Tag: censorship

Israel slated to shut ‘pro-Hamas’ network Al Jazeera run by Qatar

The Qatar state-owned network Al Jazeera is facing intense criticism that it is assisting the Hamas terrorist movement in its war against the Jewish state, prompting the government to declare that Al Jazeera’s operation will be outlawed in Israel for transmitting “sensitive information to our enemies.” 

When asked about a ban on Al Jazeera and two additional reportedly pro-Hamas news outlets, foreign ministry spokesman, Lior Haiat, told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday “The government is working on something. And it is being led by the Communications Ministry and the Defence Ministry. The idea is if they are crossing the line in assisting Hamas, we can shut out the entire channel. “

He added that the closure of a network is “directed at channels that are crossing the line in assisting Hamas.”

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US Senator Michael Bennet Invokes EU’s Censorship Demands, Calls For Big Tech to Censor “Misinformation”

Senator Michael Bennet has criticized tech behemoths such as Meta, X, Google, and TikTok, accusing them of having lax policies that seemingly sanction the spread of untruths.

The turbulent situation between Israel and Hamas was recently seized upon by Democratic Senator Michael Bennet as another pretext to launch an offensive against the digital landscape.

Bennet targeted X, Meta, TikTok, and Alphabet in a letter dated October 17, imploring them to “extinguish the proliferation of inaccurate and misleading content” related to the Middle East conflict.

We obtained a copy of the letter for you here.

On the surface, the Senator’s request appears aligned with social responsibility while mitigating harm. However, the true objective surfaced, revealing Bennet’s obsession with enhancing the influence of censorship-prone entities that preside over content veracity.

Bennet’s stance is in alignment with European Union officials who are exerting pressure on these tech giants to aggressively deal with misinformation, via a letter addressed to the executives.

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Internet Censorship, Everywhere All at Once

It used to be a truth universally acknowledged by citizens of democratic nations that freedom of speech was the basis not just of democracy, but of all human rights.

When a person or group can censor the speech of others, there is – by definition – an imbalance of power. Those exercising the power can decide what information and which opinions are allowed, and which should be suppressed. In order to maintain their power, they will naturally suppress information and views that challenge their position.

Free speech is the only peaceful way to hold those in power accountable, challenge potentially harmful policies, and expose corruption. Those of us privileged to live in democracies instinctively understand this nearly sacred value of free speech in maintaining our free and open societies.

Or do we?

Alarmingly, it seems like many people in what we call democratic nations are losing that understanding. And they seem willing to cede their freedom of speech to governments, organizations, and Big Tech companies who, supposedly, need to control the flow of information to keep everyone “safe.”

The locus for the disturbing shift away from free speech is the 21st-century’s global public square: the Internet. And the proclaimed reasons for allowing those in power to diminish our free speech on the Internet are: “disinformation” and “hate speech.”

In this article, I will review the three-step process by which anti-disinformation laws are introduced. Then, I will review some of the laws being rolled out in multiple countries almost simultaneously, and what such laws entail in terms of vastly increasing the potential for censorship of the global flow of information.

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INSTAGRAM CENSORED IMAGE OF GAZA HOSPITAL BOMBING, CLAIMS IT’S TOO SEXUAL

INSTAGRAM AND FACEBOOK users attempting to share scenes of devastation from a crowded hospital in Gaza City claim their posts are being suppressed, despite previous company policies protecting the publication of violent, newsworthy scenes of civilian death.

Late Tuesday, amid a 10-day bombing campaign by Israel, the Gaza Strip’s al-Ahli Hospital was rocked by an explosion that left hundreds of civilians killed and wounded. Footage of the flaming exterior of the hospital, as well as dead and wounded civilians, including children, quickly emerged on social media in the aftermath of the attack.

While the Palestinian Ministry of Health in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip blamed the explosion on an Israeli airstrike, the Israeli military later said the blast was caused by an errant rocket misfired by militants from the Gaza-based group Islamic Jihad.

While widespread electrical outages and Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s telecommunications infrastructure have made getting documentation out of the besieged territory difficult, some purported imagery of the hospital attack making its way to the internet appears to be activating the censorship tripwires of Meta, the social media giant that owns Instagram and Facebook.

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Academic Complicity in the Censorship Industry: The Case of Kate Starbird

The U.S. Congress has recently heard a report from the House Judiciary Committee which presents disturbing allegations about U.S. Government involvement in surveillance and censorship focused on citizens’ social media activities. The report raises concerns about breaches of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment guaranteeing freedom of speech. Something highlighted by the report is the role played by University of Washington academic, Dr Kate Starbird.

The attention this has drawn to an individual academic has been condemned in the press as politically-driven and unwarranted harassment. In the Washington Post, Naomi Nix and Joseph Menn (2023) refer to a ‘deluge of bad information about disinformation researchers’ work’ that ‘has led to a torrent of digital harassment’. That concern has been shared by a number of academics who see it also as an indirect assault on academic freedom.

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The EU Could Push its Private Message Ban as Early as Next Week

The EU is getting ever closer to pushing through the legislation known among critics as “chat control” – officially, Child Sexual Abuse Regulation, CSAR – and is hoping to reach a deal on this within the bloc as early as next week.

One of those who have been consistently opposed to the controversial upcoming rules, a German member of European Parliament (MEP) and lawyer Patrick Breyer, has reacted by warning once again that regardless of some minor changes if passed, the bill would effectively spell the end of proper encryption and private messaging in the EU.

Instead, the implication is, that CSAR would usher in the era of indiscriminate mass surveillance in this part of the digital space.

Warning that a recent “minor concession” the EU member-states have managed to agree on was a bid to finally come up with a majority and push the plans over the top, Breyer, referring to the proposal as “chat control 2.0,” calls it an “unprecedented” (at least for the EU) example of mass surveillance.

The summary of the regulation is that online services that provide messaging and chat would, going forward, have to implement automatic scanning of all private text and images – looking for potential abusive content, and then let the EU know about it.

There is no shortage of controversy and misgivings here, with two clearly standing out: once in place, what can this infrastructure be used for next (if politicians decide) – and the other, how are online platforms even supposed to make it work accurately and fairly, technically speaking?

Now, we are hearing that the EU Council is looking to “soften the blow,” at least rhetorically, but saying that the scanning would at first only apply to “previously classified CSAM (child sexual abuse material)” – but then later still expand it to everything.

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Canada Plots to Increase Online Regulation, Target Search and Social Media Algorithms

Canada is taking steps towards potentially intrusive regulation of artificial intelligence as it pertains to its application in search and social media services. The government’s intentions have been revealed, which includes AI application way beyond the realm of generative AI similar to OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Industry giants such as Google and Facebook, who utilize AI for search results, translation provisions, and customer taste recognition respectively, are among the contenders lined up in the regulatory intent with the pro-censorship government intent on having a say on how these algorithms work.

The information comes by way of Minister François-Philippe Champagne of Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED) in a letter submitted to the Industry committee analyzing Bill C-27—the privacy reform and AI regulation bill. Precise amendments remain shielded from scrutiny, however, as the governmental body keeps the proposed changes under wraps.

We obtained a copy of the original bill for you here.

The existing framework in Bill C-27 leaves the identification of AI mechanisms that can be classified into the “high-impact” category to future regulatory proceedings.

Bill C-27, by treating search and social media results as “high-impact” systems, is likely to raise eyebrows as the government’s push towards regulating technology has so far been assertive of greater control over content and therefore speech.

Non-compliance, under this proposal, may invite penalties proportional to 3% of gross global revenues.

The legislation veers into controversial territory by infusing the regulation of content moderation and discoverability prioritization into the matrix, in unexpected ways. It attempts to parallel these issues to bias accusation during recruitment or when used by law enforcement, invoking substantial surprise. Consequently, Canada’s rules, although they claim to align more closely with the EU, seem to set the country apart, leaning more towards censorship and less towards free speech.

The news comes on the back of Canada’s more recent online regulations that have raised alarm.

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China Censors Athlete Hug Photo for Inadvertently Showing Tiananmen Anniversary Date

A photo of two women track and field athletes embracing after a particularly contentious Asian Games event prompted widespread online censorship in China this week as a result of their assigned numbers – six and four, which together form the date of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, June 4.

Runners Lin Yuwei, the gold medalist in the event, and Wu Yanni, who was disqualified from a silver medal over a false start, hugged each other in their national regalia and draped in the Chinese flag, creating an image of apparent unity and solidarity on China’s “National Day,” the anniversary of mass murderer Mao Zedong imposing communism on the country. The state television network CCTV shared the image in its coverage of the race on Weibo, China’s largest legal social media outlet.

By Tuesday, the photo had disappeared from state media, prompting widespread confusion among Chinese social media users over why it was censored, as China has for decades censored any mention of the Tiananmen massacre and many Chinese citizens do not know it happened.

The Chinese Communist Party never explains its censorship to the public, but regularly deletes content from social media that in any way could be interpreted as a reference to the 1989 killings, including overt references such as “Tiananmen Square” and the date of the beginning of the massacre – June 4, 1989 – but also a vast array of potentially related items such as candle emojis (used in online candlelight vigils for the dead); the numbers six, four, and 1989; and even the word “today” if typed into a Chinese government social media search engine on the anniversary. The word “tank,” potentially a reference to an iconic photo of a protester staring down a Chinese military tank holding only what appears to be a grocery bag, also faces censorship online in China, particularly as the anniversary of the event approaches.

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Fifth Circuit Expands Injunction Against Government Online Censorship To Include CISA

A ruling on Tuesday by the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit marks a leap for the safeguarding of free speech within the social media arena. This decision sees the addition of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to a preliminary injunction in the ongoing legal contest of Missouri v. Biden.

Initially, a host of prominent agencies, including the White House, US Surgeon General’s office, CDC, and the FBI were barred from manipulating social media platforms in a manner that obstructs constitutional freedoms of speech.

The fight against censorship is far from novel, with the tale of Drs. Jayanta Bhattacharya, Martin Kulldorff, and Aaron Kheriaty, and Ms. Jill Hines circulating in the public domain for several years. Their experiences of being censored and throttled on social media platforms form an integral part of a broader governmental agenda to curb free speech for independent thinkers and intellectuals.

This latest ruling by the Fifth Circuit punctuates a series of preceding actions, including its September 8 ruling upholding an earlier order by District Judge Terry Doughty. Doughty’s order on Independence Day caused shockwaves by banning government officials from using their offices to manipulate social media companies into surrendering the First Amendment rights of citizens.

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Defenders of the Florida and Texas Social Media Laws Contradict Themselves

Social media companies argue that their content moderation decisions are a form of editorial discretion protected by the First Amendment. Conservative critics of those companies reject that argument, even as they complain that the platforms’ decisions reflect a progressive agenda.

That contradiction is at the heart of two cases that the Supreme Court recently agreed to hear, which involve constitutional challenges to state laws that aim to correct the bias that Republicans perceive. Although supporters of those laws claim they are defending freedom of speech, that argument hinges on a dangerous conflation of state and private action.

The 2021 Florida law at issue in Moody v. NetChoice requires social media platforms to host speech by any “candidate for office,” even when it violates their content rules. The law also says platforms may not limit the visibility of material “by or about” a political candidate and may not “censor, deplatform, or shadow ban a journalistic enterprise based on the content of its publication or broadcast.”

The law does not cover relatively small, right-leaning platforms such as Gab, Parler, Rumble, and Truth Social. It applies only to the largest platforms, such as Twitter (now X), Facebook, and YouTube, which Republicans have long accused of discriminating against conservative speech.

Florida politicians made it clear that they were trying to address that perceived imbalance. The bill’s legislative findings, which complain that Facebook et al. have “unfairly censored, shadow banned, deplatformed, and applied post-prioritization algorithms,” assert that the state has a “substantial interest in protecting its residents from inconsistent and unfair actions” by those platforms.

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