Slashdot Mirror


Tokyo Rose 2.0: White House Asks Silicon Valley For Terrorism Help

theodp writes: While past U.S. Presidents have had to contend with radio propaganda, President Obama also has to worry about online propaganda. On Friday, U.S. national security officials met with leaders in Silicon Valley seeking ideas for ways to curtail terrorists' use of social media and to use technology to "disrupt paths to radicalization to violence." The closed door meetup, which included Apple CEO Tim Cook and top execs from Facebook, Twitter and Google, occurred on the same day the White House also announced the creation of the Countering Violent Extremism Task Force, which will focus on using social media to counter online propaganda by Islamic State and other terrorist groups, and the State Department promised to revamp its online counter-messaging campaign.

23 of 184 comments (clear)

  1. Opening line... by Dan+East · · Score: 3, Informative

    Obama's opening line of the meeting. "Gentlemen, how much privacy and how many rights of your users are you willing to sacrifice in the name of patriotism and the fight against terrorism?"

    --
    Better known as 318230.
    1. Re:Opening line... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      The thing I'm always concerned about is when up front they claim it's to counter Middle Eastern Terrorists like the Daesh, Taliban, whatever you want to call them, maybe Saudi's and the CIA. But then the gov uses their resources to try and counter any one who opposes the agenda of the Corporate, Government, and Banker Tyranny. People who want to live in peace, have clean water, air, healthy food that's not polluted with toxins, etc. which often puts them at odds with all kinds of large interests get treated as terrorists.

    2. Re:Opening line... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Just look at the facts and you will see. Nuclear is the safest form of power generation in terms of dead people per kWh, including all the victims of Tshernobyl.

  2. Contests by BarbaraHudson · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Everyone likes contests with prizes. Simply have awards for the best parodies, photoshopped terrorist photos, and terrorist videos that make ISIS look stupid. Recruits that find out the reality is 72 virgin sheep (after all, that's where virgin wool comes from), stuff like "Achmed, the 'Stop! I kill you!' dead terrorist", etc. Translate the best into as many languages as possible.

    --
    "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
    1. Re:Contests by Snotnose · · Score: 2

      Recruits that find out the reality is 72 virgin sheep

      Sheep hell. 72 virgin men is what awaits them.

  3. reactions by lkcl · · Score: 4, Interesting

    i know they like to describe it as "response", but the "response" to terrorism is actually a "predictable reaction". these "predictable reactions" are what the psy-ops teams behind terrorist groups use to extend their reach well beyond what they would otherwise be able to achieve. kill a few people in a public place, get a MASSIVE reaction, governments predictably react in a 2-dimentsional zombie sleep-walking way, calling it a "response", and the damage is magnified and furthers the aims of the terrorists: to terrorise as many people as they can.

    blunt and simple question. why are governments HELPING terrorists?

    even this "news" report - where the U.S. govt is now holding talks with the companies that hold the most information about people in the history of humanity - far more than IBM could ever hold on punched-cards when it was commissioned by the Nazis to track the jewish population - is yet another example of the terrorists WINNING.

    i didn't approve of it at the time, but there was significant censorship of the bombings that occurred in dublin in the 1980s. TWELVE bombs - set off in ONE DAY by the IRA - reached all of the Irish newspapers... but not a single word reached us in the UK or anywhere else. the only reason i got to hear about it at all was because we had some irish workers who would have newspapers specially shipped over.

    this kind of "non-reaction" - non-reporting - i can see now is much more sensible than any kind of "reaction" dressed up with the words "response" or "proportionate response". it however takes extreme bravery to not react in the face of this kind of thing, and that, really, should be the role of governments: to say, "look: our current approach, to try to reassure you that we're 'taking care of this' for you by "reacting", isn't working. everything we try to do just makes things worse. instead, what we'd like you to consider doing is a VOLUNTARY censorship of terrorists. if you see something illegal on a social media site, report it. but DO NOT re-tweet it. do NOT send messages to your friends 'oh dear look at this, isn't it horrible'. take a deep breath, be compassionate, feel SORRY for these people that they're so deluded that they have to kill other human beings, but don't react in fear and loathing, because that's exactly what they want you to do".

    sounds naive, maybe? but look, historically, at what's worked. the current "policies" aren't working, are they? so maybe it's time to try something different, yes? remember: definition of madness - to do the same thing over and over again, given the exact same conditions, expecting every single time a different outcome...

    1. Re:reactions by walterbyrd · · Score: 2

      > why are governments HELPING terrorists?

      To appease radical Islam. A strategy which has been proved not to work.

      Japan does exactly the opposite. Japan allows very few Muslim immigrants, and does not put up with any of their bullshit.

      Not only has there not been a Muslim terrorist attack on Japanese soil in 30 years. Not only are there no Muslim riots in Japan; but Japan has far better relations with mid-eastern Muslim nations than does the US.

      Radical Islam sees appeasement as weakness, and will never stop exploiting weakness. But radical Islam respects strength.

    2. Re:reactions by fustakrakich · · Score: 2

      To appease radical Islam. A strategy which has been proved not to work.

      Yeah it did. Didn't you see Rambo 3?

      --
      “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
  4. Translation: censor all criticism of Islam by walterbyrd · · Score: 2

    House Democrats introduce legislation condemning anti-Muslim bigotry
    http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/dec/30/house-democrats-introduce-legislation-condemning-a/

    Why just Muslims? Why single out one religion for special treatment? What ever happened to free speech for everybody?

    Do Muslims get to continue their hate speech, and outright death threats? Why is that not being addressed?

    Who decides what is "hate speech" against Islam? Muslims tend to consider the slightest honest criticism to be hate speech. They kill over cartoons.

    My understanding is that most religious hate speech, and hate crimes, are against Jews.

  5. This Is Not A Problem by crow_t_robot · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Why do we spend so much time on this terrorism and social media bullshit??? This is not a real issue. How about we spend as much time working on the problem of our aging and dysfunctional national infrastructure like the electrical grid or the public transportation systems?

  6. Is the story of "Tokyo Rose" true? by walterbyrd · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Below is a story from cracked.com. Not the best source, but better than wikipedia.

    I am curious, does anybody know the truth about this?

    In the U.S., whenever people openly criticize American troops or side with the opposition in a military conflict, they're accused of being like "Tokyo Rose" (anti-war protester Jane Fonda was called this during Vietnam, or snidely referred to as "Hanoi Jane"). If you've seen the movie Flags of Our Fathers, there's a scene where the American GIs stationed in Japan hear a sexy English-speaking lady on the radio taunting them with the fact that, while they're being blown to pieces, back home their wives are probably blowing other dudes. That's "Tokyo Rose" -- she would broadcast anti-American propaganda aimed at demoralizing troops overseas.

    After the war, two journalists actually found this traitor and the government threw her in jail.

    But It Turns Out ...

    The only problem is, the U.S. military had an agency monitoring enemy broadcasts 24/7 during the war, and they declared that there was no "Tokyo Rose." It was just a catchall name soldiers gave all English-speaking Japanese women on the radio. So wait, who the hell did they arrest, then? A California-born woman, Iva Toguri, who actually did the opposite of what we just described.

    It's complicated. War isn't science, OK?

    In 1941, Toguri was in Japan, taking care of an aunt. She was set to return to the U.S. on December 9 of the same year, but a little thing called "Japan bombing the shit out of Pearl Harbor" made that impossible. So she stayed there against her will and eventually got a job in Radio Tokyo, where she worked under a captured Australian major who had been tasked with broadcasting propaganda in English. However, since their Japanese superiors/captors didn't actually understand what they were saying, the major and Toguri began slipping pro-American messages into the broadcasts, which were always done in a playful tone.

    Toguri never went by "Tokyo Rose" (her moniker was "Orphan Annie"), and you'll note that her voice was anything but sexy. When the war ended, reporters desperate to confirm the rumors found Toguri, thought she fit the profile, and basically conned her into admitting that she was the real deal. As a result, she was convicted of treason, fined $10,000, and sentenced to 10 years in prison, and she had her citizenship revoked. Toguri was finally given the old presidential "Whoops, our bad" by Gerald Ford in 1977.

    http://www.cracked.com/article_20408_5-famous-people-you-wont-believe-didnt-exist_p2.html

  7. More speech? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Why isn't the solution to terrorist speech more speech? Why are we looking for ways to censor people? I'd much rather they were dicking around on Facebook rather than killing people. And if they're dumb enough to use social media to plot things, then their information is available for the police to find.

    So I'm not sure I get the point of this at all. Isis' use of social media isn't what concerns me. The way they oppress and kill people is what I truly hate. Far from censoring beheading videos, I think it's only because we can see such things that we know how depraved these people are. I'd much rather see Isis' butchers executed for their crimes than censored.

  8. Tokio Rose? by Teun · · Score: 2

    I had to look up Tokyo Rose, I knew Vietnam Rose and the latter seems for well educated people more infectious.

    --
    "The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
  9. You want to stop radicalization? by fredrated · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Stop sending troops to kill people all over the world, in their own countries, people that are of no conceivable threat to America, and they will stop wanting to kill us.
    Mostly we do this in our economic interest. In essence, terrorism is a cost of the way we do business. If Global corporations and countries were to change to doing business ethically, no longer supporting dictators and corruption to get resources cheaper or with more assurance, their profits would go down but so would the need to strong-arm people all over the world with our armies.
    Because we don't want to stop doing business this way, we need to seek advice on how to create better ways to hold back the animosity and hate we create by our actions. But until we stop creating the animosity and hate, it will always plague us.

    1. Re:You want to stop radicalization? by gtall · · Score: 2

      Really? The U.S. helped the Islamic nutjobs take Afghanistan from the Russians. Then, just to show us how much they appreciated the effort, they provide a safe haven for Al Qaeda and the rest is history.

      You also ignore that Saudi Arabia has been exporting the most virulent form of insane Islam for a long time.

      The U.S. took Iraq away from a brutal dictator. The Iraqis decided to turn their country into shit...home grown Islamic shit. The U.S. helped take Libya away from a brutal dictator. The Libyans decided to turn their country into Islamic shit.

      Stop whitewashing Islam.

  10. Obama not a fan of 1st nor 2nd amendment ... by drnb · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Basically Obama is not a fan of the first nor the second amendment. Can those student's who attended his Constitutional Law class when he was teaching get a refund?

    1. Re:Obama not a fan of 1st nor 2nd amendment ... by microTodd · · Score: 3, Informative

      Huh? It took like 5 minutes to find former students who TALKED about his lectures and in fact showed reporters notes from lectures he gave.

      Here's one example:

      http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07...

      --
      "You cannot find out which view is the right one by science in the ordinary sense." - C.S. Lewis on Intelligent Design
  11. Make the statements ineffective by sjames · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Radical extremist messages don't resonate with people who have a comfortable life. Every time the middle class gets pushed down, every time a full time job doesn't make ends meet, every time a simple medical problem costs several years income, the radical extremist messages come through a little louder and a little clearer.

    1. Re:Make the statements ineffective by ScentCone · · Score: 2

      Radical extremist messages don't resonate with people who have a comfortable life. Every time the middle class gets pushed down, every time a full time job doesn't make ends meet, every time a simple medical problem costs several years income, the radical extremist messages come through a little louder and a little clearer.

      Only if you're an idiot. In real life, it's the radical extremists who are responsible for poverty and misery in the Middle East. By preventing the stability and rule of law necessary to run a country in a way that allows an economy to actually grow, and by making the region extremely unattractive to investment from abroad, they guarantee the continuation of the very conditions you're complaining about. This is what they want. They're not being extremists because of those conditions, they're being extremists in order to perpetuate and even create those conditions. That's how the minority at the top of their food chain get to live they way they want: as medieval-style feudal warlords in a theocratic paradise of rule-by-the-sword. They like it. Their holy book demands it. Their culture is historically built around it.

      Your western-style SJW mumbling would make them laugh their asses off.

      --
      Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
    2. Re:Make the statements ineffective by sjames · · Score: 2

      Since TFA was about preventing radicalization in the West, that was the issue I addressed.

      As for extremism in the Middle East, we already did the big don'ts there like propping up bloody dictators with weapons and money then destroying people's homes and infrastructure to take our puppets down a notch, so even if we stop now it will take a while to improve matters. It's funny how nobody likes to talk about when the Taliban and Saddam were our bestest buds. If we quit laying down with dogs, we will quit getting up with fleas.

    3. Re:Make the statements ineffective by sjames · · Score: 2

      Again, we're talking about terrorism sparked in the west ("home grown terrorism"), not terrorism that comes from the middle east.

  12. UK, KSA, Turks by unixisc · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Know what UK stands for? Ummah Kalifate

    The UK has been a butt smoocher of Muslims for the longest time. In the Crimean war, they chose to pick Turkey over Russia, since it was such a great idea to back Muslim powers. Same thing in the Indian subcontinent - backing myriad Muslim kingdoms, like Afghanistan, against non-Muslim kingdoms, like the Sikhs, to bolster their empire. And going head to head against Russia in the so called 'Great Game', when Russia did the world a service by destroying the savage sultanates/emirates/khanates of Samarqand, Boqhara, Tashkent, et al.

    It's really bizarre that Turkey is still a part of NATO, or considered a part of the Western Alliance. That was Kemal Ataturk's Turkey, and that has been dead for at least a decade. That Turkey used to aspire to become a part of Europe, and the EU wanted no part of a country that was a military dictatorship. The EU was justified in denying Turkey membership, but not for THAT reason. The correct reason was that the Turkish people have more in common w/ their Arab Muslim co-religionists than w/ the by now completely secularized population of Europe.

    And Saudi Arabia? They're now seething at what Iran has going for them, but as Arabs, it's THEIR fault. Had they left the Byzantine and Sassanid empires alone and not Islamized them, they wouldn't be facing threats from Iran today. It's funny how people who they conquered and Islamized now claim the 'True Islam' mantle back from them. Hilarious, in fact. Aside from the Alien vs Predator aspect to that conflict

  13. Re: Female fighters posing over ISIS dead ... by guruevi · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Muslims who are moderate is like saying the US Christians who are moderate. If your faith matters to you, you're no longer a moderate. There are several sects of Islam as there are of Christianity, taking the side of the Kurds over the Syrians because of their faith is 'more advanced' is like taking the side of the Jehovah's Witnesses over the Westboro Baptist Church. Both are relatively harmless in their "small delusional group" positions but give them the political power and their internal delusions would become enforced law pretty quickly.

    --
    Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com