Sony Locks Up The PSN Account Of A Man Named 'Jihad' Because You'll Never Guess Why

from the what's-in-a-name dept

Terrorism is scary. That's the entire point of terrorism, of course. The relatively meager bodycounts of acts of terror -- compared with, say, most minor individual battles in either of the World Wars -- are actually attempting to create some kind of political or social change amongst the victims. And guess what? It totally works! After all, western nations, the bastions of freedom and puppy dogs that we are, have reacted to what is ultimately a minor threat by reporting toddlers to the authorities, freezing the bank accounts of people with dogs whose names are a couple of letters off of the scary terror-enemy, and refusing online services to people with scary (read: Islamic) sounding names. Freedom, you see, isn't free, and we have to pay for it with freedom.

And the real lesson that should be learned from pretty much the entire early part of this century is that once you start the fear-ball rolling when it comes to terrorism, it gets really hard to prevent it from trampling a great deal of innocent people in some of the dumbest ways possible. Take, for instance, Sony just flat out banning a guy's Playstation Network account because his parents named him "Jihad."

Jihad Al Mofadda, whose story shot to the front page of Reddit yesterday, said that Sony banned his account on June 7. At first, PlayStation customer support offered to switch his PSN name to something else. Then, he says, after a few days of silence, a different representative reviewed the ticket and decided to ban the account entirely, preventing Al Mofadda from accessing his stats, trophies, and all of the digital games he’s purchased. After his story exploded, Al Mofadda was able to get in touch with a Sony representative again, but he was unable to keep his original handle.

Ok, there's a lot to unpack here. Stories like this are fantastic for pointing out how easy it is for a corporate entity to try to apply some kind of language policy to its online forums and systems only to find itself hopelessly engaging in hypocrisy. For instance, Jihad is a word with a lot of discussion about what it actually means. Westerners tend to associate it with the term "holy war", and it has indeed been used in that way historically, but the word itself essentially means to persevere or struggle to keep the Islamic faith. To that end, Jihad isn't a rarity in use as a first name in Muslim circles. Meanwhile, one of my own Playstation friends has the handle HowDatDicTaste. Shall we vote on whether that handle or the one Al Mofadda used, iJihaD, is more likely to offend?

But the fact that Sony refused to allow the handle even when it was explained that Jihad was Al Moffada's first name moves this into epic levels of silliness.

One e-mail from a Sony representative read as follows: “As stated in our previous email, we have to consider the network as a whole and we need to take every ones feelings into account. I can appreciate that your name has many meanings but it has one meaning that a lot of users find offensive and there for, when a report was submitted the decision to ban your account was taken.”

Imagine for a moment that some religious sect went completely rogue somewhere in the world and carried out a series of violent attacks. And imagine that this sect decided to name these attacks "Steves." Sect members would walk into a crowded marketplace in Brazil, declare a Steveing, and set off a bomb. And let's say that these attacks received wide press coverage.

Would Sony then ban the accounts of everyone named Steve? C'mon, it's the guy's first name and he has the passport to prove it.

At the time of this writing, Sony is still refusing to allow him to use his old handle, but has allowed him to keep the purchases on his account under a different name. This means he gets his games, but loses all the friend connections he'd made as well as his game trophies. Is this the biggest deal? Of course not. But the point is that when we can't even allow people to use their own first names because we're all petrified by terrorism, things have gone a bit too far.

Filed Under: jihad, playstation, terrorism, video games
Companies: sony

Dutch Prosecutors Putting Pressure On Hosting Companies To Censor Content, Despite It Being Legal

from the that-slippery,-slippery-slope dept

GigaOm points our attention to complaints from some Dutch hosting companies that the government there is increasingly pressuring them to simply remove content claiming that it is "jihadist," but without any attempt to get a court order or to file criminal charges. We've seen this before, of course. The US government effectively forced Wikileaks to scramble for new hosting after pressure caused its hosting providers to pull the plug. Other services are pressured into removing certain types of content as well.

In the story linked above, the Dutch Hosting Provider Association (DHPA) claims that prosecutors are simply going to hosting companies and declaring, without any court order or underlying legal argument, that certain content is jihadist and should be removed. Feeling pressured and threatened, many hosts will simply remove that content. While the content may be incendiary, does that mean that there should be no due process at all? And the very real risk of overblocking doesn't seem to concern those demanding the content be taken down. The story notes one example of a video of a group of men around a campfire shooting guns -- but they note it's not entirely clear why they're shooting. And yet, they were told to take the video down.

It's easy to say "this content is dangerous, take it down," without recognizing the slippery slope of censorship this creates. No one is defending efforts to recruit people into jihadist groups, but leaping immediately to censorship without due process or any evidence of actual law breaking is not the way to protect a free and open society. It seems very much like the opposite.

Filed Under: censorship, court orders, free speech, hosting, jihad, netherlands, pressure
Companies: dhpa

New Study Says There's No Evidence That Terrorists Changed How They Communicate Post-Snowden

from the because-they-already-knew dept

One of the standard talking points right after the Ed Snowden revelations first started coming out was that the leaks were causing terrorists to change how they communicated, meaning that US intelligence was somehow "losing track" of important information on the whereabouts and plans of terrorists. The most obvious example of this was from CNN "reporter" Barbara Starr (who has a long track record of repeating Defense Department talking points) who directly claimed: "terrorists are trying to change the way they communicate because of what they learned from Edward Snowden's admitted leaks of classified information about government surveillance programs." We questioned this claim on a number of points -- in part because there was plenty of evidence that most terrorists already suspected such surveillance and acted accordingly. Meanwhile, in private, James Clapper (who publicly was claiming massive damage from terrorists changing how they communicate) admitted that he really wasn't that worried.

Clapper has said repeatedly in public that the leaks did great damage, but in private he has taken a more nuanced stance. A review of early damage assessments in previous espionage cases, he said in one closed-door briefing this fall, found that dire forecasts of harm were seldom borne out.

So it should come as no surprise at all that a new research report more or less confirms that there is no evidence of terrorists changing how they communicate post-Snowden. You can read the full report from Flashpoint Partners yourself, but it's pretty clear:

• The underlying public encryption methods employed by online jihadists do not appear to have significantly changed since the emergence of Edward Snowden. Major recent technological advancements have focused primarily on expanding the use of encryption to instant messenger and mobile communications mediums.
• Aside from warning of tampered copies of “Asrar al-Mujahideen” that were deliberately infected with spyware, none of the prominent jihadi logistical units have expressed any public doubt as to the continued effectiveness of encryption methods employed in their software packages that were released prior to the Snowden leaks.
• The actual release of new jihadi-themed encryption software packages, like “Asrar al-Dardashah,” seems to have had a far more noticeable impact in terms of driving waves of interest in the subject of encryption among users of jihadi web forums than the publication of the Snowden NSA revelations in June 2013.
• Well prior to Edward Snowden, online jihadists were already aware that law enforcement and intelligence agencies were attempting to monitor them. As a result, the Snowden revelations likely merely confirmed the suspicions of many of these actors, the more advanced of which were already making use of – and developing –secure communications software.

In other words, as we said, most terrorists already assumed their electronic communications were at risk and acted accordingly. There is little to no evidence that Snowden's leaks had any significant impact at all. The report shows that encryption packages were popular well before the Snowden leaks, and little seems to have changed after the Snowden leaks.

The report also looked at forum discussions on various encryption techniques on forums frequented by terrorist groups. As you can see from the following two charts, there doesn't appear to be any bump in discussions about encryption or related software post Snowden (the leaks began in June of 2013). If anything there was much more discussion before the Snowden revelations started:

The full report is quite interesting, though I doubt we'll see any NSA defenders/Snowden haters admitting that their doom and gloom claims turned out to be false.

Filed Under: communication, ed snowden, encryption, fud, james clapper, jihad, terrorists
Companies: flashpoint partners

YouTube Gives UK Gov't Broad Powers To Censor Videos It Doesn't Like, Even If They're Legal [Update: Or Not]

from the i'm-sure-that-won't-be-abused-at-all... dept

Update: It appears that this story was misreported by a few sources, and the fans were flamed by UK government comments about censoring videos. Youtube has as program that lets trusted sources more easily flag videos that are then reviewed fairly quickly by YouTube staff. However, these videos still get reviewed to see if they violate any of YouTube's terms of service, rather than automatically pulled down. It's still concerning that the UK government seems to think that it should censor content that even they believe is not legal, but it doesn't appear that YouTube is actually letting the UK government censor videos.

A few years ago, then-Senator Joe Lieberman went on a bizarre anti-free speech crusade against YouTube, arguing that by allowing "terrorists" to post videos to YouTube, people were watching those videos and magically turning into terrorists. Because YouTube videos are just that powerful. Given the public shaming, Google actually caved in and started banning "terrorist" videos. Of course, how do you define a "terrorist" video? The fact is we just don't know, and that's evidenced by the fact that Lieberman's efforts resulted in videos from a Syrian watchdog organization being taken down as terrorism -- when they were really reporting on the atrocities of that country's government. If anything, you'd think this would be a clear warning about the perils of trying to censor "terrorist" videos. You're going to get it wrong, and often block important and newsworthy videos.

But... instead it appears that this effort is only ramping up, and unfortunately, YouTube seems to be helping. Over in the UK, where the government has been gradually censoring more and more of the internet over the past few years, Google has apparently agreed to give the UK government broad powers to "flag" videos they argue are bad, even if they're not illegal. Ostensibly, the goal is to block videos that "proliferate jihadi material."

The YouTube permissions that Google has given the Home Office in recent weeks include the power to flag swaths of content “at scale” instead of only picking out individual videos.

They are in part a response to a blitz from UK security authorities to persuade internet service providers, search engines and social media sites to censor more of their own content for extremist material even if it does not always break existing laws.

And the UK government even admits that the videos it will be taken down are not illegal:

The UK’s security and immigration minister, James Brokenshire, said that the British government has to do more to deal with some material “that may not be illegal, but certainly is unsavoury and may not be the sort of material that people would want to see or receive”.

Of course, that kind of statement shows the program is wide open to abuse. The sort of material people would not want to see or receive? Well, then they just don't watch it. Besides, who gets to decide what people would not want to see? Because there's lots of important content that a government might not want its citizens to see, but which are kind of important to a functioning democracy and open society.

While I'm sure the pressure from the government here was quite strong, it's upsetting to see Google cave in to these kinds of requests. Giving the UK government a giant "censor this video" button seems like exactly the wrong approach.

Filed Under: censorship, free speech, jihad, joe lieberman, syria, terrorism, uk, youtube
Companies: google, youtube