EU Parliament Member Proposes ‘Black Box’ to Trace Citizens’ Web History

Posted on October 20, 2011 at 3:34pm by Liz Klimas

European Union Member of European Parliament Tiziano Motti (Italy) thinks whatever happens on your PC would be recorded — for the sake of protecting children.

Active Politic (via Slashdot) reports that last year Motti gained majority support to expand data storage of Google searches, to protect children, and now he is proposing technology called a Logbox, which according to its website is “an enterprise ColdFusion logging library” that logs or traces applications.

'Black box' technology, similar to those that record data on airplanes, has been proposed for Internet-using devices in Europe.

According to EuropaPortalen, translated by Google, Motti proposes this “black box” type technology be installed on smartphones, PCs, e-readers, TVs — anything that can connect to the Internet:

“We politicians are often hypocrites. On the one hand, we say that pedophilia is terrible and that it must be fought. On the other hand we do not give police the necessary tools to combat it. With my suggestion stop the hypocrisy,” [Motti said.]

[...]

“It allows the honest citizens to anonymously register their activities on the Internet in a comprehensive, secure and neutral manner that can not be abused. So, users can clearly demonstrate that they have not committed criminal acts so that the police do not waste time on the innocent in their investigations, “it sounds in the fact sheet Motti wrote.

The idea is that the system will be connected to an “early warning system” of criminal activity. Where are the details are unclear, but is essentially that at any time material with sexually abused children are detected, an alarm, go to the authorities to be able to see who uploaded it.

ActivePolitic reports MEP Lars Christian Engstrom’s (Sweden) opposition to the proposal:

If it were China, North Korea or Saudi Arabia who had proposed this, what would we say then? It’s scary in a democratic Europe to even hear a politician suggest such a thing. It is so absurd that I really hope we never have to discuss it seriously in Parliament.

EuropaPortalen includes Lund University sociologist and defender of open Internet Marcin de Kaminski’s perspective that such technology would violate Internet users privacy rights. de Kaminski says Motti may think this technology would protect children but he doesn’t understand the longer term implications.