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Who wants to be a terrorist? A rough guide to over-regulating free speech with anti-terrorist measures

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Who wants to be a terrorist? A rough guide to over-regulating free speech with anti-terrorist measures
Wikimania 2019

Manifestations of fear of terrorism are visible almost everywhere in the world. This fear facilitates the emergence of laws that give multiple powers to law enforcement, through de facto permanently raising threat levels in cities around the world to “code yellow”; to tackling the emergence of radical messaging online as a terrorist radicalisation tool. In the debate civil and human rights organisations navigate a difficult landscape: on one hand, acts of terrorism should be prevented and radicalisation should be counteracted; on the other, regulatory trends conflate fighting terrorism with simply removing controversial content from before our eyes. Many projects documenting human rights violations, incl. terrorist activity, are already affected by arbitrary content removal decisions taken by internet platforms. In the digital rights movement we believe that the rigorous application of proportionality is the only way to ensure that laws and subsequ [[Category:2019:Advocacy submissions]] ent practices will not radically change the ways we exercise the freedom of speech online. Human rights exist in the digital world, and must be respected by governments and companies alike. We want to engage participants in the conversation about the global society of the near future. Do we want laws that err on the side of free speech and enable exposure to difficult realities at the risk of keeping terrorist content online? Or do we “go after terrorists” at the price of stifling citizen dissent and obscuring that difficult reality?

Speakers: Anna Mazgal Diego Naranjo