The Efficacy of Censorship as a Response to Terrorism
This chapter discusses the use of law and intimidation and direct censorship in relation to the purported strategic needs of terrorism and counter-terrorism. It explains the role of the media and the strategic efficacy of censorship in insurgent terrorism, which includes subnational and transnational actors attempting to gain political power. The chapter further explains the role of the media and the strategic efficacy of censorship in state terrorism, where terrorism is deployed to sustain and strengthen political power. The role of the media and the strategic efficacy of censorship in counter-terrorism are also analyzed. The chapter talks about the strategic relationship between insurgent terrorism and counter-terrorism where the media and the efficacy of media censorship are a strategic response against terrorism as opposed to their being a tool of terrorism, which is sometimes the case in state terrorism.
Terrorist Web Sites
The majority of the literature dealing with terrorism and the Internet focuses on cyberterrorism. In particular, it focuses on the vulnerability of critical information infrastructure(s) to cyber attack. Consistently alarmist in nature, many of these texts focus on the potentially disastrous consequences of a successful future cyberterrorist attack1 while skipping blithely over the proven role played by the Internet in a vast amount of current terrorist activity.2 The fact remains that despite the presence of many terrorist organizations online worldwide, no act of cyberterrorism has ever yet occurred. The point is not that cyberterrorism cannot happen or will not happen, but that it has not happened yet. Given this fact, the state of research into terrorist groups’ very real online presence is curious on two counts. First, only a small number of political scientists, international relations scholars, or even those whose exclusive focus is the study of terrorism, have researched terrorist Web sites.3 As a cursory glance in any bookstore or library reveals, the majority of what passes for knowledge about the intersection of terrorism and the Internet is based on opinion and impression, not on social science theory or empirical investigation. Further, most of the research that is available is focused on specific groups and dispersed across space and time such that meaningful synthesis is next to impossible.
Cyberhate: A Legal and Historical Analysis of Extremists' Use of Computer Networks in America
American extremists have traditionally cultivated technology to enhance efficiency and promote goals. This article concentrates on how domestic right-wing and other extremists have used computer networks to these ends. Although the concept of a guerrilla insurgency through "leaderless resistance" became a factor in right-wing extremist movements before the Internet's advent, cyberspace hastened its popularity. The Internet has been useful to hatemongers and extremists because it is economical and far reaching, and online expression is significantly protected by the First Amendment. Various court decisions have established that not all communication is protected, in cyberspace or elsewhere. Although the government cannot regulate Internet expression because it offends sensibilities, it can regulate expression that constitutes crimes that fall under various unprotected areas of speech. Courts have convicted hatemongers who use the Internet to communicate threats rather than merely ideas. Private service providers and foreign governments have greater latitude to prohibit offensive and hateful expression that does not constitute a threat.