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UN Wants to Combat Online Racism
Ristoril writes "There's an article on Yahoo! News about the United Nations World Conference on Racism, Racial Discrimination and Xenophobia, taking place in 2001. The goal is to get nations to start 'doing something' about racist propaganda on the Internet. While no specific policies are mentioned, I seriously doubt they're planning the sensible thing -- education." Thoughts? Comments? Suggestions?
Not necessarily, no, but it is the UN itself which tries to promote the UDHR (Universal Declaration of Human Rights), article 19 of which says:
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
Note the part about "imparting information and ideas through any media": The UN, if it attempted to actually remove speech that it found offensive, would be violating it's own UDHR.
"A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
"A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
- 'K' in Men in Black.
I am sincerely hoping that you meant "speech" wherever you just said "thought". Otherwise, this appears to be a justification of the concept of thoughtcrime, instead of just an argument in favor of censorship.
The arguments for / against censorship are being endlessly rehashed elsewhere, so I won't deal with them here (except to note that censorship is a diversity-limiting concept -- and if you except it on the grounds that it protects diversity -- do you censor anti-censorship speech on the grounds that it's anti-diversity? Seems awfully hypocritical to me.)
But if there's one thing that I will not let you do, it is tell me what I can and cannot think. Let's examine some of this for a second:
It's like saying murder should be allowed cause everyone should be free to do what ever the hell they want.
Um, no. It's actually not at all like that. It's like saying I should be allowed to (for example) feel like killing you for posting this. Sure, feeling like that would be incredibly unreasonable. But as long as I don't act on it, are you arguing that I should be penalized for that? If I should, why? Should Spock be the only person not in violation of your law?
racism doesn't (usually) directly cause the death of someone, but it indirectly causes the death of a global society, progress and humanity.
What would you propose doing about it? About anti-diverse speech? About anti-diverse thought? And would your solution to anti-diverse thought really be any better than what it replaces. (What exactly is anti-diverse thought? Who decides? Also see my questions about censorship above.)
Thought can be more destructive sometimes than the act - thought usually leads to the act too, and it should be discouraged.
Great. Punish me if I don't have enough self-control to avoid committing the act -- but if I just think about it, what then? If it's an irrational thought, you should have educated me beforehand about the (dis|ad)vantages of thinking that way. But once I've had the thought? Therapy? But why therapy me if I didn't act on it? I haven't hurt anyone. Well, ok, it might have led me to hurt someone. Sure, and my choosing to drive to the store instead of walk there also made me more likely to hit a pedestrian on the way. Do I get punished for that? (Ok, ok, call the analogy police. But it's no worse than your murder analogy.)
Basically, punishing (or attempting to therapy) people for basically unverifiable potentials for causing others what may or may not be considered harm based on who's deciding, which society should have educated them against anyway, and when they had enough self-control not to actually carry anything out and hurt anyone is not a successful foundation for any sort of legal system.
Is there anything obviously wrong with this? Let me know.
For those concerned about the US position on such proposals, at the Holocaust conference the US envoy said that freedom of speech issues would prevent the US from supporting restrictions against racist activity on the Internet, but that hate groups could be monitored for "planning destructive activity."
As for what the Expert Commission is actually discussing in February in regards to the internet, it's a three hour session (part of a three day seminar) on the remedies available to victims of acts of racism and incitement to racial hatred on the internet; technical problems linked to prosecution of acts of racism on the internet; and the legal and technical questions of the issue (such as defining the act, the perpetrator of the act, responsibility of the servers and providers, competence of prosecutors, international cooperation in the judicial aspects).
What the United Nations is concerned with is the systematic use of the internet to exacerbate conflicts, facilitate 'ethnic cleansing', and target migrants or refugees by stoking ethnic hatred and intolerance - not people randomly using 'hate speech' in a chatroom or on usenet, or even the typical idiotic webpage spewing 'white vs. black' ideas. In this regard, the internet is seen as just another mass media tool in the arsenal of those promoting such ideas, similar to radio, television, and the press (as was used in Rwanda where the horrific genocide was sparked by inflammatory radio broadcasts and newspapers). I spent most of 1997 as a senior intelligence operations noncommissioned officer in support of the NATO peacekeeping mission in Bosnia, and I've seen firsthand the use of the internet in this manner by all sides in that situation (Serbian, Croatian, and Bosniac), and the misrepresentations and lies became so bad that the High Commissioner (of the international community) in Bosnia had to place restrictions on the news broadcasts and webpostings of each sides' press agencies, lest they renew the conflict. The same tactics were used when the NATO action againt Serbia was ongoing, when all sorts of anti-Serb and anti-Kosovar sites sprang up online. You can see similar sites regarding nearly any major dispute in the world today: try Kashmir, or the ongoing Ethiopia-Eritrea war. The question we need to address is where the line lies between legitimate representation of views and propaganda sparking and leading to criminal acts, outright conflict and genocide.
As for the foreseeable future, the international community isn't even at the point of coming up with agreed upon definitions concerning the issue, much less finalizing guidelines, and plans of action for effectively combating such speech online, and is nowhere near the paranoid view expressed elsewhere in the thread that the United Nations is coming up with international laws, treaties, conventions, restrictions, etc promoting censorship or banning free speech on the internet.
For more background and information on the Third World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance, check out their website at http://www.un.org/rights/racism/
By the way, this is my first post to slashdot after lurking for a year. :) Hi everyone!
SenshiNeko (representing the Republic of The Gambia in the Security Council at the National Model United Nations Conference this year)
Honestly, I doubt that education would help the worst offenders. It seems to me that the ones with the most hate are impervious to reason OR education. Sometimes it's a maater of faith, which IMO is the height of irrationality.
If you don't teach em when they're kids, except in rare cases, you're just not going to teach them. You can't teach a door to be a window, so you can't teach a racist to be tolerant.
No, I don't have any other solutions. I wish I did.
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The weird thing about this conference is that none of the Arab nations was invited to be represented, supposedly out of respect for Israel (which is a dubious way to express respect). This is especially interesting, since the whole "Islamic Terrorist" image is one of the most recent racial stereotypes to arise in (at least American) Western culture. But I suppose CNN and friends are less likely to carry stories that demonstrate the failings of CNN and friends.
It's too bad Yahoo only carries AP and not AFP, or I'd have some links to share. And remember, if you don't do it for the babies, at least do it to thwart the ragheads, right? Lovely culture.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
I can't really say that I'm surprised. We're moving so swiftly towards the New World Order, where any views which go contrary to the masses are labelled thoughtcrimes, and the offenders forced into re-education camps or simply silenced in the night, that it makes sense that the UN would go after this.
Maybe I'm alone in this, but even if I strongly disagree or become deeply offended at what someone else is saying, I'm still willing to defend to the death their right to say it. It doesn't matter to me if it's the KKK, neo-Nazis, the Nation of Islam, or the Scientologists. And yes, I realize that the freedoms I seen deteriorate in the States aren't necessarily granted anywhere else in the world. That doesn't stop me from believing everyone should have those rights. We don't seen to have that freedom anymore in the US, so why not have the UN going around to ensure that no one does?
Whatever happened to diversity? Diversity of opinion is just as important as any other kind of diversity.
The best way these things is the way a state government official in one of the southern states (can't recall which right now) where the KKK has adopted a stretch of highway through one of those adopt-a-road programs is handling it. They can't deny the KKK the right to adopt the highway. Instead, this person has introduced legislation to rename it the Rosa Parks Memorial Highway.
That is, IMHO, the best way to handle these things.
---
Yeah, this is pretty fscking disjointed. It's been a long day, a long night at class, and I really should be asleep, but . . .
"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." --H.L. Mencken
A new research study reported today that the use of copper wire by racist, skinhead, and white supremacy groups is at an all-time high. "This is a disturbing trend," said a predictably reliable source of meaningless blather. "It is imperative that right-thinking people around the world band together to combat racism, imperialism, Zionism, and other -isms that the UN and the world press disapprove of."
U.S. government officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed that racist and neo-Nazi organizations make extensive use of copper. "These guys use copper wire to communicate all the time. They connect to the Internet, they watch cable TV, they call each other on the phone," said the official. "But that's just scratching the surface," he continued, "they use copper in electrical wiring, light switches, electrical fixtures--hey, some of them even use copper-bottomed pots and pans to cook meals for their racist friends."
These shocking revelations come hard on the heels of disturbing new revelations that many of the Swiss and German insurance companies that failed to pay on Nazi-era policies also make extensive use of copper wire for both communications and electric power distribution. Swiss government officials in Zurich refused to confirm reports that they were investigating whether insurance company officials used copper-bottomed pans for cooking.
Leading scientists, meeting at a UN-sponsored conference in Tokyo, sought to clarify the issue. "Copper can be an element for good, or for evil," said reknowned ethicist Robert Brooks of Harvard University. "While we deplore the way that these disgraceful elements are using copper, we have to remember the positive ways in which copper has been used for good." Nonetheless, Prof. Brooks did observe that there is a longstanding link between copper and racism--dating back to the early days of the slave trade, when the hulls of slave ships and other vessels of the period were routinely covered with copper to protect the ships from rot. "Think of it," mused Brooks, "how far we've come from the days of the slave trade, and we still can't manage to keep copper out of the hands of these people."
For more information, contact the International Alliance to Ban Copper and Racism, 475 Riverside Drive, New York, NY 10022.
There are a couple of problems with combating online racism. First of all, trying to censor the internet will never work; look at DeCSS. As soon as some web sites were ordered not to offer it, dozens of others popped up in their place. The same thing could happen with racism. Second, the UN is trying to fight the symptom instead of the disease. Stopping people from expressing racist views will not eliminate racism; people will be as ignorant as they were before. I agree that education is the only answer to stop people from being ignorant enough to be racist in the first place.
When you start nitpicking on what people can and can't say, you have fiascos like the Seattle "riots" over the WTO. When you silence your opposition, you are infringing on their right to express their ideas how they see fit. You don't have to endorse them but if you value your freedom of speech, you have to respect theirs. Who are you going to let judge whether your words and ideas are deserving of censorship? Are you going make the courts determine whether any word you utter is proper? What if you piss off the wrong group, like with the DVD case? What about the guy whom was fired for using the word niggerdly because someone thought it referred to black people in a derogative way or the guy who was fired for talking about a Seinfeld episode?
If someone were to start the National Association for the Advancement of White People, would the NAACP get to have them shut down for being racist by excluding blacks? What if someone started the United White Guy college fund? Are they more discriminitory that the United Negro College Fund? What of so called reverse discrimination? Do proclaimed minorities have greater rights than the "white male majority?"
Is is worse to kill someone because they're black than it is to kill someone because they parked in the 7th parking space from the left of the center of the parking lot? Is it appropriate to hire a less qualified minority rather than hire a better qualified white male? Affirmative action and so called hate crimes only create further tension between the races. When you begin banning opinions and start waiving special protections for certain groups, you're giving people a reason to hate MORE.
When it comes down to it, words are just words. Regardless of how someone feels, words are necessary to convey how people feel and they have the right to express their feelings whether or not a single other person agrees with them. Judge by actions, not words.
Don't leave your mind so open that your brain falls out. Don't close it so much that you cut off the blood.
Although you are correct in that there is some genetic difference between the different races of humanity, the effect of this fact is generally negligable when dealing with anything more specific than statistical generalities.
I tend to think that society and culture have more effect than genetics do, and that the breadth of genetic possiblities within a racial group is more broad than the genetic tendancies for that race. (ie. Africans have a tendancy to have longer legs and to be better at running than do those of European decent, but I've met my share of stubby legged Africans - and of long legged Europeans).
Given your idea that you can measure how advanced a people are by what technology they produced, I would counter that most major technological advances came from the most wealthy peoples at the time, and that what race they were had nothing to do with it.
When the Chinese were rich, they produced Paper, Gunpowder, etc. When the Greeks were rich, they produced the science and philosophy that would power later technological advances. During the European dark ages, when everyone was poor, they produced exactly jack shit - All the western technological advances of that period came from the Muslims in Arabia and North Africa. Then, when the Europeans became rich again they spawned all the recent history we know and love.
Hmm... I think I managed to actually say something...
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
If they're going to outlaw racist webpages then what websites will I be able to go to to make fun of the obviously illogical reasoning? Now, I'm not saying that a logical argument for racist conclusions isn't possible, I'm just saying that absurdly illogical arguments are more common.
Oh, wait, there's still religious sites like capreport.org to make fun of... I'll be just fine =P
And I think my .sig is appropriate to this subject...
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
Racism is, frankly, disgusting. Not too far from my home (my real home, not my college apartment) lives one family in particular. The youngest of the three daughters is no more than eight years old (and I've known them for five years) and ever since I moved there, I've listened to them grow increasingly hateful and racist, to the point where my sisters and I can't even invite a good portion of our friends over anymore for fear that those three will come out and start harrassing them. It has to be, without a doubt, the single most sickening thing I've ever seen.
But I cannot support censorship of any kind (except for parental censorship and self-censorship). I'll grant; I'd like to see all hate speech disappear from the Net. But it's not my place, nor anyone else's, to start forcibly removing it.
In the past I've mentioned the ".xxx plan" for porn. I've always found the idea intriguing (the idea being that porn sites would have to register under that domain). It still allows porn sites to exist, but in a manner such that someone who doesn't want to see those sites can avoid them very easily. As far as I'm concerned that's even more important than making filtering easier for parents who choose to use it. I want to be able to hit AltaVista, run a search, and hit a checkbox labeled "exclude porn sites" so I don't have to wade through them while I look for what I'm really after.
Perhaps a similar plan could work for hate speech such as this (".hate" or ".kkk" or something similar). It means that you have to legally define hate speech, but that's not as difficult as defining porn.
I would submit that hate speech could be defined as the advocation of the annhilation, forced separation, or intimidation of any group of people based on beliefs, genetic factors, physical or mental prowess, or anything else other than the objective merits of the individuals within that group. Does anyone agree or disagree?
Keep in mind, this plan does not prohibit such speech in any way. What it does do is make it so that a person who views a site knows beforehand just what the site contains. I don't see how this is an affront to anyone's rights; frankly I find it to be a bigger affront to my own rights when people pull cure HTML tricks to redirect me from a harmless-looking personal page into a porn site. Implicit in the right to free speech are two other very important rights: the right to hear what I choose, and the right to not hear what I choose not to.
One of the things I cherish about the Internet is the freedom from racial prejudice. Unless I choose to reveal it, no one knows my race, my sex, my age, my religion or anything else. They can judge me by my words and actions.
I'm franky disturbed by this. The article seemed to imply that there was a need for some kind of censorship. Instead of wasting your time trying to silence these groups, publish rebuttals and spread your own message. If you think that reading some words on some poorly written Neo-Nazi web site is going to start a race war, you've got deeper problems already. This quote jumped out at me, "Sweden has one of the world's highest rates of Internet usage, with more half of adults online. The country has found itself at the hub of European neo-Nazism, with a rising racist crime rate."
They seem to be implying a positive correlation between internet usage rates and neo-Nazism. Sounds like the Internet has once again become the scapegoat. Obviously there must be some deeper issues going on in Sweden. Anyone there want to fill us in on the story?
Anyway, if we are going to embark into this brave new world, let us do it right! Let's ban all speech that is hateful, further lets ban all speech from parties that have committed crimes against humanity. We don't need those messages being imparted onto our impressionable youth.
I guess the first thing to do is to shut down all the United States Government sites. Here is a quote I found on a Native American site:
"Over 300 Million Indigenous Peoples were brutally tortured and murdered by an invasion of foreign forces in an act to Exterminate an Indigenous Peoples so as to Steal their Land and Resources. Those who were not exterminated were Forcefully Removed from their lands (either at gunpoint or the point of a bayonet or by Forged Treaties) and driven off to Federal PRISON Camps called RESERVATIONS. "
I'll leave it to you to decide the validity of their claim. Maybe we should shut this site down for implying that the U.S. Government slaughtered millions of Native Americans? Or should we shut down other sites because they deny the Native American Holocaust?
Or perhaps we can start teaching critical thinking and reasoning so our citizens can make informed decisions! But we couldn't have that, after all once citizens can think logically they might actually start taking back their rights. *sigh*
The more you know, the less you understand.
I am sick of hearing the phrase New World Order!
"Next World Order" is more like it. Everything evolves, changes. The attitudes, tastes, arts and even sciences of today evolved out of yesterday's World Order, and tomorrow's will be different from todays.
I am personally sick of everyone lumping change under the banner New World Order, as if the current "World Order" is uniquely special in the annuls of history.
Many associate any attempt to develop societal uniformity in any capacity as the Great Satan.
I have a hard time believing that there is NOTHING in this world greater for us to acchive or strive for than to have individuals who can do whatever they want.
Look at our environment, they way we fight each other and the way our society splits into disparate classes from the slum to the suburb, will these problems ever be solved without some freedom being lost in the sacrifice?
Oh, that's right - it's more important that no one EVER have to curtail their freedom one iota then to weed out the maladjusted, and downright evil in the world.
The nobility of the middle ages would be shocked to see our form of society now, yet all here would aggree that what we have is better.
The "better" world of 200 years from now may look different, and we would be just as shocked to be plopped down in the middle of it.
"Sig free in '03!"