Google Reveals "Terrorism Video" Removals

jones_supa writes "Google has revealed it removed about 640 videos from YouTube that allegedly promoted terrorism over the second half of 2011 after complaints from the UK's Association of Chief Police Officers. The news was contained in its latest Transparency Report which discloses requests by international authorities to remove or hand over material. YouTube had also rejected many other state's requests for action. Overall, Google summed it had received 461 court orders covering a total of 6,989 items between July and December 2011. From those, it said 68% of the orders were complied with. Google added that it had received a further 546 informal requests covering 4,925 items, of which it had agreed to 43% of the cases."

Comments

Censorship, much?

[evorster]

Why is it that some people believe that if they hide away from something that something ceases to exist?

Re:Censorship, much?

[zero.kalvin]

I guess they know that, but they want to make it harder for anyone to find these things. Now I understand if it is regarding material on how to construct IEDs or similar things. But if these videos promotes terrorism then why not let them? Look at this from my point of view, arabic is my fluent language and I have easy access to that sort of material, but I am not going to be convinced by these videos just because I saw them. However there is a positive side for this, by hearing what they have to say, I gain more information on them and the way they think. So for me the average person I can better articulate my objections to these people, and be able to say with knowledge why these people are bad, and not just "they hate us for our freedom" - Sorry to break this to you, they don't hate you for your freedom. Now for you, who is not from that region, or someone who doesn't speaks arabic, you should have access for these videos because how else would you understand them if they were not presented to you ? The state is stupid to think that people would suddenly resort to terrorism just because they saw some bearded asshole with a machine gun and screaming "death to the infidels" --- Not letting you see that is more dangerous than you actually seeing and understand what he is saying. ~~~Rant over

Re:Censorship, much?

[__aaeihw9960]

I've always wondered this, but my own investigations have proved futile:

Sorry to break this to you, they don't hate you for your freedom

So, if they don't hate us for our freedoms (I'm with you on this point - that's the whitewashed, political reason), what do they hate us for? Is it our economic policies? Our military strategies? What is it?

Because I'm at a total loss, and I can't get any real information about this in the states. Why did the Islamist extreme folks start wanting us dead? Who kicked that off, and what the hell is it all about?

Re:Censorship, much?

[jonnythan]

Because of our involvement and activism in the middle east. We have steadfastly supported Israel since its creation, we invaded Iraq and toppled its government, we have participated in the overthrow of Iran's government, etc etc. We've messed with and in many cases toppled with the national governments in Iran, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Egypt, and others.

We've been dicking around in their business for 70 years. It's easy for the US to send some troops and equipment over and have a massive influence by installing dictators, killing people, etc. - all while pretending it's perfectly acceptable. They don't have the resources to do that, so we get car bombs.

Re:Censorship, much?

[zero.kalvin]

Terrorism is a problem, but bombing the shit out of them right away is not the god sent solution. Understanding them, understanding the motivations behind what they do is very important to defeat them. If you don't understand why they hate you, then how can you destroy them ? Or more importantly what is your moral justification for killing them if you don't know why they are doing what they are doing? For me it sounds as if you don't care enough to know, and content with delegating these issues to your government ( which is the stupidest thing anyone can ever do), and this in my opinion is even worse than a bad argument.

Re:Censorship, much?

[Baloroth]

They hate you for coming from your fat rich economy and telling them what to do, and forcing them to sell their oil cheaply, btw.

Bull-fucking-shit. You know who largely sets oil prices worldwide? OPEC (in a manner that would be completely illegal in most of the Western world for price collusion, BTW). Do you know why the US meddles so often? Because OPEC and the Arab world in general hold so tight a fist on oil production, and have shown their willingness to strangle the rest of the world if they don't get their way. The US didn't invade Iraq the first time because it wanted to: no, it did so because Saudi Arabia asked the US to. Gave us a pretty big check to help out, too. The whole region is massively fucked up, has been for literally millennia. The US hasn't always helped, but they also haven't been the ones to start it either.

Re:Censorship, much?

[Artraze]

Regardless of why they might say they 'hate' the US (infidels, meddling, etc.) the real reason is, at the end of the day, not a whole lot different from why the US 'hates' the terrorists: They want an enemy.

They have a lot of social and political problems, and because they cannot fix them (and really, do not want to because that would require advocating their control) they create a war. It lets the leaders accumulate more power while giving the people someone to blame for their problems other than their leaders.

Why the US? As the 'most powerful' country it's easy to come up with reasons (and not necessarily inaccurate ones!) that it could have negatively impacted people (e.g. selling arms to Israel, trade stuff, cultural influence, etc). That also means that you are expected to lose your war, which is nice because it means you don't really have to try that hard because you can also blame your failings on them being too powerful. This gives a bonus of making you then underdog and any small victory huge. The are also a few other things like being non-islamic and well known and all that.
(As you'll note, the basic ideas here are what makes terrorists, in turn, a great enemy for the US: far away, impossible to actually defeat, and different(==bad).)

Re:Censorship, much?

[fishthegeek]

Bull crap. Thomas Jefferson was a president who had to handle Muslim piracy with warships, which escalated into the First Barbary War. The Europeans didn't have any stake in the middle east when the Moors invaded Europe, which created the sentiment of containment that sparked the crusades. You need to stop drinking the kool-aid. Many other countries have steadfastly supported Israel since it's re-establishment in 1948, and the list of countries that support, and trade with Israel is huge (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_relations_of_Israel) so simply stating that our support of Israel is causal in certain groups hating the United States is nothing more than ill informed nonsense. Some (certainly not all) Muslim states have ALWAYS engaged in violence against non-Muslims, and it will always be that way. I write all of this as a vet of the Persian Gulf War; so I have been there and, I will also say that some of the most hospitable, kind, and wonderful people I have ever met were also Muslims in the middle east. I do not want anyone to get the impression that I have a grudge against Islam because I do not. That said, history isn't kind to the idea that certain Islamic states (or groups if you prefer) hate us for any reason other than because we're not them.

Re:Censorship, much?

[Bigby]

US monetary and political support for Israel dwarfs all other countries combined. You follow up your argument that saying they hate us because we aren't them. So why don't they focus their attention on Switzerland? The Vatican? Canada?

We are the big fish in transgressions against their will. Whether their will should be tolerated or not is another story, but the transgressions are the cause, not just because we are free or we simply exist.

Re:Censorship, much?

[phantomfive]

They hate the US because of Lady Gaga, because she is immoral and sinful. Not because of her fashion choices, but because they are opposed to music. American culture is corrupt, and it is spreading to the Middle East. (Note that Western Europe at one time had huge fights over whether music was moral or immoral as well, so this is not something unique to Islam).

Sayyid Qutb was an important proponent of this way of thinking, and had a lot of influence in the formation of Al Qaeda. Some people suggest cultural immorality is more important to global jihadism than what the US did in Iran 50 years ago (remember Iran is not Arab anyway), but who knows if they are right. Certainly American 'immorality' is an important aspect.

The way I see it for Bin Laden, he was a rich powerful guy, wanted to get into politics (ambitious people often do), but the only way to do that in Saudi Arabia where he lived was to have a revolution. There was absolutely no way to have a revolution with the US supporting the Saudi government. So the obvious first step is to remove the US from the situation. The simple way to do it is to hit Americans hard somewhere, then they run. Americans don't stick around, they run, just like after the Beirut hotel bombings. After America was gone, it would leave Bin Laden free to start a revolution, and it would also make him look very powerful. Middle Easterners are drawn to power, much like in the European middle ages (or really for most of history).

Because lets be honest, with all the mistakes and problems the US has caused in the Middle East, we are still much nicer and better than their own dictators.

Re:Censorship, much?

[cpu6502]

Google also censored the 16-year-old girl who was reading from her Bible the passages that forbid gay marriage. (They claimed reading a text that has been revered by billions of humans beings over 6000 years is "hate speech".) Sometimes they are a little heavy-handed with their removals. Meanwhile they left the videos calling her a "cunt" and threatening to murder her as okay.

Re:Censorship, much?

[Grygus]

Hate speech doesn't stop being hate speech because someone writes it down. It also doesn't stop being hate speech because a whole lot of people agree with it. The Bible is less than 500 years old. If people did not submit the other videos for removal, then it's not a judgment call on Google's part.

I have no idea how your post got modded insightful.

32%

[hackula]

The 32% they absolutely refused to take down were videos of cute little kittens.

Let the terrorists speak

[Psyborgue]

Free speech concerns aside, I'm much more afraid of terrorists promoting their agenda in the dark than those who shout it from the rooftops. It's a lot easier to keep track of people stupid enough to put themselves out in the public sphere (and those who associate with them).

Re:Let the terrorists speak

[funwithBSD]

No free speech issues here at all. The service is privately owned, they can decide who can show what on their service. You have no rights on their private service.

Now, perhaps you can be mad about who they choose not to serve, but they have the rights, not the people uploading the images.

I suspect they may be "terrorists" not terrorists

[crazyjj]

I bet if you could see the list, many of these "terrorists" would turn out to be people just criticizing their governments and revealing government secrets.

Re:free speech

[sideslash]

There's no legal guarantee of free speech in this context. The (metaphorical) microphone belongs to Google, since they are hosting everything and letting people upload their stuff at no cost. As long as they can make money off of what people say into their microphone, they'll let them keep talking. And if Google decides they occasionally want to grab their microphone back and make somebody stop talking into it, that's their right. People are free to complain and criticize such treatment, but that doesn't affect Google's right to do what they want with their microphone (metaphor for website).

Ironically, it could arguably be a violation of freedom if Google didn't have the right to censor their own website.