FACTflash: UNLIKE…Censorship

Thailand blocks 96,000 Facebook pages-Bangkok Pundit

[FACT comments: MICT announced a further 10,000 Facebook page blocks on November 23.]

Is a lese majeste crackdown around the corner?

ICT asks FB to block thousands of sites

Bangkok Pundit: November 25, 2011

http://asiancorrespondent.com/70492/is-a-lese-majeste-crackdown-around-the-corner/

 

UPDATE: Sunai of Human Rights Watch tweets

Anudith said ICT Ministry told Facebook to block more accounts with LM contents: 26,000 URL in Aug-Sept and 60,000 URL in Oct-[Nov].

BP: Is requesting blocking of more sites better? Is this just blocking for Thailand (i.e if your IP address shows you are from Thailand, you can’t view the page)  like with YouTube?  Wonder how many requests that FB has complied with….

btw, slightly corrected Sunai’s tweet to change to Nov as there appears to be an error in his English language tweet whereas his Thai language tweet makes it clear it is Nov.

The Bangkok Post reported on Wednesday:

He said the anti-monarchy movement was still active with websites with lese majeste content prevalent on the internet.

Mr Sondhi said the PAD is gathering evidence to prove the government is insincere in protecting the monarchy.

He said the alliance will submit a petition asking the government to take action against anti-monarchy elements.

If the government fails to act within 14 days, the PAD will stage a mass rally against it, Mr Sondhi said.

Then, also on Wednesday, the Democrats held a press conference, led by Deputy Spokesperson Mallika Boonmeetrakool* and shadow ICT Minister and Democrat MP Sirichoke Sopha as reported by Krungthep Turakit which BP has summarized below:

Mallika spoke about lese majeste websites on social media websites and stated that as a former advisor to the ICT Minister that has been following this idea for 3 months and she is found that there are more than 4oo video clips on YouTube or other websites. She stated that under the Democrats that the ICT Minister coordinated with the Courts and the justice system and received good cooperation and the court acted immediately, but with the new government the ICT Minister is doing nothing including not to court. Even one of the people that we arrested, whose name is Nattawut D or whose online name is Mahabord Kahng Sai, who is one of the main posters of the anti-monarchy movement and is part of the red shirt movement and signed an agreement to cease his action, but then continued in the movement.

Mallika then showed photos of Nattawut D when he was arrested and photos of a person standing next to the ICT Minister and stated was it the same person? [see here for photos]. It is understood that Nattawut is now an advisor to the ICT Minister as part of the working group of the Minister. She further stated that she has spoken to senior people in the party on whether to work with the ICT Ministry, but as the Ministry cannot be relied on and fails to act to block lese majeste websites, it was decided to set up a group of people who love the monarchy under the name “cyber warriors” who when they have time will look for lese majeste websites and clips as well as those against national security, drugs, gambling etc. These URLs will be collected and sent to the ICT Minister. If the Minister won’t take action e-mails should be sent go FightBadWeb@gmail.com

She also warned Thais who receive such links or clips not to click on “like” as hackers will be able to access your personal information and photos and then set up a new account and post using your photo.  และขอเตือนประชาชนว่าหากได้รับลิ้งค์ หรือคลิปผ่านเฟสบุ๊คส่วนตัวอย่ากดแสดงความเห็

Sirichoke stated that Yingluck is the head of the organizing committee for celebrations on December 5 for HM the King. He stated that if the government  is afraid to take action “against its own” (ไม่กล้าดำเนินการกับพรรคพวกเดียวกัน) as it is known that some of them are red shirts that such thoughts were a danger to the institution.

BP: Mallika also tweeted that if no action is taken against the 200 URLs sent to the Minster, she will get the Democrat lawyers to file a criminal complaint of malfeasance under Section 157 of the Criminal Code (ถ้า200 URLที่กำลังส่งให้รมว.ไอซีที ไม่มีปิดไม่จับไม่เป็นผล ดิฉันจะให้ทนายพรรคปชป.ช่วยดำเนินคดีอาญารมต.มาตรา157ละเว้นการปฎิบัติหน้าที่).

This press conference was, of course, around the same time that Uncle SMS was being sentenced to 20 years in jail…..

Then, today the ICT Minister as per the Bangkok Post:

Local Facebook users risk violating the computer law unknowingly by pressing the “like” or “share” button included with posted comment on anti-monarchy messages on the most popular social networking site, Information and Communication Technology Minister Anudith Nakornthap said on Thursday.

Anyone doing so could be arrested on charges of violating the Computer Crime Act and committing lese majeste because the law prohibits the dissemination of content deemed insulting to the monarchy, he said.

Facebook users should not press the “like”  button or post comments on lese majeste-related content.

They would then become involved with the group’s network. This may  allow  anarchists to use their personal information to create a fake Facebook account to support their cause.

Mr Anudith urged the users to press the “delete” button if they receive  messages defamatory to the revered institution, to avoid breaking the law.

”Any user not deleting it may risk beiing prosecuted under the Computer Crime Act, because they will be seen as having a role in indirectly disseminating an unlawful message,” he said.

BP: Is clicking on like “dissemination”? He has really taken on board the Democrat press conference as he is repeating their warning. Prachatai has more:

On 23 Nov, Grp Cpt Anudith Nakornthap, Minister of Information and Communications Technology, said that the Ministry had asked Facebook headquarters to delete over 10,000 URLs or pages which contained pictures and messages offensive to the monarchy.

The contents were posted from abroad, and that made it difficult for the Ministry to close them, he said.

He asked anybody who found such contents not to press ‘Like’ or make comments because that would be indirect dissemination. He admitted that offensive content had been rapidly spread in the past 2-3 days. To help disseminate this is an offence under the 2007 Computer Crimes Act, he said.

Peerapol Anuttarasote, a reporter for the Thai News Agency, tweeted through @yoware that during the last three months the MICT had contacted Facebook to eliminate 50 accounts.

Although Facebook has a rule not to reveal posters’ IP addresses, it has yielded to requests to delete inappropriate content and has done so more quickly than before, the reporter said, adding that the MICT insists that it can track down the posters.

BP: Facebook has deleted or blocked the sites? The suggestion from the page is that they are deemed “hate sites” – other groups have tried this without success.

The ICT Minister had previously promised to more stringent on lese majeste websites. It is hard to assess whether he has or he has not. The Democrats say “no” and well he likely says “yes”, but then they will both say that. We have had one person arrested – see post about arrest here – since this new government took office (anyone aware of any other arrests since this government took office???), but is this just the tip of the iceberg or a one-off? BP thinks there are certainly elements within the government who won’t be unhappy at the new powers and what this means for going after political opponents. So far we have mixed messages with talk of crackdown with sites being blocked vs review of lese majeste cases, but there is also no sign of any change from this government from the first year of the last government where we also had talk of a panel to look into lese majeste cases which from the rise in cases may have helped in a few cases, but still was not effective.

So will the government follow through with the PAD and Democrat party request? Will the PAD be able to follow through on their threat of a mass rally? Will it be just blocking websites or will people be arrested as well? If the latter, what will this mean for the review of all lese majeste cases promised in late September?

*Thai politics makes for strange bedfellows, IFEX from 2000:

According to information collected by RSF, Malika Boonmeetrakul, a journalist, and two cameramen from the private television network ITV, were attacked on 20 November 2000 by supporters of Prime Minister Chuan Leekpai’s Democratic Party during an electoral meeting. After the attack, a Democratic Party leader stated that certain press professionals “are paid by political parties,” so their articles are subjective.

The King Never Smiles: A Siamese fatwa-Bangkok Post

COMMENTARY

The Siamese Satanic Verses

Kong Rithdee
Bangkok Post: December 12, 2011

http://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/270124/the-siamese-satanic-verses

Writer Salman Rushdie, accused of blasphemy, once said: “If Woody Allen were a Muslim, he would be dead by now.”

In Buddhist Thailand, Mr Rushdie, it’s much simpler than that. Woody Allen doesn’t even have to be Thai. He can be what he has always been, a US citizen who speaks his mind. He only has to keep joking the way he does, mocking and criticising the Almighty and the demi-gods and quasi-gods, and he would be convicted, shackled and locked up. He can be jailed, like Joe Gordon and so many others, simply for what he speaks.

Age wouldn’t be a problem, either. Allen is 71. Amphon – Ah Kong – Tangnoppakul, recently sentenced to 20 years under the lese majeste law for what he allegedly texted, is 61. As if old men are forbidden from what Steve Jobs championed: Think Different.

Of course, the Allen scenario is hypothesis. What’s real is something else. What’s real is the frightening ignorance of common sense and humanity in favour of a 103-year-old law, exploited and exaggerated to achieve the guillotine effect, to reinforce the glass ceiling that’s about to crack. And judging from the political climate and Chalerm Yubamrung’s bombast, Gordon and Ah Kong won’t be the two last convicts.

What’s also real is Mr Rushdie’s ordeal, which, though fading from the public’s memory, still serves as the finest exhibit of the debate on freedom of speech, of thought, of books, written or translated, burned or banned. “Doubt, it seems to me,” Mr Rushdie said, “is the central condition of a human being in the 20th century.” And doubt, in the usual playbook of the authorities, is countered with fascism and fear. For writing a novel that questions the faith of a billion people, Mr Rushdie was sentenced to death by a small group of Islamist vigilantes who, in the process of defending God, ended up blaspheming His sanctity and teachings. The book, The Satanic Verses, is as provocative as it is creative, a literary pyrotechnique and a bold, arrogant experiment that pushed the sacred envelope of the Islamic faith. But Mr Rushdie was doing the duty of a writer: he explored boundaries – poetic, political, spiritual boundaries. He was throwing a bomb which, unfortunately, exploded in his face when Ayatollah Khomeini called on “all zealous Muslims to execute [the writer and the publishers] quickly, where they find them, so that no one will dare to insult the Islamic sanctity”.

That was the Ayatollah’s radio broadcast in 1989. If it were today, it would have been a Facebook post. It is much easier in the 2010s to call on zealots around the world to light the pyre and burn the heretic at the stake. And in fact in Thailand, we have seen such Facebook posts. Not a call for murder, thank God, but something similar in spirit: a witch-hunting of non-believers. We don’t have the Ayatollah, but the authorities, with Mr Chalerm puffing his chest at the helm, is scarily announcing a crusade worse than the jihad waged by the chivalrous Saladin. Worse – because this is no longer the 12th century, and because there’s nothing chivalrous about the handling of the Ah Kong case at all.

Mr Rushdie is a non-believer, and he put forth his argument. But non-believing is not a crime, in as much as believing in God or demi-god – a concept many do not subscribe to – is not something to laugh at.

Iqrah, or “Read!” – that’s the first word in the revelation of the Koran, and perhaps Mr Rushdie was naive enough to believe that his detractors would heed God’s order and read, study, seek knowledge, instead of turning instantly into scalp-hunters. “I expected a few mullahs to be offended, and then I could defend myself in public,” he said, regarding publication of The Satanic Verses. And later, Mr Rushdie issued something close to an apology, saying he regretted the distress his book “has occasioned to the sincere followers of Islam”. The most important point is that he wasn’t jailed or killed.

Joe Gordon has been jailed for translating a banned book. Like Mr Rushdie, he might have expected some people to be offended and he could defend himself in public. He might have expected people to iqrah, to read, so he broke the law. But it’s obvious now that Article 112 is a flawed law in need of immediate rethinking, because it forbids that simple act commanded by God – to read.

Going after hate speech and venomous saboteurs is one thing, as I’m sure Mr Chalerm knows, but weaponising the 112 to forge fear is no different from the Ayatollah’s terrible fatwa. To protect God, I repeat, sometimes the self-appointed guardians risk despoiling his name.

“It is very, very easy not to be offended by a book,” Mr Rushdie said. “You just have to shut it.” Too bad that’s never enough here.

 

Kong Rithdee writes about movies and popular culture for the Bangkok Post.

 

Bloggers, protect yourself-EFF

For Bloggers at Risk: Creating a Contingency Plan

Jillian C. York

December 21, 2011

 

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/12/creating-contingency-plan-risk-bloggers

 

In 2011, we have witnessed the incredible power of bloggers and social media users capturing the world’s attention through their activism. At the same time, regimes appear to be quickening the pace of their cat-and-mouse game with netizens, cracking down on speech through the use of surveillance, censorship, and the persecution and detention of bloggers. The increasingly the tech-savvy Syrian regime has been reported to demand login credentials from detainees, for example, while the use of torture in some of the region’s prisons continues.

Aware of the threats to their safety, bloggers often devise contingency plans in the event they are detained. Syrian blogger Razan Ghazzawi was on her way to a conference in Jordan several weeks ago when she was arrested (she has since been released). In a premeditated effort to protect her contacts, she shared her passwords with trusted friends outside the country with instructions to change them in the event of an arrest. This way, she would not be able to give up the login credentials to her accounts since she would no longer know them. Other bloggers inform their close contacts of their wished contingency plans, determining in advance whether they would want a campaign for their release. A number of the bloggers arrested this year, in Egypt, Syria, and elsewhere, have connections to international activist networks that have experience creating global campaigns and can easily contact government officials, companies, and human rights organizations.

Assessing individual risk is neither easy nor straightforward. Therefore, all bloggers–whether well-connected or just starting out–should consider creating a plan in the unfortunate event they are detained. That said, there are numerous resources bloggers can use to stay informed when other bloggers in their country are detained, harassed, or surveilled; when their government is monitoring phone conversations or Internet activity; and when detainees are being compelled to give up information, such as passwords, to authorities.

With that in mind, EFF together with Global Voices Advocacy have created a set of questions to consider. This list is by no means exhaustive, but should offer a starting point from which bloggers can develop their own contingency plans.

All bloggers should:

• Consider providing someone outside the country with the following information:

• Login credentials to your social media, email, and blog accounts
• Contact information of family members
• Information about any health conditions

Regularly back up their blog, Facebook, email, and other accounts

Consider mirroring your website if you want to ensure it remains up without your attention to it (Global Voices Advocacy offers instructions on mirroring a WordPress blog)

Encrypt sensitive files and consider hiding them on a separate drive

Consider using tools like Identity Sweeper (for Android users) to secure/erase your mobile data

Consider preparing a statement for release in case of arrest– This can be helpful for international news outlets and human rights organizations

Consider recording a short video identifying yourself (biographical info, scope of work) and the risks that you face and share with trusted contacts

Develop contacts with human rights and free expression organizations*

Think about a strategy/contingency plan for what to do if you’re detained (see below)

If you are arrested or detained:

• Is there a trusted person(s) that you would like to authorize to make major decisions on your behalf–such as whether to conduct a public campaign? If yes, please make sure to discuss your preferences with that person. The following are among the topics you could talk about:

• What are your preferences for public campaigns? Is there a particular message that you feel strongly represents you and your views?
• What are the organizations you feel closest to in terms of potentially leading campaigns for your release and/or better treatment?
• Are there any particular attorney(s) who you know and would like to solicit for your case?
• Do you have a preference about what to do about your accounts? (i.e. Change the passwords, turn them into campaign accounts or shut them down) Do you trust someone else to make crucial decisions about your accounts if your situation changes?
• Is there any specific information about you or relevant to your case that you prefer not be made public?
• Do you have acute or chronic illnesses which require medication or treatment? If yes, what are they? (Asthma, diabetes, heart conditions, etc.)
• Are there family members that one can contact to sign off on important decisions or speak to the media? If yes, who? Are there family members who you absolutely do not want to speak on your behalf?

When having these conversations, keep in mind that it may be hard for you to foresee every future development. The best course of action may be to have in-depth conversations with trusted friends and family members so that they clearly understand your preferences–and then authorize them to make decisions as they best see fit under evolving conditions. In other words, “delegate with guidance” so that your trusted relations can look out for your best interests and your wishes under evolving circumstances.

*There are numerous organizations out there and we could not possibly name them all.  EFF and Global Voices Advocacy are great starts, but we also recommend international organizations Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, FrontLine Defenders, Reporters Without Borders, the Committee to Protect Journalists and Access.  If you need assistance finding a local organization in your country, please contact us and we will try to help.

This post was co-authored by EFF and Global Voices Advocacy, with special thanks to Zeynep Tufekci.

 

FACTreview: Access Controlled-ONI

 

http://access.opennet.net/

 

The Access series represents three edited volumes published by the OpenNet Initiative and MIT Press that document nearly a decade of extensive technical and in-field research on the trends and patterns shaping information controls around the world.

Access Denied

The practice and policy of global Internet filtering (2008) draws on results from the ONI’s first global survey of Internet censorship, documenting and analyzing Internet filtering practices in over three dozen countries. It stands as the first rigorously conducted study of state-based Internet censorship policies and practices.

Access Controlled

The shaping of power, rights, and rule in cyberspace (2010) updates and expands on Access Denied by presenting information controls that go beyond mere denial of information and aim to normalize (or even legalize) a climate of control. These next-generation techniques include strategically timed distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, targeted malware, surveillance at key points of the Internet’s infrastructure, take-down notices, and stringent terms-of-usage policies. Access Controlled investigates this spectrum of control in countries that make up the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) as it is there, primarily, where some of the most important techniques of information control are emerging and a normative terrain is being set.

Access Contested

Security, identity, and resistance in Asian cyberspace (2011) examines the interplay of national security, social and ethnic identity, and resistance in Asian cyberspace, offering in-depth accounts of the unique national struggles against Internet controls in the region. The authors examine such topics as Internet censorship in Thailand, the Malaysian blogosphere, surveillance and censorship around gender and sexuality in Malaysia, Internet governance in China, corporate social responsibility and freedom of expression in South Korea and India, cyber attacks on independent Burmese media, and distributed-denial-of-service attacks and other digital control measures across Asia.

• Access Contested book launch

[FACT comments: To be honest, we think ONI has blown it for the third time, at least about Thailand. Our December 16 letter to them follows:

Dear Colleagues,

Thai activists have been disappointed again by your conclusions regarding Internet censorship. In fact, we have complained about those very same conclusions in Access Denied and Access Controlled and now repeated in Access Contested.\

The world is a big place, my friends, and we do not accuse you of any ill-intent. However, with rare exceptions such as Freedom House and Reporters Without Borders, international free speech NGOs pay scant attention to our normal, daily conditions here.

Our major gripe is that, for the third time, you failed to question any of us in Thailand about censorship. Freedom Against Censorship Thailand (FACT) is certainly most aware of the state of Internet blocking by all government agencies but you might also rely on the iLaw Foundation for its annual assessments of Web blocking using the Computer Crimes Act 2007 by analysing the court orders required by that law. It appears you are relying only upon Herdict statistics; we think those barely scratch the surface.

It’s good you think that Thailand deserves mention, that we remain among your handful of countries. However, we think you make Thailand a vastly undervalued censor state.

Numbers of blocked URLs alone, of course, do not a police state make. ONI seems to have a policy of ignoring social censorship such as pornography, perhaps fearing detractors dismissing all the rest. However, Thailand’s social censorship works in ways you have not even considered such as clothing and dress-code censorship, religious censorship, lèse majesté. We’re sure you have not discovered the wholesale block, for instance, of Thai online pharmacies because they offer the morning-after pill. RU-486 is illegal in Thailand despite the fact that we have the world’s second-highest number, after the USA, of course, of teen pregnancies.

You obviously have not considered the charges (and five-year prison sentence after your publication) against an American citizen born in Thailand for merely posting four hyperlinks on his weblog to the introduction and three chapters of Thai translations of a book banned in Thailand, The King Never Smiles, published at Yale. The content itself was not examined for the defamation, insults or threats necessitated in the precision of law.

FACT thinks there is pervasive filtering of political, social, conflict and security and Internet tools categories. Furthermore, we say there is NO transparency of government censorship (forget “low”!), although we concede you “medium” consistency. You surely must have read that some politicians are pushing for a complete block of social networking, including Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. This might be hard for you in the West to take seriously unless one remembers that all of YouTube was blocked for seven months in 2007.

Although you state our CCA is being “employed as a political tool”, you greatly understate the numbers and seem to rely only on the statistics from CCA court orders compiled by iLaw (which you fail to mention) and fail to include the huge censorship by the military agencies CRES and CAPO in 2010. We further find no mention of FACT’s work in your writing nor the fact that we tested the CAT ISP for your April-May 2010 round. This makes only three, of 125 ISPs. FACT is, of course, both ONI-Asia’s and TNN’s partner. We certainly noted that no Thai names had been consulted.

For your information, FACT’s analysis shows that 761,416 URLs were blocked on December 5, including 96,000 Facebook pages, rising at a rate of 690 every day. Not one webpage has been unblocked since the rule of law, including the CCA, was suspended by emergency powers April 10 – December 23, 2010.

 

FACT again this year petitioned Thailand’s National Human Rights Commission for full disclosure of Internet censorship. Of course, we’re not holding our breath: this was mostly political exercise.

 

You’re still missing the boat, my friends. A cursory analysis of political history shows that countries fall to dictatorship in an instant—look at the Khmer Rouge. We think Thailand is an incipient Burma making the same mistakes.

 

We can only urge you to do better next time. And we’re happy to help.

 

 

freedom,

CJ Hinke

 

Appeal: The Rosenberg Fund for Children of imprisoned activists

[FACT comments: We don’t often host pleas for money to FACTsite. But the Rosenberg Fund for Children, named for the accused atomic spies executed by the USA in 1953, is an exception. Robert Meeropol, son of Ethel and Julius, grew up in foster care after his parents were put to death. He continues to oppose their silencing by the state with compassion for children of modern activists jailed for their beliefs. we’d like to see this effort extended to many other countries. This is not charity—this is human community. Please give as generously as possible. Karma may reward you by not being busted this year!]

Spies, schmies! Love with handcuffs—a symbol for all activists.

Welcome to the new dawn of activism!

Finally, working people, youth, immigrants, and those concerned with the environment have had enough. They will no longer stand for the super-wealthy ripping us off, plundering the planet, profiting from military nightmares, destroying unions and so much more. But in response to the waves of dissent that have swept the country this year, political arrests have skyrocketed to over four times what they were in 2010.

From Madison to San Juan, from Oakland to New York City, the children of the unemployed, disenfranchised, and victimized—whose parents have been attacked for their resistance—as well as teenaged activists, are suffering. Maybe you can’t join the demonstrators on the front lines or in their encampments, but you can show your solidarity with them by supporting the Rosenberg Fund for Children.

With your help we are rising to the occasion. We haven’t let the challenging economic times deter us. We have increased our granting by $10,000 this year to $370,000. We’ve done this because the need has grown even more critical, and because you’ve shown you’re willing to contribute your precious dollars to help these kids. We’re betting you still feel that way.

I wish I could share all the stories of those whom your donations helped in 2011, but I only have the space to tell you about two of the newest members of the RFC family.

This fall an Attica Prison Visit grant enabled the granddaughter of imprisoned, radical attorney Lynne Stewart to visit Lynne and introduce her to her first great-grandchild, born after Lynne’s imprisonment. Lynne’s zealous representation of unpopular defendants led the government to charge her with aiding terrorism. An RFC grant made this important family reunion possible.

Jackson (pseudonym), now 11, still has nightmares about the time the police raided his home, pointed their guns at him, took his parents to prison and forced him into foster case. Jackson’s parents’ “crime” was their work to bring about peace between young African-Americans and Chicanos in a manner that challenged the authority of the notorious Los Angeles police department. Jackson’s mother writes that his “school work has been disrupted by repression. [He is] suffering from emotional distress … as well as problems of adjustment [to the] school authorities’ insensitivity to issues he faces [because of] the family’s political beliefs.” An RFC grant is paying for Jackson’s therapy.

I chose these two examples because they demonstrate the growing attacks upon those who are agitating for change. So much of what we’re witnessing now echoes the 1930’s, as this recession looks more and more like The Great Depression. But a mass progressive response has finally begun, and now it is our turn to aid their vulnerable children. You can do that today by making a fast, secure online donation to the Rosenberg Fund for Children. Every extra dollar you contribute will show these brave people and their families how much you and thousands like you value their resistance.

If you’ve already given in 2011, now is the time to make an additional donation. If you haven’t given yet, please show your support with a special, bigger than usual year-end donation to the RFC. Your help has never been more critical. We must never let them feel that they stand alone!

The children are depending on you.

 

Robert Meeropol
Executive Director

 

FACTorial: Why we fight

An American academic researcher associated with Thailand for 35 years asked my help on Thailand’s censorship regime some time ago. As a fluent Thai speaker, he has worked as a military officer, consultant to govt, private industry and int’l organisations. He has been very active against govt corruption and was recently based in Pattani.

He recently contacted me again with this question: “How can controls be maintained in society without censorship?  Some consider that censorship is essential and that all communities engage in censorship; the differences lie in the specifications of the strictures.”

My answer is pretty WISYWIG and what FACT has been all about since the beginning. If anything, the greater government repression, the more censorship, the more angry radical it makes me.

I guess I’m too old school. See, at 61, I’m still the wild anarchist I unleashed when I was a teenager. My grown kids with families are in their 30s; they’ve been bought and sold, chained to the wheel, maintaining a lifestyle instead of getting a life.

So why, exactly, do govts (not “we, not “society”, not “the community”) need to maintain control over society? Look, we all censor ourselves—e.g., “Don’t make my ass look fat.” It’s not nice to offend anyone for no apparent goal. On the other hand, we’ve all become so thin-skinned to embrace political correctness that the concept of PC becomes our guiding light in interactions with others. This means, really, we can never feel free to be ourselves. We’re always on guard, always on edge. And that, my friend, is a bullshit way to live.

Let’s start from a radical premise. Start with NO censorship. Then let the community, “society” figure out the limits by free discussion; the Internet is the new age town meeting. What does govt have to do with anything? Furthermore, the limits must be mutable as we evolve and grow, hopefully smarter and, ergo, more tolerant.

See, Emma Goldman was right: If voting could change anything, it would be illegal. Those fine folks “we” voted for (never voted in my life because I’ve found no one worth voting for and voting against a lesser evil just ain’t democracy) are simply civil servants, our servants, not our masters. Don’t think they have a bigger handle, better picture, than any of the rest of us. First off, to get elected, anywhere, you’re rich, right? Give me one single example after Honest Abe it ain’t so.

I guess I’m a rare idealist. But we don’t preserve any real values by censorship, we only stifle human growth and potential.

You may know I have been loosely affiliated with WikiLeaks since the beginning. Those 250K cables constituted monumental govt transparency. You know what? Fact is, nobody was much interested.

We are truly dumbed down. I don’t give up the fight against ALL censorship for two reasons. First, I’m really a fucking stubborn old coot and I have a 13-year old daughter. I don’t want her to ever go to a bookstore or library or record store (iTunes!) or look for a website and encounter a message saying, “You’re too stupid to look at this.”

CJ Hinke

Freedom Against Censorship Thailand (FACT)

India’s unworkable plan to censor Facebook-The Atlantic

India’s Unworkable Plan to Censor Facebook

Adam Clark Estes

The Atlantic: December 5, 2011

http://news.yahoo.com/indias-unworkable-plan-censor-facebook-163718807.html

 

As the United States considers its own measures to block illegal websites, India’s government is pulling a China and asking Internet companies like Facebook and Google to start screening all user generated content. The censorship measures requested by the Indian government — “to remove disparaging, inflammatory or defamatory content before it goes online” — do resemble China’s firewall, based on the so far vague details of the plan reported in The New York Times‘s India Ink blog on Monday morning. However, the companies affected also say it’s out of the question.

RIndia’s proposed site-screening sounds rather unworkable. Apparently, it all started six months ago, when India’s acting telecommunications minister Kapil Sibal told government officials that disparaging comments on the Congress Party president Sonia Gandhi’s Facebook page were “unacceptable” and eventually asked executives from Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo “to set up a proactive prescreening system, with staffers looking for objectionable content and deleting it before it is posted.” India Ink’s Heather Timmons explains that the companies’ representatives “will tell Mr. Sibal at the meeting on Monday that his demand is impossible, given the volume of user-generated content coming from India, and that they cannot be responsible for determining what is and isn’t defamatory or disparaging.” And the volume must be huge; Facebook alone has 25 million users in India.

Sibal’s request resembles the Great Firewall of China, but the execution is notably different. Internet companies’ obeying the Indian government and removing “unacceptable” user generated content opens up the possibility of pretty broad-based censorship, but we don’t yet know many details about what the Indian government’s proposal would block. Do Indian officials want to block certain bad words or offensive images? That already happens all over the world, including the United States, and falls more in the more justified realm of keeping obscenity off of sites accessible to all ages. Do Indian officials want broader powers, like the ability to stifle any and all criticism? This is starting to sound Tiananmen-inspired.

China’s Internet-blocking abilities are both vaguely defined and incredibly powerful. Whereas the Indian officials propose that the Internet companies themselves beef up their moderation efforts with more advanced screening tools, albeit with guidance from the government, Chinese officials have carte blanche when it comes to blocking entire websites. China doesn’t just screen the types of content that goes up on sites like Facebook; it blocks the site completely. The Indian government’s proposal sounds more like a screen than a wall. Let’s call it the Mediocre Content Filter of India. (It’s not as scary is it?) It seems like the India’s proposed screening methods would also depend on the Internet companies — humans moderators in fact — to do the blocking.

This approach is much more permissive than China’s internet censorship practices. China has a huge head start when it comes to blocking undesirable content. Because the Chinese government poured the foundation of the country’s firewall, officially known as the Golden Shield Project, in the late 1990s, the system is incredibly sophisticated and mostly automatic. It’s also pretty aggressive. While it’s provided some details in the past about what kinds of content is offending, the Chinese government is basically free to block whatever it wants. Last year alone, over 1.3 million websites shut down in China last year, nearly half of the total number of sites available

Related: Hillary Clinton: China ‘Trying to Stop History, Which Is a Fool’s Errand’

It doesn’t sound like India wants to prohibit its citizens from using Facebook; they just don’t want the citizens saying bad things about the government on Facebook. Nevertheless, India’s pronounced intent to block certain types of content along with pending legislation in the United States that would block sites altogether shows a trend in governments considering more aggressive ways to regulate the internet that, at best, resemble China’s famously draconian methods. The proposed screening methods matter to Internet companies because India’s huge population is such a huge area for growth. The message of allowing more Internet censorship that countries like India are sending matter to everyone on the web.

WikiLeaks: The Spyfiles

WikiLeaks: The Spyfiles

http://wikileaks.org/the-spyfiles.html [BLOCKED BY MICT!]

[FR] Wikileaks : Un monde sous surveillance 

The Spyfiles – The Map 

Mass interception of entire populations is not only a reality, it is a secret new industry spanning 25 countries

It sounds like something out of Hollywood, but as of today, mass interception systems, built by Western intelligence contractors, including for ’political opponents’ are a reality. Today WikiLeaks began releasing a database of hundreds of documents from as many as 160 intelligence contractors in the mass surveillance industry. Working with Bugged Planet and Privacy International, as well as media organizations form six countries – ARD in Germany, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism in the UK, The Hindu in India, L’Espresso in Italy, OWNI in France and the Washington Post in the U.S. Wikileaks is shining a light on this secret industry that has boomed since September 11, 2001 and is worth billions of dollars per year. WikiLeaks has released 287 documents today, but the Spy Files project is ongoing and further information will be released this week and into next year.

International surveillance companies are based in the more technologically sophisticated countries, and they sell their technology on to every country of the world. This industry is, in practice, unregulated. Intelligence agencies, military forces and police authorities are able to silently, and on mass, and secretly intercept calls and take over computers without the help or knowledge of the telecommunication providers. Users’ physical location can be tracked if they are carrying a mobile phone, even if it is only on stand by.

But the WikiLeaks Spy Files are more than just about ’good Western countries’ exporting to ’bad developing world countries’. Western companies are also selling a vast range of mass surveillance equipment to Western intelligence agencies. In traditional spy stories, intelligence agencies like MI5 bug the phone of one or two people of interest. In the last ten years systems for indiscriminate, mass surveillance have become the norm. Intelligence companies such as VASTech secretly sell equipment to permanently record the phone calls of entire nations. Others record the location of every mobile phone in a city, down to 50 meters. Systems to infect every Facebook user, or smart-phone owner of an entire population group are on the intelligence market.

Selling Surveillance to Dictators

When citizens overthrew the dictatorships in Egypt and Libya this year, they uncovered listening rooms where devices from Gamma corporation of the UK, Amesys of France, VASTech of South Africa and ZTE Corp of China monitored their every move online and on the phone.

Surveillance companies like SS8 in the U.S., Hacking Team in Italy and Vupen in France manufacture viruses (Trojans) that hijack individual computers and phones (including iPhones, Blackberries and Androids), take over the device, record its every use, movement, and even the sights and sounds of the room it is in. Other companies like Phoenexia in the Czech Republic collaborate with the military to create speech analysis tools. They identify individuals by gender, age and stress levels and track them based on ‘voiceprints’. Blue Coat in the U.S. and Ipoque in Germany sell tools to governments in countries like China and Iran to prevent dissidents from organizing online.

Trovicor, previously a subsidiary of Nokia Siemens Networks, supplied the Bahraini government with interception technologies that tracked human rights activist Abdul Ghani Al Khanjar. He was shown details of personal mobile phone conversations from before he was interrogated and beaten in the winter of 2010-2011.

How Mass Surveillance Contractors Share Your Data with the State

In January 2011, the National Security Agency broke ground on a $1.5 billion facility in the Utah desert that is designed to store terabytes of domestic and foreign intelligence data forever and process it for years to come.

Telecommunication companies are forthcoming when it comes to disclosing client information to the authorities – no matter the country. Headlines during August’s unrest in the UK exposed how Research in Motion (RIM), makers of the Blackberry, offered to help the government identify their clients. RIM has been in similar negotiations to share BlackBerry Messenger data with the governments of India, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.

Weaponizing Data Kills Innocent People

There are commercial firms that now sell special software that analyze this data and turn it into powerful tools that can be used by military and intelligence agencies.

For example, in military bases across the U.S., Air Force pilots use a video link and joystick to fly Predator drones to conduct surveillance over the Middle East and Central Asia. This data is available to Central Intelligence Agency officials who use it to fire Hellfire missiles on targets.

The CIA officials have bought software that allows them to match phone signals and voice prints instantly and pinpoint the specific identity and location of individuals. Intelligence Integration Systems, Inc., based in Massachusetts – sells a “location-based analytics” software called Geospatial Toolkit for this purpose. Another Massachusetts company named Netezza, which bought a copy of the software, allegedly reverse engineered the code and sold a hacked version to the Central Intelligence Agency for use in remotely piloted drone aircraft.

IISI, which says that the software could be wrong by a distance of up to 40 feet, sued Netezza to prevent the use of this software. Company founder Rich Zimmerman stated in court that his “reaction was one of stun, amazement that they (CIA) want to kill people with my software that doesn’t work.”

Orwell’s World

Across the world, mass surveillance contractors are helping intelligence agencies spy on individuals and ‘communities of interest’ on an industrial scale.

The Wikileaks Spy Files reveal the details of which companies are making billions selling sophisticated tracking tools to government buyers, flouting export rules, and turning a blind eye to dictatorial regimes that abuse human rights.

How to use the Spy Files

To search inside those files, click one of the link on the left pane of this page, to get the list of documents by type, company date or tag.

To search all these companies on a world map use the following tool from Owni

Tyranny and truth: Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator

[FACT comments: This Charlie Chaplin monologue from the 1940 film, The Great Dictator, forms the soundtrack to Anonymous’ occupation of Wall Street.] “The Great Dictator” (1940) http://www.americanrhetoric.com/MovieSpeeches/moviespeechthegreatdictator.html Adenoid Hynkel (dictator of Tomania)/A Jewish barber: Closing Address (“Look up, Hannah”) Audio mp3 delivered by Charlie Chaplin Hynkel: I’m sorry, but I don’t want to be an Emperor – that’s not my business. I don’t want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone, if possible — Jew, gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another; human beings are like that. We want to live by each other’s happiness, not by each other’s misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world there’s room for everyone and the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful. But we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical, our cleverness hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery, we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost. The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men, cries out for universal brotherhood for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women, and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me I say, “Do not despair.” The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass and dictators die; and the power they took from the people will return to the people and so long as men die, liberty will never perish. Soldiers: Don’t give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you, enslave you, who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel; who drill you, diet you, treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder. Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men, machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines! You are not cattle! You are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts. You don’t hate; only the unloved hate, the unloved and the unnatural. Soldiers: Don’t fight for slavery! Fight for liberty! In the seventeenth chapter of Saint Luke it is written, “the kingdom of God is within man” — not one man, nor a group of men, but in all men, in you, you the people have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness. You the people have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then, in the name of democracy, let us use that power! Let us all unite!! Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give you the future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power, but they lie! They do not fulfill their promise; they never will. Dictators free themselves, but they enslave the people!! Now, let us fight to fulfill that promise!! Let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, to do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness. Soldiers: In the name of democracy, let us all unite!!! Hannah, can you hear me? Wherever you are, look up, Hannah. The clouds are lifting. The sun is breaking through. We are coming out of the darkness into the light. We are coming into a new world, a kindlier world, where men will rise above their hate, their greed and brutality. Look up, Hannah. The soul of man has been given wings, and at last he is beginning to fly. He is flying into the rainbow — into the light of hope, into the future, the glorious future that belongs to you, to me, and to all of us. Look up, Hannah. Look up.