Since May 2008, US Homeland Security Committee chairman Joe Lieberman has pressured the video-sharing site YouTube, through its parent company Google, to ban videos that "glorify" Islamist violence. In a statement intended to coincide with the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Senator Lieberman announced that "Google's community guidelines for YouTube will now bar videos that incite violence, in addition to videos that contain hate speech and gratuitous violence." A covert initiative in the UK suggests the British government is also attempting to co-opt private internet companies in the greater war against extremism.
Lieberman was pilloried by organisations such as the American Civil Liberties Union, the Center for Digital Democracy, and Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, for his support of the controversial Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007. Many other bodies were also concerned that the provisions of the Act could be used to quash legitimate, if unpopular, political activism - clearly contrary to the First Amendment of the US Constitution. Unable yet to push this legislation through its second reading in the Senate, Lieberman turned his attention to internet video, with a demand earlier this year that all videos related to organisations proscribed by the US State Department as "Foreign Terrorist Organizations", irrespective of actual content, should be removed immediately. Google initially refused to accede to Lieberman's demands, although it did take down about 80 videos the company deemed to have contravened YouTube's own terms and conditions. Tim Stevens is a Researcher at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence at King's College London.
The decision by YouTube to amend its guidelines to reflect Lieberman's general argument might not appear unreasonable. Lieberman insists that some online videos help facilitate radicalisation. Google understands that some material is objectionable to many people, and that it must at times bend to the public sector in order to retain its pre-eminent position in the global internet market.
As always in the debate between security and liberty there are further wrinkles. YouTube has long operated a system whereby community members report material they consider offensive or in breach of guidelines, resulting in removals if the company agrees with the complainant. This internal moderation process works quite well, eliminating the need for the site owners to screen every one of the millions of videos uploaded each month. Under the new imposed guidelines, who is to decide what constitutes "legal" content when the policy is driven by politicians pushing an ideological line?
The revised guidelines have thus far only been applied to footage of insurgent attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan, propaganda videos, and other material of arguably pro-Islamist and anti-western bent. But when US military recruiting videos, neo-Nazi speeches, and all species of anti-Muslim harangues remain on YouTube, it seems that the First Amendment extends unevenly across the internet's ideological landscape.
Such inconsistencies are not unique to the US. The UK Home Office has drawn up a provisional list of videos it considers undesirable. This list will be frequently updated and passed to web filtering companies that label, filter and block content to users of public service, commercial and educational computer networks. Both American and British governments are asking businesses to block material deemed unsuitable by civil servants. Several companies have agreed to do so.
The Home Office list is exclusively composed of Islamist insurgent videos, some of which are admittedly beyond the pale; beheadings, for instance, are brutal in their nihilism. Other videos on the list are less vicious and the Home Office admits that it would be up to the courts to determine their legality. If they are only potentially illegal, how then can government ask for this material to be denied to internet users? Who will be prosecuted to allow the courts to make these judgements?
One should perhaps not be too critical of these initiatives. The internet plays a significant role in radicalisation, in creating environments that shape and sustain anti-social worldviews of many types. Virtual communities of like-minded individuals undoubtedly help to shepherd some people towards violent conclusions. All governments should wish to stem the tide of radicalisation.
But neither Lieberman's nor the Home Office's opening moves in this field are encouraging. The range of material thus far marked out for removal clearly reflects the administrations' political priorities in the "war on terror" against Islamist militancy. It remains to be seen if YouTube's guidelines will be extended to cover all "incitement to violence", rather than just videos associated with Muslim adversaries of the US. The apparent bias of the Home Office provisional list will only deepen existing Muslim grievances against the west. And is using the private sector to implement social policy sending the wrong message to our own public? How will the government counter charges that it is using the private sector to do its own dirty work?
The potential to misuse such models provides another serious cause for concern. Although I have argued that if such policies are implemented, they should be evenly applied, one would not wish their remit to be extended to all forms of political expression at variance with the state's objectives and ideology. We must be as vigilant in policing government as it must be vigilant in policing us.
One hopes that such measures advocated by Lieberman and the Home Office will not compromise the very constructive steps governments have taken in tackling radicalisation. Accusations of bias and proxy censorship will favour no-one.
