Fascism Returns

http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2012/02/07/uk-calls-isps-censor-extremist-websites-81511/


U.K. Home Affairs Committee has issued a call to Internet Service Providers clamp down on “violent extremists” by censoring to “extremist” websites.

We have recently seen the U.K. government issue censorship orders to YouTube to remove videos showing abhorrent police activity against the public. Such videos are classified as extremist videos which breed anti-U.K. sentiment. The U.K. government is now calling on ISPs to censor such “extremist” videos.

I recently cited another example, a video of police entrapment, in which dozens of victims where brutally beaten – along with a tutorial on how to get around the censorship.

Tutorial: How To Get Around Government Censorship Of YouTube Videos
Step By Step Guide Explaining How To Get By Government Censorship Of YouTube Videos.
Our so-called liberty loving democratic governments are resorting to tactics of a fascist totalitarian dictatorship and censoring YouTube videos which show nothing more then people protesting for their civil liberty. Here is the story behind the government censorship along with a tutorial on how to defeat it. Enjoy!

12610 points us to an InfoWars article revealing that the Government is censoring YouTube Videos, not for “piracy” or “cyber attack” videos, but to hide the massive uprising of the middle class that is spreading worldwide due to unbearable contempt that is spreading worldwide.

Government Orders You Tube To Censor Protest Videos 200511top

In a frightening example of how the state is tightening its grip around the free Internet, it has emerged that You Tube is complying with thousands of requests from governments to censor and remove videos that show protests and other examples of citizens simply asserting their rights, while also deleting search terms by government mandate.

The latest example is You Tube’s compliance with a request from the British government to censor footage of the British Constitution Group’s Lawful Rebellion protest, during which they attempted to civilly arrest Judge Michael Peake at Birkenhead county court.

Peake was ruling on a case involving Roger Hayes, former member of UKIP, who has refused to pay council tax, both as a protest against the government’s treasonous activities in sacrificing Britain to globalist interests and as a result of Hayes clearly proving that council tax is illegal.

Hayes has embarked on an effort to legally prove that the enforced collection… because no contract has been agreed between the individual and the state. His argument is based on the sound legal principle that just like the council, Hayes can represent himself as a third party in court and that “Roger Hayes” is a corporation and must be treated as one in the eyes of the law.

The British government doesn’t want this kind of information going viral in the public domain because it is scared stiff of a repeat of the infamous poll tax riots of 1990, a massive tax revolt in the UK that forced the Thatcher government to scrap the poll tax altogether because of mass civil disobedience and refusal to pay.

When viewers in the UK attempt to watch videos of the protest, they are met with the message, “This content is not available in your country due to a government removal request.”

more

http://www.infowars.com/government-orders-you-tube-to-censor-protes…

Of course, the first thing I did before starting to write this article was to vet the story. I clicked on the link to the censored video and it loaded absolutely fine for me. But as the article clearly states, it has been censored by the UK government so viewers in the UK can’t view it.

Now Public Intelligence points us to an article which reveals that politicians are calling for the outright censorship of so-called “extremist” websites by Internet Service Providers.



U.K. Home Affairs Committee Encourages Internet Service Providers to Censor Extremist Websites

MPs urge ISPs to tackle extremist websites (AFP):
Internet service providers should clamp down on websites used by violent extremists, both Islamists and increasingly the far right, British lawmakers said in a report Monday.The Internet is a more significant vehicle for promoting radicalism than prisons, universities or places of worship, and is involved in almost all cases of extremism, parliament’s home affairs committee said.Law enforcement agencies can already order illegal material to be removed from the Internet, but “service providers themselves should be more active in monitoring the material they host,” the report said.The MPs recommended that the government work with Internet service providers (ISPs) to develop a code of practice on removing extremist material, but acknowledged international co-operation would also be needed.

During the committee’s investigations, it heard complaints from ISPs that it would be “impractical” for them to actively monitor material, citing the sheer volume of online content and implications for freedom of expression.

But security expert Peter Neumann, of King’s College London, told the MPs that political pressure could at least force big Internet companies to do more.

“This is not about freedom of speech. All these websites, whether it is YouTube or Facebook, have their own rules… They are very effective in removing sexual content or copyright content,” he said.

“Why can they not be equally effective at removing, for example, extremist Islamist or extremist right-wing content?”

Home Affairs Committee — Nineteenth Report — Roots of Violent Radicalisation (parliament.uk):
3. Where does radicalisation take place? — The internet33. Many of our witnesses cited the internet as the main forum for radicalisation. Sir Norman Bettison, the Association of Chief Police Officers’ lead for Prevent, told us that “the internet does seem to feature in most, if not all, of the routes of radicalisation”. It was regarded as particularly dangerous as it was now one of the few unregulated spaces where radicalisation is able to take place. According to the Home Office, the internet “plays a role in terms of sustaining and reinforcing terrorist ideological messages and enabling individuals to find and communicate with like-minded individuals and groups”. This seemed to be contradicted by more recent Home Office-commissioned research, which concluded that the internet “does not appear to play a significant role in Al Qa’ida-influenced radicalisation”. Even those witnesses who attributed a significant role to the internet tended to support that report’s conclusion that some element of face-to-face contact was generally essential to radicalisation taking place, including with regards to the extreme far right, but by definition this does not deal with the issue of self radicalisation which by its very nature takes place in isolation and concerns have been expressed about the impact of ‘Sheikh Google’ on individuals who may be vulnerable, but have not been identified as starting on a journey of self radicalisation.…4. The Prevent Strategy — The Internet

53. The Home Office launched a Counter-Terrorism Internet Referral Unit in 2010 to investigate internet-based content which might be illegal under UK law and take appropriate action against it, although Sir Norman Bettison described it as “a pebble thrown into the World Wide Web ocean”. It had received 2,025 referrals thus far, about 10% of which led to websites or web pages being taken down. Sir Norman believed that the referral site needed greater publicity which would in turn require greater capacity: at the time of our inquiry it consisted of around a dozen officers. Charles Farr told us:

Every internet service provider (ISP) has acceptable behaviour codes for use on their systems. So having that conversation, even where the website is operating in a broadly legal space, is not unusual for them. Governments all around the world have those conversations with ISPs every day, and the public will very often make their own representations to ISPs about particularly unacceptable content that may still be legal on websites around the world.

He later clarified that Governments would only make representations if websites were breaching the law.

54. Under the Terrorism Act 2006, if a law enforcement agency approached a hosting provider in respect of the Act’s provisions regarding liability for hosting terrorist content, they would be compelled to take it down and if an internet service provider failed to remove the content upon receipt of a valid notice under section 3 of the Act, it would be committing an offence. The Internet Service Providers’ Association argued that:

When section 3 notices of the Act are invoked to remove material then there is no issue; when they’re not invoked it becomes more problematic. As in other areas, ISPs are not best placed to determine what constitutes violent extremism and where the line should be drawn. This is particularly true of a sensitive area like radicalisation, with differing views on what may constitute violent extremist.

55. Professor Neumann, who co-authored Countering Online Radicalisation for the International Center for Radicalisation in 2009, told us that the Government had implemented a number of their recommendations:

One of our recommendations was to bring strategic prosecutions—not necessarily taking down websites but to prosecute the people who are producing the content for the websites. That has happened, to some extent. There is also a mechanism that the Government have introduced for deciding what kind of content should be taken down and that has also been done. Most importantly, we believe that there is no technical solution to this problem and that this problem needs to be addressed differently, and the Government have followed us there.

However, he considered that more remained to be done:

The most profitable way for any Government to address this problem is to bring political pressure, in some cases, to bear on internet providers-big internet companies who are hosting extremist videos in places like YouTube, Google, Facebook … They do that to some extent but they could do it more consistently. I believe that, for example, all the measures that have been taken by YouTube to clean up its act have always been in response to political pressure, both from the United States and the United Kingdom …

This is not about freedom of speech. All these websites, whether it is YouTube or Facebook, have their own rules. They have acceptable behaviours. They all say, “We are against hate speech” and they are very effective in removing sexual content or copyright content. Why can they not be equally effective at removing, for example, extremist Islamist or extremist right-wing content? Primarily, I believe it is because it is not in their commercial interest and that is why it is so important that politicians and Governments bring political pressure to bear.

The Internet Service Providers’ Association argued that it would be “impractical” for ISPs to be expected to proactively monitor material, given the sheer volume of content online, as well as undesirable, given the implications for freedom of expression.

56. Assistant Chief Constable John Wright, the National Prevent Coordinator for the police, added that there was a need for greater international cooperation, given that most of the websites are hosted outside the UK’s jurisdiction. The Internet Service Providers’ Association confirmed that if material was hosted outside of the UK, a UK intermediary would be unable to remove it. They agreed that “to improve this, greater international cooperation could be explored, although what constitutes violent extremist under the law in one country is not necessarily the same elsewhere.”

57. Given the impossibility of comprehensively controlling the internet, it is necessary to employ other methods to tackle the issue. Alyas Karmani argued:

If you are thinking about banning the internet, you have just got to provide a counter-narrative. That is what we do at STREET, so what we do is we identify their narrative and then you have to put an equally effective counter-narrative, because if you ban one site, 10 others emerge, and the sophistication of various ideologues in terms of promoting on the internet and through social media is highly proficient.

The Government has been attempting to counter terrorist ideology, this work being led by the Research, Information and Communications Unit at the Home Office; however, Charles Farr admitted that:

Getting that message across … to a group of people who would rarely read the media that we would normally work with, is very challenging.

The Government’s focus will be on “increasing the confidence of civil society activists to challenge online extremist material effectively and to provide credible alternatives.”

58. Jamie Bartlett was also concerned that children were not developing the skills that would enable them to sift critically material on the internet:

A lot of the information that looks very trustworthy and accurate—and people tend to go on aesthetics of websites—is absolutely bogus but we are not taught this in schools because it has happened so quickly. People are not being taught in school how to critically evaluate internet-based content and I think that is one of the biggest weaknesses that we face at the moment.

59. The Counter-Terrorism Internet Referral Unit does limited but valuable work in challenging internet service providers to remove violent extremist material where it contravenes the law. We suggest that the Government work with internet service providers in the UK to develop a Code of Conduct committing them to removing violent extremist material, as defined for the purposes of section 3 of the Terrorism Act 2006. Many relevant websites are hosted abroad: the Government should also therefore strive towards greater international cooperation to tackle this issue.

60. Given the impossibility of completely ridding the internet of violent extremist material, it is important to support defences against it. We support the Government’s approach to empowering civil society groups to counter extremist ideology online. The whole area of communications technology and social networking is complex and extremely fast-moving. A form of interaction that is commonly used by thousands or even millions of people at one point in time may only have been developed a matter of months or even weeks earlier. It follows that legislation and regulation struggle to keep up and can provide a blunt instrument at best. Leaders in fields such as education, the law and Parliament also need to be involved. Evidence taken by this committee in regard to the riots in London last August showed that some police forces have identified social networks as providing both challenges and opportunities, with the message from one chief constable that the police recognised that ‘we need to be engaged’. In respect of terrorism, as in respect of organised crime, the Government should seek to build on the partnership approach to prevention that has proved successful in the field of child abuse and child protection.