It has long been unclear what position the government will take with regard to the Directive on combating sexual abuse, sexual exploitation of children and child pornography. The Polish representative in the Council refrained from taking a firm standpoint, which made us believe that the government - mindful of civil society's likely outrage - is playing hide and seek, hoping that the Directive will be adopted with the silent approval of Poland. Provoked by this game, back in November, we managed to trigger some interest in this topic in two leading daily newspapers. Right after the first article describing the alleged tactic of the Polish government was published, the spokesperson of the Ministry of Justice confirmed that the government "of course, supports the Directive", including the concept of obligatory Internet blocking. This position was made very clear at the JHA meeting on 3 December 2010.
To us it clearly meant that the government was trying to do some policy laundering. Almost exactly a year ago, - Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, in a public debate with NGOs and Internet activists, acknowledged that blocking Internet sites is a flawed measure and should not be applied. Moreover, he promised that any future plans to introduce legal measures affecting Internet freedom would involve consultation with civil society. The present policy and the way it has been carried out so far clearly contradicts both promises.
In an attempt to draw more attention to what is happening in Brussels with the support of our government, Panoptykon organised a public debate under the auspices of Polish Ombudsman, Prof. Irena Lipowicz which took place on 10 February 2011. The discussion panel was composed of representatives of the Ministry of Justice and four foundations representing both sides of the debate: Panoptykon, Kidprotect.pl, Safe Cyberspace and Nobody's Children. The audience consisted mainly of journalists, academic society representatives and technologically minded individuals.
While Panoptykon argued that there was no collision between protecting children and Internet freedom because child abuse images can be effectively removed and therefore do not need to be blocked, our opponents claimed the opposite, on the grounds that international cooperation did not function well enough. The debate revolved around the following issues: what are the technical possibilities of removing illegal content; how to ensure both fast reaction and due process; what are the challenges of international cooperation; how can we prove that blocking tends to be used instead of and not in addition to fighting crimes against children; how blocking can disturb pending police investigations; how big the problem of child abuse images on-line really is; and what role can the Internet community play in addressing the problem.
The Government's representative, Tomasz Darkowski, argued in favour of web blocking. Mr Darkowski stressed that the Directive should, in the first place, prevent Internet users from accidental and unwanted contact with child abuse images. He also expressed a strong belief that web blocking would remain strictly to child abuse images and there were no reasons to worry about possibilities of extending blocking to other types of content. This claim is all the more astonishing when one can already hear some politicians suggesting that hate speech and illegal gambling sites should be blocked. Polish experience clearly shows that it does not take a lot to change an existing law, especially in order to make it more radical.
In the end, the Ombudsman had a voice. She expressed her astonishment with the hot atmosphere of the meeting caused by the huge societal interest in the issue of website blocking. Prof. Lipowicz called in for more evidence and analysis to support our claims. It was also clear that further discussions are needed - first to explain the technical aspects of blocking and the second to analyse the risk of extending blocking to other types of "unwanted" content. The office of the Ombudsman is committed to helping us continue the debate. In the meantime, we are collecting evidence and analyses requested by the Ombudsman (the action called "Respond the Ombudsman") and preparing an electronic publication that will summarise the debate. It will be published on 10 March 2011.
Finally, together with five other organisations, Panoptykon has sent an open letter to the Prime Minister calling for a meeting "a year after". We want a serious discussion on the future of Internet freedom in Poland, which seems threatened not only by the blocking proposal. There are at least four other controversial and pending areas of regulation, which need to be explored: data retention, content liability, nonlinear audiovisual services and the implementation of the Telecoms Package. We hope that the Prime Minister will accept our invitation and a working meeting with the government will happen before 15 March.
With regard to Internet blocking, we hope to hear from the Prime Minister the same words we heard from Woody Allen's character, quantum physics genius Boris Yellnikoff: "However, as only a great mind can do, I've reassessed... my... position, and uh, changed my mind."
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number9.4/polish-debate-internet-blocking
