Tusk is working on a fresh form of net censorship. It's ACTA squared

In the Sejm held a tumultuous debate on a bill to enable authorities to block "illegal content" on the Internet. The task was accepted at a gathering of the Council of Ministers the day before.

Donald Tusk implements a controversial EU regulation (DSA) to average content on the network. The government wishes to grant the president of the Electronic Communications Office the right to issue immediately enforceable orders to block entries on the Internet. This means that without the judgement of the court, without the adversarial procedure and without a real right of appeal, the authoritative will be able to decide what Poles can read, watch and publish.

– Donald Tusk's government decided that net censorship should apply in Poland. It's not a court of law, but a government authoritative is to decide what's actual and what's not. The explanation is about serious crimes, but they put in a alleged hatred speech. Who's to decide who's gonna talk hatred and fake news? Government authoritative Donald Tusk said Dariusz Matecki of PiS during the parliamentary debate.

The task provides a wide list of entities that will be able to request a blockage of content – from the Police, through the KAS, to the Border Guard. The criteria cover both, of course, reprehensible acts (pedophilia, trafficking in human beings), as well as categories which are completely impenetrable and prone to arbitrary interpretation, specified as “loath speech” or “hate speech”. In practice, it will be a gateway to removing politically uncomfortable content, critical of power.

It is peculiarly dangerous that the president of the UKE will not be able to appeal the decision – the author of the content will gotta object to the general court, after the fact that the material is blocked. This reverses the logic of the regulation of law: alternatively of protecting the citizen from excessive administrative interference, we receive a mechanics of administrative censorship that can be applied preventively and immediately. A decision to remove a content can be issued if "it does not have a negative impact on civilian discourse and electoral processes".

It is worth recalling that the DSA as an EU regulation allows the participation of judicial and administrative authorities, but it is up to the associate States to decide which circumstantial mechanisms they will implement. The Polish government has chosen the most extremist and dangerous option for public debate.

As a result, this law can become a tool for gagging mouths to citizens and the media – especially in electoral campaigns or in moments of political crises. This is simply a classical method of any power that is afraid of free discussion: the clothes of censorship in appearances of combating crime and pedophilia on the web.

DSA is the world's first regulation (Regulation) imposing work on companies in the associate States of the European Union for the content on their platforms. It has been full in force in associate States since 17 February 2024. Articles 9 and 10 of this normative act supply that state judicial and administrative authorities may order suppliers to block content online. In May this year, Poland was sued by the European Commission for failing to comply with the DSA request within the set deadline.

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