School Shooting In Finland Prompts Lawmakers to Re-Examine Web Laws

If you needed evidence that the impulse to regulate videogame violence leads down a slippery slope toward wider censorship, just turn to Finland. In the wake of a school shooting in the Northern European country Tuesday, Finnish Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen wants his government to look into changes to Internet monitoring laws.

Matti Juhani Saari, a 22-year-old chef trainee, killed 10 people at his catering and tourism college earlier this week before turning his gun on himself. Prior to his suicide, Saari set off several gasoline bombs in the exam room where the murders took place, burning the bodies beyond recognition.

Police had been alerted to a video Saari posted on YouTube before the shooting and even detained him for questioning the day before the attack. The video showed Saari firing his Walther P22 pistol at a woodland shooting range. Saari was released and his gun permit was not suspended, however, because, according to Finland's police chief, the videos "did not threaten anyone."

In another video posted to a Finnish social networking site, which police did not review, Saari pointed his gun at the camera and said, "You will be next" in English.

Though the Finnish government is considering tougher gun laws, it also wants to expand its ability to monitor what citizens say on the Internet. President Tarja Halonen told a Finnish broadcaster that "the Internet and YouTube forums...are not another planet. This is part of our world and we adults have the responsibility to check what is happening, and create borders and safety there."

A statement by YouTube parent Google pointed out that videos on the site are already subject to community policing, and experts tend to agree that the sheer number of videos, including hoaxes, pranks, and vague threats makes official monitoring difficult, if not impossible.

Links to gaming have already been established in this case, although they are tenuous at best. Saari's YouTube account apparently included links to another user, whose profile expressed interest in the 1999 Columbine high school shootings.

GC: It's ironic that this case is being used by Finnish authorities to call for government monitoring of Web speech, since it was precisely the community policing cited by Google that alerted officials to Saari in the first place. Clearly that did nothing to prevent the tragedy, though suspending Saari's gun permit and confiscating his weapon might have.

Of course, the problem is that Saari's YouTube videos were not threatening enough to warrant legal action. The only way this unfortunate crime could have been prevented online would have been to discover Saari's more direct threat on the Finnish social networking site. That's one video in an entire nation's Internet traffic. Very easy to find after the fact, essentially impossible, outside of community policing, beforehand — that is, unless the government had an army of Internet police do nothing but troll and data mine Web speech. Let's hope that's not where we're headed.

[via Reuters]