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Is Twitter Aiding and Abetting Terrorism?
wiredmikey writes with word (and the following extract from a CNN report) that "Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, director of the Shurat HaDin Israel Law Center, sent a letter to Twitter on Thursday asserting that the company is violating U.S. law by allowing groups such as Hezbollah and al Qaeda affiliate al-Shabaab to use its popular online network. ... In her letter, Darshan-Leitner noted that Hezbollah and al-Shabaab are officially designated as terrorist organizations under U.S. law. She also cited a 2010 Supreme Court case — Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project — which upheld a key provision of the Patriot Act prohibiting material support to groups designated as terrorist outfits."
if the internet providers are aiding and abetting terrorism, or the phone system operators, or encrypted radio manufacturers, or SMS users etc etc
Let's suppose I have a web site that lets people post messages to a discussion. How would I go about discovering which of them are "terrorists" according to the US government's definition, so I can exclude them? None of the "terrorist" organizations seem to have posted their membership list online.
Unless I can determine who is a member of any organization, I'll have to consider such laws as "secret laws" designed to trick me into unknowingly committing a crime. And I'll have to consider the legislative body that passed such laws my clear enemy.
One obvious conjecture is that the intent of the law was to punish anyone who hosts a public forum on any topic. After all, it means that any organization can ask one member to join my forum, and then report me to the US government. I see no defense against this other than shutting down all public forums.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
No, actually ISPs are NOT common carriers (yet). They are defined as "information services". Apparently ISPs actually *want* not to be common carriers because it means they can grab more money from customers, shape, throttle and generally violate net neutrality in ways that a common carrier would not be allowed to do.
Apparently ISPs would rather take the risk and be exposed (liable) for what its customers do in exchange for the freedoms (and abuses) that come with NOT being common carriers. But all it might take is an actual terrorist event where an ISP *is* held accountable, for ISPs to retreat back to common carrier status. Of course, they probably figure that they have Congress in their pockets so that that would never happen (i.e. they want their cake and eat it too... they want the protections of common carrier status, its non-liable features, but without the constraints that would limit their revenue generating power)
It should be stamped out ASAP
So, you offer instead to block them from using this service, and drive them underground, where they would be harder to 'monitor'?
At least this way you have an idea what their arguments are for their cause, and can easily offer a counter-argument (to their current or would-be followers). Offering a counter-argument for something you have no knowledge of, and whose members / followers are not readily identified / reached is a challenge to say the least.
You have two ways of heading off potential problems -> allow an open forum where anyone can say whatever they want (no wiretapping necessary) but you have to put up with people saying things you disagree with / hate / consider morally objectionable, or have a closed one, where you have to wiretap the populace to ensure that the opinions / groups you disagree with aren't starting something. An open forum to air grievances / differing opinions, of course, tends to make a government last longer, and costs a lot less than wiretapping everything while providing better results.
Strike the shepherd, and the sheep will scatter; strike the wrong shepherd, however, and a thousand shepherds will rise in his place. Suppression tends to work like that, like ablative armor. It works excellently at first, but through constant use begins to degrade and fail asymptotically. The US is over-quota for shepherds (they've reached their bag limit), so to speak, and are seeing the pendulum swing the other way. Yet, they insist on pushing even harder, apparently unaware of this trade-off effect.
I am John Hurt.
Yes Twitter is and can be used for protest and civil disobedience ^C^C^C^C^C^C^C^C^C^C^C^C^C^C^C^C^C^C^C^C^C^C^C Terrorism.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
To the Right(tm), the world is split into two parts: "good guys" and "bad guys". Every person, every nation and every non-state actor in the world can be placed in one of these two categories. All issues of morality, foreign policy and so on can be answered by identifying who, in the alleged moral dilemma, is the "good guy" and who is the "bad guy".
To the Left(tm), the world is split into two parts: "oppressors" and "oppressed". Every person, every nation and every non-state actor in the world can be placed in one of these two categories. All issues of morality, foreign policy and so on can be answered by identifying who, in the alleged moral dilemma, is the "oppressor" and who is the "oppressed".
Israel is "good guys" and "oppressor", and Palestine is "bad guys" and "oppressed".
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People use infrastructure. Terrorists are people. Therefore terrorists use infrastructure. Therefore we must destroy infrastructure.
You gotta love that kind of reasoning.
Pirates use infrastructure.
Illegal immigrants use infrastructure.
Yep, hawkish application of a scorched earth strategy also applies when it comes to your own GODDAM home. Let's outdo all of the above when it comes to damage done. It's like writing your name on the wall you built with other peoples poo.
20 minutes into the future
but you can blame the telephone company for giving terrorists a communication channel. But we already figured out safe harbor for phones. Internet services need to come next.
Balderdash!
Or the fundamentalist Christians, for that matter.
Religion supports terrorism, it needs to be banned.
Yes Twitter is and can be used for protest and civil disobedience ^C^C^C^C^C^C^C^C^C^C^C^C^C^C^C^C^C^C^C^C^C^C^C Terrorism.
Civil disobedience is getting arrested for refusing to leave the Mayor's office.
Terrorism is killing the mayor and city council.
Civil disobedience is trespassing on corporate property.
Terrorism is blowing up the house of the CEO, killing her and her family.
Civil disobedience is guerilla theater that gets you arrested for blocking traffic.
Terrorism is flying a plane into the World Trade Center, or a truck bomb at the mall.
Anyone more gifted than the mentally impaired shouldn't be confused about the difference between civil disobedience and terrorism. If what you are doing is resulting in large numbers of other people dying, it isn't likely to be civil disobedience.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell