I think it's safe to say that the Internet is the greatest tool for
the distribution of ideas ever invented. Unfortunately, that means it
is also the greatest tool for the distribution of bad ideas --
including the idea that people should be killed for their beliefs (for
more on dangerous "viral" ideas, check out href="http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/116">this video
of a talk philosopher Dan Dennett gave to the TED
conference).
But should posting those kinds of ideas on the Web be a crime? It
looks as though it has become one in Britain.
In the first case of its kind, three young men in Britain href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6273732.stm">have been
sentenced to as many as 10 years in jail for being what the court
called "cyber jihadis" -- engaging in a sophisticated
campaign to convince other radical Muslims that they should kill
non-believers and conduct various acts of terrorism. The three ran a
network of websites from London, and were found with CDs and
other material that instructed would-be terrorists in how to build
pipe bombs, as well as films that showed kidnapping victims being
beheaded.
Inciting people to commit acts of violence, or fomenting hatred
against an identifiable group, is seen as a crime in many countries
(including
Canada). But what constitutes incitement to violence or inciting
hatred against a group?
There are literally tens of thousands of websites, blogs, e-mail
newsletters, IRC groups and chat forums in which people spew all sorts
of hatred towards identifiable groups -- homosexuals, Jews,
Palestinians, Muslims, you name it. Should all of those people be
convicted of crimes and sentenced to prison time?
The judge in the British case said in his decision that none of the
men in question had even come close to carrying out any acts of
violence themselves, although they did their best to stir up violent
feelings among others and encourage them to engage in violence.
Referring to one of the young men, the judge said that he "came no
closer to a bomb or a firearm than a computer keyboard." Two of
the men involved in this conspirary had never even met.
Early on in the trial, the href="http://www.shortnews.com/start.cfm?id=62523">judge admitted
that: "The trouble is I don't understand the language. I don't
really understand what a website is. I haven't quite grasped the
concepts."
The charge against the men is also worded in an almost bizarrely
roundabout way: they admitted to "inciting another person to
commit an act of terrorism wholly or partly outside the United Kingdom
which would, if committed in England and Wales, constitute
murder." In other words, they admitted to trying to convince
someone to do something somewhere outside the UK that -- if done
inside the UK -- would have constituted murder.
That's a pretty large legal net, in which you could catch a lot
more than just a few "cyber-jihadis." Jailing the men in question
didn't require such a charge either: all three admitted to engaging in
a $3.6-million conspiracy to defraud banks and
credit-card companies to finance their operation, a crime that
would have been enough to put them away for some time.