National security officials in the United Kingdom will be given “special access” to some key YouTube features by Google, The Irish Times reports. Apparently Google will give officials in the U.K. the ability to raise a “super flag” on videos that they deem dangerous to national security. The Irish Times says that these “super flagger” powers mean that any content that U.K. officials flag will be immediately reviewed for takedown. Additionally, national security officials will have the ability to flag content in bulk so they won’t have to flag individual videos to be reviewed on a one-at-a-time basis.
The Irish Times says that Google gave the U.K. government these new powers in part as “a response to a blitz from U.K. security authorities to persuade Internet service providers, search engines and social media sites to censor more of their own content for extremist material even if it does not always break existing laws.”
