New Examples of Censorship in West Europe, Facebook, Google, Saudi Arabia, China, Japan, and North America
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2013-12-18 16:23:49 UTC
- Modified: 2013-12-18 16:23:49 UTC
-
Today, a special police unit can decide that a certain website needs to disappear from the Internet, and threaten its domain name registrar into revoking the address “until further notice”, without any legal basis whatsoever.
The name of the unit is PIPCU (Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit) and it has just reported on the success of Operation Creative – a three month long campaign that resulted in 40 websites accused of copyright infringement shutting down, or at least moving to a new Web address.
-
Speaking at the Internet Service Providers Association, Security Minister James Brokenshire said that an announcement on blocking extremist websites is ‘forthcoming.’
-
Numerous reactions are now being voiced against the inclusion in the 2014-2019 Defense Bill of article 13 whose provisions enable a pervasive surveillance of online data and communications. Gilles Babinet, appointed in 2012 as French Digital Champion to Nellie Kroes, Vice-President of the European Commission responsible for the Digital Agenda for Europe, was quoted [fr] in the French newspaper Les Echos, “This law is the most serious attack on democracy since the special tribunals during the Algerian War” (our translation).
-
Social networking giant Facebook has been granted a patent to use profile information to analyze whether shared files are “pirated” or not. The data is carefully analyzed using several social indicators including the interests of the poster and recipient, their geographical location, and their social relationship. According to Facebook the patent can help the company to “minimize legal liabilities,” but whether users will be happy remains to be seen.
-
Facebook is developing a speech impediment. The recent fracas over beheading videos was marked by severe bouts of waffling from the social media giant. On one hand, it seems to want to ease unfettered expression. On the other hand, it's set itself up as the content police.
These two aspects often collide with disastrous results. Beheadings are a go, but breast cancer groups can't post photos of mastectomies. Recent partnerships with government agencies see Facebook willing to censor by proxy, even as it attempts to roll back its control in other areas. Giving 800+ million users access to a "report" button is well-intended, but the reality is more troubling. Something that's simply unpopular can be clicked into oblivion in nearly no time whatsoever.
-
It seems that Google now wants you to make use of words in a more careful and responsible way, and thus, has drawn off many words, including a bunch of profane words, from its built-in dictionary for Android. With the rollout of Android 4.4 KitKat, Google has now stopped giving you predictive suggestions for a raft of words.
-
Last Tuesday (26 Nov) representatives from the country’s Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice — the Haya’a — raided several bookshops selling the novel H W J N by Ibraheem Abbas and Yasser Bahjatt’s, demanding it’d be taken off the shelves. H W J N is a “fantasy, sci-fi and romance” novel about a genie who falls in love with a human, and is a best-seller in Saudi Arabia.
-
China's campaign against online rumors, which critics say is crushing free speech, has been highly successful in "cleaning" the Internet, a top official of the country's internet regulator said on Thursday.
-
The government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe this month rammed through Parliament a state secrecy law that signals a fundamental alteration of the Japanese understanding of democracy. The law is vaguely worded and very broad, and it will allow government to make secret anything that it finds politically inconvenient. Government officials who leak secrets can be jailed for up to 10 years, and journalists who obtain information in an “inappropriate” manner or even seek information that they do not know is classified can be jailed for up to five years. The law covers national security issues, and it includes espionage and terrorism.
-
Fukushima continues to spew out radiation. The quantities seem to be rising, as do the impacts.
The site has been infiltrated by organized crime. There are horrifying signs of ecological disaster in the Pacific and human health impacts in the U.S.
-
The drawn-out process in which a bill becomes a law lends itself to harmful things, like mission creep and bloating. Canada's new cyberbullying legislation, problematic in its "purest" form, is now becoming even worse as legislators have begun hanging language aimed at other issues (child porn, terrorism, cable theft [?]) on the bill's framework.
As was noted earlier, language aimed at punishing revenge porn had already been attached to the bill. But the urge to target as much as possible with a broadly written bill is too much for Canada's politicians to resist. Michael Geist notes that Bob Dechert (Secretary to the Minister of Justice) took a moment during the debate to speculate about the "dangers" of "stolen" cable.
-
This month, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that the Department of Homeland Security must make its plan to shut off the Internet and cellphone communications available to the American public. You, of course, may now be thinking: What plan?! Though President Barack Obama swiftly disapproved of ousted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak turning off the Internet in his country (to quell widespread civil disobedience) in 2011, the US government has the authority to do the same sort of thing, under a plan that was devised during the George W. Bush administration. Many details of the government’s controversial “kill switch” authority have been classified, such as the conditions under which it can be implemented and how the switch can be used. But thanks to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), DHS has to reveal those details by December 12 — or mount an appeal. (The smart betting is on an appeal, since DHS has fought to release this information so far.)
Recent Techrights' Posts
- 'Confidential Computing'? More Like a Giant Back Door.
- CacheWarp AMD CPU Attack Grants Root Access in Linux VMs
- Cybercrimes and Online Abuse From Extremists and Militants on a VPN/Tor
- A straitjacket or lobotomy won't solve this issue
- Links 02/12/2023: Pfizer Sued for Lies About Efficacy, Censorship of Scientific Dissent, More Pfizer Layoffs
- Links for the day
- Selling Free Software
- by Richard Stallman
-
- IRC Proceedings: Saturday, December 02, 2023
- IRC logs for Saturday, December 02, 2023
- Links 03/12/2023: CRISPR as Patented Minefield, Lots of Greenwashing Abound
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news
- Professor Eben Moglen: In 1991 Richard Stallman Thought GNU/Linux Was Doomed Due to Software Patents
- Back when Linus Torvalds was about to release Linux Prof. Moglen and Dr. Stallman had already spent years developing GNU and refining its licence, the GPL, which Linux would later adopt
- Montana’s TikTok Ban Was to Protect Free Speech and the United States' First Amendment
- TikTok does not embrace Free speech
- GNU/Linux Surges to Almost 4% Worldwide on Desktops/Laptops, 2% in Latest Steam Survey (Ubuntu Not the Top Distro)
- We've fortunately bet on a winning platform
- Links 02/12/2023: ChatGPT Drowns in Bad Press, Censorship Worldwide Increases Some More
- Links for the day
- [Meme] Screenshots of Web Pages (Relevant to One's Article) Are Not Copyright Infringing Anywhere in the World
- bullying and hate crimes
- IRC Proceedings: Friday, December 01, 2023
- IRC logs for Friday, December 01, 2023
- A Year of Doing Techrights 'Full Time'
- been a year!
- Microsoft and Its Boosters Worsen Linux Security
- The circus goes on and on
- Links 01/12/2023: Facebook Infested With Malicious Campaigns by Imposters, ACLU Gives Advice on Doxxing and Online Harassment
- Links for the day
- Just Like Its Budget Allocation, the Linux Foundation Devotes About 3% Of Its Latest Newsletter to Linux, Devotes More to Linux's Rivals
- It's just exploiting the brand
- Links 01/12/2023: Google Invokes Antitrust Against Microsoft
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news
- UK Government Allowing Microsoft to Take Over Activision Blizzard Will Destroy Jobs
- Over 30,000 fired this year? More?
- It's Cheaper to Pay Bribes (and Produce Press Releases) Than to Pay Fines (After Lots of Negative Publicity)
- Does the UK still have real sovereignty or do corporations from overseas purchase decisions and outcomes?
- November 2023 Over With GNU/Linux at All-Time Highs According to statCounter
- ChromeOS+GNU/Linux combined are about 7% of the "market"
- New Report Provides Numerical Evidence That Google Hired Too Many People From Microsoft (and Became Malicious, Evil, Sociopathic)
- "Some 12,018 former Microsoft employees currently work for the search and data giant"
- Google: Keep Out, Don't Save Your Files, and Also Let Us Spy on Everything You Do
- Do you still trust "clown" storage?
- IRC Proceedings: Thursday, November 30, 2023
- IRC logs for Thursday, November 30, 2023
- Links 01/12/2023: Many Suppressions in Hong Kong and Attempts to Legitimise Illegal and Unconstitutional Fake Patent 'Court' in EU (UPC)
- Links for the day