Final Opinion – Well responding to Heather’s last post

Good point, the honey pot scenario also comes into play, as authorities can catch other so called terrorists by tracking the main protagonists actions.

 

But there are still incidents when people slip through the net. It was only through a huge strike of luck that the Nick Reilly bomb in Exeter didn’t detonate. If it had, a South West version of 7/7 (London bombings) could have occurred.

 

Whilst authorities do seem to have the majority of people using the internet for detrimental reasons under surveillance, regulating the internet would surely make it tougher for children to become manipulated.

 

However as we have discovered throughout this blog, it is very difficult to regulate certain parts of the internet, without taking away large parts of freedoms from a democratic state.

 

I for one am happy to put my faith in the authorities and keep the internet as it is……..for now. I believe what is really needed is more and different media education at a younger age to children. 

Unregulated internet…

To counter Pete’s example about the hazards of unregulated internet, demonstrated by Hamaad Munshi’s case, I stumbled across this case on CNN’s website, completely by accident.
It’s really quite interesting and it actually demonstrates that despite the fact that there aren’t internet regulations, law enforcement authorities are still prosecuting people for actions they take/put on the internet:

http://edition.cnn.com/video/#/video/international/2009/02/10/wus.one.womans.war.bk.a.cnn

(My apologies- I can’t seem to embed the video)
FROM CNN: “When Malika El Aroud was arrested for suspected terrorist offenses before Christmas last year Belgian police claimed they had detained no less than an “al Qaeda living legend.” As the wife of the al Qaeda operative who assassinated Northern Alliance leader Ahmed Shah Massoud in a suicide bombing just before 9/11, her words are said to carry substantial weight in terror circles.
In this edition of the World’s Untold Stories, CNN, which obtained an exclusive interview with the woman counterterror forces simply call “Malika,” tells the extraordinary story of how she once used to party in Brussels nightclubs, fell in love with a militant extremist, then found herself living with Osama bin Laden’s inner circle in Afghanistan. Eloquent, passionate, and persuasive she is now accused of being one of al Qaeda’s most prominent online propogandists. Authorities say she may have inspired an entire cadre of radicalized Muslim men across Europe to take up arms. Their number may include her new husband, who is believed to have joined forces with al Qaeda in the tribal areas of Pakistan. CNN’s documentary will shed extraordinary new insight on the continuing global security threat posed by Bin Laden’s global Jihad.”

Blogging regulations… none to speak of.

One topic that we didn’t touch on in the presentation is blog regulation. I recently came across an article from the US about regulating the political blogs in an effort to force them to comply with campaign finance rules—which are vast, confusing and extremely complication.

Many people cried foul,  “Internet bloggers should enjoy traditional press freedoms and not face regulation.”
“Curtailing blogs and other online publications will dampen the impact of new voices in the political process and will do a disservice to the millions of voters who rely on the Web for original, insightful political commentary,” said the Online Coalition, a group of bloggers and online activists.
After fierce debate the call for regulation was struck down.
However, when scouring the internet for more cases of blog regulations, it seems that there are very few… almost none that I could find.
I guess in some ways they are somewhat self-regulated as they can still be susceptible to prosecution under libel laws.

More information on Hamaad Munshi (Britains youngest ever ‘terrorist’)

In our group presentation, we mentioned a man called Hamaad Munshi. Throughout the blog, we have been talking about the damage unregulated internet can cause when young, innocent minds are manipulated by it. I feel the example of Hamaad Munshi is the best example of this occurring. He was imprisoned for two years last year for making a record of information likely to be useful in terrorism.

presentation evalution

I think our presentation went really well.  I think that Dan and Pete have really already said what the good bits and what the bad bits were.

There were quite a lot arguments the night before about how we should lay out the powerpoint presentation..more text? or more pictures? whose bit is more important and who should get more time? I think in the end we made the right decision. We decided to go for content over look- I’ll be the first to say that our powerpoint wasn’t particularly flashy, but all the graphs, pictures, sounds and links were directly relalvant to the points we were making whilst talking, which I think that is why people were able to follow the presentation with ease.

I do think that perhaps some of our posts on the blog have been a little convoluted and academic in their apprach and at times also a little sporadic, but I do think that we made an attempt keep it flowing. I think personally I attempted to stick to a ‘readable’ format but that it often lacked visuals- I’d argue that looking at other media regulation, it’s hard to find pictures/audio to make the text intersting.

I’m pleased that we got such positive feedback from our peers and I found the expereince of working with friends intersting- glad that we are still mates at the end of it.

TV ….what’s the (regulation) story?

TV and radio are monitored more stringently than papers, by Ofcom.  Ofcom- the independent regulator of the telecommunication and wireless industries in the UK has basic statutory duties under the Communications Act 2003 which are to:

further the interests of citizens in relation to communication matters and to promote competition.

 Ofcom is well renowned and its duties are clear. Everyone intending to broadcast- analogue or digital- must be given license by Ofcom. The reasons are that in order to broadcast, one must have air frequencies- or ‘spectrum’- which in the UK is scarce, so the moderator gives careful consideration to applicants before granting a license. The second is that as a watchdog, it provides that all terrestrial analogue stations (BBC, Channel 3, 4 and 5) and as per the Community Radio Order 2004, the 200 Community Radio station abide to the ‘public service’ remit, which is to show a percentage of news and current affairs output. Again, as the wave of on-demand services are made available, regulations have to adapt- On-demand services for example, are self-regulated by a group called the Association for Television on Demand, whose code broadly mirrors that of Ofcom.

Internet TV is now the next frontier for regulators- you can learn more about that by looking at some of Dan’s posts- who will find it hard to keep the tenet of freedom of expression in cyberspace and moral conduct of the community.

The damage of non-regulated internet

In my last blog, I posted an interview with Fareed Ahmad, President of Devon and Cornwall’s Muslim Society (Ahmadiyya Muslim Association). In the interview he talked about the dangers of what sites like live link can do, with regards to his faith. To view the hanging please (warning the video contains extreme and graphic images of people dying) click here.

 My main gripe with how the hanging was portrayed on live leak wasn’t to do with the actual showing of the hanging. It was to do with the lack of information written alongside it. It tells you nothing of why the two men are being killed, and only has what seems to be a presumption that it is murder that the woman is being killed. Yet we do not know who or how many people she killed, and in what circumstances the murder took place.

There is also a lack of explanation into Iranian law on the website. The feel of the website as a whole in my opinion is very much from a Western perspective, mocking the rules and laws of another culture by exposing what would be perceived as outrageous in this country.

As I stated in my earlier posts, in my opinion we are too sheltered from the news and the grave reality of what goes on in other cultures. But I feel if we are to see the unregulated news events of other countries, we at first need to understand fully about other countries cultures and rules and the reasons for those rules. Unregulated ‘news’ websites like Live Leak, can therefore be a danger if they are put into the hands of people who are not able to ‘read’ the media properly. I feel this is why it is imperative that schools teach children about how to read and challenge the media at a very early age (see David Hampshire interview in last post).     

Internet regulation interviews

Listen to the interviews with:

Fareed Ahmad, Chairman of the Ahmydiya Muslim society, his views on internet regulation

 David Hampshire, county advisor for religous education – similar views to mine on educating children

 Click Here

If you would like to know more about Cornwall council’s Dor Kemmyn innitiative click here.

My role in the presentation

Based on the number of times we rehearsed (was it 6 or 7) and the feedback we got from everyone, I am going to say we had a successful presentation. Hopefully we shed some light on some of the aspects of Internet regulation in a humorous and intelligent way.
My role was essentially to argue the point that the Internet should NOT be regulated.  This viewpoint is one I largely agree with when we are talking about government regulation. However, things like Net Nanny, school Internet filters and other such devices certainly play an important role in society.
Some of the points I made in the presentation included the fact that the Internet is used as a platform for organizations or groups of people to get a message into the public realm. Without the Internet they may not otherwise be capable of disseminating their point of view. This was demonstrated with the film “Loose Change.” Without the Internet it is very likely that people, especially in the UK, would even know about this 9/11 conspiracy theory.
Although it’s difficult (for me) to feel like we came to a definitive conclusion on Internet regulation. The reason I feel that way is because the Internet is SO vast and there are SO many grey areas.

How true?

An example of a grey area is the “honey pot” method. It’s a subject we didn’t have time to cover in our presentation used by law enforcement officials. Basically, they use fake child pornography websites to lure in pedophiles and catch them in the act. This is just one strong example of why the Internet should not be regulated. But on the flip side, one might argue that if the Internet was regulated pedophiles wouldn’t be using it to obtain child pornography…. And so goes the argument, reaffirming my thoughts that one conclusive viewpoint is not in our sights.

Our Presentation

Just thought I’d put a quick link to the powerpoint we used.

 http://www.slideshow.com/presentations/6827-censor-this-presentationppt

A quick warning thought, there are some graphic images and links in this presentation.

Censor This.