This podcast was pretty good. ISIS were using a Turkish Dropbox like service to move files ... except the service was actually based in France, something a whois on the domain could have easily detected. Fighters have also geotagged tweets/instagram/Facebook posts, which led to a drone strike:
> So ... they're both more sophisticated than you think when it comes to opsec. And less sophisticated than you think when it comes to opsec.
A lot of their recruits are people in their 20s or even teens from various countries including western ones. They are basically regular users that try to learn opsec as they do. And the youth from most muslim countries also use smartphones and most of the services we use too.
ISIS used to be more sophisticated in terms of opsec when their officers were mostly former officers from Saddam but since then it feels like either the drone strikes managed to decapitate their hierarchy or that there were internal purges to promote the truly ideologically crazies.
Also, when an operation is said to have succeed thanks to opsec, always remember that it can be a way to cover an internal humint source.
I understand why Twitter might not want ISIS accounts on their service but from a national security standpoint, it seems better to have the communication happening on a U.S.-based service like Twitter than some darknet or crypto-centric app.
We built huge spy networks only to find out that the terrorists don't even use the internet for their plans. They use burner phones and other non-tech solutions (paper?! omgawdwtf.) because (surprise!) they're harder to track on a systematic level.
Before he was killed Bin Laden communicated with his inner circle only by USB drives transported by sneakernet - his bunker lacked Internet connection but his communications were electronic. I think some of his communication was re-transmitted by his couriers over the Internet though but not through locations that were physically near where he was hiding.
Really, he didn't have internet? I remember his final video and it was so laden with modern political jargon I'm really surprised - I kind of figured he'd spent the decade in hiding surfing political forums.
His communication was two way, not just one way. It was just really slow and labor intensive.
I typed my last comment going from memory. I looked it up and my memory served me well, his bunker didn't have Internet. Looks like his USB drives weren't encrypted though, rookie mistake.
I generally do not connect to web sites from my own machine, aside from a few sites I have some special relationship with. I usually fetch web pages from other sites by sending mail to a program (see git://git.gnu.org/womb/hacks.git) that fetches them, much like wget, and then mails them back to me. Then I look at them using a web browser, unless it is easy to see the text in the HTML page directly. I usually try lynx first, then a graphical browser if the page needs it (using konqueror, which won't fetch from other sites in such a situation).
I occasionally also browse unrelated sites using IceCat via Tor. Except for rare cases, I do not identify myself to them. I think that is enough to prevent my browsing from being connected with me. IceCat blocks tracking tags and most fingerprinting methods.
I never pay for anything on the Web. Anything on the net that requires payment, I don't do. (I made an exception for the fees for the stallman.org domain, since that is connected with me anyway.) I also avoid paying with credit cards.
"""
a cursory google search doesn't show anything substantive (only tor browser vulnerabilities).
are you saying that tor, the protocol, is compromised? what's the basis for your claim?
we do know that state actors can break it at great expense, but that isn't really a statement about tor weakness as much as it's a statement about the resources of state actors. and for a person like RMS who is likely not a state-level threat, his use of Tor probably does provide him with some degree of protection.
From a certain perspective, he is a "state-level" threat. Not an imminent, physical threat, certainly - this is a threat of a different type. He loudly and vigorously argues and advocates against various government policies and actions (as well as those of the largest corporations most deeply entangled with the state apparatus) and gives advice on how best to resist them.
Weren't those side channel attacks? IE getting the tor browser to leak info over plain internet when connecting to an onion site so the connection could be correlated?
Now I'm curious, I wonder how feasible it would be to use acoustic sniffing to hear people like him talking or typing. Some guys infered letters from the sound of keystrokes.
Indeed. I would be very surprised if any real planning happened on twitter DMs. That would be unbelievably stupid, with the NSA stuff now being so well known
It's a great way to plant false plans. You don't have to carry them out unless the threat was never mitigated(if it wasn't taken seriously, then you can carry it out for 2x damage: part being the attack itself, the second part being that "they knew and did nothing!").
> #texasattack: "May Allah accept us as mujahideen."
Minutes after:
> Allahu Akbar!!!! 2 of our brothers just opened fire.
Also saw Salafists retweet an old cartoon by Charlie Hebdo of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi hours before the Charlie Hebdo shooting occurred.
I'm divided about this issue. One the one hand, I've seen accounts that glorify the Paris attacks and link to bomb making materials, on the other hand, I've seen lots of video's from Syria and Palestine which does indeed radicalize youth, but is also not directly terrorist propaganda (a lot of this is newsworthy, but does not end up in the news, so it is valuable to share on social media). Should linking to an Anwar al-Awlaki video be grounds for a ban? Remember, these videos are on Youtube.
I like to think back 10-15 years when people had to self-host their websites. Stuff that, back then, would surely get you a knock on the door, slips through daily on social networks. I say: If you can't host it yourself, you can't rely on a third party to host it for you and protect your anonymity.
So yes, chase them underground, and apply more serious tracking to those that are acting more seriously (someone on Telegram writing about terrorism is way more serious than someone on Twitter writing about terrorism). Try to keep social media free of war propaganda. And be careful to not overdo it. America is a country where writing a Facebook post about Apple interspersed with quotes from Fight Club can get you SWATted [1].
Then ghosting would make much more sense, in my opinion, to keep the data just in case some information will get shared that could lead to catching terrorists/recruiters.
Just what I was thinking. Reddit and HN shadowban people without them ever knowing. Twitter probably should too, and allow things like current location/potential plans to be farmed.
It's already common practice for criminals to use encrypted chat system. You may get noobs and fresh recruits but anything serious would happen elsewhere.
You use twitter to radicalize and indoctrinate - not plan attacks. Attacks are typically planned alone and in solitude after someone has already been radicalized.
This is perhaps giving the USG too much credit, but it's possible that they considered this a reasonable trade-off. That is, they are reducing the amount of new radicalization, at the expense of driving the already radicalized underground. On it's face, this is a good trade-off, since already radicalized people are going to be using crypto/darknet stuff anyway.
I think it's more trying to stop people from finding those darknet sites in the first place. I'd imagine they are using Twitter to bring people to the sites where the real conversations go on.
Agreed, and this should be the retort to any curtailing of free speech in the name of safety. Its the same argument as allowing “the_donald” to exist on Reddit. You will not stop an ideology by denying them a platform. Better to debate them in an open forum, even if they are evil. The only way to counter bad ideas is with good ones.
There was a recent /r/science article that suggested the banning of coontown and fatpeoplehate resulted in less hate on the platform as a whole. Would you argue this hate moved to other avenues of the web? I'd bet some of it did, but some people just stopped being so hateful on the internet once their cesspool went away.
It's conflation to compare coontown with the_donald. Go there right now. You won't find "kill the jews" posts. You won't find "kill the gays/black people" posts. You'll find a ton of supportive people with a particular worldview--and there's nothing wrong with that.
If you assume the people you disagree with are "insane" or disregard them as "full of hate" then you'll never understand why they think the way they do and the division in our world continues unabated.
It still blows my mind that people who support the currently elected president, are considered a hate group. If the other candidate had won, would we consider her subreddit a hate sub? Would we care what the losing party thought about her subreddit? We all know the answer to that: "No." I have never before seen an election where "only one candidate is considered a human being."
I was curious and peeked over to see what's currently popular over at the_donald. Some of the top-voted recent links:
* "UN Globalists are on suicide watch after President Trump's speech"
* "One of the best quotes of the speech. Socialist cucks BTFO!"
* "This tweet from David Brock's cucks is less than 2 weeks old and has already aged terribly."
* "Can you imagine a world without Islam?"
* "HE TRULY IS A GOD AMONG MEN" (God-Emperor Trump)
* "Since 9/11 there have been ~35,000 deadly Islamic terror attacks; that's an average of 2,000 per year... So let's (A) NEVER FORGET, (B) PRESS F, and (C) DRIVE. THEM. OUT. FROM. THE. EARTH!"
The_donald is dramatic - maybe to the point of low-grade hysteria. There was an excellent quip from the election:
SALENA ZITO wrote (about Trump)
the press takes him literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally.
You can map the same thing onto his subreddit. If we take them seriously but not literally, they're not wrong.
People with a globalist view really disliked Trump's speech.
There's a matter of opinion about a line in the same speech that his supporters apparently liked.
I'm not going to weigh in on David Brock.
Some God Emperor silliness. FWIW, the God Emperor of 40k led humanity very well up until the point of the Horus Heresy and every God Emperor depiction of Trump is one prior to the Emperor's wounding so it's well intentioned (at least).
And Islamic terror is the most deadly religious ideology in the world right now. Perhaps it's not the wisest thing to be concerned about but it's avowed enemy of America , democracy, and limited government so it's an almost perfect outgroup for self-styled American patriots.
Bill Maher, once heralded as an extreme left liberal (who supported gay marriage and marijuana legalization in the early 90's when nobody thought either would ever happen), consistently talks about the "threat of Islam to democracy". Is he a neocon now? And should we remove his speech to "reduce hate" the same way you're suggesting the_donald be removed?
You pivoted away from the topic. Bill Maher case may be interesting to discuss, but doesn't change whether the_donald calls for hate. Which actually looking at the subreddit shows it does.
Either Bill Maher (a liberal hero) is a racist islamaphobe, or, the_donald users who share the same views as him... aren't islamaphobes.
Because unless we're not talking about Islamaphobia, what else did you actually see that could be considered "hateful"? Because on that same sub you'll find people of all colors, and most religions discussing things. You'll find legal immigrants. You'll find ex-Muslims and atheists. You'll find gays. You'll find women. You'll find Brits. You'll find lifelong Democrats and Libertarians. You'll find ex-"Bernie Bros" who were furious at the DNC's betrayal of Bernie Sanders. You'll find people who grew up under Communist rule. I know, because I've seen every single one of those on that sub and almost every one of those demographics has posted a picture of themselves with a MAGA hat at one point or another.
If you want an actual white supremacist sub, you're thinking of /r/uncensorednews which actually lists Jews with (((triple parenthesis))). That's a pretty sharp contrast to the_donald. But it wouldn't be, if the_donald was as hateful as been claimed.
You can always find a worse place. There are places worse than 4chan too, but I don't see how that's relevant to the_donald being hate filled / fuelled.
There's islamophobia, there's cherry picking of news about rape claims, infowars crap about illegal immigrants which is just hate mongering, posts like "let's trigger illegals and show some love for our ICE agents".
I'm not going to link to that dump specifically because they don't deserve the publicity. If you don't see this as hate mongering, we disagree on a very fundamental level.
I frequently hear that defense of the_donald subreddit, but it seems not to be backed by facts.
Yes, it is extremely important not to dehumanize our political opponents and to understand all the terrible things that made people be disillusioned with the establishment and vote for Trump.
But the_donald community is definitely extreme in their fundamentalism, way beyond just being supportive of Trump's political agenda. Looking at their front page does actually show islamophobic and sexists posts and frequent calls/cheers to violence, contrary to your claims.
"It's conflation to compare coontown with the_donald. Go there right now. You won't find "kill the jews" posts. You won't find "kill the gays/black people" posts. You'll find a ton of supportive people with a particular worldview--and there's nothing wrong with that."
Go read the comments. You will find plenty of that stuff.
"If the other candidate had won, would we consider her subreddit a hate sub?"
False equivalence. I don't recall Clinton ever saying she wanted to jail her political opponent. I don't recall her campaign ever retweeting literal white supremacists.
> I don't recall Clinton ever saying she wanted to jail her political opponent.
This part isn't really fair. If I want to jail my political opponent because she's my political opponent, this is a big problem, but if I want to jail her because she's committed crimes, that's perfectly fine.
I don't have a dog in the fight either way. I dislike Democrats and Republicans alike. There's enough publicly available evidence that she mishandled classified documents. If I did that, they'd lock me up and throw away the key.
It flabergasts me that otherwise reasonable people can say what you're saying. Is it confirmation bias? Is it a media that while rarely outright lying, just avoids mentioning anti-Clinton facts? How?
> There's enough publicly available evidence that she mishandled classified documents.
In the same way that many people did before her and in the same way that people continue to do now. Are you proposing to prosecute everyone the same way?
Why is it suddenly an issue when HRC is doing it but not when Gowdy and Chaffetz do it? Or when almost the entire Trump administration is doing it? Or when the Bush administration "lost" 50M emails they were supposed to have kept?
Hint: If you only have a problem with it when HRC does it, you probably want to check your sexism and misogyny settings.
I don't want to see everyone prosecuted, just the people who break the law. Why does Hillary get better treatment than Bryan H. Nishimura?
I'm unfamiliar with your accusations against Gowdy and Chaffetz, but if they did something similar, I'd support their prosecution, too.
I had to remind myself of Bush's email scandal. It looks like, in the end, since the emails were found, there was no law broken? I'm unclear on this point. But the point is, that if they broke the law, somebody should have been prosecuted, then, too.
Your arguments seem to be going in the direction of "the other side is doing it, too." That's not a defense! It especially doesn't do anything to convince me, since I'm not on anybody's side.
And I would feel the same way if it were a male republican we were talking about. Do you really think you can retreat to accusations of misogyny every time somebody says something negative about a woman you support?
> Why does Hillary get better treatment than Bryan H. Nishimura?
The cases aren't comparable. One was a wilful mishandling of classified documents; the other was a widely accepted way of dealing with email.
> since the emails were found, there was no law broken?
A Senate committee said "[T]his subversion of the justice system has included lying, misleading, stonewalling and ignoring the Congress in our attempts to find out precisely what happened." That sounds like they broke the law.
> "the other side is doing it, too."
Not really - it's more that "Oh, look, the female candidate is getting slammed for things that everyone in USGOV has done, is doing, and will do whilst the male candidates and aides ... do not."
> And I would feel the same way if it were a male republican we were talking about.
Then presumably you are now calling for Kushner's indictment?
When numerous investigations turned up jack squat regarding her doing anything wrong, calling for her to be jailed IS calling to jail her simply because she's your political opponent.
> resulted in less hate on the platform as a whole
The study is interesting, but this is decidedly not what it says, and you should be wary of overinterpreting its arguments. If you look at the definition of hate speech they used, it was defined as "the vocabulary of the subreddits in question". This isn't a general complaint about hate speech being slippery and hard to pin down, it's a criticism of the fact that defining it as the specific vocabulary of the subreddits in question is a huge confounder. What the study's conclusion boils down to is:
"If you ban a subreddit, the exact vocabulary (in-jokes, etc) of that subreddit declines."
Well, duh. This is an especially tautological result for communities that have such a rich vocabulary of in-jokes (and slurs) :(
There's not much in the paper to suggest that the emigrants from coontown and FPH aren't expressing the exact same ideas elsewhere, without using the exact same lexicon that they developed in their original communities. I would be surprised if this result didn't replicate for pretty miuch any community that has its own internal vocabulary and in-jokes, such as nominally pro-social-justice subreddits or even narrow political subreddits like /r/anarchism or something.
I'd suggest that your sentiments map very nicely onto a rationalist view of the world but poorly onto reality. I think this more generally falls into a bias some hyper-logical people propagate, that since they assume they make decisions primarily with logic, that others must do the same as well.
It inherently assumes that A) people vulnerable to being recruited into a suicidal death cult are thinking logically, and B) such people can be logically talked out of their ideology.
If instead one assumes that emotional connection is the primary driver of the recruiting success in question, it follows that disrupting this pipeline would yield more success than attempting to reason with talented recruiters who aren't trying to have a fair and logical debate.
Sure, just like you could convince McDonald's to go vegan with a few carefully worded arguments...
ISIS doesn't use twitter to debate you. They use it strictly for outbound propaganda.
Even if you could somehow convince those running ISIS accounts of the folly of their endeavours, these are likely to be a tiny fraction of ISIS' people. There are a few dozen social media people in their ranks, but the idea that the bulk of them even have access to Twitter is somewhat laughable.
Denying ISIS such propaganda outlets is useful in fighting them. Proof by the free market theorem: they wouldn't use Twitter if they did not consider it better than the alternatives. They are also better informed about their situation, so they're more likely to be right than anyone else. Denying them this possibility must therefore be damaging to their cause.
This idea that extreme ideologies are somehow damaged by access to mass media is among the most ridiculous infatuations HN has embarked on, informed almost exclusively by wishful thinking. An ideology that is pushed underground is, and this is almost a truism, strictly worse off than one that has access to these tools.
See the recent reddit paper for some numbers, or consider something like r/the_donald: does anybody really believe that community would have been more powerful if it had been relegated to their own platform early on?
Again, exploding people with bombs and using trucks as bullets is already illegal. More to the point, it's important to not conflate extreme ideologies with specific groups which use those ideologies. ISIS uses Twitter to recruit people to ISIS. There are many violent extremist groups that aren't ISIS, and would love to see it's demise.
Agree it's better to debate in an open forum. Free speech should permit the exchange of all ideas, even "evil" ones. But isn't it a bit disingenuous to compare r/The_Donald to ISIS, since the latter is inciting violence?
> Agreed, and this should be the retort to any curtailing of free speech in the name of safety
There is no free speech issue here, Twitter isn't operated by the government, neither is Facebook or Reddit. My point is, people are still free to set up their own servers at home, running their own app, their liberty to do that is not harmed by Twitter rejecting content. On the contrary, it's an opportunity for free speech advocates to remember that.
I don't think Free Speech has ever meant being required to publish others speech. Freedom of the press was meant to ensure you can say what you wish via pamphlets or starting your own newspaper, wherein you own the method of speech. That is why it was fundamental to Free Speech.
One has never been able to compel a publisher to publish them.
You may have a different concept, but to my way way of thinking that has always been the connection between the First Amendment and Free Speech.
But, since you asked, businesses that offer services to the public can refuse service to anyone UNLESS they're refusing a member of a protected class, for being a member of a protected class.
White restaurant owner kicking out a black lady because she's belligerent/drunk/whatever -- fine.
White restaurant owner kicking out a black lady because she's black -- not fine.
Religious bakery owner refusing service because it's Monday -- fine.
Religious bakery owner refusing service because the customer is gay -- not fine.
Freedom of speech is really something that must be contextualized, for it to be a useful term.
In all contexts, freedom of speech is considered a 'right', but in some contexts it's a positive right, and in others it's a negative right.
In the US constitution, it's a negative right. The First Amendment states that 'Congress shall write no law ... abridging the freedom of speech.' In the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it's a positive right:
"everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice". [1]
If Twitter were subject to the UDHR, it would seem to me that people would be entitled to use Twitter as a free speech platform. We are lucky that this is not the case, because that would surely violate Twitter's property rights and its employees'/investors' right to self determination.
To dissallow Twitter to shape its own content/user base strategy would be unethical.
The concept of Free Speech also includes that of Free Association. As in, Twitter gets to decide who they want to associate with. And in this context, associate with means use their platform.
>The only way to counter bad ideas is with good ones.
Absolute rubbish; bad ideas spread through people, thus you need to be able to reach people when you counter bad ideas, but people generally aren't controlled by their rationality, they are attached to ideas and stick with them. The idea that if only for example Jewish interest groups had debated the Nazis more, then the Nazis would have been shown to have bad ideas is ridiculous.
Some ideas, as Marcuse put it, block the democratic process and this blockage may require apparently undemocratic means to remove.
Not to downplay the move, but by their own admission, many of them were banned before they even tweeted once. I'd bet most of them don't fall under MAU
I just hope that one day they will do something about the bot accounts. They seem able to have an effect on political discourse, and therefore present a clear danger to democracy. Many are also completely obvious and would be trivial to round up.
I'm more interested in why it took them this long, while they're perfectly fine suspending accounts that are politically opposing to their worldview. How are political dissenters more dangerous than actual terrorists?
There is no direct business value in banning users from your platform. In fact, doing so is a short-term net negative.
This is also why Twitter was so slow to ban bots: you gain a fraction of satisfaction for your users that interact with annoying bots, at the cost of dwindling user numbers.
> suspending accounts that are politically opposing to their worldview
Because highly visible users of their platform (verified celebrities) started DMing the CEO and threatened to leave if bullies were not dealt with. Creating a safe space for the social elite is very much adding business value to Twitter and makes investors happy.
I think Twitter just awaited the US government reaction, and took as long as the law / future business prospects allowed them. That Twitter propaganda has become a major problem for the intelligence agencies and anti-terrorism units is evident. It takes a long time to properly deal with these problems, just like Twitter will probably take years to combat astro-turfing bots meddling with a foreign election (which seems to me, the logical next step in the evolution of mass automatic banning of problematic accounts).
Because highly visible users of their platform (verified celebrities) started DMing the CEO and threatened to leave if bullies were not dealt with. Creating a safe space for the social elite is very much adding business value to Twitter and makes investors happy.
Really? I wish more people would have just come out and said that. Special treatment for the whales explains everything so much better.
But I guess that doesn't sell well to the have-nots, and it needed to be recast as harassment problem at all levels. Which subjugated all of us to years of commentary and squabbling over how we're going to use computers to fix undesirable-but-totally-natural aspects of human behavior. Also explains why the highly-visible people seemed so cool with instituting a privately-controlled nanny state every step of the way.
The word "terrorism" is a PR word intended to marginalize whatever group it is applied to.
As a tactic, terrorism describes the infliction of civilian casualties meant to create a disproportionate climate of fear. By this definition, drones used in warfare are a form of terrorism.
In today's world we are not fighting wars in the traditional sense of defending ourselves against aggression. Since there is no obvious threat, the people will not support a pragmatic war of aggression meant to help install US hegemony in oil rich (or otherwise geopolitically important) regions of the world.
So our planners are left with the need to create a moralistic crusade and to marginalize and dehumanize the adversary so that Americans will not care when we find out that many of them (and their civilians) were slaughtered or forced to live in poverty/squalor.
It starts with the framing of the adversary as helpless against an illegitimate regime. The people are framed as victims of their own failure to end up with a better regime, and the moralistic idea of nation building and bringing in democracy is introduced.
Then, the regime is asked to give up power. When it refuses, as all regimes would, the US pretends it has a moral justification to use force against people and infrastructure. There is the heavy implication that a greater purpose exists, such as democracy or women's rights, or stopping the torture policies of the regime, etc.
But in fact no plan exists other than to remove the regime from power. Never before has there been a more hollow policy/intellectual movement than the idea of nation building.
Meanwhile, the US has typically funded various militant groups that oppose the regime, and now those groups are no longer needed. Some decide to seek power in the newly existing power vacuum. They will be branded as terrorists arbitrarily to suit the needs of the US PR campaign.
The word terrorism is used to characterize a person or a set of beliefs or an organization as unworthy of respect and unworthy of humane treatment.
Yet in the US we fail to recognize our drone strikes as the same tactic as suicide bombings, while we create untold pain and suffering abroad.
Both of our major political parties strongly support the endless war and the endless killing and destruction of the political adversaries abroad who dare to try to control their own destinies and the destinies of their region.
Twitter clearly supports this too, and feels obligated to help eradicate the first amendment as much as possible in its own small way, even if it can't actually revoke the amendment.
You are missing the biggest differentiating factor of terrorism, the targeting of innocent civilians. Yes, US drone strikes do cause fear in a similar way to terrorism. Yes, civilians are being killed by US drone strikes. Yes, that fact is morally reprehensible. But no drone strike is launched with the sole intent of killing civilians. That is a world of difference.
This is a fun discussion because you're both right and tomes have been written about the definition of terrorism. Some of the actions of the IRA or the bombing of the Marine barracks in Lebanon in 82 are interesting events to consider in the civilian/military distinction.
It's also worth noting that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were acts of terror under most definitions.
This is a good definition, which IIRC was compiled from a lot of other academic sources:
Alex Schmid and Albert Jongman: “Terrorism is an anxiety-inspiring method of repeated violent action, employed by (semi-)clandestine individual, group, or state actors, for idiosyncratic, criminal, or political reasons, whereby—in contrast to assassination—the direct targets of violence are not the main targets. The immediate human victims of violence are generally chosen randomly (targets of opportunity) or selectively (representative or symbolic targets) from a target population, and serve as message generators.”
That is a better definition than mine since I used the word civilian. You are right that terrorist attacks can be directed at military members.
I would maybe challenge or tweak the state actors inclusion in potential perpetrators. The bombing of population centers like London, Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, etc. during WWII feels like a separate category. Those should still be war crimes, however the fact that they were carried out during an active war by the military would seem to make them a little different than traditional terrorist attacks.
> But no drone strike is launched with the sole intent of killing civilians. That is a world of difference.
I used to agree with your assertion. I will explain why I no longer do.
The goal of warfare is very simply to break the will of the opposing population to keep fighting.
Taking out roadways and bridges and sewage treatment plants with smart bombs is another way to break the opponent's will. Not quite as demoralizing as a funeral for a loved one killed by the enemy, but demoralizing nonetheless. That is why we use smart bombs to take out infrastructure... to make life harder for the enemy so that its will is broken.
In the revolutionary war, guerrilla tactics like taking cover behind a tree were considered morally cowardly and abhorrent by the British, yet were embraced by revolutionaries as an effective tactic in an asymmetric battle.
During WW2 the US carpet bombed the Japanese mainland, intent on total devastation of entire cities (civilians included) so that the Japanese would relent and give up the fight.
During the Vietnam war the US used chemical weapons extensively, which had extensive civilian consequences.
The point if the argument so far is to illustrate that the line between acceptable and unacceptable civilian casualties is (for the US, at least) very flexible based on the urgency of the battle. The closer we are to not winning the more readily we will do away with any aversion to civilian casualties. The same is true for any nation or other group of fighters.
The second question is, why has the US invested so much money in smart bombs and drones? We are told that it is because the US has an extremely high moral standard when it comes to warfare, and we are spending Trillions on these weapons systems simply because we value the lives of civilian populations so much that we are willing to make this massive investment.
The real reason we have done this is because after the cold war the US lost its appetite for discretionary war-making. The jig was up. The threat of the spread of communism never panned out and a generation had been deeply impacted by the Vietnam war. Many had seen combat, many had lost friends or family in a war that was widely viewed as a horrible mistake.
In order to sell Americans on war again, our leaders had to be able to launch a hygienic war. Recall during GW1 how we saw live video of bombs dropping precisely onto targets that we were told contained munitions or other weapons bunkers. These bombs could be dropped right next to a hospital or school and create no harm for the patients or students. Finally, the US had technology that allowed the exceptional moral character of our war initiatives to be reflected in the character of the battle. The people were reassured that only the bad stuff was being harmed.
As US entanglement in the middle eastern wars got bigger and bigger, opposition groups grew more resilient to the smart bombs and were able to put up a fight that required something even more precise.
So drones were created that contain precision cameras and weaponry, allowing areal executions of enemies to be undertaken cleanly, without killing anyone who wasn't deemed guilty by whoever in the US had ordered the strike.
This all makes sense if you believe the story that Afghanistan and Iraq (for example) are full of mostly US-loving people and a few hostile combatants who hate us for our freedoms.
In reality, there is widespread public support of so-called terrorist groups, widespread resentment of US involvement. How can the US manage to police this sort of environment?
If you are driving a car and you go too fast you can be caught speeding. The penalty of the time wasted and the cost of the ticket discourages people from speeding. In US drone-controlled areas, the drone killings offer a broad deterrent for behavioral misconduct.
Only if one buys into the US definition of guilt as being appropriately determined by someone who has been authorized to order the strikes is this remotely fair or reasonable.
What is more effective to intimidate a population into compliance, a system with too many false negatives or one with too many false positives? I'd argue that false positives (unwarranted or loosely-justified killings) are exactly the sort of thing that helps enforce the sort of control that the US wants.
Imagine if in the US we heard about people being killed via drone killings on American soil. It would terrify lots of people. Imagine if some foreign body was determining who was guilty and innocent and we had no democratic say in the criteria used to make this determination?
It leaves no choice for the target population but to live in fear and to supplicate to the US and hope for mercy. We Americans are told that there is some incredibly humane stuff going on and that we are able to make all this happen without sending as many American troops into harm's way. But in reality we are being led to believe a story of humane and judicious use of force that is simply a story meant to get us to support the war and nation building efforts and has no basis in reality.
Drones are like lethal sheep dogs herding the population (sheep) in a way that the US wants. They use just enough brutality to get the job done, and the brutality comes in the form of actual death for some, but constant teeth gnashing stress as the propellors are heard overhead, constant empty reassurances given to children that everything will be OK and that they won't be targeted, etc. The purpose of the drones is to keep the level of terror and fear just high enough to get compliant behavior... to coerce the target population into compliance.
I agree with a lot of what you said (and thanks for laying that out in depth, it was an interesting read), but that still doesn't change the fact that the method the US uses to target drones strikes is completely different than the method terrorists use to target their strikes. It is possible to recognize the ethical problems of the drone program while also saying it is on a higher moral ground than the random killing that terrorists employ.
> It is possible to recognize the ethical problems of the drone program while also saying it is on a higher moral ground than the random killing that terrorists employ.
Are those ethical parameters or economic parameters? If every regime that would possibly end up in conflict with the US is expected to develop the satellite technology, smart bomb tech, drone tech, etc., before engaging in battle, that's pretty much impossible for any non-first-world country.
So one must conclude either that any non-first-world country must instantly surrender out of an inability to fight at the same moral level as the US, or that the distinction is not actually a moral one.
In the US, we are told that is a highly important moral distinction... but this is simply because the public prefers to feel the satisfaction of operating from a moral high ground and so it's a great way to sell a population on the idea of sacrificing trillions of dollars (enough to pay for education, healthcare and a 3 day work week for all Americans for decades) so that our nation can do the morally righteous thing and kill (usually brown) people.
I think they have to be ethical standards. If they are economic standards then you open up the possibility that any method of war/killing is acceptable in dire economic circumstances. That is how you get a country like North Korea threatening nuclear war.
This idea isn't uniquely American. Humanity as a whole has decided that there are different levels of morality in warfare and killing. Those standards evolve over time. You example of the American revolutionaries and the extensive use of chemical warfare in WWI are examples of things ebb and flow. But at the heart of it I think most can agree that people have a right to fight for their own freedom, but they do not have the right to indiscriminately kill. That indiscriminate killing is what separates drone warfare from terrorism.
How do you define indiscriminate killing? Carpet bombing and terrorism are at one extreme, WWII style bombing of military targets is a bit less indiscriminate, drone strikes are much less indiscriminate. Lincoln and JFK type assassinations are perhaps at the other extreme.
How do you draw the line at what's OK and not OK? As the GP suggests, it seems to be drawn at whatever level of technology the most advanced group has.
Personally, I think terrorism is one of the most moral ways of fighting. By definition, it creates a high level of fear with a small number of casualties. That's far better than, say, trench warfare with a high level of casualties but isolated from the majority of the population.
>That is how you get a country like North Korea threatening nuclear war.
To be clear, North Korea has not threatened starting a nuclear war. They have threatened that if they are attacked, they will respond with nuclear weapons. This is essentially the same threat that all nuclear powers make.
I'm sympathetic to your view because I used to hold it.
> I think they have to be ethical standards. If they are economic standards then you open up the possibility that any method of war/killing is acceptable in dire economic circumstances.
Why should any method be acceptable? Why not have (for example) Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un put on boxing gloves and determine the fate of NK's nuclear program with a boxing match?
The US has been enacting sanctions on NK for decades which have caused significant suffering of NK's population. The pain and suffering caused by those sanctions, the starving children, etc., are viewed by the US to be the fault of NK's leaders simply because they do not obey US directives.
From the perspective of the US, the sanctions are a humane way of putting pressure on NK's regime that are nonviolent. Are the pangs of hunger felt by the children who are starving or malnourished due to those sanctions nonviolent?
In international conflict, all that matters is one nation's ability to force another nation's hand. Imagine if NK were able to do something to cause Americans to miss three meals per week until the US backed down from its extreme position on NK's regime. We laugh about this because it is so unlikely, but what is the difference?
The hawks will tell us with a straight face that KJU is mentally unstable. Note that all leaders that the US wishes to remove from power are labeled mentally unstable or insane and unpredictable. Our propagandists leverage the fear that many people feel for mental illness and label the enemy with it to make us more easily mistrust and hate the enemy.
By every rational account, KJU is playing a cool, long-term game and is using his power and resources effectively to stave off US bullying. While I would certainly prefer he not have nuclear weapons, there is no evidence that he is unstable or irrational. He simply hasn't gone for the carrots that have been halfheartedly offered, and multiple US presidents have failed to improve the situation.
Is KJU supposed to simply say "OK, Donald Trump, I will step down because I would never threaten to launch a nuclear weapon at a country that declares my regime illegitimate and threatens me with military operations in nearby waters"? It's pretty absurd to think he'd do that. His incentive at this point (based on what has been offered) is to make the US worry that any strikes or attempts to unseat his government could result in a nuke being launched at one of the population centers of the US or a US ally.
Note that KJU has not threatened nuclear war in isolation, it has simply threatened to respond if attacked.
> Those standards evolve over time.
What has occurred is that the US now has much more control over which wars it wishes to enter, and has a more difficult time persuading citizens to risk their lives fighting. So the sort of military that we have today is designed to allow wars to continue in spite of the lack of obvious threats. Since the threats are not obvious, it is not possible to convince the American people to carpet bomb a country that is not obviously at war with us, so a more surgical method must be used in order to get enlistees for optional wars.
The moral progress narrative is just that, a narrative. If we ended up in a fight with a true adversary we would throw it out the window and use all sorts of newly developed weapons (such as EMF weapons that peel the skin off of enemy soldiers, sound weapons that deafen the enemy and cause months of headaches, etc.).
War is about force and coercion, and war requires public support in a democracy. Those two things are (I believe) the fundamentals from which all of the rest of the scenarios (technology, morality, etc.) fall out.
> terrorism describes the infliction of civilian casualties meant to create a disproportionate climate of fear. By this definition, drones used in warfare are a form of terrorism.
It's hard to read the rest of your post with that opener.
You may believe that drones are used poorly, and you may believe they naturally result in higher civilian casualties, but there is absolutely nothing that implies that "by definition". Drones are simply another weapon that happens to have human operators located elsewhere.
A drone makes a loud noise as it hovers invisibly above, piloted from afar. It contains sophisticated sensor systems to allow it to detect the heat of human bodies, and cameras and computer systems that can do face matches with long lists of people deemed OK to kill.
By your logic, drones are simply airplanes... simply a transportation device. That is obviously not a useful level of abstraction with which to view their use in war.
In our modern wars, drones are used as intimidation devices, with the sound of their propellers issuing a constant reminder that anyone may be the next to die.
They are thus much more akin to dropped leaflets containing propaganda meant to persuade an enemy population.
In the past, leaflets have been used to do intimidation by declaring the time in the future when a nearby building would be obliterated. The locals, after reading the leaflet and seeing the building obliterated, were meant to have greater respect for the powerful nation that dropped the leaflets and to become more obedient to it.
A private company concluding that it probably isn't a net positive for either itself or humanity to host broadcasts inciting people to drive trucks into Parisian shoppers or blow up London Tube trains is somewhat orthogonal to the question of whether US foreign policy and individual military strikes often have disastrous results.
Ironically, no argument could be more US-centric than arguing the concept of terrorism cannot exist outside of the US government's list of enemies du jour or the suggestion that corporations' right to make moral judgements about whether they wish to offer free recruitment advertising for suicide bombers should be sacrificed to the false idol of the First Amendment.
Well, Twitter is a US company and has an incentive to please US officials.
Thus the context of terrorism in modern America and American politics is broadly relevant. It might be terrorists you don't like this time, but what about next time when it's terrorists you support? Who gets to decide what groups deserve that label? Donald Trump?
> ... corporations' right to make moral judgements about whether they wish to offer free recruitment advertising for suicide bombers should be sacrificed to the false idol of the First Amendment.
Fine if society actually needs companies to make moral judgments on behalf of the public. In the US there has been widespread opposition to the basic freedoms provided by the bill of rights over the past decade or so.
What we are seeing is a combination of companies helping with the US propaganda narrative about terrorism by silencing opposing voices. Worse, we are seeing companies like Twitter and Facebook turn into moral filters. Someone is deciding what is "terrorism", what is "fake news", etc. These are not the services that platform companies provide, they are the services that religious leaders provide.
> Who gets to decide what groups deserve that label? Donald Trump?
Twitter, on Twitter's platform. And yes, people are perfectly free to disagree with Twitter's characterisation of particular groups and comments.
I'm afraid we're going to have to agree to disagree on the notion that platforms which distribute more criticisms of US policy to more people on a daily basis than most revolutionary subversive movements manage in their entire history are going out of their way to be helpful to the US propaganda narrative, or indeed the implicit argument that promotion of ISIS can be judged to be a threat to humanity only in terms of US propaganda narratives.
> platforms which distribute more criticisms of US policy to more people on a daily basis than most revolutionary subversive movements manage in their entire history
This characterization of dissent is highly misleading. Dissent should be thought of as speech that the powerful interest actually wants to suppress.
In the US, our powerful interests love speech such as "Trump is a clown" or "Obama is not a US citizen" because they are nonsense issues that have nothing to do with policy, yet they animate voters effectively.
To the powerful interests, the ideal electorate is one that is deeply passionate about issues that pose no threat to the status quo. To use a more specific example, much campaign funding is raised by rallying groups to donate based on issues that are unlikely to result in policy change.
terrorism describes the infliction of civilian casualties meant to create a disproportionate climate of fear. By this definition, drones used in warfare are a form of terrorism.
Let's address that point. First, that's a convenient definition that erases the distinction between State and non-State violence which is critical to many people's formulations of what is and isn't permissible.
E.g I wouldn't tolerate my neighbor trying to search my house, but I would step aside for a police officer with a warrant.
Secondly, drone warfare isn't conducted primarily to kill civilian targets. Sure, bystanders do die in the process but there's never been an account of a US drone strike that was motivated by the desire to instill fear in civilians by maximizing civilian causalities.
Terrorists seek to maximize damage. States don't, or at least subject to some constraint. Carpet bombing is terrible on its own merits, but it's not akin to using nuclear / biological weapons.
In today's world we are not fighting wars in the traditional sense of defending ourselves against aggression.
We absolutely are fighting aggression. The Pulse Nightclub? The Twin Towers? Jihadists routinely declare war on America and work towards killing Americans. We're not fighting state actors (with the exception of ISIS) hence the term "asymmetric warfare".
Meanwhile, the US has typically funded various militant groups that oppose the regime, and now those groups are no longer needed. Some decide to seek power in the newly existing power vacuum. They will be branded as terrorists arbitrarily to suit the needs of the US PR campaign.
They were terrorists when we supported them, now they're just terrorists that bother us. Al Queda was a terrorist group when it fought the Soviets, it just became a problem for America when America became the new enemy.
The word terrorism is used to characterize a person or a set of beliefs or an organization as unworthy of respect and unworthy of humane treatment.
You're correct. And it's an important part of mutual radicalization, look at how quickly the left adopted very right wing thoughts after charlotesville. People were calling for punishing the terrorist's family, starting watch lists, and the importance of preemptive self-defense against terrorists.
Yet in the US we fail to recognize our drone strikes as the same tactic as suicide bombings, while we create untold pain and suffering abroad.
They're not the same tactic. The U.S is duty-bound to protect its citizens and the U.S citizens exchange obedience for protection, drone strikes are a mechanism of protecting U.S citizens, the legitimacy of the State depends on the U.S defeating its enemies. Sure, there are less violent ways of accomplishing the goal but that's for the U.S citizens and U.S influencers to decide.
Both of our major political parties strongly support the endless war and the endless killing and destruction of the political adversaries abroad who dare to try to control their own destinies and the destinies of their region.
Hardly. The U.S goes out of its way to support self-rule so long as the people are committed to liberal democracies. Look at all the aid the US dishes out and all the favorable treatment it gives fellow democracies.
What the U.S can't tolerate (and must never tolerate) is the formation of States (like ISIS) that dream of genocide for Americans or American interests or the defeat of freedom and liberty.
>Secondly, drone warfare isn't conducted primarily to kill civilian targets. Sure, bystanders do die in the process but there's never been an account of a US drone strike that was motivated by the desire to instill fear in civilians by maximizing civilian causalities.
This isn't a drone strike, but wasn't the goal of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs to kill as many civilians as possible in order to instill so much fear that their country surrendered? If that is the criteria for terrorism, then we have certainly already committed the largest terrorist attack in world history.
The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are imo one of the most ethically/morally challenging situations ever.
I don't think it's terrorism for a few reasons:
1. America took steps to minimize causalities [0] - America dropped pamphlets and warnings prior the attack (although the warnings were dire, they didn't explain exactly how terrible the bombs would be)
2. America didn't exclusively target civilians or the softest targets, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were chosen for their industrial significance and proximity to airbases.
3. America made an attempt to avert the bombing - they told Japan that something terrible would happen if there wasn't unconditional surrender (Japan was okay with conditional surrender but America wasn't). That's probably near enough a threat but also these were warring States so it's different than a street dust-up.
4. America made the utilitarian decision to drop the bomb after considering the alternatives - the reality is that an invasion of Japan would have been more bloody for the Japanese and the Americans. Fun fact: the military commissioned 1 million purple heart medals as preparation for the invasion of Japan [1]
5. I'd say that terrorists have utopian ideologies and they use the goal to sanitize the means. America didn't have any delusions that they'd drop the bomb and then there'd be paradise, they knew it'd be much closer to hell on earth.
I don't think the bombing was defensible, and I'm so incredibly legalistic that I would have preferred that America used the bomb but that America would then have sentenced the aircrews and their commanders to death after a trial at nuremburg. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were crimes against humanity and if we use the nuremburg formulations, they're indefensible and call for capital punishment.
The bombs were critical and effective but indefensible and humanity should wipe the names of the bombers and their military chain of command from the history books (probably including Truman).
For me this is just too much giving the benefit of the doubt. I find it much more likely, and I'm pretty sure that most historians agree, that they were dropped to deter the USSR. Japan had lost the war, to assume that there was only a choice between dropping the bombs or invasion is yet again to be too kind.
That's not usually true. Terrorists often don't go for max deaths but for a specific symbolic target (e.g. Pentagon, wtc etc). What they want is to provoke a response, ideally heavy-handed repression - the aim is to polarise the society targeted, to instill fear and panic, and reveal the implicit violence of government as explicit action.
Drone strikes and the policy of global assassination does not keep you safe, it just kills a lot of people. Re support for democracy, I'm not sure why you believe that given support for Pinochet, sisi, Mubarak, hussein, Saud etc
What they want is to provoke a response, ideally heavy-handed repression
sounds damage maximizing to me - provoking a heavy handed response sounds like an issue of damage multiplication. It's not as if all targets are equally valid to terrorists - no one ever suicide bombed a corn field in Nebraska. If the 9/11 hijackers were going for maximum damage, what should they have attacked?
Drone strikes and the policy of global assassination does not keep you safe, it just kills a lot of people
It keeps me more safe than doing nothing, and less safe than other more dramatic attacks - e.g glassing the countries that produce the most terrorists. I'm sure my local police could keep me more safe, but that doesn't discredit the safety they help create.
Re support for democracy, I'm not sure why you believe that given support for Pinochet, sisi, Mubarak, hussein, Saud etc
America supports non-democratically elected leaders in addition to democratically elected leaders. I don't have a list, but I think the only democratically elected government that the US doesn't support is Hamas.
A bit of a diversion but I don't think the 9/11 pentagon crash counts as terrorism because it was a military target. If you work at the Pentagon, you're more directly participating in war than an average person in New York.
I thought I'd seen everything now that Republicans all started to love Putin. But this sort of alliance between the r/fatpeoplehate-crowd and ISIS is yet another mind-blowing milestone.
Now I finally know how my dog feels when he looks at me with his head tilted to one side, his eyes betraying his lack of understanding.
One man's political dissenter is another's terrorist :)
More seriously, this is obviously a textbook example of a cognitive bias: There is absolutely no possibility that the number of specific people being blocked for hate speech in the US you are likely to read about come anywhere close to these 300,000.
One of those was probably mine. I was banned within five minutes of signing up, I'm guessing because I was using semi-public wifi and didn't provide a phone number (although the signup form says it's optional.) The stated reason was for "bot-like activity".
I get spam follows from bots with no posts all the time. It's generally pretty easy to tell who will turn out to be a real person or not — they'll have random, super botty names (Svetlana Nakamoto with the handle jonesdevin), or their profile pics will be stock art or porn stars, or something like that.
"Robots" have run our "censorship" tools for two decades of spam-fighting. Even on the decentralised USENET platform, back when one third of traffic was spam and one third was spam cancels.
Twitter really ought to do something about Sybil attacks. In fact, they could probably fix their monetization strategy at the same time; start charging users some small fee in exchange for having their identity verified. Non verified accounts can't be retweeted or they have some caps on the number of public views they can get, or interactions they can have with accounts that don't follow them, etc. Now that I think about it, this could solve their spam and harassment problems too.
> The company is balancing a commitment to free speech against pressure from policymakers who want to see social media companies do more to fight extremism and hate speech.
Big issue for today. Both 'free speech' extremes are bad. No two people can agree on a "perfect" middle ground though.
I wish they would release also some of these good usernames that have been abused or used by scammers. Or at least something like: if the account didn't post a tweet in like, say, 5 years... notify the owner it's up for expiry.
I saw one account that threatened to exterminate tens of millions of people today. I reported the post but somehow I doubt Twitter will do anything about it.
Unless it was made by a powerful country, that wouldn't be a credible threat so it wouldn't matter. If it was 10's of people, it might be taken more seriously and you should report it to the police anyway, not just Twitter.
Agreed. You can try to equate Twitter with Nazi's for suspending accounts.
Or you completely flip the analogy and say that this is Twitter refusing to not speak out and do nothing, while the Nazi's are coming for people on Twitter.
I disagree that everyone should have a platform to say anything. Allowing hatred and violence can normalise it.
Also, if someone got on a soapbox outside your house and starting preaching violence I don't think you'd be celebrating the exercising of their rights - you'd probably call the police.
> Also, if someone got on a soapbox outside your house and starting preaching violence I don't think you'd be celebrating the exercising of their rights - you'd probably call the police.
Sure, except
> The company is balancing a commitment to free speech against pressure from policymakers who want to see social media companies do more to fight extremism and hate speech.
> [...]
> Twitter last year signed a voluntary pledge in Europe to take action within 24 hours against reports of racist, xenophobic and violent content.
It seems the pressure is comming from policy makers, not the house owners.
> It seems the pressure is comming from policy makers, not the house owners.
I think you'll find that most people in society would support the motion to attempt to reduce extremism and hate speech. It's not a controversial issue nor do I in any way feel it's trampling on any rights I have.
You think that if they can tweet they won't have to go out and murder. Let off a little steam on facebook??? Really???
Really??? Obviously they are doing both and by 'shitposting' you mean posting videos glorifying their victims being beheaded and burnt alive. I suppose you think pedophiles should be able to publish their rape vids too? Anything goes right? No rights more important than the precious!
If posting murder vids and torture photos is an effective recruiting tool in your country, you country has problems it needs to address. Banning the tweets is attaching the symptom, not the cancer.
I'd argue we should let them post what they want and monitor them as they freely associate with their cohorts and note the patterns/relationships. This seems like such an obvious answer that I can only assume that I'm either way off, or this is some type of marketing to engender some type of patriotism response among those not yet signed up or active on Twitter.
There have no doubt been scores of security analysts doing this for years, but I'd imagine that this can only go so deep, as I doubt they're openly scheming on Twitter.
It does however provide a window into some of their recruitment behavior, as these types of outlets are the easiest places to lure vulnerable or impressionable people into deeper, darker corners of their propaganda networks. But I have to imagine that if you were to shut off their ability to lure people there in the first place it would do more to fight them than watching and following them.
If the slope were that slippery, you couldn't do anything: "Now you want me to do the dishes. But if I agree to that, you will soon ask me to build a spaceship!"
History has repeatedly shown that the slope is that slippery.
Just within the last 17 years, we've seen plenty of examples of events and behavior that at one time would have been considered unacceptable or shocking become normalized and "par for the course".
That we have shiny beeping toys and a broader vocabulary to describe aspects of human behavior today doesn't change the fact that human behavior itself hasn't changed in a long, long time.
They are increasingly a major conduit for speech. Isolating people from Twitter isolates them from their inherent right to speech. This does two things a) sets precedence for future speech limitations and b) makes it harder for us to track people associated with terrorism. Both are bad since they historically lead to more violence.
Not fully. The problem is the network effect. Look at the Arab Spring. "Everyone should have access to Twitter due to freedom". Now we see the other side of speech and run away.
Unfortunately, you'll see the American ideal of free speech quickly purged from the Internet as American companies shed their nationalism for profit. The EU does not hold speech as dear as the US.
As the EU gains more power, they'll pressure American firms to conform to their laws. Since the firms have EU headquarters, they will. If the American firms wore that mantle with pride (and paid the taxes that go with it), the EU could only ban them from having their sites accessible by EU citizens. Not even the EU would go so far as to do that. Sadly, Twitter et al traded their Constitution for coin.
It's arguable that the American ideal of free enterprise trumps free speech in this era- and such corporations have always had the right to police speech as they'd like. Private entities and all that. If you don't like it, perhaps you should support anti-monopolist policies.
I do support anti-monopolist policies. My favorite president is Teddy.
The very fact that we are discussing the enterprise limiting speech does show it's arguable. I say it should be argued. Further, I say that comments such as yours, while I'm fine with you stating it, serves only to act as slight of hand that limits speech.
We should aim to break up the ongoing dominance in tech by these ever-increasing conglomerates, either nationalize Twitter into a public utility, or break it so alternatives exist so people can switch to them. That may be the ideal world to strive for.
In the current world, though, I find free speech arguments in this context to be alarmist because Twitter isn't the only channel for public discourse, and this specific case (shutting down jihadist accounts) seems like a less flagrant act of corporate censorship than, say, Apple banning iOS apps that warn civilians of drone attacks. It just seems like there are worthier incidents to get outraged about, but people like to choose certain targets of outrage because it suits their tastes. Hacker slacktivism is as annoying as any other kind.
I'll bet may salary that the folks at Twitter have no problem deleting ISIS accounts, and would do it irrespective of any impetus from the US Gov.
And the Europeans are considerably more strict on this - they have severe surveillance laws. Sweden inspects every single packet coming in and out of Sweden.
Also - consider the fact that Twitter bans accounts all the time for some really basic stuff. People have been banned for not much, the bar is not high.
Meh, as an EU citizen I think their balance of free speech is OK. Not as extreme as in the US, but that doesn't make it worse. The UK draws a sensible line without having it enshrined in any constitution.
The right to forget is a great example. Sure, its "against the free speech of Google" but it's decidedly for the people being spoken about IMO.
Two things: 1) Google shouldn't have free speech since it is not a person. 2) The reason things get enshrined in the Constitution is to limit the ability of the government to get rid of it. The UK's non-constitutional, constitutional monarchy is a rather problematic thing if the monarchy ever wanted to exercise itself.
1) Sure, but taken as a literal interpretation of the constitution they should, as they are a collection of people[1]
2) From a purely theoretical standpoint I agree, it does occupy an interesting place. If the monarchy ever did try to exercise any of its powers it possesses outside of delegation it would trigger a consisting crisis that would mean they would be immediately stripped of such powers.
I mean, the Queen technically has all the powers of state and those are granted "at will" (air quotes) to the prime minister and other officials. If she ever woke up and decided to declare war, strip parliament of its authority or execute a few commoners what would happen?
> Who defines what is considered terrorism and what isn't?
Whoever the regional / world power at the time is.
There were organizations on Britain's terror list that have been absorbed into the new country's defense forces gaining sovereign immunity and employing the same practices as before, and I'm not referring to the United States.
The goal of any terrorism is sovereign immunity. Its not the worst bet people have made.
Will there be prosecutions against these 300,000 terrorists where the evidence they are terrorists is presented in court to be evaluated through a legal process?
https://www.wired.com/2015/11/isis-opsec-encryption-manuals-...
This podcast was pretty good. ISIS were using a Turkish Dropbox like service to move files ... except the service was actually based in France, something a whois on the domain could have easily detected. Fighters have also geotagged tweets/instagram/Facebook posts, which led to a drone strike:
https://gimletmedia.com/episode/62-decoders/
So ... they're both more sophisticated than you think when it comes to opsec. And less sophisticated than you think when it comes to opsec.