Prime Minister was too soft on Google and Facebook for hosting jihadi propaganda, says ex-aide

LimeyLucy

Rookie
Aug 5, 2015
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Interesting article in my Daily Mail today, thought would share it with you and would love to hear your views on it.... do you agree or not?

QUOTE

David Cameron was too "softly softly" in his approach to Google hosting terrorist material, a former senior Number Ten aide admitted yesterday.
Clare Foges said Britain's security services were being "scandalously under-assisted" by Google, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
She accused the US tech giants of allowing their sites to be used to "build a jihadist army".
But Miss Foges, the Prime Minister's former speech writer who was at his side for four years, said politicians had been too gentle on the internet giants because they were keen to associated with "the techy zeitgeist".


In the first two years of the Coalition government alone, Google held 23 meetings with Tory ministers - including three with David Cameron.

Miss Foges, who stood down earlier this year, said: "We have had a long period of politicians going softly softly with the tech companies, fearful of looking like old Luddites if they dare to challenge the gods of "Silicon Valley
She added: "Politicians are always keen to associate themselves with the techy zeitgeist, rhapsodising about "the digital age" in what feels like the political equivalent of dad dancing".
Miss Foges said that, finally, this "kowtowing seems to be coming to an end".
She pointed to a recent speech on extremism in which "a more hardline experienced" Mr Cameron told the internet firms they must do more to help the fight against terrorists.


In an article for the Times, Miss Foges said she believed political patience with the web giants was now wearing thin. She added: "It is on Google, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other platforms that a jihadist army is being built".
"Propaganda is tweeted, beheading selfies circulated; "WhatsApp is used to organise troop movements ; radicalising poison seeps unseen behind fiendishly encrypted technology.


"The tech establishment's response is a mixture of can't act, won't act - they claim it's too difficult to vet the net across different jurisdictions, and besides, they are as utopian about free information as their Californian hippy forebears were about free love".

Miss Foges also tore into the US traitor Edward Snowden, who stole, then leaked top-secret documents revealing sensitive intelligence gathering techniques used by GCHQ and the CIA. The fugitive was described as the "patron saint of all paranoid narcissists who think their government would ever be bothered to spy on them

UNQUOTE

Do you agree with the above? should these techno giants be doing more to stop the propaganda appearing ? Hard to believe that during WW2 these companies would be done for treason !

 
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Those companies must deny access to people who use it to spread illegal material like beheading selfies or to coordinate their terror attacks. If the companies don´t comply, their services must be shut down and the persons responsible must be put on trial. I suggest a Michael Ciconetti styled punishment: Three years of Islamic State. That would cure their unlimited greed.
 

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