History

Malmström's new pro-crime approach is a major step forward for European cybercriminals compared with the work of her predecessors. Despite being a liberal, she has bravely taken up the policies of her aging French conservative predecessor. By pushing these policies forward, we finally move away from the dangerously effective approach taken by Italian Commissioner Franco Frattini.

Frattini was more concerned about fighting cyber-criminals and terrorists than the far easier task of talking tough. He actively dismissed the blocking of terrorist and child abuse websites, simply because this policy is ineffective. Our brothers in the crime network "Russian Business Network" (RBN) suffered badly as a result.

The Russians were as lax on fighting cyber-crime as Malmström complains the United States is today. However, instead of demanding blocking like Malmström, Frattini publicly demanded that the Russians take action in order to durably destroy the cyber-crime network. Our Russian criminal friends then suffered a crackdown, resulting in the whole network being shut down, never to be seen again.

If only blocking had been in place back then! The child abuse sites of the Russian Business Network would have been far less of a political issue in Europe. The European Union could have got away with simply talking tough, pretending that the network didn't exist and leaving the criminals to get on with the valuable work of profiting from abuse - and allowing users of the abuse material to continue to work around the blocking technolgy.

We also welcome Malmström's steep learning curve. Only a few short years ago, she would have been fighting blocking as actively as she fought against long-term retention of consumers' personal data. Data retention unfairly flatters every ordinary citizen of the Union, treating them as if they are hard-working criminals like us. It is indeed remarkable that Malmström is now supporting something so similar to something she previously opposed:

Data Retention	Internet Blocking
... Undermines citizens' fundamental rights	... Undermines citizens' fundamental rights
... was imposed by the EU due to an initiative by four Member States in the Council of the European Union	... was proposed after Spain started pushing this in the Council
... was proposed even though its supporters were unable to give evidence of it being necessary, proportionate and effective.	... was proposed by Malmström even though she is unable to give evidence of it being necessary, proportionate and effective - Malmström cannot even produce evidence from her own country, where it is already in place.
... was proposed in reality in order to compensate for the failures of police forces to cooperate quickly and efficently	... was proposed in reality in order to compensate for the failures of police forces to cooperate quickly and efficently
... used child-abuse websites as a way of blackmailing politicians to support it and to silence critics	... uses child-abuse websites as a way of blackmailing politicians to support it and to silence critics
Malmström voted against	Malmström is the proposal's biggest advocate