US
intelligence agencies are not going to put up with the loss of opportunity to
monitor users on the Internet after the revelations of a former NSA employee
Edward Snowden and want to achieve the right to legally monitor social networks
and other Web services.
The
main argument of the security services remains the fight against child
pornography and terrorism. On the first point between the government and
technology companies reached a mutual understanding, and special algorithms
monitor and remove any such materials and send the information to the police.
But surveillance of users of social networks under the pretext of fighting
terrorism are potentially threatened by business Internet giants.
However,
discussion of the possibility of monitoring the activities of social networks
has reached a level of US Senate Committee.
Intelligence
Committee last month included in the draft budget of US intelligence activities
for a companies such as Google, Facebook and Twitter, to disclose any
information that can identify terrorist activity, and this applies to text
messages in social networks, mail and even video.
Lawmakers
are considering the measure in response to the terrorist organizations use
social media for propaganda, recruiting followers and planning terrorist
attacks. As an example, active in Twitter terrorist organization "Islamic
State", whose activities are prohibited by law in several countries?
Social
networks and other Internet companies, of course, do not want to prevent the
growth of terrorist activity. However, according to WSJ, they do not support,
and the prospect of becoming a "watchdog of the law", as expressed in
his statement Yahoo! and Google.
In
addition, the tracking of terrorist activities in social networks, according to
Internet companies, due to the much greater technical and legal difficulties
than the removal of child pornography. After adult material easy to track using
algorithms and detection of acts of terrorism often depends on the context and
is linked with the violation of citizens' rights to privacy of correspondence,
which does not trust the process automation.
Today,
therefore, social networks rely on their users. So, Facebook does not allow
references to terrorist activity and immediately remove them yourself or
complaints from users. Twitter has greatly expanded the staff support services
to deal with complaints of users, including those relating to terrorist
propaganda.
However,
representatives of the Intelligence Committee believes that since social
networks are working on the definition of terrorist content on the basis of
user input, they can submit the relevant materials to law enforcement. However,
Internet companies and human rights organizations believe that after the
revelations of Snowden's secret services lost access to the channels of mass
communication and is now trying to regain the broad rights of access.
