Longer jail terms for viewing terror content online

https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/uk-41479620

by phr4ts • 9 years ago

127 95 9 years ago

bbc.com

dmitrygr2• 9 years ago

Words cannot describe now worrisome this is.

yodon• 9 years ago

Actually that is precisely what words are for, which is why this announcement is a big deal.

pfarnsworth• 9 years ago

All this does is extend the jail terms. Where were you when the law was initially created? It's been on the books for years.

dmitrygr2• 9 years ago

Same place I am now. Clutching my head between my hands and wondering how the world went to hell so quickly.

freedomben6• 9 years ago

While I agree that the best time to speak up is when the precedent is being encoded into law, the phrase "better late than never" does come to mind.

lovich• 9 years ago

This was 17 years ago, there is an entire generation of people who gained the right to vote in between now and when this law was passed.

rahimnathwani• 9 years ago

This is an informative article let down by a deliberately misleading statement: 'As to the government’s definition of terrorism, it has lost all meaning: remember that a peaceful protests are formally classified as “Low-level terrorism” in government training material.'

The 'government' early in the sentence refers to the UK government (the subject of the article) but the training material was published by the _US_ government, so it's irrelevant here.

It _is_ worrying, though, to see content being banned, and putting the burden of proof ('reasonable excuse') on the viewer, rather than the prosecution.

visarga2• 9 years ago

putting the burden of proof ('reasonable excuse') on the viewer

A parent who lost his son due to terrorism would be put in jail for doing online research into the killers.

wcarron• 9 years ago

Oh...shit. That is both stupefying and petrifying. More and more I feel that there is a new class war coming; and it is not rich vs poor so much as it is governments vs civilians. Really wondering whether this will be shot down or if other governments will follow suit down this road as quickly as possible.

Instinct tells me the latter is more likely. I've not been on this Earth long, but where the fuck did all my freedoms go? It's like we're standing on a sandbar watching the tide erode our liberties from under our feet. And shit, it's the ocean. We can't do anything to save our little sandbar.

netsharc• 9 years ago

Government as a proxy for corporations. Even the "bastion of liberal democracy" the European Union (taking over from the USA) is run by lobbyists. Secret meetings to force TTIP, ministries of transports lobbying to keep lax emission testing rules so car manufacturers can cheat, the guy who was president of the tax haven of Luxembourg being president of the European Commission.

Seems like we're returning to feudalism with the little people being serfs, while in the palaces the 1% enjoy their riches. Terror in Europe (and the export of fighters from that continent to the middle east) is borne out of little people not seeing any future and being easily influenced by talk of joining some "great" cause of Jihad...

r00fus2• 9 years ago

Jihad or Nationalism. The centrists (e.g. May/Macron/Merkel) fear and yet benefit from both - they can sacrifice freedoms to sell corporatist agendas.

Meanwhile populists across the spectrum are tarred and feathered as helping the extremists (or "not being strong enough against them").

KGIII2• 9 years ago

I have watched ISIS recruitment videos. They have pretty catchy music and are well produced, actually.

I've watched GPY stuff, older Taliban stuff, all that.

I'm not even religious and it wasn't even scholarly. I was just curious about the debate and like to see things for myself.

I'm not sure I'm going to do well in a dystopian future.p

Anyhow, freedom is not something given once. It's something constantly defended. How you do that is up to you, I suppose.

rjeli3• 9 years ago

This is why Americans have the 2nd amendment

ykler• 9 years ago

No, this is why we have the first amendment. The second amendment is crap. I have no very strong opinion on whether people should be allowed to have guns, but the issue is not very relevant. Governments will always have way more force than private individuals. The important thing is to contain that force. And it is a very bad thing if just looking at what extremists have to say can get you arrested.

carlossilva33• 9 years ago

As a European I am jealous of your Bill of Rights (specially the 2nd). If only it wasn't being trampled on and used as toilet paper...

Addendum: Regarding the inevitable issue of gun violence, it has actually decreased since the early 90's https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/12/03/weve-...

klatuveranictu• 9 years ago

The 2nd amendment is worthless without the 1st, 4th, 5th and 6th, 7th and 8th.

seanmcdirmid4• 9 years ago

So we can participate in Swiss-style militias in defense of our country?

pythonaut_162• 9 years ago

This article is pretty click-baity. It claims to be about reading banned literature in the title, then when you navigate to the site it immediately says the announcement/law is actually about watching videos promoting terrorism.

The main body of the article is pretty incoherent and rambling; it never really clearly states what the law is actually about.

If you actually go read the linked BBC article[0], you'll find that what's happening is somewhat less alarming than the article would lead you to believe. From what I gather, a politician is attempting to increase the maximum sentence of an existing law from 10 to 15 years, and to apply it to streaming content rather than just downloaded content.

There are definitely free speech implications and concerns here, but it's not nearly as dire as the article would imply.

[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/uk-41479620

*Also, the subtext of the BBC article > People who repeatedly view terrorist content online will face up to 15 years in prison, the home secretary has told the Conservative Party conference.

astrodust• 9 years ago

Is owning a copy of the Anarchist's Cookbook or Mein Kampf going to be a criminal offense? What about a video version of same?

vilhelm_s• 9 years ago

Anarchist's Cookbook, yes, probably. There has already been several convictions under this law for owning descriptions of how to make bombs. (The law dates from 2000, although the maximum sentence is now being increased from 10 to 15 years).

Mein Kampf, I'm less sure, there have been people charged with owning ISIS propaganda, but I'm not sure exactly how it worked out on appeal. (They were also convicted on other counts.)

freedomben6• 9 years ago

As soon as it's politically advantageous for those in power to make it so, yes.

dirtyaura• 9 years ago

The article is not click-baity. It uses analogy to make a point.

lucb1e2• 9 years ago

then when you navigate to the site it immediately says the announcement/law is actually about watching videos promoting terrorism.

Huh, is that somehow better? Can I not watch promotion videos for whatever reason and not go to jail? Research and journalism are obvious examples, where the politicians will say "of course those people will not get prosecuted" (until there is a journalist publishing negative stuff about said politician), but even for plain old curiosity's sake, trying to understand those people better, or whatever else you can come up with, it should be totally legal.

pythonaut_162• 9 years ago

Not better necessarily, but outrageously different from the article's (and original HN title's) claim that people were going to be sent to jail for 15 years for reading banned literature.

rgbrenner• 9 years ago

The blog post above adds little to the bbc article that it links to.. in fact the bbc article is clearer about what has changed -- it's not a new law (Terrorism Act 2000), and the change is from 10 years to 15 years, and it now applies to streaming terrorist videos (instead of just downloaded videos).

https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/uk-41479620

This article is also good:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/oct/03/amber-rudd-v...

sctb• 9 years ago

Thanks, we've updated the link from https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/2017/10/britain-c..., which points to this.

tezza• 9 years ago

Mein Kampf was banned banned banned, no ?

Later watered down and now you can buy it.

Various Hizb ut-Tahrir / Wahabi literature is banned banned banned.

Plenty of books have been banned, contrary to what the author is implying

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_books_banned_by_gove...

LinuxBender• 9 years ago

Does banning something make it go away?

castis• 9 years ago

Nope, just pushes it out of public view.

212• 9 years ago

It makes it significantly harder.

Ie: try getting a firearm in most of Europe. Possible, but extremely hard, which is a major reason why there is so little gun violence compared to US.

r00fus2• 9 years ago

No but those who ban it gain political capital for "being strong against X" where X the bogeyman of the day.

DaiPlusPlus• 9 years ago

Succinctly summarises the modus-operandi of the UK Home Office's policymaking: Reactionary and fear-driven, where "fear" is defined as the current black-top newspaper headlines.

KGIII2• 9 years ago

It worked for drugs! /s

visarga2• 9 years ago

Way to make something cool - make it illegal. Teens don't care that much about future consequences, but they get to feel tough for doing something illegal.

ISL• 9 years ago

While this is a British concern, a reminder of what the United-States rebels enshrined into their new Constitution:

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

daveguy• 9 years ago

And an unfortunate reminder of the president's urging for a Senate investigation of the free press for publishing news he does not like.

Tweeted Oct. 5th 5:59am :

"Why Isn't the Senate Intel Committee looking into the Fake News Networks in OUR country to see why so much of our news is just made up-FAKE!"

whipoodle• 9 years ago

Yeah... unless you're protesting. Or in a group deemed "radical". Or, or, or...

212• 9 years ago

Right. You just need to redefine what "freedom of speech" or "freedom of press" means.

For example, "freedom of press" doesn't cover publishing whats defined as "information of non-public interest" (see Gawker). I'm not defending or accusing Gawker, just providing an example that "freedom of press" comes with a lot of exceptions and new ones are continuously added.

seorphates2• 9 years ago

Sure. But given recent events and the increasingly blatant escalation of government power over its people it starts to become more clear that, at the root of it, "freedom of speech and of the press" means exactly that which our current governments fear the most and desperately aim to control - the freedom for all to research, dig and question the authority that governs them. It has almost become a simple interpretation. Which brings us to the second.

Complicate that with the fact that through generous corporate sponsorship we now seem to find our collective selves being led by all manner of wolves.

vacri3• 9 years ago

And yet Reporters Without Borders rates the US down at #43 when it comes to press freedom, marginally below the UK at #40.

https://rsf.org/en/united-states

An example of why it rates so low: https://rsf.org/en/news/us-rsf-concerned-second-wave-journal...

Also, while the First Amendment is good to have, it's not as absolute as its fans make out. There are plenty of restrictions on free speech in the US - libel/slander, obscenity, official and military secrets, insider trading, incitement, 'fighting words', intellectual property violations (a big one, thanks Disney), National Security Letters (yay 'warrant canaries')... and then there's things like 'free speech zones' (aka "time, place, and manner restrictions" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_in_the_Unite...). Some of those are good things to have, but nevertheless, not all of them are, and they're still 'government restrictions on speech'.

Again, the First Amendment is good to have, but people need to stop quoting it like it's a vaccine against loss of freedom of speech. The actual situation is a lot more complex.

freedomben6• 9 years ago

AFA libel/slander laws, I think there is a difference between having the freedom to speak it, and the freedom from consequences of speaking it. Causing real damage to a person by lying or misrepresenting them isn't quite the same as simply voicing opposition to ruling party policy.

Regarding consequences, I have the right to tell my boss to go to hell, and him firing me for that isn't a violation of my freedom of speech. The government throwing me in jail for it would be though.

Military secrets and the like are also different, because you sign an agreement saying you will keep the secrets. Prosecution therefore isn't done under restriction of speech, it's for breach of contract.

You have a good point on things like incitement and "fighting words" tho. And I agree that we in the US are far from the ideal of truly free speech. There's a lot of ways around it that the government has come up with over the years.

koenigdavidmj3• 9 years ago

We don’t have D-notices, and most of the restrictions you listed exist in a more abusive sense in the UK (plus stronger defamation laws and hate speech).

negativity• 9 years ago

Holy shit. I'd leave the country and renounce citizenship over something like this.

Reading words? Looking at pictures? Watching a video? Felony jail time? Really?

This is policy that any sane person would resist.

liquidise• 9 years ago

While i have no intention of drawing moral equivalencies: in the US, watching child pornography videos can earn you felony jail time and permanent registration on a sex offenders list. Agree or disagree with the punishment, watching a video resulting in jail time is not without precedent, even stateside.

misterHN• 9 years ago

which law?

ijisjisjjd• 9 years ago

"... And then the child proceeded to give the man a hand job"

Welcome to 15 years in jail.

Oh is that unreasonable? Thought crime 101.

savanaly• 9 years ago

Aren't there employees at facebook and NSA and the like who have to spend all day looking at material that might be child pornography to verify it is indeed such? Do they have to get special clearance or something so it's guaranteed they'll never be prosecuted for it?

freedomben6• 9 years ago

Where would you go? (serious question, not a troll. I'd love to have some basic idea of where to go should things get bad enough in the US).

weirdstuff• 9 years ago

Costa Rica? (I don't know, just putting it out there. I hear there are lots of U.S. expats there.)

pantalaimon• 9 years ago

The rest of Europe is still an option.

ivm• 9 years ago

Come to Chile. It's stable and safe, people are warm, and nature is gorgeous. I moved here 3 years ago instead of Canada and can't be happier.

The government barely cares about any kind of surveillance and there's no cultural trait to obsessively control everything. Chile also was the first country to sign a net neutrality law.

csomar• 9 years ago

Given that the video is, at the end of the day, a Binary number; this is going to be quite interesting.

Is it about downloading the wrong number? Or watching the video? If I downloaded, it doesn't mean I watched.

ecshafer• 9 years ago

To be more specific, it is a number used as an argument to a function. The bit stream input into a video decoding algorithm is what makes the video. The video binary itself is mostly nonsense.

But the other way to look at is that it would be possible to have a set of data that is essentially illegal to use one function on and legal for another function to be used. Could someone unknowingly generate or acquire a set of data that is illegal to access and own? There has already been cases of terrorists hiding information within legal media.

dTal2• 9 years ago

sigh again with the "files are numbers" thing.

Above the generous threshold of about 128 bits, any given number is vanishingly unlikely to have been derived through any other process. If your 134-byte file turns out to be valid SVG for the Cartoon Network logo, then functionally speaking it is the Cartoon Network logo because it's incredibly unlikely you just pulled those particular 1072 bits out of your ass.

Similarly, if you are in possession of a 30-million digit binary number that happens to be valid h264 for an ISIS recruitment video, "oh what a stunning coincidence" isn't going to wash.

So "files are just binary numbers" doesn't get you anywhere, at all.

https://qntm.org/number

Sir_Cmpwn• 9 years ago

Wow, this is literally thoughtcrime.

dTal2• 9 years ago

"Viewcrime".

petre• 9 years ago

Yeah, that would totally stop terrorists.

pasbesoin• 9 years ago

So, if I view footage of Amber Rudd, I'm going to jail?

Because that's what we're really talking about, here.

freedomben6• 9 years ago

A defence of "reasonable excuse" would still be available to academics, journalists or others who may have a legitimate reason to view such material.

Subjective definitions in laws and policies is very dangerous. What makes someone an academic? What about a journalist? Somehow I doubt that a self-declaration is sufficient.

carvalho• 9 years ago

I do hope that companies like Twitter and Youtube take their responsibility.

How about 15 years of jailtime for the CEO of a company that facilitates streaming of terrorist propaganda and child-erotic material?

rm_-rf_slash• 9 years ago

A defence of "reasonable excuse" would still be available to academics, journalists or others who may have a legitimate reason to view such material.

Reminds me of the bit from Family Guy when the police bust in to stop an act of prostitution, and the John points to the camera and says that he's filming it, so it's a porno.

The cop responds: "As long as you're filming and selling it, it's legal. Enjoy your day."

So bizarre.

codedokode4• 9 years ago

That is very serious punishment for just watching the videos. Does it mean that government cannot cope with growing terrorist activity and wants to make it easier to put people they don't like to jail without having to prove that they were actually planning something or otherwise related to terrorism?

Dowwie• 9 years ago

You can legally own an arsenal of machine guns and ammo

shostack• 9 years ago

Would a valid cyber attack be to infect someone's machine, get these videos to play with logs that they played, and then report the person? Seems like the kind of thing that can be done relatively easily at mass scale...

confounded• 9 years ago

Couldn’t you just get them to read a Wikipedia article? Send a shortened link?

Or say “I wonder what Islamic State’s policy objectives are?” to them, and wait for them to search?

In a way, it’s a little nastier than book burning — casual readers go in the fire too.

tim333• 9 years ago

This seems like a bad law. I know the government doesn't plan to use it for average Joes surfing the web but even so. I quite often have a look to see what the other side is arguing in conflicts including downloading dabiq (an ISIS mag) and reading Breitbart. It shouldn't be an offence unless you get involved doing or at least supporting terrorism.

The government seems to be overreacting to the earlier days when some of the ISIS founders did their organizing and preaching in London.

applecorruption2• 9 years ago

So is it now CIA have to spy everybody then ? In this crazy world, everybody could be terrorist ?

How about search engines, do they have any responsibility in this ?

Question: What about the false flags by government.. who's watching them ?

applecorruption2• 9 years ago

I know... is this actually leading to scenario, where Alex Jones and Infowars are stamped to be terrorist organisation .. and if you watch any they videos you could be jailed ?

- hard to trust our governments really. We as normal poor people seems to be always the loosers and abused.

Longer jail terms for viewing terror content online

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