Updated: Surayud denies involvement in discussions and planning for the 2006 coup
Political Prisoners in Thailand: March 23, 2009
http://thaipoliticalprisoners.wordpress.com/2009/03/23/new-surayud-denies-involvement-in-2006-coup/
Further to our earlier post based on a Bangkok Post story regarding Thaksin Shinawatra’s comments on privy councilors and judges and their role in the 2006 coup, The Nation (24 March 2009: “Surayud denies role in 2006 coup”) has more on Surayud Chulanont’s denials of involvement in the coup. Surayud is quoted as saying “”We can prove what truly happened.” It would indeed be useful to see real evidence.
The Nation also reports former Internal Security Operations Command deputy chief Panlop Pinmanee as insisting that a “General S” had held a meeting “during which the participants agreed to oust Thaksin because he was not loyal to the monarchy.”
Meanwhile, “Thepthai Senpong, personal spokesman to Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, responded to Thaksin’s allegations saying the former PM had proved that he was averse to the justice system by smearing judges and privy councillors.” His Democrat Party colleague “Deputy Prime Minister Suthep Thaugsuban said Thaksin had made allegations against privy councillors and top judges with the intention of instigating unrest”
The story in The Nation also says that Thaksin “accused three judges of being behind his ouster, saying Supreme Administrative Court president Ackaratorn Chularat, Supreme Court president Chanchai Likhitjittha, Charan [Jaran Pakdithanakuland] and Pramote Nakornthap had spread rumours that he was behind the publication of [Paul Handley's] ‘The King Never Smiles’.”
In the same edition, The Nation (24 March 2009: “EDITORIAL: Ready to tear the country apart”) contradicts some of its own report above, claiming that there have been denials by Thaksin’s alleged sources (see Bangkok Pundit on this here).
And, not to be left on the sidelines, Thaksin critic Sopon Onkgara chimes in with an op-ed (24 March 2009: “Phoney phone-ins aim to hurt people in high places”). Sopon argues that the veracity or otherwise of Thaksin’s statements mean nothing for: “The virulent effects of his accusations, whether true or false, undoubtedly affect many people in high places.”
Columnists at The Nation have often dared Thaksin to name names, and now that he does they seem shocked and distraught, with Sopon claiming that: “The state of his [Thaksin's] mind and his mental stability is questionable. A lot of people already think he has gone mad and nothing can cure him.” Sopon’s op-eds are increasingly little more than personalized attacks but the give a flavour of the fear and hatred that remains following the events of the past few years.
Sopon adds: “Who knows, the next names he utters could be shocking and beyond our wildest imaginations. If those cheering him in the Chiang Mai stadium believe in his accusations, it means that the respected names he mentioned will be hated by thousands of people in the land. Therefore, the malice in Thaksin’s words cannot be denied.”
But perhaps Thaksin has already uttered that which is “shocking and beyond our wildest imaginations” for The Nation also reports (23 March 2009: “Ever the victim, Thaksin tries to explain his downfall”) that, “For the first time, he even made an insinuation by mentioning the VIP-protection code ‘901′, used by security details to refer to His Majesty.”
It is clear that lesé majesté and the political role of the monarchy remains at the centre of current debates in Thailand and that the political use of lesé majesté is unlikely to be diminished in such a highly charged atmosphere.
JonDo – The Privacy Generator
25-03-09
JonDo – The Privacy Generator
OpenPR: March 17, 2009
http://www.openpr.com/news/72275/Anonymization-software-JonDo-released-in-a-new-version.html
Version 00.11.001 of the open-source anonymization software JonDo focuses on a simpler usability. Furthermore, and besides other security relevant enhancements, the German Privacy Foundation e.V. has been included as independent certification authority.
The program help of JonDo has been completely rewritten: besides the manual, it now contains also a lot of background information about anonymity on the internet. The enhanced install routines considerably simplify the first steps with the program under Windows, Linux and Mac OS X.
Moreover, the certificate management has been greatly enhanced: a new technology enables X.509 certification by several organizations in parallel. Thereby the identity of Mix operators may be checked by several independent organizations instead of only by one. Thereby, the German Privacy Foundation e.V. acts as independent certification authority besides the JonDos GmbH and the TU Dresden.
JonDo is an open-source tool for anonymizing internet access over cascades of so-called Mix-Servers. The Mixes are operated by mutually independent operators. JonDo users are thereby even protected from an observation of their internet steps by individual operators. The development of the software is done by the JonDos GmbH from the Regensburg business incubator “IT-Speicher” and by researchers from the TU Dresden and the University of Regensburg.
Further information:
- list of changes:
www.jondos.de/en/download/changelog
- new technology for multiple certification:
www.jondos.de/downloads/DA_PKIs_verteiltes_Vertrauensmode…
- certification policy of the German Privacy Foundation e.V.:
server.privacyfoundation.de/jondonym-certification.html
- download:
- JonDo logo:
www.jondos.de/files/image/JonDo.png
- Technical University of Dresden:
www.inf.tu-dresden.de/portal.php?node_id=442&group=16&ln=en
- University of Regensburg:
- IT-Speicher:
Portrait of the company:
JonDos supplies her customers with open source tools to assert their right for informational self-determination. Moreover, the company would like to demonstrate the marketability of high-quality privacy tools.
JonDos as enterprise acts as billing service and mediator between users of the anonymisation service JonDonym, the “JonDonauts”, and the independent operators of the service, the Mix Operators. The basis of our business model is selling the access to the service to the JonDonauts, while paying the Mix Operators for relaying their traffic over so-called Mix Cascades.
JonDos develops and provides free open source software for running and using the JonDonym service in cooperation with researchers of the german universities TU Dresden and University of Regensburg.
Press contact:
JonDos GmbH
Phone: +49.941.604889 62
eMail: mailto:press@jondos.de
PGP/GPG: www.jondos.de/downloads/JonDos_GmbH.asc
Web: www.jondos.de
THAILAND: New Film Ratings System Just a Rerun?
Lynette Lee Corporal
Asia Media Forum: March 23, 2009
http://www.theasiamediaforum.org/node/1045
In what perhaps is a taste of things to come, the gory Thai film ‘Chuead Khon Chim’ (loosely translated as ‘Carve Before Tasting’) has barely escaped being totally banned from public screening, thanks to the country’s new film ratings system.
Currently showing in theatres here, the film — with the English title ‘Meat Grinder’ — is about a mentally disturbed noodle shop owner who uses chopped-up human meat in her dishes. According to news reports, Thai censors thought that the film’s original title, translated into ‘Human Meat Noodles’, was too graphic.
Although the Film and Video Act of 2007 will officially take effect in May, films like ‘Meat Grinder’, which has a PG-13 rating in spite of its grisly plotline, are probably giving an early taste of what the Thai movie industry will be like once the new ratings system has been fully implemented.
The ratings system has seven classifications: General Audiences — no sex, abusive language or violence; ‘Promote’ — films that should be promoted on the basis of cultural or artistic merit; 13 — no violence, brutality, inhumanity, bad language or indecent gestures; 15 — some violence, brutality, inhumanity, bad language or indecent gestures will be allowed; 18 — no exposed genitalia, crime or drugs; 20 — sex scenes are allowed but no exposed genitalia; ‘ban’ — films that offend the monarchy, threaten national security, hamper national unity, insult faiths, disrespect honourable figures, challenge morals or contain explicit sex scenes.
” ‘Meat Grinder’ was initially banned by Thai censors because they thought the movie would put the country in a bad light, given the presence and popularity of noodle shops here. Because of the ratings system, this movie is now showing in Thailand,” popular film director, producer and screenwriter Prachya Pinkaew told AMF.
A screenwriter and producer, Prachya is known for his box-office hit movies such as ‘Ong-Bak: Muay Thai Warrior’, ‘Tom -Yum-Goong’, and ‘Chocolate’.
The Thai Film Directors Association president has also lobbied against the restrictive film censorship system under the Film Act of 1930, and was one of the directors included in the team that drafted the new regulations.
Prachya said he is satisfied with the new system and is, in fact, excited about it.
“I’ve been waiting for this for many years. I don’t think this is going to be a failure in the Thai setting. The same set-up has existed in other countries in the region and Thailand is almost the last country that is going to use a ratings system. No matter what, movies will be shown in theatres anyway,” said Prachya.
He added that his colleagues at the Thai Directors Association say the ratings system “will allow them to create their work however they want”.
Some quarters, however, question the “vagueness” of some category descriptions. The popular movie site www.thaifilmjournal.blogspot.com has expressed doubts about the “no crime” criterion under the ’18′ classification.
“I am uncertain about the wording of the ’18′ classification. No ‘crime’? Really? None at all? That means that just about every movie that comes out can only be seen by viewers over 20, because just about every movie has some form of crime happening,” wrote the Bangkok-based journalist who goes by the pen name ‘Wise Kwai’.
The site also asks whether authorities will continue to implement the so-called ‘pixellation censorship’, where scenes like smoking and drinking are pixelised in order to discourage the public from taking up such habits.
“What about film festivals? Do all films shown by all the film festivals have to be submitted to the ratings board?” asked Wise Kwai in a Feb. 18 entry.
Even stronger is criticism about the ‘banned’ category, which naysayers find too sweeping and effectively defeats the purpose of a ratings system.
“The ‘banned’ classification is open to bureaucratic abuse. All in this classification are highly subject to individual interpretation and could easily be used to punish free thinkers as much as the current book and Internet censorship and lese majeste prosecutions,” said freedom of expression activist CJ Hinke.
Hinke believes that the new ratings system still reflects the “growing trend to unbridled censorship throughout Thai society” and is again one of the ways of “creating a new generation of Thais who are unable to form their own opinions”.
“The new classifications will serve to stifle Thai directors and producers who will be more concerned with a favourable ratings in order to sell movies rather than producing high quality, creative films,” said Hinke, a Thailand-based translator and book publisher who is also the coordinator of the Freedom Against Censorship Thailand (FACT), an anti-Internet censorship group formed in 2006.
This, added Hinke, could result in a decrease in the number of Thai films that can compete in international film festivals.
Even when the new Films Act was being deliberated upon in 2008, director Apichatpong Weerasethakul wrote in an article for the Thai Film Foundation said that the new law “is not a step forward”.
“The insistence of (this agency) to keep the right to ban movies means they do not believe in the age-classification system. They also do not believe in allowing the people to learn from experience, because they are afraid youngsters will be addicted to pornography…,” said Apichatpong, who withdrew his 2007 film ‘Syndromes and a Century’ from commercial release in Thailand when censors demanded that four pivotal scenes be cut from it.
Said Hinke: “Film is one of the creative avenues for social change in society and deserves government support, not censorship.”
In defending the films ratings board’s inclusion of the ‘banned’ category, culture minister Teera Slukpetch was quoted by news reports in February as saying that a filmmaker can always lodge appeals regarding the body’s decisions.
“If the filmmaker believes a verdict is not fair, he can appeal to the National Film Board, chaired by the Prime Minister himself, or he can go all the way to put the case before the court,” he said.
Prachya agreed that the ‘banned’ classification can create problems. He said that while the part about offending the monarchy is clear, it remains unclear how the board will interpret what is offensive or harmful to national security and religion.
He predicts that the implementation of the new ratings system could be “hectic”, which could result in doubts and questions coming up repeatedly. “But in the future, this system should go well,” Prachya said on a hopeful note.
Set Viktor Bout free!-NY Times
25-03-09
[FACT comments: Regardless, Bout has done nothing illegal in Thailand. Democracy is not about might and right, it’s about justice. It is just to free Viktor Bout no matter the power-plays by his far-bigger competitor arms merchants, the USA and Russia.]
Merchant of Death’ or Simple Tango Lover?
Robert Mackey, The Lede
The New York Times: March 19, 2009
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/19/merchant-of-death-or-misunderstood-tango-lover/?hp
At an extradition hearing in Thailand on Tuesday, the wife of Viktor Bout — a Russian national who U.S. federal prosecutors say conspired to sell weapons to rebels in Colombia — told the court that her husband “does honest business,” and had only traveled to South America “for tango lessons.”
Alla Bout, who identified herself as a fashion designer, also claimed that Mr. Bout was arrested last year, after an elaborate American-led sting operation in Bangkok, only because he had become “a pawn in the chess game” between the United States and Russia. Two months after his arrest, Mr. Bout was indicted on four terrorism-related charges by U.S. prosecutors who said that they want to try him “for, among other things, conspiring to sell millions of dollars worth of weapons to the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (the ‘FARC’) — a designated foreign terrorist organization based in Colombia — to be used to kill Americans in Colombia.”
Mrs. Bout made her remarks to a Thai judge who has voiced his reluctance to decide whether or not Mr. Bout (pronounced BOOT) should be sent to the United States to stand trial or should be released, which would apparently please Russia’s foreign ministry much more. Last week a Bangkok newspaper, The Nation, reported that the judge, Jitakorn Patanasiri, “half-jokingly said he would be denied a visa to either the United States or Russia following the verdict.” The Nation said the judge told a Thai prosecutor: “I am in a tough position. Bilateral ties with Russia and the United States could be at stake.”
The judge also announced that he would appeal to Thailand’s foreign ministry to make a statement to the court. After that statement did not appear in time for Tuesday’s hearing, the judge announced a six-week delay in the proceedings.
It is no wonder the judge feels pressure from the two countries. As The Associated Press reported last week:
Inside the cramped, humid courthouse in Bangkok, the political chess game is on full display. An American Embassy staffer routinely slips notes and whispers advice to the prosecutor, while two Russian Embassy diplomats sit behind Bout, chatting with his wife and mother. [...]
Russia, for its part, made great efforts to get Bout out of Thailand. Experts say Bout has been useful for Russia’s intelligence apparatus, and Russia does not want him going on trial in the United States.
Both sides have accused the other of trying to bribe Thai officials — a common practice in a country where the judiciary is notoriously corrupt — to win Bout’s release. Russia, which sold cheap oil to Thailand last year and has talked of selling it fighter jets, summoned the Thai ambassador in Moscow and the country’s foreign ministry demanded the case be investigated “objectively and impartially.”
Mrs. Bout’s defense of her husband echoes his own repeated claims of innocence. In 2003, Mr. Bout told The New York Times that he had built a perfectly legitimate air-freight business, starting with three Antonov cargo planes purchased in 1992 as the Soviet Union fell apart. At the time, he spoke of himself as a peaceful man and said that his fondest wish was “to take one of my helicopters to the Russian Arctic north and make wildlife films for National Geographic and the Discovery channel.”
In response to the charge — made by the U.S. government and journalists like Douglas Farah, who wrote a book about Mr. Bout’s career called “Merchant of Death” — that his fleet of planes carried weapons to war zones across the world, Mr. Bout said simply: “It’s not my business to know what’s on board.” Even so, in the same interview with The Times, he also took issue with human rights activists who claimed that he flew illegal weapons to rebel groups in Africa:
“Illegal weapons?” he said. “What does that mean? If rebels control an airport and a city, and they give you clearance to land, what’s illegal about that?” After all, he said, rebels become governments, which have a right to defend themselves.
More recently, Mr. Bout appeared on Russian television in 2006 to laugh off the idea that the character of an international arms dealer named Yuri Orlov, played by Nicolas Cage in the film “Lord of War,” could possibly have been based on his own life and work. In an English-language interview (Mr. Bout studied at the Soviet Military Institute for Foreign Languages and speaks six languages), Mr. Bout told the satellite channel Russia Today: “I feel very sorry for Nicolas Cage who had to play this Orlov … it’s a bad movie.”
Earlier this week, Mr. Bout appeared on Britain’s Channel 4 News to claim that the charges against him were part of an attempt to “make out of a small fish a huge whale.” In the interview, Mr Bout also denied the most damning charge against him, that he had supplied weapons to Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. (The complete video of this fascinating, if occasionally obscenity-laced interview is available on Channel 4’s World News blog, embedded near the end of a blog post by Nick Paton Walsh, who conducted four separate interviews with Mr. Bout at the prison.)
As Mr. Paton Walsh wrote this week in an article for the British newspaper The Observer, Mr. Bout told him at first: “I never supplied arms as such at all and especially never had any deal with Al Qaeda.” When Mr. Paton Walsh later asked him if it was possible that his planes had carried weapons without his knowledge, he said: “I couldn’t exclude that.” Then Mr. Bout finally admitted that his planes did ship arms to Afghanistan in 1996 — but, he insisted, he had only armed the Afghan government fighting the Taliban, not the rebels or Al Qaeda.
Despite being behind bars, and having now waited more than a year for his case to be resolved, Mr. Bout is generally even-tempered in the Channel 4 video. He only loses is temper at one point — not at being pressed to defend his reputation, but at being interrupted by his mother, Raisa, whose visits to the prison seem to be getting on his nerves almost as badly as the indignity of having to share a cell built for 20 with 70 prisoners. The only time Mr. Bout raises his voice in the interview with Channel 4 News is to say to his mother in exasperation: “Thanks Mom — we’re trying to talk! Why do you come here every five minutes?”
Before his arrest, Mr. Bout’s career was discussed on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and by Riz Khan on Al Jazeera English.
Mr. Khan’s program includes interviews with one of Mr. Bout’s friends, a mysterious Syrian-American C.P.A. named Richard Ammar Chichakli. Mr. Chichakli told the Dallas Morning News in 2006 that he was “in exile” in Russia, having fled from his home in Richardson, Texas, after federal authorities raided his accounting firm there in connection with the investigation into Mr. Bout’s business activities.
Mr. Chichakli, who helped to arrange The New York Times interview with Mr. Bout in 2003, has the kind of biography it would be difficult to invent for a spy novel. He confirmed to The Times in 2003 that he is the nephew of a former president of Syria and was ‘”trained in aviation and intelligence,” when he served in the U.S. Army. According to a very elaborate personal Web site he maintains, Mr. Chichakli says that he was not involved in any criminal enterprises with Mr Bout and that “Richard Chichakli is an internet mask to a mysterious character painted by those who never knew him.”
[FACT comments: Why has this story gone completely unreported in Thailand?]
Chinese Journalist Stranded in Thailand
Radio Free Asia: March 16, 2009
http://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/Stranded-03162009115613.html
A Chinese journalist says time is running out for U.N. refugee officials to hear his asylum case.
A Chinese dissident journalist who fled to Thailand after his writings angered Beijing has appealed to the U.N. refugee agency not to leave him stranded, citing threats and harassment aimed at his application for political asylum.
Zeng Jieming, who is currently applying for political asylum with the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Bangkok, is a former journalist for state-run Guilin Television. He fled to Thailand on Oct. 31, 2008.
Zeng said he was targeted by the Chinese authorities for publishing articles in overseas-based magazines and Web sites, including Dacankao Daily News, Beijing Spring, and Fire of Liberty.
“After I lodged my application, they gave me an interview slip for March 13, 2009,” said Zeng, who said he was in Thailand without any official status.
He said he was trying to process his asylum application under the stamp of the Bangkok Refugee Center, which is run under contract with the UNHCR.
They are making me wait indefinitely—a few months, a year.”
Zeng Jieming
When he showed up at the UNHCR office in Thailand on the day, however, staff refused to see him.
“The reason they gave me was that they had called me and my wife on Dec. 18 but that neither of us had answered the phone,” he said.
Zeng called for international attention to his case before his permit to stay in Thailand expires April 30.
His appeal comes just days after the wife and children of a top civil rights lawyer under close surveillance by the Chinese authorities arrived in the United States after walking across the border to Thailand.
Gao Zhisheng’s wife Geng He, their 15-year-old daughter, and five-year-old son suffered “great hardship” in China from living under virtual house arrest in their Beijing home, Geng said, and arrived in the U.S. March 11.
Intimidation alleged
Meanwhile, staff at the UNHCR office, have refused to reschedule Zeng’s appointment, asking instead that he write a letter explaining why he didn’t answer the telephone on Dec. 18.
“They are making me wait indefinitely—a few months, a year,” he said.
Zeng said unidentified men had paid him visits beginning Jan. 7 and tried to intimidate him.
“This made me think that perhaps the Chinese government was putting pressure on the UNHCR in Thailand, and causing problems for my asylum application.”
“On Jan. 7 I got a threatening phone call. The caller said I would have to suffer the consequences if I wrote articles criticizing China,” Zeng said.
“The second incident happened one evening when I went out for a walk. I had just got to a bridge at the mouth of the alleyway where I was living, and two small vans drove recklessly towards me, brushing past me very close. Why didn’t they use headlights? It was already dark,” he said.
“The third incident was in the last few days. Somebody started banging on my door in the middle of the night. I asked who it was, but there was no reply.”
Zeng’s responsibility
An interpreter at the UNHCR office in Bangkok said the responsibility lay with Zeng.
“A lot of time had elapsed. He should have come to enquire why we hadn’t called him in so long,” the interpreter said.
The interpreter, surnamed Liu, said he doubted the Chinese government would get involved in Zeng’s case.
“In my experience, the Chinese Communist Party hasn’t any influence here. Unless it has bribed someone,” Liu said.
“There are two people in charge of China-related cases here. One is me. I wouldn’t take bribes from the Chinese government. The other is 76 years old. How could such a person do that? He doesn’t have any influence, so how could the Chinese Communist Party influence the way we administer things here?”
Beijing Spring editor in chief Hu Ping said a number of Chinese dissidents had escaped to Thailand recently and applied for political asylum.
“The UNHCR should hire some specialists to do this kind of work,” Hu said.
“These people should keep contacts with overseas rights groups, so that when there’s something they don’t understand, they can ask us. That would make their work go much more smoothly.”
Original reporting in Mandarin by Tang Qiwei. Mandarin service director: Jennifer Chou. Translated and written for the Web in English by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Sarah Jackson-Han.
Siam in World War I
25-03-09
[FACT comments: Here is yet another part of history apparently censored. Our colonised neighbours were expected to send conscript (in fact if not in law) soldiers to fight in their Great War, WWI, aka “The War to End All Wars”. But even Thailand played a part in the cannon fodder.]
Siam in World War I
One area on which there has been the increasing focus of scholarship since the 1970s is that of the contribution of Siam (renamed Thailand in 1939) to the First World War. Siam declared war on Germany in July 1917 and sent 1,284 soldiers to France. The last surviving soldier, Yod Sungrungruang, was presented with the Legion of Honour by the French Ambassador to Thailand in February 1999. He gained much publicity in the following year after an interview by CNN television was broadcast. Surprisingly there is no memorial in Christ Church, Bangkok, to the members of the British Community who fought in the war – this is probably the only Anglican Church in Southeast Asia without a plaque of some kind.
FACT petitions ICANN, not UCANT
25-03-09
Formal submission to ICANN from Freedom Against Censorship Thailand (FACT)
Our observation has been that, throughout recorded history, every attempt at censorship of the individual, is doomed to failure. Worse, censorship makes socially-questionable content far more interesting. “Banned in Boston” (or Bangkok) has always been a badge of honour for free thinkers. In short, banning content assures it a wider audience.
Trying to keep such content “secret” as in Thailand raises many disturbing questions about democracy, transparency, accountability in the role of responsible government. It is far too easy to suppress ideas, opinions, discussion and information with a censorship regime. And there has never been a censor class which knew where to stop.
We must not permit private organisations to take control over content. It is far too easy for private groups to have hidden moral, religious, gender, political agendas. The UK’s Internet Watch Foundation is a good example of a private group being given carte blanche to impose its opinions on the public in total secrecy. We think the goals are not really about “protecting the children” but generating public and private funds for administration while making adults feel good about their efforts.
Not that governments do much better. But at least in case of governments or international governing bodies, there can be the distant possibility of transparency, accountability and oversight. Such oversight should bear many layers of public protection and include academic, expert and public scrutiny.
We are tempted to say secrecy might be the largest part of the problem. Certainly, if one is to examine the recent Internet censorship programmes of the traditionally-liberal Scandinavian countries, it is easy to see how such efforts go off the tracks almost on inception. Who watches the watchers?
The real effort must be put into education for our young people in every country. Why have we given up parental supervision and family discussion to the state? This is what “family values” should mean not some holier-than-thou attitude that all our children can see right through.
The aspect of Internet pornography that disturbs us most is that it may be affecting gender relationships in a profound manner. Many of us learned about sex from parents and friends and in the back seat of a car; now adolescents and younger may think the fantasy life on the Internet is the way real people relate to each other.
Interpol has a very effective database of hundreds of thousands of child abuse images. A spider bot has been created that trawls the Web efficiently every day. When it finds such images, they are immediately deleted. Low cost, minimal administration and upkeep, no counterproductive arrests and prisoners, in short, no problems for wider society. And yet the images are removed from the ‘net, frustrating their posters. Not perfect, but far more effective than secret censorship.
While we have raised this subject, we must add a word about sexual age of consent laws which vary for every country. However, up until around 1980, most age of consent statutes defined age 12 as legal. We would daresay that the age of sexual experience everywhere in the world is often around this age.
This makes considering those under 18 sexually as children completely unrealistic. And it’s the teenagers themselves who will out you on this one. Thailand has interesting age of consent parameters: consensual sex is legal at age 15 but sex for money before 18 is illegal (as is prostitution!).
Lastly, we think any attempt to regulate Internet pornography using specific port options is a failed effort. Necessity will ensure that technical circumvention methods are discovered even before you can implement such a system.
Although no precise statistics seem available, there appear to be between five and seven billion cached Web pages and two billion active pages, between one and two hundred million weblogs alone. Of these impressive numbers (such a study should be done if it hasn’t already), there are thought to be at least ten million pornographic pages. Many of these are not-for-profit. We don’t think you can push that rock even marginally uphill.
So we must find ways to accommodate what is obviously a popular social trend for a large percentage of 1.5 billion Internet users. The best form of censorship is personal: Don’t like it, don’t look.
A free Internet is the the first cornerstone of democracy and certainly the best chance humans have ever had at real participatory democracy. Now we just need to find ways to make governments less afraid of their netizens and trust them to be responsible to their fellows.
We welcome the opportunity for further frank discussion and consultation with ICANN on this matter.
Thank you. We voices of reason will prevail.
Sincerely yours,
CJ Hinke
Freedom Against Censorship Thailand (FACT)
Save the children? ICANN opens debate on CyberSafety charter
The group behind the campaign to take porn off of port 80 is now lobbying ICANN to create a new “Cybersafety Constituency” to assist in the formulation of domain name system policy.
Joel Hruska
Ars Technica: March 19, 2009
ICANN has been soliciting a lot of comments on its governance and future of late, including one petition to form a CyberSafety Constituency (CSC) within the Non-Commercial Stakeholders Group. (NCSG). The petition (PDF) as filed with ICANN is fairly innocuous and harmless-sounding, but the woman doing the filing—Professor Cheryl B. Preston, of Brigham Young University—has ties to other nonprofit organizations that should have been disclosed at some point within the application procedure.
Preston is general counsel for the nonprofit group CP80, which advocates for the creation of an Internet filtration system that would supposedly seek to keep porn and other adult content sandboxed away from the family-friendly tubes. The organization deserves credit for proposing a system that wouldn’t automatically cripple Internet access speeds nationwide, force deep packet inspection, or turn ISPs into de facto Internet police. That said, failing to qualify as prima facie terrible does not automatically qualify CP80′s legislative baby, the Internet Community Portals Act (ICPA) as a good idea.
Filtering at the port level
CP80′s solution to the seemingly intractable problem of Internet filtering is to segregate traffic by port. All “normal” traffic (have fun defining that) would continue to flow over Port 80 or whatever port it’s currently assigned to. Adult content, however, would be shifted away from Port 80 (hence the group’s name, “Clean Port 80″) and on to a new port—let’s call it Port XXX. Were CP80′s legislation to pass, the Internet would look something like this:
The system as illustrated would allow an ISP to sell access plans to both the filtered and unfiltered Internet, consumers could choose which they want, freedoms are preserved, and everyone goes home happy…at least in theory. CP80′s proposal might deserve a small bit of credit for avoiding some of the obvious issues that sank the concept of an adult-content .XXX domain name—except for the massive technical flaws and political challenges inherent to the ICPA’s design. If you’re already wondering about international governance and enforcement, don’t worry—CP80 has anticipated your concerns:
Got that?
The ICANN connection
Professor Preston describes the CSC as a group that would focus on Internet safety issues and cites her personal concern that “as Internet policies are developed at ICANN, the interests of families, children, consumers, victims of cybercrime, religions, and cultures become better represented…we need to carefully craft mechanisms involving law and industry that balance unfettered free speech and anonymity with some protections against exploitation of the most vulnerable, the ability to address and reduce criminal activity, and the right of Internet users to have choices in the nature of their access.”
As proposed, the CSC would also function as a global outreach initiative and would attempt to coordinate international responses to what the paper posits are common cross-border, cross- cultural concerns. Again, as written, all of this is very kosher: everyone wants to balance rights and responsibilities, protect the “most vulnerable” from exploitation, and give users freedom of choice. Preston’s letter advocating the creation of the CSC is consistent with her work for CP80, but some mention of the latter should occur in any discussion of the former, especially since CP80 makes it clear that they’ve considered the role ICANN might hypothetically play in the creation and international adoption of ICPA-equivalent legislation.
Preston’s omission is made potentially more serious by the fact that CP80 itself isn’t exactly a digital city on a hill. The organization is headed by Ralph Yarro III, CEO and largest shareholder of the SCO Group. He’s also the Founder/CEO of ThinkAtomic; if you visit that company’s website you’ll note (for now, at least) that the “Featured Company” of the day is CP80. ThinkAtomic is a prominent backer of CP80, and is listed as providing the group with legal, strategic, medical, and technology contributions. Run down the page, and you’ll note a common last name—Ralph, Justin, and Matthew Yarro are all listed as technology contributors.
If the BYU professor is serious about establishing the CSC, she’d do well to distance herself from either CP80 or the CSC petition before ICANN. There’s nothing within the CSC’s stated mission objective that would automatically create conflict with other actors interested in maintaining free speech and online anonymity. The best way to disperse accusations that she or the organization she currently represents has a hidden agenda is to cut ties with one or the other. Whether people agree or disagree with any particular position a hypothetical CSC might advocate, they won’t respect the body as legitimate if its viewed as nothing more than the puppet of a US group.
As for CP80′s ICPA proposal, it’s a bad idea; there’s no way feasibly address the political and technical challenges of the project. Even if all such barriers vanished, there would still remain the age-old question of censorship—who does the censoring and writes the standards? Pretending that these issues are irrelevant because we all agree that protecting children is important is whitewashing the topic at its finest. ICANN is accepting public comment on the issue.
Report finds Megan’s Law fails to reduce sex crimes, deter repeat offenders in N.J.
Susan K. Livio and Maryann Spoto
The Star-Ledger: February 7, 2009
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2009/02/study_finds_megans_law_fails_t_1.html
Megan’s Law, the landmark legislation that brought a new level of scrutiny to convicted sex offenders, has failed to deter sex crimes or reduce the number of victims since its passage 15 years ago, a new study concludes.
The federally funded study, conducted by the state Department of Corrections and Rutgers University and focused solely on New Jersey, suggests the growing cost of carrying out the law — estimated at $5.1 million statewide in 2007 — “may not be justifiable.”
“Despite wide community support for these laws, there is little evidence to date, including this study, to support a claim that Megan’s Law is effective in reducing either new first-time sex offenses or sexual re-offenses,” the researchers wrote in a 44-page report.
The study is the latest in a string of efforts to measure the effectiveness of Megan’s Law, which has been adopted in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Those earlier studies also found the measure does not act as a deterrent.
Defense lawyers and civil libertarians, who have long opposed the law and who have fought in court to overturn it, seized on Friday’s findings, calling on lawmakers to dismantle what has grown into an elaborate system for tracking sex offenders and notifying communities of their presence.
Megan’s Law supporters pushed right back, calling the measure a vital tool for parents to protect their children.
State Sen. Bill Baroni (R-Mercer), said the study “completely misses the objective” of the law.
“Any attempt to use this study to weaken or erode Megan’s Law will never succeed,” he said.
The law is named for Megan Kanka, who was 7 when a neighbor lured her into his Hamilton Township home on July 29, 1994, raped and killed her. Residents of the block were unaware the neighbor, Jesse Timmendequas, was a convicted sex offender. Timmendequas is now serving life in prison
In an atmosphere of statewide outrage, Megan’s Law was passed by year’s end. It requires convicted sex offenders to register with police after their release from prison and to notify authorities if they move. In cases where an offender is deemed most dangerous, the entire community is notified.
By 2002, the names of sex offenders also had been entered in a searchable on-line registry operated by the State Police.
Megan’s mother, Maureen Kanka, who pushed for the law’s passage in New Jersey and other states, said in a telephone interview Friday that Megan’s Law was working just as intended.
“The purpose of the law was to provide an awareness to parents,” said Kanka, who still lives in Hamilton. “It was put there for parents to know where the offenders are living. It’s doing what it was supposed to do. We never said it was going to stop them from reoffending or wandering to another town.”
She said she was confident the law would not be repealed, and she dismissed the cost of carrying out the measure as “pennies” when placed in context with the billions of dollars the state spends every year.
“The law provides a service to the public,” she said. “I am not concerned it will be taken away.”
The study, funded by the National Institute of Justice, examined the cases of 550 sex offenders who were broken into two groups — those released from prison before the passage of Megan’s Law and those released afterward.
The researchers found no statistically significant difference between the groups in whether the offenders committed new sex crimes.
Among those released before the passage of Megan’s Law, 10 percent were re-arrested on sex-crime charges. Among the other group, 7.6 percent were re-arrested for such crimes.
Similarly, the researchers found no significant difference in the number of victims of the two groups. Together, the offenders had 796 victims, ages 1 to 87. Most of the offenders had prior relationships with their new victims, and nearly half were family members. In just 16 percent of the cases, the offender was a stranger.
One complicating factor for the researchers is that sex crimes had started to decline even before the adoption of Megan’s Law, making it difficult to pinpoint cause and effect. In addition, sex offenses vary from county to county, rising and falling from year to year.
Even so, the researchers noted an “accelerated” decline in sex offenses in the years after the law’s passage.
“Although the initial decline cannot be attributed to Megan’s Law, the continued decline may, in fact, be related in some way to registration and notification activities,” the authors wrote. Elsewhere in the report, they noted that notification and increased surveillance of offenders “may have a general deterrent effect.”
Whatever the report’s caveats, those who oppose Megan’s Law said the findings reinforce their beliefs that the measure fails to improve public safety even as it violates the rights of people who have served their time in prison.
“We now find that for the past 15 years we have left the public with a false sense of security,” said Michael Buncher, who heads the Special Hearings Unit in the state Public Defender’s Office. “Unfortunately, it appears that Megan’s Law does not work. It’s time to rethink the solution.”
Deborah Jacobs, exeuctive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey, called such laws “political Band-Aids that don’t stay on.”
“It’s long overdue for the New Jersey Legislature to let go of what they consider the political value of ‘tough on sex offenders first’ and start focusing on helping the victims,” she said.
Staff writer Mark Mueller contributed to this report.
‘Net strangers-WSJ
25-03-09
[FACT comments: This is precisely why we defend a free Internet. All those folks putting up all that information for all the rest of us, for free, just because it’s something they want to share. That includes FACT, you know. If you’re afraid, it’s your problem. Give yourself away, share yourself. And accept others’ sharing. The world’s just not full of predators and cheats.]
The Kindness of Strangers
Bruce Schneier
The Wall Street Journal: March 12, 2009
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123567809587886053.html
When I was growing up, children were commonly taught: “don’t talk to strangers.” Strangers might be bad, we were told, so it’s prudent to steer clear of them.
And yet most people are honest, kind, and generous, especially when someone asks them for help. If a small child is in trouble, the smartest thing he can do is find a nice-looking stranger and talk to him.
These two pieces of advice may seem to contradict each other, but they don’t. The difference is that in the second instance, the child is choosing which stranger to talk to. Given that the overwhelming majority of people will help, the child is likely to get help if he chooses a random stranger. But if a stranger comes up to a child and talks to him or her, it’s not a random choice. It’s more likely, although still unlikely, that the stranger is up to no good.
As a species, we tend help each other, and a surprising amount of our security and safety comes from the kindness of strangers. During disasters: floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, bridge collapses. In times of personal tragedy. And even in normal times.
If you’re sitting in a caf้ working on your laptop and need to get up for a minute, ask the person sitting next to you to watch your stuff. He’s very unlikely to steal anything. Or, if you’re nervous about that, ask the three people sitting around you. Those three people don’t know each other, and will not only watch your stuff, but they’ll also watch each other to make sure no one steals anything.
Again, this works because you’re selecting the people. If three people walk up to you in the cafe and offer to watch your computer while you go to the bathroom, don’t take them up on that offer. Your odds of getting three honest people are much lower.
Some computer systems rely on the kindness of strangers, too. The Internet works because nodes benevolently forward packets to each other without any recompense from either the sender or receiver of those packets. Wikipedia works because strangers are willing to write for, and edit, an encyclopedia ญ with no recompense.
Collaborative spam filtering is another example. Basically, once someone notices a particular e-mail is spam, he marks it, and everyone else in the network is alerted that it’s spam. Marking the e-mail is a completely altruistic task; the person doing it gets no benefit from the action. But he receives benefit from everyone else doing it for other e-mails.
Tor is a system for anonymous Web browsing. The details are complicated, but basically, a network of Tor servers passes Web traffic among each other in such a way as to anonymize where it came from. Think of it as a giant shell game. As a Web surfer, I put my Web query inside a shell and send it to a random Tor server. That server knows who I am but not what I am doing. It passes that shell to another Tor server, which passes it to a third. That third server — which knows what I am doing but not who I am — processes the Web query. When the Web page comes back to that third server, the process reverses itself and I get my Web page. Assuming enough Web surfers are sending enough shells through the system, even someone eavesdropping on the entire network can’t figure out what I’m doing.
It’s a very clever system, and it protects a lot of people, including journalists, human rights activists, whistleblowers, and ordinary people living in repressive regimes around the world. But it only works because of the kindness of strangers. No one gets any benefit from being a Tor server; it uses up bandwidth to forward other people’s packets around. It’s more efficient to be a Tor client and use the forwarding capabilities of
others. But if there are no Tor servers, then there’s no Tor. Tor works because people are willing to set themselves up as servers, at no benefit to them.
Alibi clubs work along similar lines. You can find them on the Internet, and they’re loose collections of people willing to help each other out with alibis. Sign up, and you’re in. You can ask someone to pretend to be your doctor and call your boss. Or someone to pretend to be your boss and call your spouse. Or maybe someone to pretend to be your spouse and call your boss. Whatever you want, just ask and some anonymous stranger will come to your rescue. And because your accomplice is an anonymous stranger, it’s safer than asking a friend to participate in your ruse.
There are risks in these sorts of systems. Regularly, marketers and other people with agendas try to manipulate Wikipedia entries to suit their interests. Intelligence agencies can, and almost certainly have, set themselves up as Tor servers to better eavesdrop on traffic. And a do-gooder could join an alibi club just to expose other members. But for the most part, strangers are willing to help each other, and systems that harvest this kindness work very well on the Internet.
This essay originally appeared on the Wall Street Journal website.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123567809587886053.html
Tor:
http://www.torproject.org/torusers.html.en
Alibi clubs:
