Internet giants commit to tackling hate, terrorist, propaganda

Internet giants commit to tackling hate, terrorist propaganda in EU

Facebook, Twitter and others agree to investigate hateful, threatening speech within 24 hours of anyone reporting it.

Tech Industry

May 31, 20165:25 AM PDT

• by Richard Trenholm
  
  @rich_trenholm

https://cnet4.cbsistatic.com/hub/i/r...wearing_1.jpegEnlarge Image
Twitter and other Internet giants are backing new rules to combat hate speech.
James Martin/CNET

Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft and YouTube have signed on to new rules to tackle online hate speech.

The Internet titans agreed on Tuesday to a new code of conduct by the European Union that takes aim at illegal hate speech and terrorist propaganda posted online. Under the new rules, they have committed to reviewing within 24 hours of receipt the majority of notifications about a social media post that may contain hate speech. They've also agreed to remove the post if necessary.

Under the rules, the companies will also communicate with one another, with governments and with law enforcement agencies about keeping up with potential abuse.

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"There's no place for hate speech on Facebook," said Monika Bickert, head of global policy management at Facebook. "We urge people to use our reporting tools if they find content that they believe violates our standards so we can investigate. Our teams around the world review these reports around the clock and take swift action."

Karen White, Twitter's head of public policy in Europe, echoed the sentiment. "We remain committed to letting the tweets flow," she said. "However, there is a clear distinction between freedom of expression and conduct that incites violence and hate."

In addition to removing abusive posts, the EU and the big companies will look to balance hate speech by promoting "independent counter-narratives" and supporting educational programs that "encourage critical thinking."

Twitter wants to "leverage the platform's incredible capabilities to empower positive voices, to challenge prejudice and to tackle the deeper root causes of intolerance," White said.

http://www.cnet.com/news/facebook-tw...st-propaganda/

http://american-rattlesnake.org/2016...-twitterverse/

The complicity between tech companies and these states is deplorable. The EU needs to be destroyed.

ISIS fighters peddling Yazidi sex slaves on social media

By Perry Chiaramonte
Published May 31, 2016 FoxNews.com

http://a57.foxnews.com/images.foxnew....jpg?ve=1&tl=1Facebook profile of a German ISIS fighter discovered by MEMRI appears to offer Yazidi sex slaves for $8,000.

ISIS fighters and depraved sympathizers have turned social media platforms into a digital auction block, where sex slaves are offered for sale to an audience of wisecracking creeps, according to an international institute that monitors the global threat of terrorism.

Facebook profiles discovered by the Middle East Media Research Institute’s Jihad and Terrorism Threat Monitor Project feature a German ISIS fighter offering two Yazidi sex slaves to the highest bidder.

“To all the bros thinking about buying a slave, this one is $8,000,” reads a May 20 post accompanied by the picture of a woman on the Facebook page of the Islamic State militant who calls himself Abu Assad Almani.

A few hours later, a second image was posted by the fighter of another woman.

“Another sabiyah [slave], also about $8,000,” the posting reads. “Yay, or nay?”

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The posts were riddled with comments disparaging the women.


It’s not clear if Almani was selling the women himself or just commenting on their sale by other militants, but the stomach-turning posts highlight ISIS' longstanding penchant for enslaving and selling girls and women who they perceive as non-believers.

The posts were removed from the social media site a few hours later, but not before users commented on the photos, asked questions and made derogatory remarks about the women. Screenshots were saved by MEMRI JTTM and provided to FoxNews.com.

MEMRI researchers have monitored jihadist posts for the last decade, and seen the brutality increase dramatically in recent years, said Executive Director Steve Steven Salinsky. He noted that ISIS' extensive use of Islamic punishments such as beheading and crucifixion, and throwing homosexuals off roofs to their deaths has all been heavily documented on Twitter and Facebook.

"Sales of slave girls on social media is just one more example of this," Stalinsky said. "When ISIS beheaded Western journalists, people took notice – but since then, apathy has prevailed. The West has become desensitized to this evil."

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A screenshot of the fighter's Facebook page


The latests posts captured by MEMRI include disparaging remarks about the women and girls being offered for sale. A British self-described ISIS supporter named Abdulrahman Mosh Arm wrote, "That much for that? That thing should be buy 1 get that troll for free lol."

Another commenter who identified himself as Romeo Langhorne commented: "What makes her worth that price? Does she have an exceptional skill?" Almani replied, "Nope. Supply and demand makes her that price."

One female supporter even suggests that he keep the two women, believed to be of the religious minority group Yazidi, for himself.

"She is Yazidi,” A woman named Almera Farzanah asked. Alami repled that he believes so to which she says; "$8000 is too expensive, even Mahar [dowry] for a good Muslimah [Muslim woman] is not that expensive. I thought there were many muhajirah [foreigners]?? Why u not marry one of them? Rather than having to buy expensive sabi."

Others complained in comments on the Facebook postings, chastising Almani for posting pictures of unveiled women. Others made derogatory comments regarding the Yazidi people and culture.

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2016/05...l?intcmp=hpbt2

European Commission and IT Companies announce Code of Conduct on illegal online hate speech

How will Facebook, Google and Twitter define the "Hate" they plan to censor?

U.S. Tech Giants Join EU to Censor the Internet

FBI wants access to Internet browser history without a warrant in terrorism and spy cases
https://img.washingtonpost.com/rf/im...EeabN0KYX2omXA
In this March 1, 2016 file photo, FBI Director James Comey testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington. (Jose Luis Magana/AP)

By Ellen Nakashima June 6 at 5:30 PM

The Obama administration is seeking to amend surveillance law to give the FBI explicit authority to access a person’s Internet browser history and other electronic data without a warrant in terrorism and spy cases.

The administration made a similar effort six years ago, but dropped it after concerns were raised by privacy advocates and the tech industry.

FBI Director James B. Comey has characterized the legislation as a fix to “a typo” in the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which he says has led some tech firms to refuse to provide data that Congress intended them to provide.

But tech firms and privacy advocates say the bureau is seeking an expansion of surveillance powers that infringes on Americans’ privacy.

Now, at the FBI’s request, some lawmakers are advancing legislation that would allow the bureau to obtain “electronic communication transactional records” using an administrative subpoena known as a national security letter. An NSL can be issued by the special agent in charge of a bureau field office without a judge’s approval.Such records may include a person’s Internet protocol address and how much time a person spends on a given site. But they don’t include content, such as the text of an e-mail or Google search queries. There’s also a limit to how much visibility the bureau would have into which part of a website a person had visited. For instance, if the person went to any part of The Washington Post’s website, law enforcement would see only washingtonpost.com—nothing more specific.

Comey said that making this change to the law is the bureau’s top legislative priority this year.

The inability to obtain the data with an NSL “affects our work in a very, very big and practical way,” he told the Senate Intelligence Committee in February.

The Senate panel recently voted out an authorization bill with the NSL amendment. The Senate Judiciary Committee this week is considering a similar provision introduced by Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) as an amendment to ECPA, a law governing domestic surveillance.

Cornyn said that what he characterized as a “scrivener’s error” in the law is “needlessly hamstringing our counterintelligence and counterterrorism efforts.”

But privacy groups and tech firms are once again warning that the expansion of power would erode civil liberties protections.

The fix the FBI seeks would “dramatically expand the ability of the FBI to get sensitive information about users’ online activities without oversight,” said a coalition of privacy and civil society groups and industry organizations in a letter sent to the Hill Monday.The new categories of information that could be collected using an NSL “would paint an incredibly intimate picture” of a person’s life, said the letter, signed by the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International USA and the Computer & Communications Industry Association, among others. For example, a person’s browsing history, location information and certain email data could reveal details about a person’s political affiliation, medical conditions, religion, and movements throughout the day, they said.

On top of that, the NSL would come with a gag order preventing the company from disclosing it had a received a government request, said Neema Singh Guliani, ACLU legislative counsel. The letter noted that over the past 10 years, the FBI has issued more than 300,000 NSLs, most of which had gag orders. “That’s the perfect storm of more information gathered, less transparency and no accountability,” Gulani said.

But a law passed last year, the U.S.A. Freedom Act, requires the Justice Department to review gag orders periodically to assess whether they are still justified.

The amendment being considered by the Judiciary Committee on Thursday is part of a broader effort by lawmakers to update ECPA to require law enforcement to get a warrant for all e-mail content, no matter if it’s one day or one year old.Privacy groups and tech companies support the broader ECPA update, versions of which some lawmakers have sought for years.

But the groups and tech organizations in their letter said that if the ECPA bill includes the NSL provision, they will pull their support.

A November 2008 opinion from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel made clear that ECPA allows the FBI to obtain with an NSL only four types of basic subscriber information from Internet companies: name, address, length of service and telephone bill records. There is no reference in the law to browser history, for instance. The opinion said the four existing categories were “exhaustive.”

The FBI’s Office of General Counsel, however, has argued that that electronic communication transactional records are the functional equivalent of telephone billing records. To eliminate any uncertainty, the FBI wants the law to explicitly cover such data.

Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), the ranking member on the Judiciary Committee, and Mike Lee (R-Utah), a committee member, oppose the Cornyn amendment. They say they will push for a clean version of the ECPA update similar to a bill passed by the House earlier this year.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...00c_story.html