FINLAND:A DEADLY shooting at a Finnish school yesterday raises questions over tougher policing of the internet after news that the gunman posted menacing videos of himself on the web before killing 10 people.
Student Matti Juhani Saari (22) also killed himself in the incident closely resembling a 2007 massacre at another Finnish school, where that gunman also published messages on internet video- sharing site YouTube.
Police were alerted to videos posted by Saari and even questioned him the day before the attack. He was not detained because the videos "did not threaten anyone" directly, said Finland's police chief - highlighting the difficulty in judging the risk of postings on the internet.
Prime minister Matti Vanhanen said authorities needed to look into what can be done to better protect citizens, including possible changes in internet monitoring and tougher gun laws.
Finnish president Tarja Halonen told broacaster YLE: "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."
Several videos posted on YouTube by "Mr Saari" over the past month showed a dark-clad man firing a handgun at a shooting range. The videos were removed by YouTube, which is owned by US internet giant Google, shortly after the killings.
One video on a different website showed what appeared to be the same man saying directly into the lens: "You will die next," before firing off shots towards a camera on the ground. In other footage, he emptied his pistol at an off-screen target, turned to the camera, said "goodbye" and walked off.
According to a former classmate, Saari bore no resemblance to the loner profile of many mass murderers. "He was happy, a social guy - there was nothing exceptional - and he got along with people well and he was not lonely. He had friends," Susanna Keronen said.
Finnish police declined to detail their internet file on Saari or their talks with him on Monday, other than to say they were carried out by "an experienced policeman".
Criminologists say video-sharing websites offer killers unprecedented scope to get their messages across. "This type of networking was not possible before the internet era," Aarne Kinnunen, a trained criminologist and adviser to Finland's justice minister, said. "The internet creates the image that there is a crowd of people that respect this type of behaviour and . . . misrepresentation of reality."
Videos linked to killing sprees gained widespread attention in 2007 when Cho Seung-Hui killed 33 people, including himself, at Virginia Tech university in the United States and sent a film explaining his actions to US broadcaster NBC.
Google said the videos posted by Saari on YouTube did not breach its "zero tolerance policy for threats and incitement to violence". - (Reuters)