Tag: police state

Google will soon ask Australian users to show ID to view some content

Governments all over the world have started pushing for ways to collect ID on social media users, often under the guise of providing a safe space for kids online.

In about a month, Australian users will be asked to provide age verification documents like a driver’s license, passport, or credit card to access age-restricted content on the Play Store and YouTube.

The move complies with the “Online Safety Declaration 2022,” which requires platforms to verify age before allowing users to see age-restricted content.

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Orwell Was Right

The ideal citizen of Orwell’s Oceania bubbled with rage a mile wide and a millimeter deep and could forget in an instant passions that may have consumed him or her for years. We just did this, with a pandemic that had the country steaming with indignation until it was quietly declared over the moment Putin rolled over Ukraine’s borders. We switched from “the pandemic of the unvaccinated” to “Putin’s price hikes” in a snap. National outrage moved a few lobes over with zero fuss, and now we hate new people; instead of “anti-vax Barbie,” we’re barring Russian and Belarussian kids from the Paralympics.

It appeared that there had even been demonstrations to thank Big Brother for raising the chocolate ration to twenty grams a week. And only yesterday, he reflected, it had been announced that the ration was to be reduced to twenty grams a week. Was it possible that they could swallow that, after only twenty-four hours? – 1984

A heartbeat ago politicians and pundits all over were denouncing Canadian trucker protests over reports of swastikas. “Conservative Party members can stand with people who wave swastikas,” said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. This was despite the fact that even Snopes concluded the photographed “swastikas” weren’t expressions of neo-Nazi sentiment, but protesters comparing Justin Trudeau’s government to Nazis.

Now the swastika in the Ukrainian context has been un-banned by Facebook, you can buy Azov Battalion mugs and t-shirts on Amazon, and we have headlines like “Are there really neo-Nazis fighting for Ukraine? Well, yes — but it’s a long story.” In an effort to argue that Putin is worse than Hitler, we have people like Atlantic Council senior fellow Anders Aslund saying “Hitler had more arguments for his attack on Poland,” and former U.S. Ambassador and Stanford professor Michael McFaul saying on live TV that Hitler “didn’t kill ethnic Germans, German-speaking people.”

This isn’t to say the Russian propaganda about “deNazifying” Ukraine should be taken seriously, but it’s amazing, isn’t it, how quickly our conventional wisdom changes its stance even toward something like neo-Nazism — an absolute one day, an Amazon impulse buy the next.

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Russia’s RT television network can no longer be legally broadcast on Canadian screens, CRTC rules

Canada’s federal broadcast regulator has ruled that RT, a Kremlin-controlled network, can no longer legally be carried on Canadian television screens.

“Freedom of speech and a range of perspectives are a necessary part of our democracy. However, it is a privilege and not a right to be broadcast in Canada,” the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission wrote in its decision on Wednesday.

The CRTC statement added that the regulator is “concerned with programming from a foreign country that seeks to undermine the sovereignty of another country, demean Canadians of a particular ethnic background and undermine democratic institutions within Canada.”

The decision came after an expedited hearing into whether the English-language channel and its French service, RT France, should be allowed on Canadian TV screens, following Russia’s recent invasion of Ukraine.

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UK Online Safety Bill, that will censor some “legal but harmful” content, presented to Parliament

The Online Safety Bill, the most far-reaching online censorship law to ever be proposed in the UK, has been presented to Parliament.

UK Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport (DCMS) Secretary of State Nadine Dorries, said her aim with the bill was to “make the internet, in the UK, the safest place in the world for children and vulnerable young people to go online.”

However, as with many bills that are positioned as a way to keep children safe, this Online Safety Bill contains sweeping speech restrictions that will affect all UK internet users.

The bill requires Big Tech companies to take action against “priority legal but harmful” content which will be decided by the government. The DCMS Secretary of State has the power to add more categories of priority legal but harmful content via secondary legislation in the future.

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Ukraine Approves Law Criminalizing Dissent, Punishes Pro-Russia Sentiment with Up to 15 Years in Prison

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has passed a law punishing pro-Russian dissent with up to 15 years in prison.

Zelensky signed a decree claiming that “cooperation with the aggressor state,” which includes pro-Russian statements, could result in up to 15 years in prison.

First Deputy Parliament Speaker Oleksandr Kornienko even wants over 20 “unpatriotic” members of Parliament who have been forced to flee the country jailed for having pro-Russian views.

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