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U.S. House Says the Internet is Terrorist Threat
GayBliss writes "The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill (H.R. 1955) last month, by a vote of 404 to 6, that says the Internet is a terrorist tool and that Congress needs to develop and implement methods to combat it."
Your forgetting that there is nothing scarier then people communicating!!!
(The sad part is that it is that while it is a funny statement, it is basically true and some fool will probably try and ban unapproved communication so they will feel safer. (and then once they are 'safer' they will still be much more likely to die while driving to the 7 Eleven...))
Thinking over that line in the bill a bit, it occurs to me:
Communication of *any kind "has aided in facilitating violent radicalization" -- because all communication can be propagandistic.
The question vis-a-vis combating terrorism is whether the (pun) *net effect of interconnectedness via a series of tubes is to increase or decrease radicalization.
It's really a question about whether you trust the good information to get out at a faster rate than the propaganda.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
going by most peoples' definitions, e.g. Al Qaeda, then probably not. but if you include anarchist groups, earth first, etc, then there are plenty of examples. and i'm pretty sure the government's definition is the latter.
Can anyone provide a single example of a terrorist act that resulted from an individual in isolation reading propaganda on the Internet? It looks like all the Muslim terrorists - even though they use the Internet - have been primarily motivated and coordinated through their mosques. So should the first thing to go be freedom of speech, when freedom of religion is much closer to the source of the terrorist threat? The Christian Web sites that have provided names and addresses of physicians providing abortions, then crossed them off as they were assassinated by the faithful, might be closer to what the Congress shows fear of. Even in that case, the prime motivators of the assassins were their preachers and congregations, not their solo reading of a hateful Web site, afaik.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
"`(4) IDEOLOGICALLY BASED VIOLENCE- The term `ideologically based violence' means the use, planned use, or threatened use of force or violence by a group or individual to promote the group or individual's political, religious, or social beliefs."
Well, that's it then. This bill renounces the motivations behind the Revolutionary War.
I want a law banning Independence Day celebrations, any burning of the Gaspee in effigy (Tea in the harbor? Wimps. _We_ burned a British tax ship to the friggin waterline), Bunker Hill battle reconstructions, and anything else related to "violence in the name of ideology"
What a fucking joke.
--
BMO
And once again we as americans sit back and do nothing.
The personal, as everyone's so fucking fond of saying, is political. So if some idiot politician, some power player tries to execute policies that harm you or those you care about, take it personally.
Get angry.
The Machinery of Justice will not serve you here -- it is slow and cold, and it is theirs, hardware and soft-. Only the little people suffer at the hands of Justice; the creatures of power slide out from under with a wink and a grin. If you want justice, you will have to claw it from them. Make it personal. Do as much damage as you can.
Get your message across. That way you stand a far better chance of being taken seriously next time. Of being considered dangerous. And make no mistake about this: being taken seriously, being considered dangerous, marks the difference -- the only difference in their eyes -- between players and little people. Players they will make deals with. Little people, they liquidate. And time and again they cream your liquidation, your displacement, your torture and brutal execution with the ultimate insult that it's just business, it's politics, it's the way of the world, it's a tough life, and that it's nothing personal. Well, fuck them. Make it personal.
As told by Quellcrist Falconer, and I have to agree.
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
My problem with it is simply that they're swinging at windmills. What sort of evidence do we even have that there are violent radicals planning huge attacks in this country?
The plots that have been foiled so far have been more of "a bunch of hicks with half-baked ideas that could never even come to fruition short of massive incompetence on the part of generic law enforcement" deal.
Then again... massive incompetence is what a lot of this country's current problems boil down to. Either that, or calculated moves to reinforce central government absolute rule veiled as massive incompetence. I'm more prone to follow Occam's razor, though, and believe the former.
I disagree. AFAICT, you actually use your early subscription privileges to compulsively scan every new article on slashdot to find those that are in any way critical of centralized government authority. Then, no matter what the particulars of the issue, no matter how benign or draconian the actions in question, you write a long multiple paragraph f1rst p0st where you express your staunch support of each and every case of expanded government authority or surveillance powers. Blissfully ignoring the lessons of the brutal history of the 20th century, your post invariably dismisses any and all concerns about each issue, regardless of their validity, as nothing more than paranoid ranting.
Thank you! $22 Million to study what is already known or a slippery slope to restricting freedoms by committee. Forgive me if I don't give the benefit of the doubt to the former and start pondering the later. Here's a good article on the bill: http://www.slate.com/id/2178646/
I wish I had mod-points to use, instead of feeding the trolls, but the parent poster apparently have no idea what he is talking about. While it is true that most people in the suburbs causing the riots have come from muslim countries, the riots themselves have nothing to do with religion and everything to do with an enormous distrust with the French authorities and young people just wanting to destroy things.
The Homeland Security Brigade is sure out in force on Slashdot today. It's a shame the summary was exaggerated, because it gave you an excuse to dismiss the serious problems posed by such a bill.
If you bother reading through the actual bill text, you will see it is creating yet another secretive bogeyman-protection government agency, this time focusing on the "homegrown terrorists."
Much of the bill is occupied with broadening the definition of terrorism, so that it may apply equally well to anyone who publicly promotes views the government deems an "extremist belief system" with an alleged "purpose of facilitating ideologically based violence to advance political, religious, or social change."
You don't have to commit any crime to be a terrorist in the new America. You don't have to do anything violent. You don't have to even speak in favor of violence. All you need to do is to speak in favor of an "extremist belief system" which is claimed by the government to "facilitate" violence, and you're now deemed a threat.
This is the essence of thoughtcrime.
Fortunately, this bill is only preliminary, and does not actually outlaw such speech. It only empowers the agency to develop "methods and processes" which can be used to prevent such speech.
P.S. If it weren't egregious enough that such an agency is even being created, it's being made as opaque to public inspection as possible (while providing a few meaningless nods to "civil liberties" -- meaningless because the only oversight in the bill is provided by the Department of Homeland Security itself). When you bother reading the bill, you might notice the clause about the Federal Advisory Committee Act... and its "nonapplicability."
Please mod parent article flamebait/troll.
/. and it's audience) would benefit greatly from his taking a few journalism courses. He's got the hang of sensationalism alright, but perhaps he should examine the finer aspects of journalism like clarity, consistency, intellectual honesty, in-depth research providing valuable insights to the reader instead of FUD, etc., etc. It's not as if he hasn't been at this a few years now... You'd think that, being a commercial website focused on delivering news and information to geeks, that, just perhaps, by now they'd have learned how to do a little research and actually provide some real information and intelligent articles instead of just blindly passing along whatever some troll dragged up off of a random news site.
/. editors are, with the potential for good, community conscious editors to rise up from the user pool who have some concept of what "news for nerds" really means, which would involve real information based on honest inquiry and research instead of just forwarding along unfounded FUD. Give a stable selection of long-time readers with positive karma and posting scores the ability to see articles before they're posted and vote on their relevance, accuracy and "truthiness" before they're slammed out to the general readership... and maybe even the ability to edit those submissions into something that actually resembles news and information, and we might have something worthwhile going here. As it stands, /. is every day becoming more like a blog or sci/tech oriented version of del.icio.us, and less a medium for reliable, thought-provoking news and information.
Would you really expect anything less from CmdrTaco? Not that I think the people who work for the major media and went through 4 years of it in college are doing any better a job, but I think that he (and thereby
You know, actually, I think a system to apply mod points to articles themselves and perhaps not just the person who passed along the article, but the editor who posted it would be a nice addition. Add karma into the mix, and perhaps we'll eventually see who the best of the
"Inveniemus Viam Aut Faciemus" 'We will find a way... Or we will make one!' --Hannibal of Carthage
Consponsored by 10 other Democrats (and 4 Republicans).
What people don't seem to understand is that we have ONE viable political party in the US, the Corporate Republicrats.
How many Senators voted for the Bono act? ALL of them. How many voted against the PATRIOT (AKA "Cowardly Congress is Scared Shitless Act)? Three. Which wing of the Corporate Republicrat Party voted for the Bankrupcy Deform Bill last year? Both of them. How many Senators are for legalizing marijuana? Zero. How many Representatives? Zero.
There is less difference between the Republicans and the Democrats than the various factions of the old USSR's Communist Party.
But when Sony can "contribute" tem milion to the Democrat and another ten million to the Republican, what do you expect? We have the best politicians money can buy.
Don't like it? Then go to the polls and split your votes between the Greens and teh Libertarians, as I do.
-mcgrew
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
You ought to quote your journal entry here in the discussion, where more people will see it.
... the potential ramifications in conjunction with other bills that also purport to "prevent terrorism", and the possibilities toward ever more selective law enforcement (such as your examples in your journal).
:(
I had similar thoughts
The camel's nose is in the tent, all right.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Or a troll. About the only way I could see it being more inflammatory is to have the article say, "The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill (H.R. 1955) last month, by a vote of 404 to 6, that says the Internet is a terrorist tool... and so is your mom."
You were modded funny, but this is also quite insightful.
A)Simple disagreement with an idea that is being widely spread automatically makes it "propaganda" to the one disagreeing.
B)Many of our politicians have argued that some accurate speech should not be spread because it can cause feelings that they disagree with, such as low morale for our soldiers or high morale for our enemies. Unfortunately, they've been very effective at silencing those that disagree (see above) with this line of reasoning.
Some people accuse the Lancet Report of being inaccurate. I don't know if it is or not, but if you think it's inaccurate then say so. As soon as you start arguing that it's hurting morale, then I know you're full of shit. If it was simply wrong, then saying/proving that should really have been enough.
Let's examine this one small quote closely.
Note the word "facilitating" (tools facilitate, y'know). Also, note the word "propaganda", another way of saying "information".
Therefore, the implicit conclusion of the statement is that information leads to terrorism, and the internet is a source of information, therefore the internet facilitates terrorism (i.e. the internet can be used as a tool to foster terrorism). Therefore we must find ways to study and limit this source of terrorism.
Think about it. If the bill isn't saying the internet is a tool for terrorists or terrorism then what is it saying? Why mention the internet at all?
As an American who loves your freedom you better damn well want unlimited access to even terrorist-related propaganda. Any limits placed on information is just another way of controlling what the populace thinks. Hell, what if the "terrorist propaganda" happens to be true? Information is such that just because it came from a terrorist doesn't mean it's necessarily false, likewise just because it came from the US government doesn't mean it's true. Facts and information must be assessed on their own merits. To control this "problem" can only mean devising a scheme to pre-screen and control the flow of information.