prove their point, Russia used the same meeting to praise hate speech laws and the need to police hate speech in Ukraine so as not to ignite nationalistic fires.

Tackling hate requires changes in society's attitude. Some of those changes need laws -- such as those we rightly already have to outlaw discrimination in the workplace. Some require major changes in our institutions to the structures and practices that reinforce inequality. But prohibiting speech, or policing thought, is not the way to do this.

Offsite Comment: Stella Creasy's war on thoughtcrime

8th September 2018. See article from spiked-online.com by Ella Whelan

Criminalising misogyny would be an affront to free thought.

The government is amending its Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill with regards to criminalising accessing terrorism related content on the internet.

MPs, peers and the United Nations have already raised human rights concerns over pre-existing measures in the Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill, which proposed to make accessing propaganda online on three or more different occasions a criminal offence.

The Joint Human Rights Committee found the wording of the law vague and told the government it violated Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). The committee concluded in July:

This clause may capture academic and journalistic research as well as those with inquisitive or even foolish minds.

The viewing of material without any associated intentional or reckless harm is, in our view, an unjustified interference with the right to receive information...unless amended, this implementation of this clause would clearly risk breaching Article 10 of the ECHR and unjustly criminalising the conduct of those with no links to terrorism.

The committee called for officials to narrow the new criminal offence so it requires terrorist intent and defines how people can legally view terrorist material.

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to privacy also chipped accusing the British government of straying towards thought crime with the law.

In response, the government scrapped the three clicks rule entirely and broadened the concept of viewing to make the draft law read:

A person commits an offence if...the person views or otherwise accesses by means of the internet a document or record containing information of that kind.

It also added a clause saying a reasonable excuse includes:

Having no reason to believe, that the document or record in question contained, or was likely to contain, information of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism.

[The trouble with discriminatory laws such as this is that they encourage hatred of others rather than diffusing the issue. Identity politics is very aggressive. Lynch mobs gather to push for for the most severe punishments for the most trivial of transgressions. Police and the prosecuting authorities always seem to side with the complainant and the resulting injustice is noted by more or less everyone in society. It succeeds only in winding everybody up and chipping away at any remaining respect for the way that the authorities run our lives. In an equal society everybody should have exactly the same rights to be protected form the ill intent of others].

The Labour MP Stella Creasy has put forward an amendment to the upskirting bill, due to be debated in the Commons this Wednesday, that would add misogyny as an aggravating factor in England and Wales. This would enable courts to consider it when sentencing an offender and require police forces to record it.

Creasy hopes this will be the first step towards recognising misogyny as a hate crime. Creasy said:

Upskirting is a classic example of a crime in which misogyny is motivating the offence. We protect women in the workplace from discrimination on grounds of their sex, but not in the courtroom -- with upskirting, street harassment, sexually based violence and abuse a part of life for so many it's time to learn from where misogyny has been treated as a form of hate crime and end this gap.

The Guardian understands that the Law Commission, which has called for a fundamental review of all hate crime legislation, supports the spirit of Creasy's amendment.

In Scotland, the Holyrood government will shortly launch a consultation on the reform of all aspects of hate crime legislation, after an independent report recommended including gender , as well as age, as a hate crime in law. Although the National Police Chiefs' Council rejected a proposal to extend the policy nationwide in July, it has set up a working group to examine the issue.

Deputy Labour leader Tom Watson has called for the establishment of a new internet censor with tough sanctions to police what he considers to be the wild west of the internet

Tom Watson has accused companies of not removing 'fake news' stories that are spread like wildfire saying:

Social media companies should be hit hard with fines if they fail to take down abusive content=

Watson says Britain should follow the lead of Germany, which fines social media firms up to £45million for not taking down hate speech within 24 hours. He says:

The likes of Facebook and Twitter have refused to change. Authorities worldwide don't have the baby teeth, let alone the sharp teeth, to make them take notice. International regulatory regimes are outdated and dangerous.

He adds that the protection the firms have enjoyed as platforms rather than publishers needs to be withdrawn saying: they won't go to the lengths they need to unless they have a legal liability.

Parliament's Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) Committee has been investigating disinformation and fake news following the Cambridge Analytica data scandal and is claiming that the UK faces a democratic crisis due to the spread of pernicious views and the manipulation of personal data.

In its first report it will suggest social media companies should face tighter censorship. It also proposes measures to combat election interference.

The report claims that the relentless targeting of hyper-partisan views, which play to the fears and prejudices of people, in order to influence their voting plans is a threat to democracy.

The report was very critical of Facebook, which has been under increased scrutiny following the Cambridge Analytica data scandal.

Facebook has hampered our efforts to get information about their company throughout this inquiry. It is as if it thinks that the problem will go away if it does not share information about the problem, and reacts only when it is pressed, the report said. It provided witnesses who have been unwilling or unable to give full answers to the committee's questions.

The committee suggests:

1. Social media sites should be held responsible for harmful content on their services

Social media companies cannot hide behind the claim of being merely a 'platform', claiming that they are tech companies and have no role themselves in regulating the content of their sites, the committee said.

They continually change what is and is not seen on their sites, based on algorithms and human intervention.

They reward what is most engaging, because engagement is part of their business model and their growth strategy. They have profited greatly by using this model.

The committee suggested a new category of tech company should be created, which was not necessarily a platform or a publisher but something in between.

This should establish clear legal liability for the tech companies to act against harmful and illegal content on their platforms, the report said.

2. The rules on political campaigns should be made fit for the digital age

The committee said electoral law needed to be updated to reflect changes in campaigning techniques.

It suggested creating a public register for political advertising so that anybody can see what messages are being distributed online political advertisements should have a digital imprint stating who was responsible, as is required with printed leaflets and advertisements social media sites should be held responsible for interference in elections by malicious actors electoral fraud fines should be increased from a maximum of £20,000 to a percentage of organisations' annual turnover

3. Technology companies should be taxed to fund education and regulation

Increased regulation of social media sites would result in more work for organisations such as the Electoral Commission and Information Commissioner's Office (ICO).

The committee suggested a levy on tech companies should fund the expanded responsibilities of the regulators.

The money should also be spent on educational programmes and a public information campaign, to help people identify disinformation and fake news.

4. Social networks should be audited

The committee warned that fake accounts on sites such as Facebook and Twitter not only damage the user experience, but potentially defraud advertisers.

It suggested an independent authority such as the Competition and Markets Authority should audit the social networks.

It also said security mechanisms and algorithms used by social networks should be available for audit by a government regulator, to ensure they are operating responsibly.

Offsite Comment: Now MPs want to police political discussion

31st July 2018. See article from spiked-online.com by Mick Hume

Those members of parliament are half right at least. Democracy in Britain and the West is at risk today. But contrary to the wild claims in their fake-news report, the real risk does not come from Russian bloggers or shady groups farming Facebook users' data. The big threat comes from political elitists like the cross-party clique of Remainer MPs who dominate the DCMS committee.

...Read the full article from spiked-online.com

Offsite Comment: British MPs, like authoritarians from Moscow to Malaysia...

31st July 2018. See article from nationalreview.com by Andrew Stuttaford

It looks a lot as if these MPs, like authoritarians from Moscow to Malaysia, have been inspired by the strikingly illiberal precedent set by Angela Merkel's social media law . In particular, part of the idea behind sticking social media companies with legal liability is to scare them into going even further in muzzling free speech than the strict letter of the law requires.

...Read the full article from nationalreview.com

The well known alt-right news website Infowars is preparing to launch a campaign aimed at persuading politicians to stop tech giants censoring its content.

It notes that Facebook, Google and Twitter are using algorithms to automatically clampdown on right-wing publications as well as those which support Donald Trump.

Infowars has now started its first petition on the website Change.org demanding that social media companies end censorship of alternative voices online. It is calling for a new Digital Rights Act to guarantee free speech on the internet.

Metro.co.uk adds:

We have been told that Infowars staff have approached Conservative politicians in the UK and arranged for an MP to ask a question in parliament about the issue.

Infowars is also planning to contact the White House, where its calls are likely to reach the ears of Donald Trump himself.

Paul Joseph Watson, the British editor-at-large of Infowars, told Metro.co.uk:

Since social media platforms are now de facto becoming the Internet and have formed into monopolies, the argument that they are private companies who can behave with impunity is no longer a valid argument.

We demand congressional and parliamentary scrutiny. We demand a Digital Rights Act to secure free speech online.

Nobody seems to have heard much about the progress of the BBFC consultation about the process to censor internet porn in the UK.

The sketchy timetable laid out so far suggests that the result of the consultation should be published prior to the Parliamentary recess scheduled for 26th July. Presumably this would provide MPs with some light reading over their summer hols ready for them to approve as soon as the hols are over.

Maybe this publication may have to be hurried along though, as pesky MPs are messing up Theresa May's plans for a non-Brexit, and she would like to send them packing a week early before they can cause trouble. ( Update 18th July . The early holidays idea has now been shelved).

The BBFC published meeting minutes this week that mentions the consultation:

The public consultation on the draft Guidance on Age Verification Arrangements and the draft Guidance on Ancillary Service Providers closed on 23 April. The BBFC received 620 responses, 40 from organisations and 580 from individuals. Many of the individual responses were encouraged by a campaign organised by the Open Rights Group.

Our proposed response to the consultation will be circulated to the Board before being sent to DCMS on 21 May.

So assuming that the response was sent to the government on the appointed day then someone has been sitting on the results for quite a long time now.

Meanwhile its good to see that people are still thinking about the monstrosity that is coming our way. Ethical porn producer Erica Lust has been speaking to News Internationalist. She comments on the way the new law will compound MindGeek's monopolitistc dominance of the online porn market:

The age verification laws are going to disproportionately affect smaller low-traffic sites and independent sex workers who cannot cover the costs of installing age verification tools.

It will also impact smaller sites by giving MindGeek even more dominance in the adult industry. This is because the BBFC draft guidance does not enforce sites to offer more than one age verification product. So, all of MindGeeks sites (again, 90% of the mainstream porn sites) will only offer their own product; Age ID. The BBFC have also stated that users do not have to verify their age on each visit if access is restricted by password or a personal ID number. So users visiting a MindGeek site will only have to verify their age once using AgeID and then will be able to login to any complying site without having to verify again. Therefore, viewers will be less likely to visit competitor sites not using the AgeID technology, and simultaneously competitor sites will feel pressured to use AgeID to protect themselves from losing viewers.

...Read the full article from newint.org