LONDON - It has often been the case that if you wanted to download something illicit like torrent pirated music, you'd wander into your internet cafe - no risk to being identified - right? Wrong! Scotland Yard is making administrators of public Web spaces to periodically poke through their customers' files and keep an eye out for suspicious activity. Under the auspices of the government's counterterrorism strategy, police are "encouraging people to check on hard drives... although it is up to cafe owners to decide if or how to monitor what customers left on their computers".  While the program is voluntary — owners can ignore police advice if they so choose — it creates an atmosphere of fear while undermining Internet users' privacy.It is expected that shortly a French letter will be issued nationwide to all public internet providers warning them - just as the Inspector French letter did with paedophiles which resulted in proactive monitoring of paedophile keywords and blocking of known sites, that.... if the police visit and find that you have been facilitating this activity, you may be prosecuted under the law for conspiring aiding or abetting; however if you co-operate we are unlikely to take this stance. 

A computer-savvy criminal could however easily make their activities invisible in a few simple steps, in other words to dust off their digital fingerprints.

Police say Internet cafe owners should remain vigilant in part because the venues have often been used by terrorists and other criminals in an attempt to evade detection. The police spokesman noted that the men behind the plot to blow up U.S.-bound passengers jets with liquid explosives secreted into soft drink containers used an Internet cafe to coordinate their plot.

This highlights the increasing government intrusion into digital use in the UK, as evidenced by the Digital Economy Bill, often described as the digital snooping bill whereas in other EU nations Internet cafes generally go about their business with a minimum of official interference. In France, it is a criminal offence for employees to view what their customers are researching on the Internet.

ISPs in the capital are avoiding monitoring internet history by wiping their computers daily using secure wipe facilities - one public internet cafe in North London said "In that way, we're not at risk of having material on our computers that the police could complain about. No one can expect us to monitor this on a real-time basis, so we feel confident that the police will not expect us to have looked at material downloaded by customers during that day." 

The Internet cafe initiative came as lawmakers criticized the government's counterterrorism strategy. A report published by a parliamentary committee on human rights Thursday said civil liberties were all too often "squeezed out by the imperatives of national security and public safety" in the fight against terrorism.

Italy's government is forging ahead with plans to extend television-broadcasting regulations to Web sites that host videos, marking one of the most sweeping attempts by a Western government to tighten control over the use of video on the Internet and in what many people consider to be a politically-motivated judgment, two managers and a former executive of Google Inc. were found guilty of privacy violations by an Italian court, the first such conviction for employees of a major internet corporation.

Milan Judge Oscar Magi ruled today that David Drummond, Google’s senior vice president of corporate development, and Peter Fleischer, global privacy counsel, as well as George Reyes, a former chief financial officer, were guilty of privacy violations. They were sentenced to six-month terms, which were suspended.

Google said it plans to appeal the “astonishing decision.”

The precedent-setting ruling may have implications for Google elsewhere in Europe, where governments and regulators have sought to curb its over-arching reach. In the past year, countries from France to Germany have tried to reign in the company’s dominance in areas from books to maps and to look at Google's use of copyright.

Greg Sterling, an analyst at Sterling Market Intelligence (San Francisco) said  “It is symbolic of the larger problems that Google is facing in Europe with people wanting to do something because they’re so angry and frustrated that Google is so dominant. It’s a bad decision. It sets a bad precedent. The individuals didn’t have any control over the private parties involved in the underlying dispute.”

The executives of Google were on trial on charges related to a clip uploaded to Google Video in 2006, created and posted on the Web by a group of Turin school students, who filmed themselves bullying a disabled classmate. The video was filmed in a school where there was an expectation of privacy and the victim had not consented to being filmed or to featuring in any video and the clip was also claimed to be defamatory of the victim and to infringe his rights. 

Google says it removed the video as soon as it was notified and helped Italian police identify those responsible, although it was in Google’s “funniest videos” category for almost two months, reaching 5,500 views.  "The Google employees on trial had nothing to do with the video in question,” Google said, "The ruling attacks the very principles of freedom on which the Internet is built. European Union law was drafted specifically to give hosting providers a safe harbor from liability so long as they remove illegal content once they are notified of its existence.”

A draft Italian decree, expected to take effect early this month, would force sites such as Google Inc.'s YouTube to operate more like traditional TV broadcasters within Italian borders, although campaigners opposed to the decree say that the decree breaches EU Directives.  Under the proposed rules, sites would have to gain permission to host copyrighted videos, such as TV programs, that users often post on sites like YouTube - this is hardly objectionable because the copyright owner has a right to object to unlicensed use and the posting of copyright material without permission on YouTube (or elsewhere on the net) is piracy. The more contentious issue is that video broadcast sites would also be required to obtain broadcasting licenses in Italy and would become liable for any libelous material in posted videos.

Nick Lockett, of DL Legal, said in an interview with Deutsche Welle (dw-world.de) "There is a parallel in this case to the UK Defamation case of Demon v Godfrey where it was held that Demon internet were not liable if they took down the offending material immediately upon being given notice. If the same principles were applied in the UK to data protection law, then it is likely that the Information Commissioner (the UK's Data Protection Office) would state that there was no privacy breach where Google removed material immediately upon notice. There is a clear conflict between various Directives imposed by this ruling and although lawyers are anxiously awaiting the full details of the ruling,  it would seem that under that ruling, there are enormous implications for social networking sites - what Google calls "chilling effects" - because if the video merely being displayed breached privacy, social networking sites are going to have to consider whether they can display video without providing some form of editorial control."

Nick Lockett went on to say that "The Italian Ruling creates a catch-22. The Catch-22 is that internet forums deal with daily is that IF you exercise control, then you cannot claim the "innocent dissemination "I didn't know" defence" (which led to moderators not reviewing material unless complained about) ... but if this verdict is right, you are now damned if you do exert editorial control and damned if you don't (under the new Italian ruling that seeks to impose on online media, the same standards as broadcast. Editors will have to consider whether people featured have provided consent to being featured, whether the setting creates an expectation of privacy and lost of other considerations).

The ruling (subject to inevitable appeal) means employees of hosting platforms like Google Video are “criminally responsible” for content uploaded by users and it the ruling sets “a very chilling” precedent. It also means that it will be harder for Companies to find executives prepared to act as Data Protection Officers. The Italian ruling is using artificial steps on privacy to impose regulation on Social Networkihg sites, even though the Italian rules contradict the principles on which the e-Commerce Directives were drafted.

European Digital Media Association said "This is really serious, because it sets a precedent, trying to hold Internet companies responsible for content generated by users and to regulate websites through stealth.

Google is facing Competition complaints at the EU level and although a U.K. price-comparison site (Foundem), a French legal search engine (Ejustice.fr) and a Microsoft service (Ciao -Bing) have filed competition complaints to the European Commission, the EU said it hasn’t opened a formal probe in the case yet.

Massimiliano Trovato, a media and telecommunications regulation expert at the Bruno Leoni Institute, believes that "...the decision will hurt the freedom of the Web in Italy, said adding that it may result in the pre-emptive editorial screening of every Web upload.It will have a very negative impact on the market for Internet services in Italy."

Nick Lockett of DL Legal believes we're taking backward steps in terms of media law and said in a BBC interview  "I thought we'd got past the need to moderate postings after Demon v Godfrey, moderation just isn’t economically feasible. Any kind of legal framework requiring pre-loading editorial control would make it almost impossible to invest to develop this kind of technology. We've got adequate control udner innocent dissemination control defences. Mr. Romani has said that "individual bloggers" wouldn't fall under the regulatory framework of the decree, but if the hosting party does fall under control then social networking sites will have significant problems."

There are a number of unanswered questions from this decision (assuming that Google did take the site down immediately under notice):

a) Do Social Networking sites and sites such as YouTube now  simply have to ask the questions:

1. Do you have the consent of the copyright owner of the video-clip to upload it?

2. Was the video-clip taken in a place open to the public or visible from a public place without special equipment? (I.e. was there a reasonable expectation of privacy?)

3. Do you have the consent of every person featured in the video-clip to publicly display the video-clip?

OR

b) Do Social Networking sites and sites such as YouTube now have to require evidence that :

1. the uploader has the consent of the copyright owner of the video-clip to upload it

2. the video-clip was not taken in a place open to the public or visible from a public place without special equipment? (I.e. was there a reasonable expectation of privacy?)

3. the consent of every person featured as a main character in the video-clip has bene given to publicly display the video-clip

c) Do other featured characters (such as witnesses watching the bullying in the video, rather than mere passers by) have to have their faces blurred so as not to be distinguishable?

Italian Media users are threatening to turn their sites Black as protest about the ruling.

Google has been under attack recently.
- It threatened to pull out of China after accusing the Chinese government of conducting cyberattacks on its users.
- In December, a Paris court convicted the company of copyright infringement for scanning books and making extracts available online. Google is appealing.

Google executives were cleared of defamation and it is expected that Google will appeal the conviction