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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."
*Can* argue wether that law is overly broad and vague though.
Terrorists use the air to transmit sound messages.
if the internet providers are aiding and abetting terrorism, or the phone system operators, or encrypted radio manufacturers, or SMS users etc etc
What, you mean like cell phones do?
Now you'll have to check a box labeled "I am not a member of a terrorist organization" when you sign up.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
Is a "civil right organization" in Israel, telling a US company that it is violating US law?
Phone companies and Internet companies and all companies that enable communications including paper manufacturers and pen manufacturers aid and abet terrorism.
To defeat terrorism, we /must/ defeat all forms of communication at all costs.
Please turn in your legal pads to the dean's bonfire pit right after chapel.
--
BMO
Whatever happened on that Israeli passport fraud? I remember they clones European and US passports, they went to Dubai, killed someone, Interpol was given the evidence to catch them, Mossad head practically confirmed it with a smug 'ooo-yeh' style comment but whatever happened to that?
It seems that Interpol should have had more success catching them by now?
And whatever happened to the attack by Israel against civilian ships in International waters killing 8 unarmed people? We should have them in court by now surely? If they're courts abide by the laws, we should be able to arrest the army commanders involved?
And the time they bombed a UN School? Any arrests?
Or when they shot a little girl in the head several times for walking on the road next to a border post? Prosecutions?
I don't know what this Israeli Law Center is, but perhaps they can help get these crimes (war crimes, piracy, murder, even extensive Israeli terrorism) prosecuted?
Terrorists use twitter? Okay. Easily solution. Just ban Twitter. I mean a smart person would let the 'terrorists' congregate in the open and see if any of those fish lead you to a bigger fish or a whale but I guess just shutting Twitter down saves a lot of paperwork.
Oh wait...terrorists are now using cell phones? Better ban those as well. Lord knows that we can't possibly let the terrorists win so we all must do our part and stop using phones of any kind. Anyone caught using a cell phone should of course be sent to Gitmo and heavily surfboarded*.
Hang on now...terrorists are driving cars and using roads? Better outlaw cars and remove the roads and transportation systems. If my memory serves me correctly, the 9/11 hijackers drove to the airport that day. So by security theater logic, if there were no roads or cars that....no 9/11 happens. If only we had been prepared that day.
Terrorists are using glasses to see better? Better create an entire government division to enforce and strictly regulate corrective vision dealers. Not a licensed corrective lens dealer? Then you're going to jail as part of the war on terror.
*alternate non-torture version of waterboarding where you just beat someone in the head with a surfboard.
I was on a motorcycle trip through the Atlantic Provinces and the RCMP pulled me over and asked, "Are you a member of a criminal motorcycle gang?" "No." "Ok, you can go."
Ms. Darshan-Leitner, had such laws been in effect prior to the establishment of the state of Israel, it is rather likely that the organizations which requested American aid and support for the establishment of the state of Israel would have been forbidden from doing so. And perhaps, then, the state of Israel would not have been established. Now that it has, how about you stop trying to take away the American freedom which assisted your nation into coming into being.
(tl;dr: Go fuck yourself)
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)
As usual, Glenn Greenwald has covered 'twitter terrorism' and other parts of the never-ending war in all its absurdity: http://www.salon.com/2011/12/20/the_u_s_government_targets_twitter_terrorism/singleton/
"We in Israel really MUST insist that you Americans institute a censorship regime!"
That has to be the single most amusing phrase ever to appear unironically in the Paper of Record: Twitter terrorism. And, of course, the authority cited for this menacing trend is that ubiquitous sham community calling itself âoeterrorism experts,â
http://www.salon.com/2011/12/20/the_u_s_government_targets_twitter_terrorism/singleton/?mobile.html
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
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.
Sure looks like it here. An Israeli organization is telling the American legal system to crack down, through Twitter, on terrorist organizations which are only minor threats to the US (and in the case of Shabab, not even a threat to Israel).
It's routine for the Americans to insist on other countries to do things for them, but they're now tolerating a Israel telling them to do something for Israel's benefit?
Keep in mind that this was an Israeli think tank that started this. Israelis, the same folks that seem to think that terrorism isn't an acceptable response to their crimes against humanity, and aren't willing to accept any less radical responses either.
It's worth noting that they're dealing with the Second Intifada, as in not the first one. During which time they could have put this all the bed by behaving like adults and actually addressing the problems, and instead they opted to engage in some pretty sick acts.
They'll hide the messages in photos of Julian Assange and trollface comics. Then, when the government tries to take down the photos, Anonymous will splatter the Internet with the images, and the Streisand effect will have been used to aid and abet terrorism. The MPAA will use this to their advantage, and we'll enter the 2nd Dark Ages.
Real nice plan, buddy.
I was helping my mother-in-law fill out the application for a US visa, and there's a hilarious section of questions of the form: Have you sold any children into sex slavery? Are you a Nazi? Have you forcibly harvested anybody's organs to sell on the black market? I'm sure the number of slave-trading kidney-stealing Nazis they catch makes up for completely wasting my (and hundreds of thousands of other people's) time.
Fuck it, ban sand. They live their lives in sand, it must do bad things for people. Hell, ban brown people, they persecute white people. Actually, last time I was in France I noticed a certain disdain, better ban all of the Romance language countries, obviously they hate us. Germanic languages apparently too, because they were anti-American. We had a world war over that.
The only thing left for me to say is: Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.
So how does the Shurat HaDin Israel Law Center suggest that Twitter prevent Hezbollah and al-Shabaab from using its service?
Should Twitter require verified identities and then ban anyone with a Muslim-sounding name? Or should Twitter delete any message that contains any criticism of Israeli policy? Maybe the Shurat HaDin Israel Law Center believes that there should be a greater level of surveillance internet-wide? Or maybe the Internet should be a walled garden so as to assure Israel that its enemies are unable to communicate?
What steps exactly does Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, director of the Shurat HaDin Israel Law Center believe that Twitter should take?
Who wants to bet that Israel is looking into the kind of telecommunications technology that allows countries like China and Syria and Iran to limit the kind of communications it doesn't like? That the next embargo on the Palestinians will be on their ability to communicate with the outside world?
Maybe they believe they have to take this step in order to ensure Israel's security. But it would be nice if they just came out and said so instead of putting it on Twitter, as if the very existence of a service that allows people to post short comments online poses an existential threat. I'm not a fan of Twitter and I don't use it but Twitter is not the problem for Israel.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Now have them file that number again against Comcast, Verizon et cetera. Bam. We just fought evil with evil.
Verizon and Comcast have in house attorneys and the ability to fight back. John Q. my-kid-ran-bittorrent-on-the-pc Public does not.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
The 1%er powers that be and their government minions are scared to death of the 99% being able to communicate freely.
Israel gives radical fundamentalist Islamic terrorists a common cause around which to rally. Israel is an existential support to the extreme authoritarian regimes throughout the region. Israel's lightning rod behavior is materially supportive of the growth and expansion of terrorist organizations and ideology throughout the middle east. If Israel continues to flagrantly choose not to cease its existence of its own volition, it should be caused to cease to exist in the interest of eliminating the raison d'etre of so many terrorist organizations.
Look, Israel: How 'bout you stop fucking with the founding principles of this nation, and we don't complain too loudly about all the money and bombs we give you -- those come out of my goddamn paycheck. It's already tiresome enough to have to carry around a screaming brat prima donna who likes to taunt bullies and fixate on suicidal promises made by a fictional deity a few thousand years ago. The least you could do is not kick us in the kidneys while we're doing it.
Go Fuck Yourself,
Bob
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
There actually is a reason for that part of the green form. It's so that if they dig up any of those things in your past, they can say you've committed a crime on US soil (signing a false declaration). They can prosecute or deport you for committing this crime in the US, while they may not be able to do anything about something you did in the dim past on another continent.
Let's also sue...
1) The postal service, because they help letter bombs and the like reach their destinations
2) Banks, since they store money and are responsible for the creation of new money, which might be used by a terrorist
3) Cellphone makes and service providers, because they help terrorists communicate
4) TV makes and news companies, since they report on terrorist attacks, which other terrorist can get ideas from
5) The TSA, FBI, CIA, and so forth, because they are aiding terrorists by not catching all of them before they attack
6) The parents of terrorists, for giving birth to them
Need I continue...?
Are spoons responsible for obesity?
Allows us to become terrorists. ;-) True free speech does not judge or rule. So anti and pro movements should be able to use the platform to spread their message.
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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What about going after the very very root cause of terrorism?
The government?
Abolish that and all of a sudden there is no longer terrorism.
Government is root cause and the main generator of 99% of terrorism.
You can't handle the truth.
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
The antisemitism and antizionism (which, for the most part, is really just disguised antisemitism) here is sickening.
If it was any other country in the world (except N. Korea or China perhaps) who did this, the response would be to laugh at them and move on.
I hardly think you would be so harsh on Britain if they told twitter it was violating American laws for letting the IRA plan attacks on civilians.
But because it's Israel doing this, you need to vilify them for it.
Grow the fuck up.
Is that chip on your shoulder getting a little hard to carry yet?
This is Slashdot, a land of Libertarian-to-the-excess. Any organization and/or country which orders a limit on "free speech" or the perception thereof, including white middle class non-denominational American anti-poverty groups or something ridiculously bland and non-offensive like that, would receive the same treatment.
I know that if I'm ever suing someone for piracy, I'll be sure to list their ISP as a co-defendant.
In the US, the ISP would rely on the Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act, implemented by the DMCA as s512 of Title 17 USC - in particular, s512(a):
(a) Transitory Digital Network Communications. - A service provider shall not be liable for monetary relief, or, except as provided in subsection (j), for injunctive or other equitable relief, for infringement of copyright by reason of the provider's transmitting, routing, or providing connections for, material through a system or network controlled or operated by or for the service provider, or by reason of the intermediate and transient storage of that material in the course of such transmitting, routing, or providing connections, if -
(1) the transmission of the material was initiated by or at the direction of a person other than the service provider;
(2) the transmission, routing, provision of connections, or storage is carried out through an automatic technical process without selection of the material by the service provider;
(3) the service provider does not select the recipients of the material except as an automatic response to the request of another person;
(4) no copy of the material made by the service provider in the course of such intermediate or transient storage is maintained on the system or network in a manner ordinarily accessible to anyone other than anticipated recipients, and no such copy is maintained on the system or network in a manner ordinarily accessible to such anticipated recipients for a longer period than is reasonably necessary for the transmission, routing, or provision of connections; and
(5) the material is transmitted through the system or network without modification of its content.
"Service provider" is defined (s512(k)(1)(A) as:
As used in subsection (a), the term ''service provider'' means an entity offering the transmission, routing, or providing of connections for digital online communications, between or among points specified by a user, of material of the user's choosing, without modification to the content of the material as sent or received.
Whether this meets the US definition of "common carrier," I'm afraid I do not know - but a DSL access provider and the like would be aiming to rely on this to exempt them from liability for whatever the user might do.
In Europe, there is similar legislation - directive 2000/31/EC, Article 12:
1. Where an information society service is provided that consists of the transmission in a communication network of information provided by a recipient of the service, or the provision of access to a communication network, Member States shall ensure that the service provider is not liable for the information transmitted, on condition that the provider:
(a) does not initiate the transmission;
(b) does not select the receiver of the transmission; and
(c) does not select or modify the information contained in the transmission.
2. The acts of transmission and of provision of access referred to in paragraph 1 include the automatic, intermediate and transient storage of the information transmitted in so far as this takes place for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission in the communication network, and provided that the information is not stored for any period longer than is reasonably necessary for the transmission.
3. This Article shall not affect the possibility for a court or administrative authority, in accordance with Member States' legal systems, of requiring the service provider to terminate or prevent an infringement.
That's not to say that no remedy is possible, though - injunctions are flavour of the month at t
didn't notice any antisemitism here yet until your post. anti-israelism maybe - IF you count that hizbollah is able to communicate as anti-israelism, while it would be more appropriate to say that both parties can communicate would be being neutral to both parties - not a single comment I read said that maybe twitter should ban israel from twitter, to make it even. it's not about jews, it's about a law center from israel asking a stupid thing that twitter even can't do and which would place twitter at picking sides instead of acting as a dumb pipe.
of course in the posts above orthodox jews are mentioned as are extremist muslims - and both are nutcases, and unable to cope with other people not acting like they want.
and why do you think that the same "better ban roads too!" messages wouldn't appear if it was UK asking for twitter to do magic censorship? that's what they're asking anyhow. but now if I don't agree with you I'm a nazi? that's information terrorism right there. go fuck yourself, UK government is vilified just about every time it's mentioned here and for good reasons too.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
So if this law passes, next thing email will become illegal. Guns also will become illegal, airlines will get blamed for 9/11 and the internet will become illegal too?
All because terrorists make use of it? Ridiculous. Just as ridiculous as blaming Twitter.
It's time for some SERIOUS root cause analysis instead of this...
Privacy is terrorism.
So it's OK to help terrorists so long as you profit directly from it?
Not that I agree with Darshan-Leitner, just pointing out what seems to be a very strange law, as least as you're interpreting it.
Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.