MOUNTAIN VIEW, California --- Google refused to remove Al Qaeda videos from YouTube today, claiming free speech concerns in response to a request from Senator Joe Lieberman over security issues. Their focus will instead be on compliance with Chinese government requests to silence dangerous Chinese bloggers and government critics.
"We respect Senator Lieberman's concerns, but we think he's wrong," said a Google spokesperson. "Al Qaeda has free speech rights too. Even if they kill Americans and foster death and destruction around the world. I mean we're not talking about dangerous Chinese bloggers and dissidents and human rights information. While we are ignoring US government requests to censor terrorists, we will still aggressively comply with Chinese government requests to block any content the Chinese government finds objectionable. We feel that is the only real threat that needs to be addressed by our company. Our motto is to do no evil, and we don't feel the Al Qaeda videos recruiting terrorists to kill and torture civilians meet the same standards on evil as websites critical of the Chinese government or promoting human rights."
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