Thursday, October 2, 2008

US Sen. Lieberman Wants Terrorist Videos Removed From YouTube - InformationWeek




U.S. Sen. Chief Joseph Lieberman, president of the Fatherland Security and Governmental Personal Business Committee, on Monday asked Google chief executive officer Eric Helmut Schmidt in an to take Muslim terrorist pictures from , which is owned by Google.


Islamic terrorist organizations, Lieberman said, usage YouTube to administer propaganda, pull followers, and supply arms training.

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While YouTube have community guidelines for its users, Lieberman said "it makes not look that [Google] is enforcing these guidelines to the extent they would use to [terrorist] content.


"Searches on YouTube tax return tons of pictures branded with an icon or logotype identifying the pictures as the work of one of these Islamist terrorist organizations," Lieberman said. "A great bulk of these pictures written document hideous onslaughts on American soldiers in Republic Of Iraq or Afghanistan. Others supply arms training, addresses by al-Qaeda leadership, and general stuff intended to radicalize potentiality recruits."


Lieberman 's refers repeat those raised in a bipartizan study released recently by the Fatherland Security and Governmental Personal Business Committee.


The study short letters that while propaganda have long been a portion of the violent Muslim movement, the Internet supplies the most accessible manner for people to link with extremists around the world. As such, the Internet stands for a threat, according to the report.


"As this study demonstrates, the usage of the Internet by al-Qaeda and other violent Islamist extremist groupings have expanded the terrorist menace to our homeland," the study states. "No longer is the menace just from abroad, as was the lawsuit with the onslaughts of September 11, 2001; the menace is now increasingly from within, from homegrown terrorists who are inspired by violent Islamist political orientation to program and carry onslaughts where they live."


In a on Monday, YouTube responded that owed to the volume of pictures that are uploaded, it's not possible to pre-screen that much content. As a consequence, YouTube trusts on its community members to flag picture that go againsts its .


YouTube said it responded to Lieberman's concerns and removed a figure of videos, but noted that pictures not containing gratuitous force or hatred address were not removed because they make not go against YouTube's guidelines.


"Senator Lieberman stated his belief, in a missive sent today, that all pictures mentioning or featuring these groupings should be removed from YouTube -- even legal nonviolent or non-hate speech videos," YouTube's blog station states. "While we esteem and understand his views, YouTube promotes free address and supports everyone's right to show unpopular points of view. We believe that YouTube is a richer and more than relevant platform for users precisely because it hosts a diverse scope of views, and rather than smother argument we let our users to see all acceptable content and do up their ain minds."

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