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British Security to Monitor YouTube for Threatening Content

Justin Aldridge

With threats to national security recently being linked with what appears on the web, Google have given British security special access to YouTube to provide officials with the opportunity to remove anything that may pose a threat to the security of the country.

It’s a move that has been prompted by the fact that governments across the world are desperately searching for ways to stem the flow of jihadi material on the web as a result of the war in Syria.

It’s believed that around 400 Britain’s have travelled to Syria to join the conflict as a result of content issued on YouTube and it’s this that the government are trying to act upon.

So how is the authority we would usually expect British security to have over social media and video sharing sites such as YouTube any different?

Google has now given officials permission to effectively work “at scale” when ridding YouTube of threatening content rather than picking through individual videos.

The issue for the government is that not everything that appears on YouTube or any other file sharing site can truly be regarded as illegal even if it does pose a threat to national security.

This is why James Brokenshire, the UK’s security and immigration minister, has stressed that action must be taken with content that is “unsavoury and not the sort of material that people would want to see or receive”, whether it’s illegal or not.

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