Captain Cyborg Has A Virus-Infected Sidekick... But Nothing Can Stop A PR Campaign

Explaining To Congress That Blocking YouTube Videos Doesn't Stop Terrorism

from the that's-not-a-strategy dept

Thu, May 27th 2010 5:56pm — Mike Masnick

We've pointed out in the past how ridiculous it is to suggest that forcing YouTube to delete videos from terrorist groups actually does anything to harm terrorist groups. It's not like some random person is coming across those videos and saying "hey, that makes sense, now I'll be a terrorist." In fact, by monitoring those videos, law enforcement can actually find out more about what terrorists are saying and what they're up to. Yet, we've had politicians attack websites that don't automatically pull down such videos.

Thankfully, there are people who recognize this is ridiculous. It looks like a bunch of experts testified at a House Committee hearing on homeland security, and repeatedly made this point:

"A mandate requiring the removal of terror-recruiting content online could be counterproductive to the fight against terrorism," said John Morris Jr., general counsel of the Center for Democracy and Technology. "Using appropriate legal process, government agencies may be able gain invaluable information about terrorist operations by monitoring online sites and services."

Anthony Romero, executive director of the ACLU, urged the committee against "sacrificing our civil liberties in pursuit of security."

"We leave it to others to debate whether evidence shows that terrorists’ use of the Internet makes them more effective or simply more vulnerable to interception of their communications," Romero said. "Instead we are here to implore this subcommittee not to level its legislative guns at this most democratic of communications tools."

Hopefully, the politicians listen, but I fear the opportunity to grandstand on this issue will be too much of a draw.

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Filed Under: censorship, terrorism

11 Comments

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ECA (profile), 27 May 2010 @ 6:17pm

Fun isnt it
The idea of creating a mouse trap from Scratch is fun, when one already exists.
USE what they WANT to place out there.

This is like a MOUSE Making the CHEESE.
Why get rid of the CHEESE and MAKE your own? do you think its any easier to catch the mouse?
USE HIS cheese, and monitor it.
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FreemonSandlewould (profile), 27 May 2010 @ 6:55pm

Dear Fun Isn't it:

If you want to catch a mouse make a noise like a cheese.
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Matthew Krum (profile), 27 May 2010 @ 8:10pm

Or...
Or just bye a cat.
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The Groove Tiger (profile), 27 May 2010 @ 10:44pm

"sacrificing our civil liberties in pursuit of security."

Wouldn't that be sacrificing civil liberties in pursuit of diminished security?
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Anonymous Coward, 27 May 2010 @ 10:55pm

Re:
@The Groove Tiger
"Wouldn't that be sacrificing civil liberties in pursuit of diminished security?"
No, it is definitely in pursuit of security. They just don't realise that they are running, Wily Coyote style, in totally the wrong direction.
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Anonymous Coward, 27 May 2010 @ 11:18pm

Explaining things to politicians only works if a bribe is attached.
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Josef, 28 May 2010 @ 1:00am

Re: Wrong
It's not a bribe. It's called lobbying. Legal bribery.
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Svante Jorgensen (profile), 28 May 2010 @ 3:01am

Ahh, the classical "Hide the symptoms and pretend the problem goes away"-policy.
Here we go again.
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Dr. Strangelove, 28 May 2010 @ 6:53am

YouTube
Thus far, there are three scholarly books available on the subject of YouTube:

The YouTube Reader, (2009) Edited by Snickars and Vonderau
YouTube: Online Video and Participatory Culture, (2009) by Burgess and Green

and this one:

Watching YouTube: Extraordinary Videos by Ordinary People (University of Toronto Press, 2010).

Table of Contents

Introduction
1. Home Movies in a Global Village
2. The Home and Family on YouTube
3. Video Diaries: The Real You in YouTube
4. Women of the ‘Tube
5. The YouTube Community
6. The YouTube Wars: Elections, Religion, and Armed Conflict
7. The Post-television Audience
Conclusion

-- Dr. Strangelove
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Boraxo (profile), 1 Jun 2010 @ 12:48pm

Yeah, its not like...
...some bored American will see these, decide to dub herself Jihad Jane, and try to become a terrorist. We've started to see bored dimwit chicks who want to play with the terrorist bad boys (a single mother in, IIRC, Colorado, just disappeared to meet up with her online terrorist boyfriend).
Now whether banning these videos will work, who knows, you still have chat rooms. But yeah, people sometimes do see these and decide to join the merry band of thugs.
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lrobbo (profile), 12 Jun 2012 @ 11:28am

Big bribe = big understanding.
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