Posted on 05/28/2008 1:45:51 PM PDT by Dawnsblood
In “Joe Lieberman, Would-Be Censor” (editorial, May 25), you proclaim it “ludicrous” to “claim that the Internet promotes terrorism.” But the fact is that the Internet, through violent jihadist videos posted on YouTube, is being used to recruit terrorists here in the United States. And that is what I have asked YouTube, in the national interest, to stop.
The bipartisan staff of the Senate committee I head, which oversees homeland security matters, has documented that Islamist terror networks rely extensively on the Internet in their continuing war against the American people.
The intelligence community, moreover, sounded the alarm about proliferation of radical Islamist sites in a 2007 National Intelligence Estimate: warning that, even absent guidance from established terror organizations, the Internet enables “alienated people to find and connect with one another, justify and intensify their anger, and mobilize resources to attack.”
What is ludicrous is the claim that YouTube has been pressured to pull down videos just because I don’t like them. Al Qaeda and its affiliates are engaged in a wartime communications strategy to recruit, amass funds and inspire savage attacks against American troops and civilians. Their Internet videos are branded with logos, authenticating them as enemy communications. They are patent incitements to violence, not First Amendment-protected speech. And they fall outside Google’s own stated guidelines for content.
The peril here is not to legitimate dissent but to our fundamental right of self-defense. For those of us in government, protecting Americans is the highest responsibility. Asking private parties operating public communications systems to assist that effort is common sense.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
The Congressional Summer Follies are starting early.
Isn’t it better to have terrorist messages out in the open, where intelligence experts and any number of interested amateurs can monitor them and warn of impending dangers, rather than driving them underground where they’ll be harder to track? Disagree with Lieberman on this.
I agree with you if they were just messages. but most of what they do on YouTube is showing our men getting hit by IED’s.
Youtube has regularly censored Michelle Malkin’s videoblog posts. They have done so because of the “tone” and nature of the “political content” of her posts (not copyright violation).
They are not a common carrier. Therefor Google’s Youtube CAN be taken to task for the content they DO leave online (like pro-jihadist pro-terrorist clips).
AID and COMFORT to the enemy.
Mildred Gillars was convicted of treason for a radio drama she broadcast in WWII. She was employed by Nazi Germany, she misrepresented herself as a Red Cross nurse and had interviewed US troops who were held POW in Germany and took their comments out of context, and routinely made pro-Nazi, anti-Allies, anti-semitic broadcasts, yet it was the work of fiction for which she was convicted.
The issue is whether the intelligence we are getting is worth the damage caused by allowing them unrestrained access.
The counter terrorism agencies monitor a lot more than just the Internet, so they may be getting a great deal of the same information (and perhaps a lot more) from other sources. After all, the terrorists still have a continuing need to communicate and, excepting Lebanon's Hezbollah, they don't have their own private telecommunications systems. Their communications are going to come up in public networks somewhere.
Despite the existence of good, publicly available encryption technology, it is unlikely that they are passing the really sensitive stuff using a wide open channel like the Internet website. It might be useful for general tactical messaging where the message can be intentionally vague or when there isn't enough time between command and action to decrypt the signal in order to take an appropriate counteraction. But for long range operational planning, why take the chance it will be “broken” if the intercepting agency has a long period of time to process and reprocess the suspected communication through their massive computer complexes.
If the cost-to-benefit ratio for tolerating the sites is negative (e.g., we are being hurt more than we are gaining), then the intelligence value argument goes out the window. You may want to fall back on a more general free speech argument at that point but its utility is limited in the face of the real danger posed by the terrorist threat. A logical argument can be made for restricting or curtailing some small amount of the torrential free flow of information that is the Internet when the restriction has a demonstrable benefit and the cost to the general (i.e., non-jihadist/islamist/sympathizer) public is low. This is, after all, still a war.
Yes, you are right. The edge of the "slippery slope" is right there. The point to remember is that democracies can reverse restrictions when they have outlived their utility. For totalitarian/fascist regimes, there is no end to the usefulness of such restrictions.
In an unclassified, open source setting, it is hard to know whether or not the danger outweighs the benefit. The only people who can really tell us, the intelligence agencies, are not going to do so because it would disclose too much about their sources and methods. Senator Lieberman notwithstanding, based on what has happened to date (essentially nothing), it seems they are getting more out of leaving them up than they are being harmed by them. Whether or not they are getting much in the way of actionable intelligence, I wouldn't know.
THIS!
Censorship benefits no one but the censors. The enemy's boasts and glorification of barbarism need to be seen and exposed, not suppressed!
Lieberman won't even be up for re-election until 2012, so why is he acting like he's running this year?
"Dear government bureaucrats,
"LEAVE THE INTERNET ALONE! Do not interfere with things that you do not even understand, because technology advances at a pace FAR beyond that of the creaking wheels of the law.
"Sincerely, Anonymous"
I wouldn’t want the government to start censoring - however as a private company, YouTube does have an obligation to listen to its users. That’s why I support users flagging these film according to the rules YouTube has already set in place through their terms of use... According to the TOS at YouTube these videos are a violation. I have to admit that it’s ridiculous that some of these stay up for so long... Especially certain users whose only videos are promotion of violence against our soldiers and in support of the terrorists. We already have a law on the books that prohibits them from providing service to terrorists, but that apparently doesn’t mean much of anything to those running the service.
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