<
https://blog.mozilla.org/netpolicy/2023/06/26/france-browser-website-blocking/>
"In a well-intentioned yet dangerous move to fight online fraud, France is on
the verge of forcing browsers to create a dystopian technical capability.
Article 6 (para II and III) of the SREN Bill would force browser providers to
create the means to mandatorily block websites present on a government provided
list. Such a move will overturn decades of established content moderation norms
and provide a playbook for authoritarian governments that will easily negate
the existence of censorship circumvention tools.
While motivated by a legitimate concern, this move to block websites directly
within the browser would be disastrous for the open internet and
disproportionate to the goals of the legal proposal – fighting fraud. It will
also set a worrying precedent and create technical capabilities that other
regimes will leverage for far more nefarious purposes. Leveraging existing
malware and phishing protection offerings rather than replacing them with
government provided, device level block-lists is a far better route to achieve
the goals of the legislation.
The rest of the post will provide a brief overview of the current state of
phishing protection systems in browsers, the distinction between industry
practices and what the draft law proposes, and proposes alternatives to achieve
the goals of the legislation in a less extreme manner."
Via David.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
