France Will Block Web Sites That Promote Terrorism 216
An anonymous reader writes In the first use of government powers enacted after the Charlie Hebdo attacks, the French Interior Ministry on Monday ordered five websites blocked on the grounds that they promote or advocate terrorism. The action raises questions about how governments might counter groups such as the self-declared Islamic State on digital platforms.
Recruiting tools (Score:4, Insightful)
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Never had much (for which, read 'any') use for Facebook or Twitter. But likewise, I've never understood what the problem with either or both existing is. If you don't want to Facebook, then don't. Likewise, if tweeting (or whatever it's called these days _twitting, perhaps?) isn't your thing, then don't.
Do try to remember that even if everyone else does it, that's not actually a requirement that you do
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And with any social media platform, you can control what you see based on who you follow. Don't want to see stupid memes, astrology posts, and endless photos of people's food*? Don't follow people who post these things. There are plenty of people on social media having actual conversations so you can follow them and completely block out the rest of the garbage**.
* Full disclosure: I've been guilty of posting photos of my food on social media, but I try to keep it limited.
** Always keep in mind that one p
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Though a block of ALL of Facebook and Twitter would be popular with everyone tired of the "chatter"?
Pro tip: You can stop the chatter by closing the tab.
It's dumb. (Score:3, Insightful)
If you allow the site to remain accessible, monitoring the traffic to/from will give you a clear bead on terrorist sympathizers in your midst. It will also give you a reading on how effective the terrorist's campaign is, and among what demographics. All of this is very useful intel for defeating them.
Also, being in the spotlight makes them more susceptible to public mockery.
Blocking it just legitimizes their position (in the minds of some), and people who are interested will just work around your blocks (
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The problem with both these positions (yours and the one above yours) is that it ignores one crucial fact - their best channel for recruiting is social media. It's free and has a wide audience.
Cut that off and what are they going to do? Send millions of spam email inviting people to join ISIS as suicide bombers?
Cutting them off forces them to fall back on older recruiting methods that are way more expensive (person - to - person), with a high risk of getting caught, and take a lot longer to produce resul
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Yes, but social media is a recruiting tool, as opposed to the means by which terrorist groups show that they are taken seriously.
I can put up any crazy stuff I want on Facebook, and no one will care. There are all sorts of wierdo groups that have blogs and social media content, but get no attention.
However, if I get on the broadcast news, I'm going to get attention. Indeed, people like to point at such social media after a newsworthy event as a "warning signs" that something was going to happen, and they
How do they define "Terrorism"? (Score:5, Insightful)
THAT'S the relevant question here.
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Followed up with "How will the scope of this block expand in time?"
Let's say we accept that these websites are so horrible that they deserve to be blocked. Fine, they're blocked. Except now, there are some sites that the government wants blocked because they sympathize with the terrorists (though they don't actively promote terrorism). Then, there are sites that promote other heinous illegal activities that are requested to be blocked. Then some not-so-heinous illegal activities (e.g. copyright infringe
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So what you're saying is governments want sites that deal with illegal issues (i.e. copyright infringement) should be blocked.
I don't think that's new.
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No, it's not new that governments want information about how to commit illegal actions blocked, but the big issue isn't "websites engaged in illegal activities will be blocked." Instead it is "how do you know those sites actually engage in illegal activities?" It might be very easy for some random site to be accidentally added to the list or for some government official to add a site because "I think that sort of thing should be against the law." If you get a political group with enough power, this block
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And once the technological system and legal precedent are in place to block one group, it becomes all the easier to block the next group.
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In the US, already, various government agencies have defined "terrorists" as people who store food like the Mormons, support political candidates like Ron Paul, or prefer not to use the banking system.
Disappearing these people under the NDAA is already legal. I guess they could block their website too.
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Easy. Anyone who promotes speech that threatens the status quo.
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So, like the 10 Plagues. That was unleashing biological weapons to frighten the populace to achieve a political goal.
Wait so they are going to block the BBC/CNN/Fox (Score:2)
Free speach == dead (Score:3, Insightful)
so... to protect the free speach of Charlie Hebdo, they ban or block speech that fall under the loose term of "terrorism"
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..., and free speech doesn't mean you're allowed to insult and provoke at your leisure.
It is, and it is your fault if you are offended to the point of initiating physical violence. Charlie Hebdo has as much right to free speech than the toughest and most conservative muslim imams/rabbi/priest. Yes, it is bigoted, but before the attacks, they were about to die of their own death due to lack of funding. The attacks made them martyr, the same way we create martyr when we kill muslims.
However, all in all, all these new laws are merely tools put in place to disqualify political dissidence. The tim
Re:Free speach == dead (Score:5, Insightful)
free speech doesn't mean you're allowed to insult and provoke at your leisure
That's exactly what free speech means. If you could only practice free speech that wasn't controversial, it would be meaningless.
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Um, 'hateful crap' is protected under free speech.
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Actually, yes, Free Speech DOES mean you're allowed to insult and provoke at your leisure.
And then you're allowed to bear the consequences, free of GOVERNMENT sanction.
Rickrolling for Freedom (Score:2)
Containment (Score:5, Interesting)
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This. A billion times this.
Dear religious nutjob: You wanna fight for your imaginary buddy? Be my guest. Go there and, as far as I care, die there. But stay there. You showed that you reject western values, western "decadency", western... you name it. Then enjoy your 7th century paradise.
To me this whole shit feel a bit like them going on a "war vacation". You know, like, checking it out and "enjoying" that good ol' country style, a bit like those "back to the roots" and "all natural" tourists spending thei
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Trying to fight ISIS is a terribly bloody idea.
So what do those people do who don't want to live under an ISIS government, but ISIS has rolled into their neighborhoods and are subjecting them? They should just suck it up and not fight back?
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I think if you want to support ISIS and fundamentalist Islam in a Western country, you should be given a one-way ticket to the Islamic country of your choice.
If you support that statement, how do you argue against someone else saying, "If you want to support Bibi and orthodox Judaism, you should be given a one-way ticket to the Jewish country of your choice".
The difference is that Orthodox Judaism does not force its values/punishments on others. As soon as it does, the statement still holds.
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Gotta love the irony... (Score:5, Insightful)
of a bunch of politicians who were soap-boxing about freedom of the press and "je suis Charlie" engaging in this kind of censorship. All speech is free, but some speech is more free than others. I don't think there's anyone alive who is in a position to form an unbiased judgment of whether a terrorist site, a porn site or Charlie Hebdo is more offensive. Offense, like beauty, is in the mind of the beholder.
Limits to the freedom of speech (Score:2)
Charlie Hebdo was not found to cross those limits.
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Not "block" (Score:2)
And there's not much uproar about these "weapons" (the media call the recent laws "arsenal") being targeted at everyone, ver
don't censor. mock. (Score:4, Interesting)
Terror is a feeling and humor is the antidote. Just as the Scary Movie franchise ruined classic horror, once it's mocked and funny, those giggling are no longer scared. They are empowered and immune to that pattern of fear. The Daily Show is also founded on this, as is/was Charlie Hebdo. France agrees with Charlie, but still fails to understand the guiding principles.
ref: http://www.nbcnews.com/storyli... [nbcnews.com]
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they did mock. and they were violently murdered. just for mocking
so humor helps, but it is not a valid antidote alone. you can't rely only on humor and nothing more if someone is ready to murder you just for laughing at an idea
what happened to charlie hebdo proves humor alone is not enough. if there is a committed, long term, and serious ideology ready to murder people just for satire, then it is time for a new approach
humor is not enough
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censorship of what?
censorship is not valid for pictures of naked ladies or insults to people's prejudices or criticism of the government
censorship is 100% valid for speech which proposes death and violence at specific people
for example: "obama is a poopyhead and i hate him"
ok. do not censor
"we should murder obama"
not ok. censor
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i love the constitution. i love the second amendment
it refers to a *well-regulated* militia
which in 18th century speak means well-trained
so if the usa is going to adhere to the second amendment as written, people must be trained in the use of guns as a condition of them having one
not hand them out to any mouth breathing moron who wants one. if you do that, you get a high homicide rate for fucking stupid reasons. oh wait: the usa has exactly that. gee, that's funny. those founding fathers were onto something
VPN is widely in use there (Score:2)
Because they bent for the music industry and actively went against downloaders, the infrastructure (massive use of VPN's in another country) to circumvent censorship is already in place.
what about (Score:2)
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
the paradox of tolerance (Score:3)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P... [wikipedia.org]
to me it's simple: everything should be free speech, except that speech which calls for the violent removal of free speech
only that should be censored, and there is zero logical contradiction
because to allow free speech to promote the destruction of free speech is self-destruction
like how germany outlaws nazi imagery: to me, an american, this feels like arbitrary censorship incompatible with the idea of a free society. but to a german, what nazism represents is the violent destruction of freedoms. therefore, censoring symbolism which is all about destroying freedom is not a contradiction, because they have first hand experience with what allowing violent freedom destruction actually leads to
intolerance itself, and intolerance of intolerance, are completely opposite concepts. it's not hypocrisy at all
Re:People (Score:5, Insightful)
Where did they pick up the desire to do that? Who is poisoning their young minds?
Maybe they feel alienated because their websites are censored, they are told how to dress, and so many Europeans think they should "go home". In America, Muslims are as free to speak as anyone else, they are welcome to wear their head scarfs to school, and they are well integrated into society. They are also a tenth as likely to join ISIS.
Re:People (Score:5, Funny)
Re:People (Score:4, Funny)
Also, get outside military out of their country. That tends to piss off most humans. Example: US Revolutionary War.
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^^^^^^^^ This ^^^^^^^^
People who think the United States is hostile towards immigrants should spend some time in Europe as one, particularly one of color.
Re:People (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, for best experience try to spend some time in Europe in a predominant Muslim neighbourhood, preferably as an attractive young woman.
Re:People (Score:4, Interesting)
Europe is traditionally a place that people leave so it's not surprising that they haven't figured out how to assimilate immigrants.
It's not even the immigrants that are the biggest problem. It's the 2nd/3rd generation young kids (mostly men 18-25) from immigrants that came over in the 60's and 70's that are causing the most problem. Those are people that grew up there.
Re:People (Score:4, Interesting)
It's the 2nd/3rd generation young kids (mostly men 18-25) from immigrants that came over in the 60's and 70's that are causing the most problem. Those are people that grew up there.
In America, it is the exact opposite. By the 2nd/3rd generation they are fully integrated, speak only English, mostly marry outside their ethnicity, vote Republican, and are complaining about all the dirty Mexicans coming over the border.
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A lot of the "lack of opportunities" is their own fault. There are plenty of Eastern European immigrants in Western Europe that are working their asses off, even though they don't speak the language and have low education. There are Asian immigrants, and 2nd/3rd generation that are working hard and doing well in schools.
It's predominantly the immigrants from Northern African descent that don't speak the language properly, don't bother to get a good education, and don't show much respect for the non-Muslim p
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Not to mention Japan...that's one of the big reasons they have population aging and decline. They don't have the immigrant flow because their society is so closed.
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In America, there aren't as many Muslims. If you have one Muslim kid in the classroom, they aren't as likely to question the teacher about the Jewish holocaust compared to when you have classroom with more than 50% Muslim kids. They'll get more vocal, and more threatening, to the point where any talk about the holocaust has been removed from the curriculum in order not to cause problems.
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Yes. But it's easier to give in than to defend, especially when confronted by a bunch of youths who aren't afraid to use violence.
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Perhaps France should do what America does, and treat history as a matter of facts and evidence, rather than having politicians declaring "winners" and outlawing opposing opinions.
Laws against hate speak are bad, but even worse is to do what France does, and outlaw hate speech against some groups and allow it against others. Holocaust denial is odious and offensive, but so are gratuitous insults against Muslims. Why is it okay for Charlie Hebdo to insult Muslims, but illegal for them to insult Jews?
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Why is it okay for Charlie Hebdo to insult Muslims, but illegal for them to insult Jews?
Say what? They are insulting Christians more than Jews, and Jews more than Muslims. Of course, they are mostly insulting French right wingers.
Fuck, one of the last things published before they got massacred was a defense of Islam against someone they considered a crazy right wing fear-monger. There was quite a bit of schadenfreude over that is some circles.
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There's a reason Obama snubbed the big protest march in favor of free speech.
Yes, it was quite ironic to see Hollande walking through Paris beside the Saudi ambassador, while back in Riyadh, Raif Badawi [wikipedia.org] was receiving 1000 lashes for a blog post.
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Though I have to admit there's a considerable "muslims go home" movement in the US as well. I may be misunderstanding this though, the people espousing that viewpoint tend to misspell "muslim".
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Though I have to admit there's a considerable "muslims go home" movement in the US as well.
Considerable? I don't think so. Do you have any citation for this being more than a fringe movement? American nativists tend to focus almost all their venom toward Mexicans.
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The Somalis Bill Clinton imported were certainly not rich, civilized, polite or loyal.
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While I agree that stopping terrorists are important, there are things worse than that. Removing our freedoms (like here: freedom of religion) seemes to me to be one of them. It is reasonable to prevent people from aiding violent extremists of any kind, but there is little link between that and islam. I.e. there are over 1bn muslims. How many muslim terrorist have we seen the last 50 years? If it is not more than 100,000 (which seems magnitudes too large), that is still less than 0.01% which is basically ju
Re:People (Score:4, Informative)
You are mistake Islam, the religion, with Islamism, the ideology of imposing a certain interpretation of Islam, and features of some ethnical identity strongly associated with Islam, over people. Islam is no poison any degree more than other religions, because it is nothing more than that: a religion.
Moreover, there is a huge mistake when as it seems to be your case, one considers the main cause of terrorism perpetrated by Moslem or Islamists to be Islam itself. It is not so simple. Moslems in western countries are pushed to identify themselves with Islamists because they are discriminated as if they were so. As for the cause of Islamism, it is western occupation. Europeans, especially French and English in the past, occupied land where Moslem lived, which caused a lot of resentment. Later, the English and UN imposed a the creation of a Jewish state in what was known as Palestine with no regard to the people who lived there. And now, Americans have set foot on two Islam countries. Do you think the Iraqis should stay passive while their country is sacked by a hostile, foreign forces?
Do you think the Quran teaches to hate Christians and Jews? Jew-hating in Middle East was in the same levels, or lower, as in Christian countries until the State of Israel was created, until western countries supported the Shah's corrupt regime in Persia.
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Islam is no poison any degree more than other religions, because it is nothing more than that: a religion.
This isn't a particularly strong statement given the record of the other religions.
Re:Necesary Censorship (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Necesary Censorship (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously. If more people had read Mein Kampf, a lot of shit would have been spared from us. Simply because more people would have noticed just what a lunatic that guy was.
Personally, I'd make it mandatory lecture for every neo nazi just to show them what kind of fucked up megalomaniac they idolize.
Censorship doesn't work (Score:2)
Censorship in general, never works very well, and often fans the flames. Just let them post whatever they want. Also, if I was a cia/nsa type, I would want all the extremist groups posting freely and publicly thinking they were safe, so I c
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Nothing has changed. Hitler advocated hatred of a group (jews at the time) as a method of establishing national unity. Today the same thing is going on. 40 years ago everyone hated commies. 20 years ago everyone hated faggots. Today everyone hates pedophiles, terrorists, and anyone with backwards thinking (meaning anyone over the age of 40). Of coarse our present hatreds are perfectly justified, unlike those racists bastards who hated the wrong sorts of people back in the olden days.
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Seriously. If more people had read Mein Kampf, a lot of shit would have been spared from us. Simply because more people would have noticed just what a lunatic that guy was. Personally, I'd make it mandatory lecture for every neo nazi just to show them what kind of fucked up megalomaniac they idolize.
Doesn't matter, he was the perfect talking head. He got people engaged, he got people enraged, he was speaking directly to a gravely wounded national pride. You might think the captain of the boat is a total idiot, but you're not going to stage a mutiny as long as he's on the course you want to be. Never underestimate the power of telling people what they want to hear.
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Yup. Exactly.
If more people had read that drivel, maybe more people would have noticed what kind of pantsless Emperor that little man was.
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This is often asserted, and it would be nice if it were true, but is there any actual evidence for it?
Sleeping through first semester German class (Score:2)
Nothing could do more damage to that movement than exposing that Das Fuhrer had the language skills of a middle school American sleeping through their first semester German class.
It's Der Fuerher...
(Did you take German in 7th or 8th grade?)
Re:Sleeping through first semester German class (Score:5, Funny)
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It's Mein Fuhrer.
(Did you even take part in the Hitler Youth?)
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It has been debated if A. Hitler had a fully functional reproductive organ, so deliberately saying "das" could be a statement.
And yet it did NOT happen (Score:2)
More than 10 million book copy were given away by the end of the war. It did not stop his rise. Neither did it help it falls. I keep hearing that showing people how bad the stuff is will actually work in favor of better udnerstanding and whatnot. All I see is actually is actually extremist spreading their stuff and nobody laughin
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By trying to censor, you only strengthen their resolve.
Ignoring them doesn't work so well, either. You miss the point where your "ANYTHING" includes nothing - if you do nothing, they will make something up. Heck, look how the right-wing christians in USA speak of being prosecuted.
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I wonder why so many people wear Che t-shirts..........have they ever read any of Che's prose?
"The situation was uncomfortable for the people and for Eutimio so I ended the problem giving him a shot with a .32 pistol in the right side of the brain, with exit orifice in the right temporal." - Che Guevara
Re:Necesary Censorship (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, glad that those misguided idiots now can't have access to content promoting hatred in the name of religion.
Unless of course he goes to his local mosque. So let's shut down the mosques. Then they'll get together somewhere else.
Face it. There's no way you can keep idiots from being caught by sects. What you can do, and best would be such a way as this, is to make this harder to observe by your security forces.
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So, you're saying the websites of places like army.mil are going to be blocked?
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Re:What about websites and paper magazines (Score:5, Interesting)
Charlie Hebdo is actually anti-racist, left-wing, and will mock nationalist party National Front just as much as different religions, including Judaism and Christianity. They only seem to be anti-Muslim, because that's the only group that can't take a joke.
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Taunting insane people isn't nice, but it's a far cry from lunatics killing people.
Re:What about websites and paper magazines (Score:4, Informative)
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that info is on a terror site and cannot be confirmed for truth... by the very fact you mention it probably makes you a terrorist.
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Jaysus, can you imagine how high the Louis number would be with a couple more centuries of them???
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its only terrorism when those we don;t agree with do it.
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"It is time that equality bore its scythe above all heads. It is time to horrify all the conspirators. So legislators, place Terror on the order of the day! Let us be in revolution, because everywhere counter-revolution is being woven by our enemies. The blade of the law should hover over all the guilty."
Some French people have been pleased to call the tactics that they agree with "terror".
Terrorism is very simply producing terror in a population as a tactic for political gain. What the "jihadis" are doin
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I vote for an empiric research of the subject.
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that's terrorist talk right there
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What I'm gonna do? tor.eff.org
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Yes, I'm evading your censorship. Why? None of your fucking business.
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It also works for the target demographic of the terrorist organizations' recruiting drives. People already in these groups will find a way around the blocks. But the advertising campaign is aimed at new recruits who are not yet motivated to set up routes around the blocks. That's why ISIS got their panties in a bunch [slashdot.org] over Twitter account suspensions. Not because they use Twitter internally, but that's how they reach out to kids.
And this is a really good reason to tread very carefully when blocking porn or