News Round-Up: Irish Gov Takes a Step Back with Hate Speech Law, Net Zero Can Deeply Scar Scotland's Environment and Telegram, X Bow to Government Pressure
News Round-Up: Irish Gov Takes a Step Back with Hate Speech Law, Net Zero Can Deeply Scar Scotland's Environment and Telegram, X Bow to Government Pressure
Every week, the editorial team of Freedom Research compiles a round-up of news that caught our eye, or what felt like under-reported aspects of news deserving more attention.
Over the past week, the following topics attracted our attention:
Irish government takes a step back with hate speech law.
Net Zero could scar Scottish higlands, Lock Ness.
Telegram agrees to share user data with the authorities, X backs down in Brazil.
UK: 46% increase in fires linked to electric vehicles.
Sweden's foreign minister: immigration must be reduced significanly.
Irish government takes a step back with hate speech law
The Irish government has abandoned plans to pass a tough internationally criticised hate speech law for now because there is no consensus in the current government to enact it.
“I believe (the existing incitement to hatred legislation) needs to be strengthened. However, we need a consensus to do that and we don't currently have that,” McEntee told national broadcaster RTE, Reuters reports.
Ireland has been working on the tough hate speech law for a long period, and it first came before the Irish parliament two years ago, with the government justifying the tough new law with the need to update regulations against incitement of hatred because they do not take into account the new reality of social media.
In 2023, it was passed in the lower house, but then stalled. Last November, large-scale protests and riots against illegal immigration erupted in Dublin in response to a stabbing of three children and their carer by Riad Bouchaker of Algerian origin. Rather than ensuring the safety of the people, then Prime Minister Leo Varadkar responded strongly to the protests by promising harsh punishments for them, both through a new tough hate speech law and facial recognition systems.
As we have written before, the new law would introduce a regime that would make incitement to hatred punishable by a fine or up to five years of prison. A draft of the law stated that any person will be punished if he or she produces or possesses material likely to incite hatred against another person or a group of persons protected under the same law. Race and colour, nationality and descent, religion, sexual orientation, disability and sex are listed as protected characteristics. Gender, according to the draft, means both the sex that a person actually has and the sex that a person has chosen and identifies with. In other words, transgender persons are singled out as a separate protected group. It also appears that the presumption of innocence does not fully apply in the case of the draft and that the accused would have to first prove their innocence, at least in some cases. In particular, the text of the draft states that if the accused is proven to be in possession of material inciting to hatred, it is reasonable to presume that it was not intended only for private use, unless one is able to prove the opposite.
The draft was seen by many as a very serious threat to freedom of expression and was criticised, for example, by major entrepreneur and X owner Elon Musk, as well as by Donald Trump Jr, son of former US President Donald Trump, and prominent Canadian freethinker and clinical psychologist Jordan B. Peterson.
Earlier this year, Musk also said that X was prepared to fund court challenges to Ireland's hate speech law.
Net Zero could scar Scottish highlands, Lock Ness
Scotland's picturesque highlands are at the centre of a heated debate over proposed pumped storage hydro schemes, GB News writes. Up to a dozen upland lochs are being targeted for development, with plans to construct massive dams, service roads, and pump houses across some of Scotland's most remote and wild areas. These pumped storage hydro systems would effectively work as giant batteries, pumping water uphill during energy surpluses and releasing it to generate power when needed. However, environmentalists and local communities are concerned about their impact on the region's iconic landscapes.
Environmental groups have raised serious concerns about the ecological impact of these schemes. The Scottish Wildlife Trust, while supporting the move towards renewable energy, warns that it 'cannot come at the expense of Scotland's wildlife'.
Brian Shaw of the Ness District Salmon Fishery Board fears the cumulative effect on Loch Ness could be disastrous. He told The Telegraph: "These schemes move huge volumes of water. Cumulatively the four operational or proposed Loch Ness schemes could pump water out of Loch Ness at 1,100 cubic metres a second, on a daily basis". Shaw argues this could "sterilise" the loch's shorelines and destroy its delicate ecology, threatening the Ness salmon population and the wider ecosystem.
Telegram agrees to share user data with the authorities, X backs down in Brazil
The messaging app Telegram has said it will hand over users' IP addresses and phone numbers to authorities who have search warrants or other valid legal requests, BBC writes.
The change to its terms of service and privacy policy 'should discourage criminals’, CEO Pavel Durov said in a Telegram post on Monday. “While 99.999% of Telegram users have nothing to do with crime, the 0.001% involved in illicit activities create a bad image for the entire platform, putting the interests of our almost billion users at risk,” he wrote.
The announcement follows the detainment of Durov in France in August because the platform did not want to share user data with the French authorities. Prosecutors charged Durov with enabling criminal activity on the platform by not revealing user data on government requests.
On the one hand, Telegram has been accused of becoming a tool criminals can use for illegal activities while on the other hand, such crackdown has sparked debate about the future of free-speech protections on the internet which is under constant threat when governments can access user data on will.
After weeks of confrontation with Brazil's Supreme Court over censorship, X has sharply changed its position, reports The New York Times. Lawyers for the platform, which was banned in the country at the end of August, said last week that the company was complying with Brazil's Supreme Court orders, which have included censoring specific users. Reuters reported on Friday that the court has not yet decided whether to lift the ban on X, but sources close to the owner of the platform Elon Musk believe the service could be restored in the country within days.
Until now, Musk and X have considered the state's censorship demands illegal, but now the company is doing exactly what it promised not to do: remove accounts from the platform that Brazilian authorities consider a threat to the country, such as political commentators with views opposing the current government. In a document sent to the Brazilian Supreme Court, X announced that 9 accounts have already been closed.
The company also gave in on other claims, paid millions in fines, and appointed a new official representative in Brazil. However, another fine of $1.8 million (1.62 million euros) was imposed on the company and the country requires it to be paid before X is reinstated.
X itself has not commented on the developments to any publication but has made social media posts reiterating its commitment to protecting freedom of expression and expressing its belief that access to the platform is important for Brazilians and democracy in Brazil.
The events in Brazil show that the unprecedented state pressure to censor users, which has seen X banned in the country, company representatives threatened with arrest, fines imposed on both X and those who attempted to use X despite the ban, seizure of property from Musk's other companies, etc., has borne fruit.
UK: 46% increase in fires linked to electric vehicles
One of the consequences of the widespread adoption of electric cars and other lithium-ion battery powered vehicles is the increasing number of fires linked to their batteries, which are causing extraordinary headaches for fire brigades. An international insurance company QBE research showed that there were three lithium-ion battery-related fires every day in the UK in 2023. In other words, one vehicle using such a battery – e.g. an electric car, electric bicycle, or electric scooter – had caught fire. In 2022, there were fewer than two such events per day per year. Overall, the number of lithium-ion battery-related fires increased by 46% in one year. That is, while in 2022 there were 630 such incidents across the country, in 2023 there were 921.
Almost a third of these fires were caused by electric bikes, with the number of incidents jumping by 70% from 158 to 270 in a year.
The number of incidents involving electric cars increased by 33%, from 89 to 118. The number of incidents involving electric scooters increased by 7% (from 117 to 125), while the number of incidents involving electric buses rose by 22% (from 18 to 22). Fires involving an electric truck jumped from 3 to 12.
The problem with such fires is the lithium-ion battery itself, which can ignite when it overheats. Once ignited, it burns very quickly, is explosive and produces a lot of toxic smoke. Extinguishing the fire is very difficult and time-consuming and special equipment and substances such as dry chemical agents are needed.
Sweden's foreign minister: immigration must be reduced significanly
Sweden’s new foreign minister, Maria Malmer Stenergard (Moderate Party) says that immigration has to be reduced and points out that 'it matters which groups come here', The Nordic Times writes citing the ministers inteview in Dagens Nyheter.
The minister notes that Sweden has received many immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa in recent years, who generally 'have a lower level of education and a different cultural background'. “Which groups come here matters,” she says and compares this to the labour migration from Finland 50 years ago. She points out that current immigration has created more significant problems such as exclusion, honour-based oppression, radicalisation and gang crime. “In order for us to remain an open country, immigration must be reduced significantly,” she says, adding that if the public perceives that politicians have lost control over immigration, it will result in demands for drastic measures.
Sweden is a sad example of what uncontrolled immigration practiced in the country for many years can do. We have touched upon the consequences of it several times in our news round-ups and articles. For example, one aspect of it is the rising violence by criminal gangs with immigrant background. But there are also direct cultural changes happening fast – almost a third of primary school pupils in Sweden speak a language other than Swedish as their first already.
The problems of uncontrolled immigration in Sweden, and the labelling of citizens who highlight the problems as spreading misinformation, etc., were also discussed in a recent analysis we published.