generalspeaking

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"Privacy has never been absolute right, and the debate about this should not become a reason for postponing urgent and difficult decisions [achieving balance between privacy and security]."
"They [ISIS] are exploiting the power of the web to create a jihadi threat with near-global reach. The challenge to governments and their intelligence agencies is huge  -- and it can only be met with greater cooperation from technology companies."
"There is no need for today's would-be jihadis to seek out restricted websites with secret passwords: They can follow other young people posting their adventures in Syria as they would anywhere else."
"I understand why they have an uneasy relationship with government. They aspire to be neutral conduits of data and to sit outside or above politics. But increasingly, their services not only host the material of violent extremism or child exploitation, but are the routes for the facilitation of crime and terrorism."
"However much they may dislike it they have become the command-and-control networks of choice for terrorists and criminals, who find their services as transformational as the rest of us."
"I suspect most ordinary users of the Internet are ahead of [technology companies]: They have strong views on the ethics of companies, whether on taxation, child protection or privacy; they do not want the media platforms they use with their friends and families to facilitate murder or child abuse."
Robert Hannigan, director, GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters), London

This is an undated image of GCHQ in Cheltenham England released by British Government on Tuesday Nov. 4. 2014

Here are the giants of social media, reamed out for their enablement of terrorist groups like ISIS to reach their target audience with no shield, no guardians, nothing to stand in the way of their ability through the auspices of networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and Google to send their bleakly nihilistic message to susceptible young Muslims to join them in violent Islamist jihad. With no reason to hide their presence, since there are no penalties, ISIS and al-Qaeda-linked groups flaunt their presence openly.

Their supporters and members now understand full well they have the freedom to download whatever they wish to, to make whatever incendiary statements that appeal to them, whatever slanderous incitements they lay claim to, with no sword of potential banishment hanging over their keyboards. The new director of Britain's electronic eavesdropping agency has challenged the American companies dominating the Internet to do better.

To do something, almost anything, to turn the situation around. Pointing out that foreign jihadis in Syria and Iraq had realized a picnic of released information from the leaked intelligence hijacked and publicized by former U.S. intelligence contractor Edward Snowden. He spoke scathingly of the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham representing "the first terrorist group whose members have grown up on the Internet", glorying on the Internet, enabled by social media.

European government officials have already on earlier occasions conferred with companies like Microsoft and Twitter to reach some kind of understanding on how terrorist groups utilize the social media networks to proselytize, gain new adherents, convince new recruits that their futures lie with committing to extremist expressions of violent jihad, surpassing all previous terrorism successes in convincing recruits to jihad.

Unlike in the past when al-Qaeda groups "saw the Internet as a place to disseminate material anonymously or meet in 'dark spaces', [ISIS] has embraced the web as a noisy channel in which to promote itself, intimidate people and radicalize new recruits." He referred in specific to messaging and social media sites and apps, exampling Twitter, Facebook and WhatsApp.

He has called for greater cooperation with intelligence and surveillance agencies on the part of the social media sites, as a commitment to aid against the conflict with Islamofascism. Taking their example from more tightly regulated telecommunications companies. The looseness of experience in the casual interplay between legitimate and forbidden videos was amply demonstrated in June when ads for the National Citizen Service, a British government organization, the BBC, charities and corporations ads ran next to extremist videos.

Videos spreading Islamist propaganda meant to stimulate young Muslims to join the conflict in Syria were presaged by legitimate government and business advertisements, creating an impression adverse to controlling the violently nihilistic message openly advanced by fanatical Islamists whose goal is the destabilization of Western democracies in pace with the growth and forward march of their extremist totalitarian ideology.

Islamic State Times @ISTimes2  ·  Nov 4
The mea culpa advanced by YouTube was its unfortunate automated advert allocation, lacking the sensitivity and common sense of a human hand discerning between the legitimate and the obscene. The added gut-punch was that ads-generating money could have been funnelled to the extremists since YouTube, like most sites, shares income from advertisers with groups providing content.

Labels: Britain, Internet, Islamism, Propaganda, Social Media, Technology, United States

posted by Pieface @ Thursday, November 06, 2014