Tales of Terror or of Error?

A draft document from the Council of the European Union from the Working Party on Terrorism discusses "Council Conclusions on cooperation to combat terrorist use of the Internet" and the launch of a new multi-nation Internet surveillance program "Check the Web." Although there is no doubt that multinational cooperation is essential in fighting terrorism, many advocates for peer-to-peer technologies, such as p2pnet, worry that there could be mission creep to surveil the practices of nonviolent citizens. Given the way that government agencies have demonized the Internet and associated it with violent criminality in government reports and legislative hearings, the anxieties of activists and lovers of free culture may not be entirely unfounded.