
Senator Joe Lieberman asks Google for a terrorist flagging button on Blogger - nextparadigms
http://www.theverge.com/2011/11/24/2584081/senator-joe-lieberman-asks-google-for-a-terrorist-flag-on-blogger
======
cstross
Imagine we'd had the internet for a century ...

Sixty years ago it would have been a Commie flagging button.

Forty years ago it would have been a button to flag a Dirty Hippy.

Twenty years ago it'd have been a Denounce-a-Doper button.

Alarmist politicians: bringing you a different instance of the same buggy
social design pattern since 500BC.

~~~
nobody314159265
It would be easier if there was a set of easily identifiable colored icons so
you could click and report someone for being a terrorist, homosexual, gypsy,
jew.

Is there any sort of existing standard ?

~~~
lutorm
There is: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_concentration_camp_badges>

(I assume that's what you were referring to.)

Edit: There's nothing like a tour of a place like Dachau to put these things
in perspective. I wouldn't say I "recommend" it, because it was one of the
least uplifting things I've done, but it's certainly educational.

~~~
dholowiski
We should all print out copies of that and mail them to him.

~~~
johncoltrane
Every human above the age of five who lives or has been educated in "the west"
or "the north" knows at least the basics about concentration camps and the
jewish genocide or what it's like to live under dictatorship. Every single one
of us knows how horrible it was. None of us would want to be a victim or a
witness or an actor of such a monstrosity.

But it happened again and it will happen again because there have been, there
are and there will always be sociopathic leaders who don't give a fuck how
many people they crush on their way to power. They know full well the hows and
whys of previous genocides and wasteful wars, they know lots of people
suffered but they also know that some people benefited — at least for a while
— from all this misery.

They did/do/will seriously consider chasing down minorities, limiting free
speech, blocking scientific research, declaring wars.

As long as they get some benefit.

As long as they aren't on the wrong side of the stick.

~~~
lutorm
_Every human above the age of five who lives or has been educated in "the
west" or "the north" knows at least the basics about concentration camps and
the jewish genocide or what it's like to live under dictatorship. Every single
one of us knows how horrible it was. None of us would want to be a victim or a
witness or an actor of such a monstrosity._

I disagree. The resurgence of neo-Nazi movements and Holocaust denial suggests
that your argument is incorrect.

~~~
johncoltrane
I have been a member of a very active french anti-fascist group called SCALP
in the early 90s. I know too much about those neo-Nazis you talk about. They
would be a good illustration of the second part of my comment regarding SOME
people who don't care about the suffering they might be responsible of.

Most of these movements are built around a leader's father-like character and
the removal of all responsibility from the shoulders of the small guys.

That's how you push a nation to slaughter its minorities. That's how all the
small guys can manage their guilt.

All of the fascist skinheads and young royalists and whatnots I've fought
against have had the exact same education as me. All of them knew about the
holocaust, the armenian genocide and so on because - like me - they were
exposed to the same books and classes and documentaries.

Watching hours of emaciated prisoners and dumped corpses is guaranteed to
disturb anybody. Most people will react by rejecting the images and the
causes: they will say this shit is horrible and, for the rest of their lives,
will be able to connect the dots.

Some people, the sociopaths I was talking about, will react by thinking that
all these horrors were deserved, that the perpretators were right, that the
west betrayed them and so on. They won't be a lot but they will find each
others. The coldest and the more charismatic among them will take the role of
leader and you'll have a new group of neo-Nazis.

A shorter version of my argument would be "They are perfectly capable of
connecting the dots. But what disgusts most of us is somehow seen by them as
acceptable.". I don't think the resurgence of neo-Nazis invalidates my point.

Quite the contrary.

------
mmaunder
Fear is the most powerful tool that any government has to expand their powers.
Or put optimistically: a common enemy has historically been the most effective
way to unite a people.

Morally it's hard to counter public policy that claims to make you safer
because you're asking someone to not care about the safety of "our children".

Biologically asking someone to not be afraid is asking them to use rational
thought to counter a hard coded evolutionary mechanism.

The existence of government at all is dependent and predicated on fear. If we
don't fear anarchy and foreign powers, we won't see a need for government.

Fear for our lives and fear for our souls are what fuels the two largest
organisations on the planet.

Lieberman is doing a clumsy job of using a well honed tool to try to expand
government power. It is pathetic in it's simplicity and predictability and
incredible that he can't see the political parallels between this and tagging
books as "dangerous".

But I don't think Joe is a stupid man. I think he is being controlled by
powerful forces. Through our HN, Reddit, slashdot and techmeme lenses we see
the Internet and it's disruption at a micro level. We forget the massive macro
disruption that is occurring and that is destroying enormous old profitable
businesses.

If you are the CEO of a record label, film studio, newspaper conglomerate or
book publisher you are scared out of your wits because a massive, and possibly
the only competitive barrier to entry has fallen: distribution. Your printing
presses, distribution centers, record stores and logging companies aren't
needed by a competitor. Information distribution has become free.

Incumbents can't compete with the likes of Google, Amazon and Apple because
they've sucked up all the hot tech talent and startups are consuming the rest.
So the only strategy left is to disrupt the distribution medium. Break the
Internet - or at least sieze control of it and regulate yourself back into a
competitive position.

There is enormous pressure on our senators and congressmen to use any excuse
they can to regulate the Internet. Creating a non-level playing field is the
only bullet many old world businesses have left to fight the innovators and
the only politically acceptable excuse is fear.

Any politician who wants to limit the freedom of communication on the Internet
has declared themselves disingenuous at best.

~~~
nextparadigms
> "There is enormous pressure on our senators and congressmen to use any
> excuse they can to regulate the Internet."

Some of them probably know what the main agenda really is, like the main
sponsors of the bill. But many of the others probably don't and they actually
think that by voting for a bill like SOPA they are doing a good thing overall,
and they are actually saving people's jobs (once they fall for MPAA's whole
propaganda), and don't even take into consideration that by "protecting" those
jobs, they could be destroying a lot more, not just economy-wise, but liberty
wise, too, simply by voting for a bill like SOPA, which was of course mainly
written by MPAA/RIAA themselves.

This is why I cringed when I watched the CNN GOP debate the other night and
some of them were basically saying they would listen to the "experts" or
"advisors" and go with whatever they are proposing. This is how we keep
passing laws like these. Because the politicians themselves lack any common
sense or leadership, and mindlessly pass a bill that is completely written by
some corporations, or they listen to advisors who have an interest in
continuing the wars, and so on. Many times they don't even read the bills
themselves before they vote. They just decide on what they hear from other
colleagues or from the "experts".

~~~
yuhong
In the US campaign donations is a problem too, but even in Europe it can go
the other way too: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2587764>

------
WiseWeasel
There's already a function for reporting abuse of Blogger's Terms of Service,
including hate speech and inciting violence here:

[http://www.google.com/support/blogger/bin/request.py?hl=en&#...</a><p>Perhaps
Google could integrate a method for reporting abuse directly on the blogs
themselves. Obviously, there is no need to distinguish terrorism from other
forms of abusive activity until you're filling out a complaint form, and
Lieberman is simply trying to get some press coverage as 'tough on terrorism'
from his constituents, as per his MO.

~~~
obtu
They really shouldn't encourage reports of an entire blog. Reporting content
that breaks some law makes sense, reporting a person for their entire stream
goes too far; it's just there to go with Lieberman's “the problem of this
country is these people” rhetoric. At some point a human needs to deal with
the reports and they'll have to look at specific occurrences of problems.

Edit: the quip was in fact referring to content, not blogs. I'm still not
sympathetic to the proposal, which is about getting Google to advertise this
guy's fear-based ideology.

------
gojomo
The original source of this story is:

[http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/11/lieberman_...](http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/11/lieberman_wants_google_to_let_users_flag_terrorist_content_on_blogger_platform.php)

The submitted article, from TheVerge, has quite rudely hidden the attribution
at the bottom of the article, in a colored text block which lacks usual
link/clickable styling. I suggest submissions featuring TheVerge should be
discouraged whenever they are just wrapping and obscuring another originating
source.

~~~
icebraining
Hidden? Not only it's in the [Source] block, as they refer to TPM on the text
itself. And the styling is consistent with many other links on the site.

~~~
gojomo
Links are the currency of the web. TheVerge consciously avoids linking to the
story originator on first in-context mention of that publication. Nor on the
key verb phrase where they could allude to the fact they learned of the story
via TPM ("...written a letter...") Nor where linking to TPM's more-detailed
coverage could supply original source documents ("...the letter...").

The one link they do give is at the bottom, where many readers won't have even
scrolled to, and in the sort of grayed text block many viewers skim over as ad
or decoration.

Others have the same criticism of TheVerge's style:

[http://www.niemanlab.org/2011/11/three-lessons-news-sites-
ca...](http://www.niemanlab.org/2011/11/three-lessons-news-sites-can-take-
from-the-launch-of-the-verge/)

This is especially egregious when an aggregator is primarily regurgitating the
same details as from the single original source, who barely gets any credit at
all. There's no reason for a site like HN to prefer the link-jacking, link-
stingy aggregator in such cases. (Sometimes, mods even change the submission
to reflect the more-primary story-originating site.)

------
vidarh
Can we get a "moron" flagging button on senate.gov while we're at it?

~~~
dennisgorelik
Properly implemented and promoted "moron" flagging button would make
www.senate.gov much more popular.

~~~
nobody314159265
A moron "flogging" button would be better

~~~
electromagnetic
Make it vote-able and we'll have the senate cleared out within the hour.

------
typicalrunt
_"Blogger’s Content Policy does not expressly ban terrorist content nor does
it provide a ‘flag’ feature for such content."_

So that's what was missing from the Internet to finally stop terrorism. Mr.
Lieberman seems to believe that the Internet is a fully-functional piece of
technology with the most mature set of users. The second a flag button is put
anywhere on the Internet, it is ripe for abuse.

And what happens if I mistakenly click the "Flag as Terrorist" button on a
post? Can I take it back, or is the author now on all watch lists?

The Internet is functioning as well as needed, thank you.

------
grecy
In the actual letter to Google[1], the words "violent Islamist extremism"
appear exactly four times, including twice in the concluding sentence.

Am I to assume this flagging button is only for use on violent Islamist
extremists?

1\. [http://talkingpointsmemo.com/documents/2011/11/lieberman-
let...](http://talkingpointsmemo.com/documents/2011/11/lieberman-letter-to-
google.php?page=1)

~~~
dholowiski
I just read the letter- YouTube has a flag button for terrorist content
already?

~~~
grecy
Apparently so (I didn't know either)

Every video has a "Flag as inappropriate" link[1] (it's a picture of a flag)
that lets you choose Reason->Violent or Repulsive Content->Promotes Terrorism.

A quick search through the YouTube Terms of Service[2] and the YouTube
Community Guidelines[3], find nothing for "terror" or anything similar.

[1] -
[http://www.google.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?answer=9...](http://www.google.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?answer=95403)

[2] - <http://www.youtube.com/t/terms>

[3] -
[http://www.youtube.com/t/community_guidelines?gl=CA&hl=e...](http://www.youtube.com/t/community_guidelines?gl=CA&hl=en)

------
Zak
What would be the purpose of flagging such things? To disable access so that
fewer people notice them? That doesn't seem like such a great idea. Instead,
the government should be _encouraging_ people to blog about their planned
crimes in public so that lots of people can read it and _call the police_.

Terrorism is a lot less effective when it's treated like an ordinary crime
instead of something different or special. It's best if we, as a society make
it easy for people to report it to law enforcement.

~~~
Tycho
Well I guess it's crowd sourcing the terrorist surveillance costs.

------
marshray
Google should give him what he wants: a prominent button on every blogger page
that emails Sen. Lieberman's office directly.

Would last about an hour I think.

~~~
nekojima
You're assuming he knows how to use email, his staffers have little choice and
would just killbox it (no doubt a forthcoming button addition to Blogger for
potential terrorists). Note the "article" said he put pen to paper to write to
Google, unless that was a tongue in cheek comment. :-/

------
user9756
... Shouldn't the terrorist then have a "terrorize" button, so that when they
see a site they don't like they could "terrorize" it?

~~~
gibybo
Seems to me this one button would serve both purposes. Or is that your point?

------
dchest
More awesomeness for the Compliant Website Template
<http://www.dchest.org/comply.html>

------
Nrndr
It won't be effective as terrorists use Wordpress.

------
ck2
Ah Congress. Always aiming for that perfect ZERO approval rating when single
digits isn't low enough.

Maybe he should ask Facebook for a "vote this person to gitmo" button so we
can turn in neighbors we don't like.

How is this joker who changes party affiliation with however the wind is
blowing still around?

------
jeffreymcmanus
What's the worst thing that could possibly happen.

~~~
westbywest
Lots of wasted time (and $$) on behalf of Google defending itself from
frivolous demands, and worse even more wasted time by members of Congress.

------
tomelders
So basically he want's a "4-Chan Party Van" launch button, and he want's to
put it in the hands of pre-pubescent teenagers with an axe to grind?

Do it! Please God let this happen. Let someone's totally brain dead idea
happen so it completely buries them because they were too blinded by their own
petty hates and stupidity that they couldn't even think one step ahead.

I think the best way to deal with people like Joe Lieberman is to give them
everything they ask for.

------
rmason
Senator Lieberman means well but he doesn't understand technology. A terrorist
flagging button isn't going to do it.

I'm certain that all the blogs in the world are scraped in real time by
various intelligence services in the federal government.

What Senator Lieberman should be asking for is to have Google send them
several engineers to improve the algorithms that flag the terrorist blogs for
them.

~~~
Vivtek
I question your assertion that he means well. I suspect he knows exactly what
he's doing: exploiting the fear of the Internet (after all, it's a part of the
uncontrolled world that is _right in your house_ ) among the less educated -
by which I mean that 80% of the public that doesn't really have time to think
about the Internet much - in order to make himself look like a protector.

It rings incredibly false to you and to me because, after all, we're not the
target audience. But he knows exactly what he's doing. He _does not care_ if
terrorists are caught - in fact, it's all the better for him if they aren't!
All he cares about is that voters see him as an island of strength in a
chaotic world of dimly perceived threats. He's actually pretty good at it,
which is why he's been voted back to Congress again and again for years, even
when his own party threw up its collective hands and ran against him.

------
lazugod
The original article:
[http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/11/lieberman_...](http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/11/lieberman_wants_google_to_let_users_flag_terrorist_content_on_blogger_platform.php)

------
gglanzani
I've made one for the senator

    
    
         <a href="mailto:joe@senators.us?subject=I'm an idiot, and you?">Probably a terrorist | His land his full with natural resources.</a>

------
AmazingBytecode
Can we also get a terrorist flagging button for hacker news please?

~~~
tomelders
I feel a bookmarklet coming on.

------
anonymous
There should be a button where anyone who sees a terrorist working can press a
button and turn that site off. This will protect our great nation from
terrorists.

------
VonGuard
Be about 3 seconds before I'd flag Joe.

------
michaelty
The good senator should be flagged for infecting the American public with
mind-staggering stupid.

------
tamersalama
I don't think he has to worry, since the effects could easily be achieved
through SOPA.

------
mgrouchy
As a canadian, I really hope this isn't representative of our southern
neighbours.

~~~
gburt
Its representative of us Canadians. This appears to be how "average" people
think. The government is the only thing that protects us from the evils of
each other.

------
zotz
Lieberman is proof positive that one need not be intelligent or even well-
informed to be a policy maker in the American government, merely well
connected.

------
1010101111001
Dear Joe:

Thank you for your correspondence and your request for a new Blogger feature.

Unfortunately, only those who upgrade to paid memberships to our service may
request new features.

We apologize for any inconvenience.

Thank you for your interest in Blogger.

Yours sincerely,

The Blogger Team

~~~
1010101111001
Alternatively...

Excerpt from Blogger Changelog:

* * *

20112211 Terrorist button [LiebermanJ]

* * _

------
hastur
How can I flag Lieberman as terrorist?

No, sorry, he's worse than that. A terrorist kills a couple of people, a few
hundred if he's really lucky. By contrast, this guy is a big contributor in
screwing a nation of 300 million people. How do I flag such devastating
damage?

