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If They Outlaw the Internet, Only Terrorists Will Have the Internet
@fredcole’s Daily Shot Monday morning struck a chord with me. He notes that, in the wake of another sickening and horrific terrorist attack in the UK over the weekend, Prime Minister Theresa May is quoted as saying “we need to work with allied democratic governments to reach international agreements that regulate cyberspace to prevent the spread of extremist and terrorism planning. And we need to do everything we can at home to reduce the risks of extremism online.” Other British leaders are understandably, but I believe wrong-headedly, calling for the same.
Let me start by saying that I yield to no one in wishing the atrocities being perpetrated across the globe by violent, fanatical islamists would stop. My own first reaction to this latest assault was to wonder if perhaps loosening our western scruples about cruel and unusual punishment in cases of terrorism might be the best move. We are, after all, dealing with barbarians, and barbarians who don’t fear death, so perhaps treating them barbarically is what is needed to deter them. If a couple of them publicly got the William Wallace treatment in Trafalgar Square, maybe it would cause the next monster to think twice about the cost he was going to pay for his 72 virgins.
I don’t know, but this post isn’t about advocating torture as a punitive measure, however much merit there might be to the idea. It’s about free speech, and the openness of the internet. And there I think Theresa May and her government are groping (again, however understandably) in the wrong direction.
Simply put, “regulating the internet” is just another form of prohibition and like all forms of prohibition, it will impact only the law abiding. I am torn because I am so deeply sympathetic to the instinct to grope for a solution, and I know full well that the internet is both a tool of direct communication planning for terrorists, and a medium of propaganda that contributes to the recruitment of terrorists. So I fully understand the instinct of a besieged head of state to want to interrupt the communications involved somehow.
But the best decisions are usually not ones made under emotional duress, and if we step back and consider the history of censorship specifically and of prohibitions generally, I think we have to conclude that this proposal is pretty much all cost and no benefit.
Any international framework is inevitably going to have to get lost in the weeds of defining what can and can’t be said, and any ultimate agreement will inevitably be both over and under inclusive. That’s the nature of such regimes. It’s unavoidable, and it will therefore inevitably wind up burdening non-terrorist communications as a billion private parties take whatever steps they wind up having to take to comply.
Worse though, it won’t work. At some level we all know that. Governments have tried prohibiting any and everything over the course of history and despite their best efforts, water keeps running downhill. If there’s a demand for it, there will be a supply. They can’t even prohibit tangible goods, like illicit drugs, with any effectiveness. What chance do they have of prohibiting an intangible like terrorist communications? Do we expect Syria, or Iran to sign up for this new agreement and work hard to implement it? Do we really think that if we whack-a-mole in one part of the internet it won’t move to another? Even totalitarian states, operating in a world of much more costly communication technology, couldn’t really stop resistance movements from communicating.
In the end, bad people who don’t care about our silly laws will find ways around them, while good people who do care about them will spend time and money and aggravation complying with them. For both good and ill, we live in a world of instantaneous, costless communication. No one will be better off because we bury our heads in the sand and pretend we can change that.
But don’t despair entirely. I’m certainly not suggesting that we stop enforcing conspiracy laws. That’s already illegal in the US, and lacking a First Amendment, the prohibitions appear to be much broader in the UK. I assume that “allied democratic governments” across the globe have instituted similar laws. These are the laws that permit law enforcement to raid Ahmed’s apartment in Jersey City and clear out his bomb making material and haul him away for prosecution before he blows somebody up.
We need these laws. I have no doubt they’ve saved many lives. But we already have them. And terrorists use electronic communications to plot their murderous insanity despite the fact that they can already be arrested and prosecuted for doing so. So no, Theresa, while I’m very, very sorry for your loss, we do not need more regulation of cyberspace in response to it. It will not help stop those you seek to stop, and it will only harm the rest of us.
Published in General
‘zactly
Btw today there are probably at least half a dozen live webcams covering the Harbor, what should be done with them?
Of course you do. While one Prime Minister might want to ban islamist websites hosted in Qatar, the next one will want to ban pro-life websites hosted in Kansas.
Not even when they believe, in good faith, that there actually is a fire?
And whether or not that happens has nothing at all to do with what is done regarding the jihadi internet sites. Do you think for a second that a Progressive will say … “Well, it is free speech … And they let the jihadis stay on the web … Si I guess we’ll let the pro lifers.” Progressives will do what suits them regardless.
And that’s why we are doomed. Too busy splitting hairs to do something simple and easy.
Islamophobia bad, extremist phobia good. Is that it?
I find her approach very Putin-like, and a threat to our own freedoms in the United States.
Man, if one didn’t know better, you could almost think that the threat of terrorism was being used as an excuse to dramatically increase the size, scope, and power of government and pare back those few protections we have against it.
Oh wait. I hear it now.
That is our policy Fred. We’ll look up the reasons later.
That site would be protected since it is most likely a Democrat Party support group.
You have them. Why would you want to release them — even somewhere else? Just detain them. They have been providing aid and assistance to the enemy, so what is the problem?
You can then begin talking about retribution to other family members if you want to be effective.
The simplest way to deal with Islamic messaging when it comes to recruitment and incitement is to simply have a little “civilizational” confidence. What do I mean by that? Well in the West, particularly in the Anglo West, we have two huge characteristics: the freedom to speak politically without reprisal from the state and the rule of law. Both of these are frighteningly being scaled back in both the UK and the US. What we need is confidence that our civilization and society is worth defending by telling Islamic proponents–the religious folks and immigrants alike–“hey, you can spread your religion, you can go out and look for converts, but if you think that we are going to stand by and allow you to set up a separate society within our society or that we are going to allow you to violate our laws out of fear of you calling us racists or phobes, then you might want to rethink remaining in our society.” I am thinking of that story out of the UK where the local police were prevented from going after a group of Pakistani Muslims who were raping young, non-Muslim girls because they were “grooming” them. When you no longer respect your own civilization, why would you expect folks from an alien civilization to respect it? We don’t need new laws or to create a surveillance state (which doesn’t prevent Islamic terrorism by the way). We just need to rekindle our confidence and love for our own civilization’s superiority–and that is not a racial thing.
Now Fred if we don’t have this government expansion then terrorism and soldiers die.
What if the one behind the site is not in the US. What about people who log on to the site and read its contents? Is simply reading why A should be killed proof of your plan to harm A? Hard lines are not easy to draw. I keep mentioning in these discussion how the FBI handled the Ku Klux Klan perhaps our most notorious domestic terrorist group. You have to infiltrate the organizations spreading the “hate” and then bust the ring leaders on whatever criminal charges you can make stick. For people abroad this is harder obviously, but on the other hand depending on how much you are willing to risk with people abroad you can engage in extrajudicial means of silencing them.
The UK already spends most of its police time shaking down its subjects anyway.
Close the borders, expel the problem people. Period.
Regulation of internet speech is a two-edged sword that has already inflicted as much harm in Great Britain on those vocally opposed to Islamists as on the Islamists themselves. Half of the comments on this thread alone would have been reported as “hate speech” to the police if said by a British citizen on twitter. The police would dutifully respond to the speech informer that it will be investigated.
This does not even take into effect the futility of meaningful technological measures that aren’t willing to go full China. I believe May even cited end-to-end encryption as a terrorist tool. How do you stop encryption, which is available through open-source applications?
You don’t need to behave like a barbarian to defeat the barbarians. The first and best way to not have barbarian problems INSIDE your country is to stop letting the barbarians in.
Our political elites, of course, think that it’s preferable instead to restrict the freedoms and privileges of the natural born citizens of the countries they rule, so that the admission of more and more barbarians to our lands can continue unabated. Barbarians are, to them, more important than us.
Yes.