Sarkozy proposes censorship of terrorist websites after Toulouse shooting

In the aftermath of the shootings in Montauban and Toulouse, French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced that the government wanted to make visiting websites that promote terrorism, hate or violence a crime. Skip to the 2 minute mark in the video below to see the announcement. The video is in French but I have translated his statement below.

From now now, any person who regularly consults web sites that glorify terrorism or that call for hate or violence will be penally punished.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xpm4r5_mort-de-mohamed-merah-l-intervention-de-nicolas-sarkozy_news

French tech website PC Inpact noted that the proposal would extend the breadth of an existing law against pedophilia and pedo-pornography online. But Sarkozy’s remarks provoked an immediate backlash online, where many criticized the proposal as an inefficient short-term reaction to the tragic events in Toulouse. Web users called out the measure for what it really was, i.e. censorship.

https://twitter.com/Clyde_Barrow_/status/182932992468062208

(So Sarkozy’s platform is really 1984, in reference to George Orwell’s novel)

After Marine Le Pen last week, Sarkozy has therefore decided that censorship was the best tool to fight against an undesired phenomenon (pornography in her case, terrorism in his). But even without considering the dangers of his proposal – unprecedented State power to determine what constitutes terrorism or what is potentially violent – the measure has many practical faults.

First, although the legal framework would make it possible, it would be technically difficult to implement such a measure given the complexities of the world wide web today (proxies, for instance, is an easy counter measure). Even the identification of the Toulouse shooter through an IP address took longer than one would think. Only a so-called Deep Packet Inspection would enable to effectively monitor connections, but at an unacceptable price for civil liberties.

Another difficulty is that would-be terrorists are not the only ones that consult the targeted websites: sociologists, journalists, historians and other professionals or scholars do to.

https://twitter.com/martelf/status/182810442949853185

Giving these professional categories an ‘authorization’ to browse terrorist websites is not a solution either. If  a journalist can consult a website for his work, why shouldn’t a normal citizen be able to if he wants to inform himself? Sarkozy’s proposal mere hours after the shooter’s death also begs the question: does he really think keeping individuals like Mohamed Merah from visiting terrorist websites will prevent them from murdering people?

Vous croyez sérieusement qu'empêcher les terroristes de lire les empêchera de tuer ? http://t.co/80HxO2ge #Sarkozysme

— jean marc manach @manhack@social.tcit.fr (@manhack) March 22, 2012

Finally, even if such a law were to pass (Sarkozy backtracked on his calendar and has now postponed the decision to after the elections), it would be struck down by the European Human Rights Court or by the Conseil Constitutionnel, which have both proven their aptitude at defending civil liberties.

To sum up, Sarkozy’s proposal is as hasty as useless as was French swimmer Laure Manadou’s Twitter comment after the shooting in Toulouse.

(Remove those stupid video games and things will be better!)

Candidates Get Google Bombed – But To No Avail

Google bombing is one of many online guerilla tactics for political campaigning but it is much more fearsome in name than it is in action, as French presidential candidates Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande recently discovered.

The Wiktionary gives a simple definition of a Google bomb:

An attempt to influence the ranking of a webpage within the Google search engine by linking to it from many other sources.

Until recently, here were the search results for the terms “incapable de gouverner” (incompetent to govern) and “on va tuer la France” (France is going to be killed).

Search result for "incapable de gouverner" (incompetent to govern)

Search result for “on va tuer la France” (France is going to be killed)

The bombings themselves had very little impact, except for search term spikes and some media coverage. They were not official campaign tactics, and were probably initiated by isolated sympathizers on either side. The goal, by linking a negative search term to the candidate’s campaign or party website, was to smear them. But there are several reasons why these two main candidates, Nicolas Sarkozy to the right and François Hollande to the left, were Google bombed to no avail.

First, the term ‘bomb’ is somewhat misleading. Google bombing is an internet practice that artificially pulls up a desired search result by linking to it from many other web pages, not some massive virus or hacking that implies major damage for a person’s website. It is therefore a much smaller and more futile attempt than, say, a denial-of-service attack, which entirely prevents users from accessing your website.

Manipulating Google’s search algorithm in order to smear a political persona can be effective – anybody who’s ever googled “Santorum” knows as much (even though this wasn’t a Google bombing per se, it had an important aftermath).

But matters never reached those proportions in this French case. Although it is a cheap and easy way of attempting to criticize a candidate, it is quite limited. Very few people are actually going to Google such artificial and convoluted search terms as “incompetent to govern” or “France is going to be killed,” which means the bombing achieves a comic effect at best, and goes completely unnoticed at worst.

Google bombing does not deny access to a candidate’s website or information. More importantly, it is a mere hint of a criticism, not a constructed argument. This means that although opponents of either candidate will find it amusing, undecided voters who happen to stumble upon the Google bombing won’t be swayed by it.

Google bomb? More like Google pschiiit.

Tweets and Timelines for Nicolas Sarkozy’s Official Campaign Launch

[EDIT] French newspaper Le Monde just published a similar article on its website with Reuters, it has good details and links: check it out!

France’s worst kept secret was finally outed last night when Nicolas Sarkozy officially announced his candidacy on TF1. But we are not interested in that. We’re interested in this:

Welcome to Twitter @NicolasSarkozy. Here's a pic of President Obama mtg with President Sarkozy in the Oval Office: pic.twitter.com/dPIxOqa8

— White House Archived (@ObamaWhiteHouse) February 15, 2012

Merci @whitehouse pour ce chaleureux message de bienvenue - NS

— Nicolas Sarkozy (@NicolasSarkozy) February 16, 2012

To see how Nicolas Sarkozy is finally taking the social media ride, check out the screencast below. In it, I do not delve into the recent polemic about whether or not Facebook closely cooperated with the Sarkozy campaign but not with other candidates to create his new Timeline: Frédéric Martel from L’Express broke the story here and there are more explanations here.

More :

– The official announcement on TF1:

– LCI/TF1: Presidential election: the web campaign knows no crisis.

The Internet has fully imposed itself as a tool for the electoral promotion of presidential candidates. Thus, the web campaign of the 2012 elections should see spending increase compared to previous ones.

– Ouest France: Presidential campaign: Twitter, Facebook…what role for social networks in the campaign?, interview with Arnaud Mercier, political scientist and communications professor at Lorraine University.

The fact remains that if we stick to what happened in 2007, we are led to believe that what takes place on social networks only has a potential impact if it is relayed by traditional media. (Arnaud Mercier)

Televised Tweeting

CC/Flickr/arcticpenguin

You can yell all you want at your television, but no one will answer back, even if French President Nicolas Sarkozy or TF1 anchor Claire Chazal make a mistake during a live interview.

Enter Twitter. You can’t pack millions of spectators into your living room to watch a live presidential interview, but you can tweet about it – and get the corrections you expected in real time. Audiences can now simultaneously watch a political news program and get instant feedback online, enabling them to better analyze and evaluate what is being said on air.

This is the gist of what many journalists and cybernauts are expressing in the aftermath of Sarkozy’s televised interview bonanza last Sunday. Many grumbled at the four interviewers’ lack of fact-checking follow-ups, which enabled the French President to go almost unchallenged during his one-hour, eight-station interview. Corrections of his mistakes and approximations abounded in the press afterwards (watch the full interview at the end of this post).

Twitter, however, is the perfect platform for real-time verification of the many figures and numbers candidates wave around on air. Media outlets, politicians and netizens alike frantically commented Sunday’s interview to defend, criticize or mock the President.

C'est long les #Guignols, ce soir... #Sarkoshow.

— justinbiebiere 🦆 (@justinbiebiere) January 29, 2012

https://twitter.com/Eric_Besson/status/163724025976209409

21:09 : 26950 tweets (7210 tweetos) pour #sarkozy, #sarko, #sarkoshow 10,2 tweets/seconde http://t.co/Yau57jei

— Devant La Télé (@devantlatele) January 29, 2012

Take French newspaper Libération‘s Désintox journalists, who picked up on Sarkozy’s false assertion that he had never pronounced the word “TVA social” [“Social VAT”]:

"TVA sociale" ? prononcé au moins 9 fois, dans un seul discours du 20 juin 2007.. http://t.co/dzQj7U1X

— Désintox - ARTE (@ArteDesintox) January 29, 2012

A video quickly followed the next day to confirm their claim:

Vodpod videos no longer available.

So what are we dealing with? There are three events happening simultaneously. First, a television audience that is 17.5 million strong but remains completely passive. Second, an online community that is intensely active in real-time but is small in size (Twitter recently reached 5.2 million subscribers in France, compared to over 100 million in the United States). Third, the interview itself, with a President and four journalists who are completely oblivious to both audiences.

The solution is to merge everything together, according to media blogs and bloggers like Guy Birenbaum at French radio Europe 1:, with live fact-checking done in a way that enables the journalists to counter phony facts on air. He writes:

When will we finally decide to confront interviewed politicians with documents (audio, video, text, sources, links) in real time to show that they spruce up reality or become amnesiac? 

These kind of media events, where spectators, interviewers and desk journalists work in a loop of feedback, are rare, but some are jumping on the bandwagon, like journalism students at the CFJ in Paris who recently partnered with YouTube for the 2012 campaign. The idea is to have two sets of journalists: interviewers who ask the actual questions and fact-checkers who verify information in real-time and pass it back to the interviewers for follow-ups – all of it visible to both television and Internet audiences.

Politicians beware. Soon your live gaffes and slip-ups will be retweeted right back into your faces.

More:

– A University of Illinois at Chicago study on social media and television interaction.

– Sarkozy’s interview: