Turkey pushes through new raft of 'draconian' Internet restrictions

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/06/turkey-internet-law-censorship-democracy-threat-opposition

by wolfgke • 12 years ago

110 40 12 years ago

adventured• 12 years ago

I wish this sort of behavior, by any government, would draw immediate, global, and severe economic sanctions. Repression is repression, whether online or off. I feel like most of the governments around the world are intentionally refraining from considering rights to fully or properly translate to the online sphere, so they can all first figure out in which ways they want to restrict or abuse their own domestic populations.

nova• 12 years ago

Well, they only have to say it's "to protect intellectual property" and the other governments would be happy to help.

jotm• 12 years ago

I guess they're quitting the Internet... Cold Turkey!

bediger4000• 12 years ago

I'm surprised that this didn't come about in the guise of "protecting intellectual property". That seems to be the usual beard when imposing internet censorship in western countries.

alionfalcon2• 12 years ago

Some kind of legal NSA, more honest than US way isn't it? But it's nonsense anyway!

x0054• 12 years ago

I love to bitch about NSA as much as the next guy, but you have to admit, it's one thing to spy, and its a totally different when you start to block content.

alionfalcon2• 12 years ago

right on that!

middleclick• 12 years ago

Something this article does not cover [1]:

"The law requires service providers to take down objectionable content within four hours and any page found in violation by the country's telecom authority or face fines up to $44,500."

[1] http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2014/02/06/turket-interne...

Nux2• 12 years ago

Well, if Britain can do it, why not Turkey? Sure, the details differ, but the story is the same essentially.

BugBrother• 12 years ago

Uh, you don't think it is relevant when you compare that Turkey is the world champion in imprisoning journalists? (Just to take one data point.)

There are no absolute black/white situations, but that doesn't mean there aren't lots of very different gray levels...

dpatru• 12 years ago

Britain held journalist Glen Greenwald's partner on terrorism grounds, suspecting he was carrying Snowden files. http://www.advocate.com/politics/media/2013/11/03/british-go...

Nux2• 12 years ago

True, there are many levels of gray. It's a shame this is happening, Turkey made great struggles towards democracy and "freedom" which is even more exceptional considering it's an "islamic" country. I hope the people will not let this go worse.

eknkc• 12 years ago

Summary:

They created a new office that has the authority to block any website url / domain / ip address without prior notice or court order. All ISPs are required to apply restrictions within 4 hours. Plus, all ISPs are required to log HTTP access + IP + Date pairs and store them for two years for government access (again, no court involvement)

throwaway_yy2Di• 12 years ago

Plus, all ISPs are required to log HTTP access + IP + Date pairs and store them for two years...

So Turkey's finally getting serious about its EU candidacy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Retention_Directive

joering2• 12 years ago

-1. Did you read his last sentence? Or Wiki you citing:

A permission to access the information will be granted only by a court.

higherpurpose• 12 years ago

That was found largely incompatible with the Fundamental Rights charter:

http://www.privacysurgeon.org/blog/incision/europes-controve...

Also the whole point of having Courts grant permission for stuff is to be a check on the executive and legislative's power. Whether that worked well in Turkey or not is a whole different issue. But I'm guessing they wouldn't bother to pass this law if it didn't.

afsina3• 12 years ago

This office (TIB) is not new at all. From what I understand, here is what really changed: Before for blocking a web site you needed a court order. Now People can contact TIB for a take down request. They immediately contact with association of ISP's and within 4 hours they take down the site. This request is also presented to Court (by TIB I think) and court has to give a verdict in 48 hours to make the take-down permanent. Otherwise after 48 hours site access will be restored.

New law looks better for content protection and personal privacy cases because it is fast, but of course this power can easily be abused.

dombili• 12 years ago

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7189178

atmosx• 12 years ago

I wrote a couple of articles about Turkey in 2007. I never expected Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to deteriorate so much, of course I'm not referring to this specific law, but to his reactions and his unwillingness to step down after pretty much the most successful decade a politician could reach for (2000-2010).

Regarding the law, with all these new technologies floating around, I think censorship will become more and more difficult for the government to enforce it on geeks but I firmly believe that people of Turkey should rely mostly on overturning the part where the ISP blocks whatever website without court order and not on tech to circumvent it. That might turn nasty and jails in Turkey are not fancy.

Given recent events, I think the law is going to be used in order to fight anti-establishment (as in anti-current-government) websites mostly and not pedophilia (surprised no one mentioned pedophilia yet...), copyright, etc.

waps3• 12 years ago

What exactly did you expect an islamist to do, other than declaring himself caliph and start to act like an islamist ? This has barely begun. This is only really about removing content. The last actual caliph in Turkey would get people summarily executed for criticism.

Plus they're kind of right. It's plainly true that islam means criticism of the government = criticism of the religion = punishable by death. The prophet executed people for that, and if you believe in islam, clearly that's the right thing to do.

mh_2• 12 years ago

Your statement: "islam means criticism of the government = criticism of the religion = punishable by death" is patently untrue (and is really better saved for clan meetings than HN). Do you have citations for: "The prophet executed people for that"? (Its kinda interesting that with all the recent documentation of states using the Internet to infringe on peoples rights, the moment Turkey does it, the response is: "see.. islam!")

yawz• 12 years ago

Unfortunately this is just one of the current oppressions in Turkey. This pro-Islamic government has limited individual freedom by every step taken, ironically in the name of "advanced democracy". Scare tactics such as putting people through trials because of tweeting anti-government ideas or sharing something on Facebook have become common practice.

aytekin• 12 years ago

"any bureaucrat can now decide to take down a certain website without having to apply for a court order, but you will need to take that decision to court in order to get it reversed."

This is going to be used/abused by the Islamic government to silence opposition or to cover up corruption news. That's the main goal of the law.

throwwit• 12 years ago

I wonder if news coverage of the restrictions is restricted in Turkey.

It'd be nice if SOME country started leading by example. 'Safegaurds' like these are gambling on the premise that they will -never- be abused, which is always a lofty bet if not flat out disingenuous.

afsina3• 12 years ago

No. There is pro-government press and they restrict such news willingly. But there are slew of other media quite open about this.

harunurhan• 12 years ago

Normally you spend a week of your time to report an insulting content. This regulation speed these kind of processes up. Also They have right to block for only 24 hours, If you do not go to law for it, the content is unblocked again. In addition, they are keeping record of everything we do on the internet already no court involvement. Actually as you know it is much worse in other countries(USA,UK...). In short I think the regulation is exaggerated. Moreover funny but pathetic most turkish who complain about it don't know what even changed. They just complain to complain, they complain because they don't like government.

fsniper2• 12 years ago

People complain because these are not rules destined for a democratic republic. They are as draconian as it can get and just aiming to silence opposing ideas and evidence exposing government of corruption.

fsniper2• 12 years ago

By the way how any democratic republic can materialize a rule of "immunity for TIB precidency for any dispute over it's ruling taken without court orders"?

d0ugie• 12 years ago

What's the status of uproxy? Wasn't a release projected for April? Can't pull up their site uproxy.org, ssl error.. http://www.google.com/ideas/projects/uproxy/

ebiester• 12 years ago

There were protests in Istanbul yesterday over the law, and as usual they were met by police brutality and tear gas.

I'm not hopeful for the next decade for them.

Turkey pushes through new raft of 'draconian' Internet restrictions

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