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Terrorism Courts The Web
David Utter
Staff Writer
2008-05-20
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A Senate Committee isn't happy with the way terrorist groups embraced online video and the web browser as a recruitment tool.
 | | Terrorism Courts The Web |  |
Senator Joseph Lieberman chairs the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. The Committee recently released a bipartisan look at Internet recruitment of new terrorists, titled Violent Islamist Extremism, the Internet, and the Homegrown Terrorist Threat.
As Lieberman explained in a letter to Google CEO Eric Schmidt, the video sharing site YouTube figures in the recruiting efforts:
Islamist terrorist organizations use YouTube to disseminate their propaganda, enlist followers, and provide weapons training - activities that are all essential to terrorist activity.
According to testimony received by our Committee, the online content produced by al-Qaeda and other Islamist terrorist organizations can play a significant role in the process of radicalization, the end point of which is the planning and execution of a terrorist attack.
YouTube also, unwittingly, permits Islamist terrorist groups to maintain an active, pervasive, and amplified voice, despite military setbacks or successful operations by the law enforcement and intelligence communities.
To counter this, Lieberman asked Schmidt to compel better enforcement of YouTube's community guidelines and remove terrorist videos from the site.
"YouTube posts 'community guidelines' for users to follow, but it does not appear that the company is enforcing these guidelines to the extent they would apply to this content," said Lieberman.
About the Author:
David Utter is a business and technology writer for SecurityProNews and WebProNews.
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