Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Warp wrote:
> > the threshold to add more things to the censorship list gets significantly
> > lowered.

> Yep. *Especially* when it's secret and the general public can't complain at 
> the absurdity of stuff on the list.  Commie Scare coming up!

  I wouldn't say the secrecy is the major problem. (Secrecy is problematic
for other, mostly ideological, reasons because it goes against the principles
of an open democracy where the citizens are, in principle, the ones who
govern a country, through representatives. If the government keeps something
secret from their own citizens, it means that they are not representing them
anymore, but it has become an oligarchy instead.)

  If the police adds something to the censorship list that they have no
legal right to add, somebody is going to find out sooner or later, when
they stumble on that site and wonder why they get the "sorry, we can't
let you into this website because of police orders" message. One of them
is then going to circumvent the censorship eg. via an anonymizer proxy
and find out exactly what is it that is being censored, and when they find
out that what is being censored is actually not something that can legally
be censored, chances are high that they will make a ruckus about it. (This
has actually happened.)

  The major problem is that once the censorship system is up, the threshold
of expanding the censorship law to cover more things is significantly lowered.
It will start with things that most people agree are "bad" (such as racism),
and go from there to things that the government doesn't like (such as
critique of major religions).

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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