No threat to blogs, says PM
Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis denied yesterday opposition accusations that the government is seeking to clamp down on the freedom of Internet users in the wake of a probe into a news blog that prompted defamation suits from government politicians. PASOK leader George Papandreou accused the government of «viewing every young person with a computer as a potentially dangerous blogger» after the Justice Ministry announced plans this week to give authorities greater powers to look into possible offenses conducted online. Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA) politician Nikos Voutsis said the government was in danger of «throwing the baby out with the bath water.» «We must not develop a prosecutor’s culture with regard to blogs,» said Voutsis. Karamanlis said that the government has no intention of reining in the freedom of bloggers to express themselves and that Greece is simply adopting international regulations that it is obliged to make part of its legal framework.