Progress

HarmfulCommunications201908.org

@@ -12,7 +12,7 @@
 #+TITLE: Submission to the Committee on Justice and Equality on /issues of online harassment, harmful communications and related offences/.
 #+AUTHOR: Éibhear Ó hAnluain
 #+EMAIL: eibhear.geo@gmail.com, 086 8565 666, http://www.gibiris.org/eo-blog/
-#+OPTIONS: ^:{} toc:2 H:4 num:t author:t email:t
+#+OPTIONS: ^:{} toc:2 H:4 num:t author:t email:nil
 #+TODO: CONSTODO CONSNOTES | CONSDONE
 
 * Planning                                                         :noexport:
@@ -245,16 +245,122 @@
         * Abuse, child sexual exploitation, hateful conduct, private information, Sensitive media, voilent threats
         * => 60,000 account reported/day
         * => 0.02% of accounts reported
-* CONSTODO Introduction
+* CONSDONE Introduction
 
-  In this submission I am seeking to highlight 2 core concerns with
+  My name is Éibhear Ó hAnluain and I have been working in software
-  respect to /issues of online harassment, harmful communications and
+  engineering and IT systems design since 1994. I thank you for the
-  related offences/.
+  opportunity to submit this contribution to your analysis of /issues
-  - How new laws could affect small or hobbyist services
+  of online harassment, harmful communications and related offences/.
-  - How regulations can be abused by bad-faith actors
 
-  I would like to outline some initial thoughts on these matters first
+  In this submission I am seeking to highlight 3 core concerns:
-  before addressing the specific questions of the consultation.
+  - The distinction between user behaviours and online services.
+  - The nature of the online services from the perspective of small
+    operators
+  - The potential damage legislative measures can have on small
+    operators of online services
+
+
+  However, prior to addressing these topics, I would like to raise
+  some ambiguities that this wider discussion will encounter.
+  - The first is the meaning of the term /self-regulation/. If a
+    measure of self-regulation to address these concerns is
+    acceptable, then it would be necessary for public-perception
+    reasons, to be clear on what that means. /Self-regulation/ could
+    mean either where each service operator manages matters of
+    harassment and harmful communications according to their own rules
+    and processes. This is currently how the large service providers
+    we're most familiar with operate. However, /self-regulation/ may
+    also refer to regulation by a non-governmental industry-funded
+    body, following the model of the press council or the advertising
+    standards authority, where rules and processes are agreed among
+    the operators as a set of standards, and where decisions of
+    compliance to these are made by this body.
+
+    In order to avoid this ambiguity, I will use the term
+    "self-moderation" to refer to the former, and the term
+    "industry-regulation" for the latter.
+
+* CONSTODO The distinction between user behaviours and online services
+
+  The internet is awash with online harassment and harmful
+  communications, and responsible governments and legislators have
+  been trying for decades to do something about it.
+
+  However, it's no less true in this sphere than in any other that
+  "doing something" is not necessarily enough to address the problem:
+  doing only the /right thing/ it what's required.
+
+  In the first of his 6 Laws of
+  Technology[fn:6laws:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melvin_Kranzberg#Kranzberg's_laws_of_technology],
+  Dr. Melvin Kranzberg determined that "Technology is neither good nor
+  bad; nor is it neutral." The tempation on observers is to decide
+  that the extent of online harassment, abuse and harmful
+  communications is because of the existence of online services, and
+  that if only we could force the services to implement their
+  technologies in a particular manner, all the problems will be
+  solved.
+
+  For instance, the United States of America recently enacted a law
+  known as the "Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act", or
+  /FOSTA-SESTA/[fn:FOSTA-SESTA:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Enabling_Sex_Traffickers_Act]. This
+  was a law to show that the U.S. Congress was doing something to stop
+  sex-trafficking. The law made it an offence for online services to
+  "knowingly [assist], [support], or [facilitate]" sex-trafficking,
+  and it removed from online services speech-related protections that
+  had been previously provided under another U.S. law known as the
+  "Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act".
+
+  Accounts show, however, that doing *this* was not effective, and has
+  been counter-productive. As expected, a number of websites that had
+  been used to legally advertise sex services in the United States
+  either shut down that section of their service (e.g. Craigslists'
+  "Erotic Services"), or shutdown completely[fn:SOSTAEffect:Lura
+  Chamberlain, FOSTA: A Hostile Law with a Human Cost, 87 Fordham
+  L. Rev. 2171 (2019).  Available at:
+  https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/flr/vol87/iss5/13]. If the goal of the
+  law was to protect sex workers, and women in particular, it has had
+  the opposite effect:
+  - Independent sex workers now have no online means to promote their
+    services, forcing them to turn to pimps for this.
+  - There has been a notable increase in the number of sex workers who
+    have gone missing.
+  - Some sex-workers have died by suicide.
+  - Assault and rape of sex workers has increased, and many fear that
+    murders of sex workers are also
+    increasing[fn:craigslisthomicide:http://www.econlib.org/archives/2018/01/craigslist_redu.html].
+  - Sex workers have no means to learn about their potential clients
+    prior to the client knowing about them: where they could vet
+    people who made contact with them over these services before
+    identifying themselves, this is not possible anymore, and
+    dramatically increases their risk.
+  - Ironically, one of the negative effects of /FOSTA-SESTA/ is that
+    it is now much harder for the police to investigate rapes,
+    assaults and murders of sex workers than before, because a
+    critical trail of evidence -- the online communications between
+    offenders and sex-workers -- now can no longer be
+    laid[fn:FOSTAPolice:https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180705/01033440176/more-police-admitting-that-fosta-sesta-has-made-it-much-more-difficult-to-catch-pimps-traffickers.shtml]. This
+    is not least because the websites are no longer there, but because
+    when they were (e.g. Backpage), they assisted the police
+    investigating these crimes against sex workers; advertising was
+    legal back then, and now it's not, the police won't get the help
+    from web sites when they need
+    it[fn:SESTAPolice:https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180509/13450339810/police-realizing-that-sesta-fosta-made-their-jobs-harder-sex-traffickers-realizing-made-their-job-easier.shtml].
+
+
+  This was predicted, but by advocates for sex workers and for free
+  speech, and legislators failed to heed the warnings. In fact, when
+  considering this law, legislators were presented with statistics
+  that were false, and misrepresented the landscape prior to enacting
+  /FOSTA-SESTA/[fn:buzzfeed:https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jennyheineman/sex-trafficking-myths-sesta-fosta].
+
+  I highlight this law in particular because it is both recent
+  (early 2018) and relevant. However it's not alone, and as we look at
+  pending legislation coming to us both domestically and from the EU,
+  it's hard not to see the same failures repeating:
+  - Pat Rabbitte's and 
+  - The EU Terrorism Content Directive...
+  - The new Copyright Directive...
+  - 
 
 ** CONSTODO The nature of the internet from the perspective of the technology