POLICY
POLICY
POLICY
Australia proposes to block social media in the event of a terrorist attack
Australia will block any site deemed to be hosting “terrorist material,” including leading social media sites such as Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc., under a proposal announced Sunday by Prime Minister Scott Morrison.
Reuters reported that Morrison (pictured, right), who somehow got invited to the G7 Leaders’s Summit in France despite Australia not being a member of the G7, said that the Australian Government “intended to prevent extremists from exploiting digital platforms to post extremely violent content.”
“We are doing everything we can to deny terrorists the opportunity to glorify their crimes,” said Morrison, the sixth Australian Prime Minister since 2007.
Morrison’s intent to censor the internet is in support of an initiative of New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern following the Christchurch mosque shootings in March. The shooter, Brenton Tarrant, a 28-year-old Australian man, livestreamed his attacks on Facebook.
The initiative to censor social media sites, dubbed in literal Orwellian newspeak as the “charter for an open, free and safe internet,” made headlines at the G7 after U.S. President Donald Trump was accused of “secretly blocking [the] move to quell internet extremism.”
Multiple companies are supporting the initiative even if they would be censored, and in Australia’s case completely blocked in the event that the Australian Government deemed a terrorist attack to be occurring. Those companies include Facebook, Alphabet Inc., Amazon.com Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Twitter.
Despite the fact that a massive shooting in New Zealand is newsworthy, the country itself fined SKY Network Television Ltd. for showing a number of edited clips from the shooter’s Facebook livestream. New Zealand also banned open discussion of shooter Tarrant’s manifesto and banned Sky News Australia for its coverage.
Australia and New Zealand are not alone in backing the censorship charter with France a strong backer as well. The U.S., alone among most of the civilized world, has free speech enshrined as an amendment to its constitution.
Photo: g20argentina/Flickr
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