In response to the intimidation of a Dutch police woman, both on- and offline, head of police union ACP, Geert van de Kamp, has called for web censorship.
An investigation has been launched into the intimidation of the police woman, who works for the foreign police of The Netherlands. In the night of Monday to Tuesday, unknown people vandalized the front door of the police woman’s house with red paint.
Also, the tires of the police woman’s car were slashed.
A group called the Winterschilders (Winterpainters) claimed responsibility for the act by posting a message on indymedia.nl, which included the full name and address of the police woman (and a picture, claims the police union). Their message reads:
Tonight The Winterpainters visited XXX, foreign police, XXX, XXX. (XXX replacing her personal data which have been removed by indymedia)
Her frontdoor got some red paint on it; symbol for the blood of the people that suffer due to the practices of the foreigner police.
We also made sure she couldn’t get to her work quickly today (flat tires).
This is a warning to all her colleagues of the modern gestapo (foreign police, immigration and naturalisation service, justice dept.).
You are responsible for what you are doing.
Stop it.
The Winterpainters
Gerrit van de Kamp, head of police union ACP, calls the incident “unheard of”, saying this “absolutely cannot and may not happen again.” And what better way to react to Gestapo accusations than calling for censorship?
Van de Kamp wants to ask the ministers of Justice and Internal Affairs to make it impossible to publish messages like the above on the internet, saying it should be “technologically possible” to filter such messages.
Gerrit van de Kamp, you are either unaware of what exactly is “technologically possible” or you are calling for censorship. In a statement on ACP’s website, you call for “preventive measures to prevent name & address data of police people to be posted on the internet”. That’s a lot more nuanced and understandable, yet it is impossible to put such filters in place without seriously endangering the freedom of the citizens you’re serving. You are asking for ISPs to filter what their users are posting to the internet:
- Should the ISPs report every filtered instance to the police?
- How will the “technologically possible” filter prevent innocent people from being censored?
- What prevents the government from adding more and more terms to the filter once it is in place?
Such a filter would be a step towards fascism. Yes, you have the duty to protect police staff, as do we, as Dutch citizens, but you are calling for a very extreme measure. The internet shall not be filtered, instead, prosecute websites or people that post this data on the internet. Call for tough laws and higher penalties to discourage people from committing these acts. That way it will be the websites’ responsibilities to filter the content posted to them.
Also, there have been many reports over the last 5 years about ill-treated asylum seekers and there has been a lot of protests about this, this incident being the most extreme protest thus far. Maybe it actually is time for the government to have another look at what’s going on and punish those responsible for incidents.
The suggested measure in your reaction is disproportionate. Please reconsider.
That will be all.
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