Internet Firms Urged to Limit Work of Anwar al-Awlaki
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/19/us/politics/internet-firms-urged-to-limit-work-of-anwar-al-awlaki.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
Pressure on Internet companies to take down his work is
growing, because legal experts say the First Amendment would
prohibit the government from ordering restrictions. With
emotions running high after the most lethal terrorist attack on
American soil since Sept. 11, 2001, there is widespread
frustration among counterterrorism officials and independent
experts at his continuing impact. But possible solutions are
divisive and complex, raising a tangle of issues involving
technology, national security, religion and freedom of speech.
- - -
The people who keep proposing these mass proactive takedowns only
demonstrate their gross ignorance of the technical issues involved,
and of the vast number of workarounds that uploaders can employ -- just
as they successfully employ with other "forbidden" materials. Even
worse, attempts to ban such items will only make them even more
attractive to seek out and host -- still widely available further
underground, but harder for authorities to monitor. And all of this is
completely apart from the complex speech and policy issues. "Magical
thinking" won't get us anywhere useful in this area. The solution for
"bad" information isn't trying to hide it, but to supplant it with
"good" information. And Western governments on the whole are too
incompetent, too lazy, or too cheap to produce the kinds of materials
that could effectively fight back against increasingly professionally
produced terrorist propaganda.
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein ([email protected]): http://www.vortex.com/lauren
Founder:
- Network Neutrality Squad: http://www.nnsquad.org
- PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com/privacy-info
Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: http://www.pfir.org/pfir-info
Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
Google+: http://google.com/+LaurenWeinstein
Twitter: http://twitter.com/laurenweinstein
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 / Skype: vortex.com
I have consulted to Google, but I am not currently
doing so -- my opinions expressed here are mine alone.
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