Tag: censorship

New Report Measures Attempts to Impose, and Evade, Internet Repression

This week, government officials in both Pakistan and Senegal cut public access to the internet in moves clearly meant to crack down on political debate. Pakistan severed connections to limit information coinciding with a general election of questionable credibility while Senegal’s action occurred after the government postponed a presidential vote to the end of the year. The restrictions come amidst global concern about increasing online censorship and surveillance.

“Global internet freedom declined for the 13th consecutive year,” Allie Funk, Adrian Shahbaz, and Kian Vesteinsson of Freedom House noted in last year’s Freedom on the Net 2023 report. “Ahead of and during electoral periods, many incumbent leaders criminalized broad categories of speech, blocked access to independent news sites, and imposed other controls over the flow of information to sway balloting in their favor,” they added.

Controlling access to information regarding electoral politics is precisely what happened in both the recent incidents in countries where authorities are barely going through the motions of democracy.

“Polls have closed in Pakistan after the authorities suspended mobile calls and data while millions voted for a new government in a controversial election,” report Yvette Tan, Caroline Davies, and Simon Fraser for the BBC. They noted that the prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, seeks approval for another term in office while the party of his predecessor, Imran Khan, who was jailed last year for corruption, called the internet cut a “cowardly act.”

Meanwhile, “Senegal’s internet service was restored Wednesday, days after the government suspended it following the postponement of this month’s presidential election” and subsequent unrest, according to Deutsche Welle.

“The government’s abrupt shutdown of internet access via mobile data and Walf TV’s broadcasting, along with the revocation of its license, constitutes a blatant assault on the right to freedom of expression and press rights,” commented Samira Daoud of Amnesty International.

Senegal, notably, appears on a list compiled by Techopedia of places where internet searches on virtual private networks (VPNs), which mask users’ identities and provide a measure of anonymity, are soaring.

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Biden Cried ‘Book Ban,’ Then Pressured Amazon To Ban His Opponents From World’s Biggest Bookstore

Democrats and their accomplices in the media have expended an awful lot of ink, breath, and energy trying to convince voters that people on the right want to “ban books.”

The leftist firestorm attacks concerned parents working to eradicate pornography and other age-inappropriate books from taxpayer-funded schools and libraries. These works include titles such as All Boys Aren’t Blue, which contains descriptions of rape, incest, and pedophilia, and Gender Queer, which shows graphic depictions of oral sex, masturbation, and homosexual acts.

Democrat activists have come out in full-throated defense of explicit sexual content for children and likened conservatives who oppose it to Nazis who want to burn books. Last month, MSNBC host Joy Reid grilled the co-founder of Moms for Liberty about why parents should have any say in how their tax dollars are used and argued that kids who identify as LGBT “feel seen” by stories about child rape.

One Democrat governor ironically argued that Republican efforts to shield children from age-inappropriate content are “castrating them.” President Joe Biden has also smeared Republicans for “banning books,” and even announced during “pride month” that he would appoint a “book ban coordinator” to make sure schools weren’t removing filth from their shelves.

That’s why it was so ridiculous to learn this week that all while Democrats were shrieking about pornography “book bans,” the Biden White House was actively “pressuring” Amazon, the world’s largest bookseller, to nuke books that raised concerns about experimental Covid-19 shots. It’s a pretty good bet that’s not the only topic the White House pressured Amazon to ban, either.

According to internal documents and emails subpoenaed by Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee, senior Biden official Andy Slavitt, who pressured Facebook to censor speech, was pushing Amazon to ban books disagreeing with Democrat policies.

Because Slavitt didn’t like the “concerning” results that turned up when he searched Amazon books for “vaccines,” he emailed the corporation on March 2, 2021, to ask to whom Biden officials could speak about “the high levels of propaganda and misinformation and disinformation of [sic] Amazon.” The vaccine debate was, and is still, ongoing. But the White House was mad that Amazon didn’t slap a warning from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention onto books that stepped out of line from the government’s Covid claims.

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WHO Report Proposes Working With Social Media Providers and Law Enforcement To Control “Disinformation”

The United Nations (UN) in general has in the past years proved to be a fine yet unfortunate example of the degradation of an institution that was conceived as an international forum for settling disputes and establishing cooperation and mutual trust between countries – without denting their sovereignty or agency.

Yet from that, it has been turning into another “brick in the globalist wall” – instead of providing a level playing field and ensuring trust, the UN is prostrating itself and its various agencies – these last years very notably the WHO (World Health Organization) – before the global agendas.

Therefore, it’s really unsurprising that the World Health Organization continues to dabble in online information suppression and even censorship, and keeps talking about “disinformation.”

As well, a recent WHO statement gives away that the UN wouldn’t mind following in the footsteps of governments who collude with Big Tech. After all, the UN has been pejoratively referred to as “the world government.”

These days, WHO’s top-of-mind goes this way, as per the post. It’s not the actual health issues, but – “cyber-attacks on health care (and) disinformation.” And these are treated as “health security risks.”

So, not health risks – but “health security risks.” There is also talk about “enhancing cyber-maturity.” It will be a cold day in hell before most people catch up with corporate/globalist newspeak anyway, but this time in a post on the WHO blog, the agency at least listed everyone involved in this curious endeavor.

It’s no less that Interpol (a global police organization), the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the UN Office of Counter-terrorism, the UN International Computing Center (UNICC), the UN Inter-regional Crime and Justice Research Institute, and the CyberPeace Institute.

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YouTube CEO Vows To Censor “Hate Speech” and Boost “Authoritative Sources” in Recommendations When People Look for Election News in 2024

YouTube CEO Neal Mohan has a post up on the company blog just in time to, well in advance, reiterate the giant platform’s policies regarding the upcoming elections.

Even though Mohan’s “letter” is supposed to deal with the “four big bets for 2024,” the bit concerning the elections is of most interest, given the ramifications of YouTube’s previous and continued restrictive approach and unprecedented levels of censorship.

Just in case anyone worried things might improve, the post reassures them: YouTube will use its massive resources and the way the platform is structured, such as search and recommendations, to wipe out what it chooses to consider “hate speech” and at the same time “boost authoritative sources” even more.

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Biden’s AI plan to censor you revealed: Researchers say Americans can’t ‘tell fact from fiction’

Twitter’s censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop story in 2020 could soon be possible on an industrial scale — thanks to AI tools being built with funding from his father’s administration, a report from Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee claimed Tuesday.

The report reveals how the Biden administration is spending millions on artificial intelligence research designed to make anti “misinformation” tools which could then be passed to social media giants.

And it discloses how researchers who got funding for the plan — known as “Track F” — emailed each other to say that Americans could not tell fact from fiction online, and that conservatives and veterans were even more susceptible than the public at large.

The report was published by the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Weaponization of Government, which is chaired by Jim Jordan (R-OH).

It casts new light on how funding from the National Sciences Foundation is being given to elite institutions including Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Madison-Wisconsin and the University of Michigan, for a program called “Trust & Authenticity in Communication Systems.”

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Homeland Security Cited Inaccurate Allegation To Censor New York Times Journalist

As the 2020 Election Day count dragged on into the next morning in the crucial swing state of Wisconsin, the New York Times campaign reporter Reid Epstein reported a hiccup at 4:52 a.m.: “Green Bay’s absentee ballot results are being delayed because one of the vote-counting machines ran out of ink and an elections official had to return to City Hall to get more.

Eight minutes later Epstein sent a follow-up tweet giving the all-clear: “Clerk has returned with printer ink!”

This tiny drama from Wednesday, Nov. 4, would be lost to history but for the deep consternation it ignited among influential members of the government and tech industry. Details uncovered in the Twitter Files and revealed here for the first time show that Epstein’s tweet prompted immediate and mostly successful speech suppression efforts by the Department of Homeland Security and others who were intent on undermining any facts or claims that might possibly be used to question the integrity of the 2020 election.

The episode is of more than passing historical note because it is the first known case of the agency attempting to silence a social media account associated with a national newspaper – and because the Times, which has long professed to report the news “without fear or favor,” did little to push back against the censorship, even though nothing has emerged to invalidate Epstein’s reporting.

Epstein’s tweet set off immediate alarm bells in Wisconsin and Washington, D.C. At 5:11 a.m., 19 minutes after Epstein’s first tweet, an election clerk from another part of the state, Rachel Rodriguez, disputed the Times’ reporting on Twitter: “I’m very familiar with the ballot scanners Green Bay uses,” wrote Rodriguez. “There’s no ink involved.”

Four minutes later, at 5:15 a.m., the official Twitter account of the Wisconsin Elections Commission retweeted Rodriguez’s post commenting, “Rachel is correct.”

Except she was not. Although most of Green Bay’s voting machines did not use ink – the DS200, the primary vote-counting machine, relied on thermal tape – that year, there was another machine involved. Local officials, in expectation of higher turnout for the heated presidential race and newly eased rules concerning absentee ballots, opted to additionally use the DS450, a high-speed tabulator that prints results through an external ink-jet printer.

Rodriguez recently told RCI that her 2020 tweet was based on the mistaken understanding that Green Bay used only DS200 machines for the election. She also confirmed that if the city had indeed used a high-speed tabulator, like the DS450 or its variation, the DS850, then her tweet would have been mistaken, because that system uses ink cartridges through an external printer. She explained over phone that her tweet fact-checking Epstein got “way more traction than I thought.” Rodriguez added that “it was 3 a.m. and I was just being sarcastic.”

Her tweet did, indeed, set off a chain reaction at the highest levels..

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House Weaponization Committee Report Warns of AI-Enabled Censorship Echoing 2020 Social Media Suppression

A Republican report from the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday raised alarms over possible AI-enabled censorship on a massive scale, reminiscent of Twitter and Facebook’s suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop exposé in 2020.

The accusations focus on a series of AI tools currently under development. Financial backing for this venture has reportedly come from the Biden administration, leading to concerns about the permeation of political influence in freedom of speech.

We obtained a copy of the report for you here.

According to the report, the administration has invested millions of funds in AI research. The objective of this activity, as stated, is the creation of handy tools capable of targeting and suppressing “misinformation.” Once operational, these utilities could ostensibly be handed over to major social media platforms.

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Elon Musk’s X Blocks Searches for ‘Taylor Swift’ Amid Spread of Explicit AI-Generated Images

X was blocking searches for “Taylor Swift”over the weekend following the spread of AI-generated images depicting the pop star in sexually explicit poses.

Searches for “Taylor Swift” and “Taylor Swift AI” on X returned error messages on Saturday and Sunday, though Elon Musk’s platform allowed variations on the search terms, including “Taylor Swift photos AI.”

X confirmed it is deliberately blocking the search phrases for the time being.

“This is a temporary action and done with an abundance of caution as we prioritize safety on this issue,” X’s head of business operations Joe Benarroch said in a statement sent to multiple media outlets.

The Joe Biden administration and the mainstream news media shifted into high gear after the fake Taylor Swift images went viral, seeking to protect the left-wing pop star.

“We are alarmed by the reports of the circulation of the false images,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Friday, saying social media companies need to do a better job enforcing their own rules.

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Government Suppressed, Censored Concerns Over Mail-In Voting In 2020: Documents

Newly released documents allege that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) knew it was wrong to censor concerns about the security of mail-in voting ahead of the 2020 election, yet it proceeded to do so anyway.

On Jan. 22, a tranche of documents published by America First Legal (AFL) alleged the Department of Homeland Security’s CISA was aware that mail-in ballots were less secure than in-person voting ahead of the 2020 election.

Nevertheless, it undertook an “unprecedented censorship campaign to mislead the American people about the truth,” according to Gene Hamilton, AFL’s vice president and general counsel.

“Common sense dictates that ballots submitted via mail are inherently less secure than verified, in-person voting by a citizen who shows identification before casting his or her ballot,” Mr. Hamilton said in a press release.

“The American people were lied to, and there must be accountability.“

AFL lawyer Michael Ding told The Epoch Times that the new documents were produced after AFL sued the CISA in November 2022.

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CDC Labeled Accurate Articles As Misinformation, Documents Show

The top U.S. public health agency labeled multiple news articles as misinformation even though the articles were accurate, according to internal emails and experts.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) added the misinformation labels to articles from The Epoch Times in widely-circulated internal messages, according to copies obtained by The Epoch Times.

One of the articles reported on a peer-reviewed paper that found heart inflammation, or myocarditis, was more common after COVID-19 vaccination than after COVID-19 infection.

Nordic researchers reviewed electronic health records and counted 109 cases of myocarditis following COVID-19 infection compared to 530 after vaccination. Their study was published by the British Medical Journal.

An internal CDC email said that the study “has been picked up by anti-vax proponents as evidence that vax was more likely to cause myocarditis than COVID-19 infection,” and provided a hyperlink to The Epoch Times article.

The Feb. 7, 2023, email listed the article under “points of confusion/potential rumors/misinformation.”

The CDC did not list any data or other information supporting its label.

“The Epoch Times article should not be labeled as misinformation,” Dr. Tracy Hoeg, a physician-scientist at the University of California-San Francisco, told The Epoch Times via email.

Dr. Hoeg said the Nordic study aligned with earlier research, including a paper published by JAMA Cardiology that found myocarditis rates were higher among some populations after vaccination compared to after infection.

Another CDC email claimed a story reporting on how the U.S. government was receiving royalty payments from Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine was inaccurate or misleading.

The Epoch Times article reported on how Moderna officials disclosed in an earnings call that the company entered a patent agreement with the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), sent a payment of $400 million, and would be paying additional royalties in the future.

“Anti-vax proponents question Moderna’s new patent agreement with NIAID, citing catch up payments and royalties as a ‘conflict of interest,” the CDC email, dated March 1, 2023, stated.

The Epoch Times article quoted Dr. Lawrence Tabak, the director at the time of the NIAID’s parent agency, as admitting royalty payments in general present “an appearance of a conflict of interest.”

The CDC defines employees taking part in matters in which they have a financial interest as a conflict of interest, while the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the parent agency of the CDC, says that financial conflicts of interest can compromise honesty “especially if the financial interests are significant.”

“It is certainly interesting that, confronted with possible ethics concerns, the CDC doesn’t address them but dismisses them as ‘misinformation,’” Michael Chamberlain, director of the nonprofit Protect the Public’s Trust, told The Epoch Times via email.

The CDC also labeled an Epoch Times video featuring a doctor describing data on COVID-19 vaccines negatively impacting gut health as misinformation, the emails show, even though the video was based on published research.

“The information contained in these documents illustrates how federal health officials so rapidly squandered the trust of the American public, and it shows the danger of government setting itself up as an arbiter of truth,” Mr. Chamberlain said.

“The agency is quick to slap a derogatory label on any statements that don’t fit its preferred narrative, and just as quick to impugn the motives of anyone who dares make those statements. This is not government working for the people, it is government as adversary to the people.”

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