Poland to tighten regulations over online gambling

The government aims to get information from ISPs to report citizens’ attempts to access illegal websites.

Poland.- The Polish government wants to tighten up restrictions over unauthorised online gambling sites and will require local internet service providers (ISPs) to inform it about citizens’ attempts to access them. According to the Panoptykon Foundation, a digital rights watchdog, the Polish authorities plan to create a central registry of unapproved websites “used to offer goods and services contrary to the law.”

According to the digital rights body, the government seeks to authorise a ‘chief sanitary inspector’ that would compel data from ISPs that will disclose which citizens tried to access unauthorised websites. In addition, companies would have to turn over the information “without the knowledge and consent of the person it concerns.”

Local organisations are worried that the censorship’s expansion could turn out to be the first of many steps in an online limitation escalation. Nonetheless, several countries enforce similar restrictions on online activities and are hardly ever questioned, like the Canadian province of Quebec or some experiences in the UK as well.