Oct 16 2007

Using YouTube to Solicit Terrorist Funds

Posted by DummyGeekGurl as News, Security

I interrupted my “early morning” reverie with one of the biggest shockers of my recent existence.

I was peacefully having breakfast, a rare event in my existence, when I came across this Philippine Star article that I just had to blog about.

Well, most of us are painfully aware of the recent developments with Al-Qaeda, Iraq, and the South East Asian threats Jemaah Islamiyah and even the Abu Sayyaf. I was already unaware of the recent developments in the Philippines when I just absentmindedly bought my first national daily in eons. I thought there was little purpose to my buying the thing, just mere frivolity, when a headline caught my eye. It is relevant for me for two reasons: this is a perfect example of how technology can be abused, and events like these have another, more personal significance to me.

The headline, “Military: Abus receiving funds from unidentified donor,” was just a headline to me at first. Till I saw the word YouTube and realized that the subjects of this story actually used YouTube to solicit funds from, well, an “unidentified donor”.

I had already known how people could abuse YouTube, because as a part of that active community, I had been the object of a few abusive comments here and there, which had driven me to put some controversial rant videos in private mode. It was through these comments that I found out that as there are major conflicts in our world today, the “real world,” that is, there are also wars raged within the virtual world of YouTube.

In YouTube, I had encountered Conservatives, and I also encountered the Islamic radicals. So when I read the story that our local terrorist menace had actually been able to solicit funds from a video they posted up on YouTube, I realized:

1) You could actually get money from pleading on YouTube.
2) You could actually use YouTube to fuel your terroristic efforts, if you had one.
3) In this technological age where possibilities are limited only by people’s imaginations and/or biases, nothing is immune or impossible, and that everything may be used either of two ways: good or evil.

*blink*

I think I may need a Valium now. :p

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A Disservice to the Journalists | Tingog.com | The Voice of The Filipino
20|Oct|2007

[...] Just this Tuesday, I had read that the Abus had been given money for terroristic motives because of …. I wonder how that is actually related to the recent blast? And to learn that this happened yesterday, in the same city I live in, is it normal to just believe that this is part and parcel of life? [...]

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