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Weighing the Value and Risks of Deplatforming GNET

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Last month, the video platform TikTok banned far-right extremists Britain First and Tommy Robinson, the latest action taken by a tech platform to address hateful and extreme content by sanctioning abusers. Platforms embrace of deplatforming as the default tool for repeated or severe violations of terms of service shows progress in prioritising the issue of online extremism, but as a tool, it is a blunt instrument that may not be equally valuable in all circumstances. Not all platforms can or will address all content equally efficiently, and whether they should requires an assessment of unintended consequences. Whether those factors are correctly balanced by platforms, or deplatforming is simply the most straightforward tool at their disposal, remains to be seen.

Addressing harmful content that could lead to hate, extremism, and terrorism is critical for tech platforms, sometimes for legal compliance and other times simply because it is imperative to protect their users and our communities. For a sense of scale, recent transparency reports show that between January and June of 2019, Twitter took action against almost 600,000 accounts for violating policies related to hate and Facebook took action against 17.8 million pieces of content based on terrorist propaganda concerns and 15.5 million related to hate speech between January and September of 2019. The Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism asserts that its joint hashing database the shared mechanism for large tech companies such as Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter, YouTube, and others to post or find terrorism-related content has over 200,000 pieces of unique content. When these actions manifest as banning a user, the result can be severe: an oft-cited example of the success of deplatforming is that of far-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, who may be as much as $2 million in debt following bans that have removed his ability to benefit financially from his notoriety. Alex Jones media outlet InfoWars had about 1.4 million daily views of its site and users before being banned from YouTube and Facebook, and 715,000 afterward, according to the New York Times analysis.

On the other hand, these results raise questions regarding whether platforms are efficient in carrying out bans. Jones, for example, launched Infowars is Back on Facebook an hour after it banned Infowars. Proxy channels emerged on YouTube, sharing Jones videos with over 1.6 million viewers, including 550,000 views in a thirty day period, and 10,000 subscribers. Lesser known antisemitic and white supremacist channels have managed to circumvent attempted bans. If the strategy to address online extremism must be whack-a-mole, there is considerable room to improve efficiency in finding users and content to ban, implementing bans, and finding and removing proxies.

Beyond efficiency is effectiveness: banning an individual or group may feel cathartic, but whether it achieves the desired result of degrading and helping defeat extremists and their movements is a far more central question. The verdict on that is, unfortunately, unclear.

Researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology looked at bans on Reddit, concluding that users that experienced sanctions from Reddit for hate speech left Reddit entirely, reduced hate speech on Reddit by 80-90 percent, and many also migrated to new Reddit threads. Audrey Alexanders study for the George Washington University Program on Extremism shows that mass bans of Islamic State (IS) followers on Twitter deteriorates [IS] followers ability to gain traction on the platform, likely hindering their reach to potential recruits and acknowledges that the decay on Twitter corresponded with IS strategic shift to Telegram as its platform of choice.

Strategic success for mass bans has often been interpreted (1) as digital decay for the individual platform in question, rather than the integrated online ecosystem, and (2) in terms of the volume of users and their hateful content rather than the escalation or de-escalation of extremism.

Telegram, for example, became the platform of choice for jihadists as mainstream platforms began to use bans, removing IS sympathizers ability to recruit followers from a mainstream audience, but driving their online communications underground to a less-visible and less-regulated platform. Now it is also becoming a destination of the global white supremacist movement.

Similar platform migration has led to extremist use of VK, the Russian Facebook-equivalent; Gab, far right-extremists Twitter-equivalent; and lesser-known sites that their users would move to if those platforms began regulating, which, as ADL analysis suggests, could be WrongThink, minds.com, toko.tech, MeWe, or freezoxee. The evolution of the chans is illustrative: bringing attention to 4chan or 8chan may have led to particular actions to limit extremist content on them, but also led 8chan to go dark and return several times, and also gave rise to Endchan, 7chan, and myriad other copycat sites that aim to circumvent attempts to regulate them.

According to an analysis by ADL and the Network Contagion Research Institute, during months when a Twitter mass ban took place corresponded to more than double the percent of new members on Gab than a typical month. The frequency with which the users referenced the ban, and the corresponding spiteful references to censorship (e.g. fascistbook and goolag) suggests that the new users are joining Gab due to mass bans on another platform, and that being banned fueled their anger not self-reflective anger for the behavior that got them banned, but toward the authorities than banned them. Another study reached similar conclusions, looking at Facebook and VK. This analysis suggests that the grievances that fuel far-right extremism may be heightened in users that are banned from mainstream platforms, and that those grievances are then expressed in fora with less oversight and a higher portion of like-minded members. In other words, there is a distinct possibility that deplatforming trades high exposure to a broad population for more extreme exposure to other extremists. And no amount of whack-a-mole will prevent extremists from finding the next forum on which they can post their hate and recruit new followers, with authorities potentially unaware of the platform migration.

Removing users and content also hinders investigation and research into the threat. Imagine an individual that poses a security concern and whose primary means of being discovered by law enforcement is online behavior for example, Conor Climo, whose online conversations and support for the Feuerkrieg Division led law enforcement to search his home, where they found bomb making materials and evidence of violent plots. If such a suspect were removed from all platforms that could be accessed by law enforcement and informants, then plots may continue, but out of sight. Further, researchers looking into such behavior to inform policymakers and the public no longer have visibility into concerning behavior once it is removed, which could distort public opinion and decision-making based on an inaccurate picture of threats.

Deplatforming may limit the breath of hate and extremism on mainstream platforms but increase extremists motivations to plot, doing so in secret. On the other hand, allowing hate unfettered access to the worlds most powerful megaphones to recruit more to their cause is similarly risky. Neither, of course, is an acceptable outcome, which is why comprehensive approaches and comprehensive research into what works is needed. Whether providing law enforcement more opportunities to track extremism, tech platforms better ways to implement terms of service enforcement, or promoting good speech to overwhelm hate and extremism online comprehensive, integrated approaches are necessary.

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Weighing the Value and Risks of Deplatforming GNET

Julian Assange writes letter to King Charles and urges him to visit …

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Julian Assange has written a letter to King Charles ahead of his coronation inviting him to visit the UK prison where the WikiLeaks founder has been captive for more than four years on behalf of an embarrassed foreign sovereign.

The letter is the first document the Australian journalist and WikiLeaks founder has written and published since his time in Belmarsh prison in London and accounts the horrors of his life there.

On the coronation of my liege, I thought it only fitting to extend a heartfelt invitation to you to commemorate this momentous occasion by visiting your very own kingdom within a kingdom: his majestys prison Belmarsh, Assange writes.

One can truly know the measure of a society by how it treats its prisoners, and your kingdom has surely excelled in that regard.

It is here that 687 of your loyal subjects are held, supporting the United Kingdoms record as the nation with the largest prison population in Western Europe.

Assange, an Australian citizen, remains at Belmarsh as he fights a US attempt to extradite him to face charges in connection with the publication of hundreds of thousands of leaked documents about the Afghanistan and Iraq wars as well as diplomatic cables.

He goes on to point sarcastically to the UK governments commitment to roll out the biggest expansion of prison places in more than a century, and the culinary delights of eating on a budget of two pounds per day.

As a political prisoner, held at your majestys pleasure on behalf of an embarrassed foreign sovereign, I am honoured to reside within the walls of this world class institution, Assange writes.

Beyond the gustatory pleasures you will also have the opportunity to pay your respects to my late friend Manoel Santos, a gay man facing deportation to Bolsonaros Brazil, who took his own life just eight yards from my cell using a crude rope fashioned from his bedsheets.

Assange goes on to invite the King to the most isolated place within [the] walls of Belmarsh Healthcare, or Hellcare and the Belmarsh End of Life Suite.

Listen closely, and you may hear the prisoners cries of Brother, Im going to die in here, a testament to the quality of both life and death within your prison, Assange writes.

I implore you, King Charles, to visit His Majestys Prison Belmarsh, for it is an honour befitting a king.

As you embark upon your reign, may you always remember the words of the King James Bible: Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. And may mercy be the guiding light of your kingdom, both within and without the walls of Belmarsh.

On Friday, the Australian opposition leader, Peter Dutton, agreed with the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, that the detention of Assange needed to come to an end.

For the first time in more than a decade, the leaders of Australias major political parties both publicly back a diplomatic intervention in the case, with Albanese saying enough is enough and Dutton agreeing it has gone on too long.

Albanese told journalists in the UK, where he is attending King Charles coronation, that the matter needed to be brought to a conclusion and he was continuing to raise it through diplomatic channels.

There is nothing to be served by his ongoing incarceration, Albanese said. And I am concerned about Mr Assanges mental health. There was a court decision here in the United Kingdom that was overturned on appeal that went to Mr Assanges health as well and I am concerned for him.

On Friday morning, the opposition leader told ABC radio RN Breakfast it had gone on for too long at the fault of many people.

A cross-section of Australian politicians have been raising the matter internally with their colleagues and international counterparts for the last few years, rallying for Assanges freedom. Nearly 50 federal parliamentarians have called on the US to drop its extradition bid.

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Australian lawmakers press US envoy for Julian Assange release

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Assanges supporters say he is an anti-establishment hero who has been victimised because he exposed the US wrongdoings.

Australian lawmakers have met United States Ambassador Caroline Kennedy, urging her to help drop the pending extradition case against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and allow him to return to Australia.

The Bring Julian Assange Home Parliamentary Group said on Tuesday it informed Kennedy of the widespread concern in Australia about the continued detention of Assange, an Australian citizen.

The meeting comes before US President Joe Bidens scheduled visit to Australia this month for the Quad leaders summit.

There are a range of views about Assange in the Australian community and the members of the Parliamentary Group reflect that diversity of views. But what is not in dispute in the Group is that Mr Assange is being treated unjustly, the legislators said in a statement after meeting Kennedy in the capital, Canberra.

Assange is battling extradition from the United Kingdom to the US where he is wanted on criminal charges over the release of confidential military records and diplomatic cables in 2010. Washington says the release of the documents had put lives in danger.

Assanges supporters say he is an anti-establishment hero who has been victimised because he exposed US wrongdoings, including in conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The US embassy in Australia confirmed the meeting in a tweet but did not share further details.

Assanges brother, Gabriel Shipton, said he felt the meeting was an important acknowledgement by the US government that Julians freedom is important to millions of Australians.

After [Prime Minister Anthony Albanese] expressed frustration with the Biden administration, this is now a test for Ambassador Kennedy to see if she can move Washington on this issue, said Shipton.

Albanese, who has been advocating for the release of Assange, last week aired his frustration for not yet finding a diplomatic fix over the issue.

Support for Assange among US policymakers remains low. Only a few members of Congress have come forward in support of the demand to drop charges against him.

If extradited, Assange faces a sentence of up to 175 years in a maximum-security prison.

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The Bradley Manning Trial: A Short(ish) Guide To Understanding … – NPR

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Army Pfc. Bradley Manning (right) is escorted out of a courthouse in Fort Meade, Md., on June 25, 2012. His lawyer announced that Manning, who is accused of leaking classified information to WikiLeaks, had agreed to plead guilty to lesser charges. Patrick Semansky/AP hide caption

Army Pfc. Bradley Manning (right) is escorted out of a courthouse in Fort Meade, Md., on June 25, 2012. His lawyer announced that Manning, who is accused of leaking classified information to WikiLeaks, had agreed to plead guilty to lesser charges.

For the next 12 weeks, a military judge in Fort Meade, Md. will consider the case of Army Pfc. Bradley Manning. It's bound to be a complicated, long-running and often secretive process that kicked off on Monday.

Before we get too far into the court-martial, we wanted to put together a shortish guide to bring you up to speed on the trial.

-- First Off, The Leaks:

Central to this court-martial is the vast trove of government data that Manning handed to the website WikiLeaks. They mark the largest leak of classified information in the history of the United States.

It was a video dubbed "Colateral Murder" that first brought attention to Wikileaks in 2010. It showed a 2007 incident in which a U.S. military crew on an Army Apache helicopter shot at Iraqi civilians and a Reuters journalist, after allegedly mistaking them for insurgents. It provided a rare chance to witness an incident of what the military calls collateral damage.

The leaks continued, peaking with the release of hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables, that brought mostly diplomatic headaches for the United States. Some argued that they revealed much more in some cases the identities of operatives and informants across the world. The government said during the first day of the court-martial that it will present evidence that Osama bin Laden asked for and received some of these cables. The documents are archived here.

-- Who Is Bradley Manning?:

PBS' Frontline has a quick 10-minute profile of Manning that is worth watching. In short, he is son of an American dad and a British mother who grew up in a small town near Oklahoma City. His relationship with his dad and his stepmother was strained. He joined the Army in 2007 seeking some structure and direction for his life.

He became an intelligence analyst for the Army and received access to classified information.

Manning was arrested in May of 2010 over the leaks. Since then, he has been held by the U.S. military.

-- What Manning Has To Say:

Since his arrest, we have not heard much from Manning. His most significant statement came when a judge was considering throwing out the case against him because of the way the U.S. government treated him.

As NPR's Carrie Johnson reported in November of 2012, it was highly unusual for a court-martial to be delayed for more than three years. Not only that but at one point, Manning was kept in complete isolation and in some instances forced to sleep naked and without a blanket.

Manning's defense attorney David Coombs, who himself has been pretty quiet, said that Manning's treatment at the Marine Corps Base in Quantico, Va., will "forever be etched, I believe, in our nation's history as a disgraceful moment in time."

The military judge ultimately refused to drop the charges against Manning. But the proceedings allowed him to plead guilty to lesser charges and make his first public statements.

Manning read from a 35-page statement. He explained that he thought the battle field reports were not considered sensitive in the military and that he leaked the diplomatic cables, hoping it would lead to a more open diplomacy.

"I believed that these cables would not damage the United States," Manning said. "However, I believed these cables would be embarrassing.

-- The Charges:

The government decided to go through with the more serious charges against Manning. As NPR's Carrie Johnson reported earlier this month, Manning is facing charges "including violations of the Espionage Act and aiding the enemy, which carries a possible life sentence."

Carrie adds that during the 12-week trial, the government will have to prove "Manning had reason to believe the leaks would hurt national security."

Court House News Service reports that on the aiding the enemy charge, the government has to prove that Manning leaked the information with that intent in mind.

-- How To Follow The Action:

We will post on major developments in the case, but several reporters covering the trial have been tweeting live updates. Ed Pilkington is covering it for The Guardian; Alexa O'Brien is covering it for The Huffington Post, and Kevin Gosztola is covering it for the liberal website FireDogLake.

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What Is Encryption, and How Does It Work? – How-To Geek

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Youve probably seen the term encryption used around the internet. So what is it? It might be the most important technology we have. Most digital security measures,everything from safe browsing to secure email, depend on it. Without encryption, wed have no privacy.

If you write something down that is important, private, or sensitive you might worry that someone else is going to read it. If you need to give it to a messenger to take to another person, the risk of the wrong people reading that message increases. Encryption changes the composition of a message or data so that only people who know how to return it to its original form can read it. To anyone else, itll appear as gibberish or a meaningless collection of characters and symbols.

Since the earliest times, people have used different techniques of preventing anyone but the intended recipient from reading private messages. The ancient Greeks would wrap a strip of parchment in a tight spiral around a wooden rod called ascytale. They wrote their message along the length of the rod, over the wrapped parchment.

Uncoiled, the writing on the parchment made no sense. A messenger would deliver the parchment to the recipient who would read the message in private having first wrapped it around their own, matching, scytale. This is a form oftransposition cipher.

Its a primitive technique, but it has elements that youll find in modern encryption systems. Both the sender and the recipient must know in advance what the encryption scheme is, and how to use it. And they both need matching mechanisms to do so.

Another method used by the ancient Greeks used aPolybius square. This was a five-by-five or six-by-six grid of letters. A letter was referenced by its coordinates, like the game battleships. The first letter in the first row was coded as 11, the fourth letter on the second row would be written as 42, and so on.

Of course, there are many ways to fill the grid with letters. Unless you know the layout of the letters, decryption is difficult. This lets you set up a scheme with multiple squares with different layouts. You could create seven squares and use a different square for each day of the week, for example. Schemes that use multiple alphabets are calledpolyalphabetic ciphers.

A Polybius square is a form of code. A code substitutes other characters for letters, in this example, digits. Ciphers replace letters with other letters.

Julius Caesar gave his name toCaesars Cipher. This uses an offsetor rotationto select a letter a set distance from the letter youreenciphering. If you were using an offset of two, A would be written as C, and D would be written as F. The recipient has to know the correct offset to use to decipher the message by subtracting the offset from the letters theyve received.

A Caesars Cipher with an offset of 13known as rotation 13 or ROT13possesses a special quality. There are 26 letters in the standard English alphabet, and 13 divides into 26 exactly twice. With this offset, to decipher something you can put it through the enciphering process again. Enciphering twice returns you to the original text.

If you pick out the letters GEEK in the top alphabet and note the matching letters in the lower alphabet, youll get TRRX. If you do that again with TRRX in the top alphabet youll get the letters GEEK from the bottom alphabet.

In programming terms, this simplifies matters because you only need to write an enciphering routine. Theres no need for a deciphering routine. This is why writing a ROT13 implementation is a common exercise for people learning to program. ROT13 is also commonly held up as anexample of very poor, low-grade encryption.

You can try it yourself with this online ROT13 engine. Try entering Alaska Nynfxn then putting the output back in as the input.

All of the examples weve covered here are easy to crack, but they do illustrate a common element that is shared amongst them all, and amongst all forms of encryption. Theres a set of rules to follow to convert your original data, called the plaintext, into the enciphered version, known as the ciphertext. That set of rules is an algorithm. And thats what encryption is.

Its algorithms for privacy.

Just like the person in ancient Greece, a person in the digital age who wishes to store or send private data faces challenges. What can you do to prevent unauthorized people from accessing the data? And what can be done to make it secure?

All of the old systems could be overcome with knowledge of the encryption system. Use the same diameter rod and the scytale message becomes readable. Caesars Cipher can be broken by trying different offsets on the first part of the message. You only have 25 to try, at the most.

Polybius squares pose more of a challenge because the layout of the letters within the square is unpredictable.If you know what the layout of the square is, it isnt even a challenge. If you have no idea of the layout of the square you can try to decipher the message by studying the ciphertext itself.Thats called cryptanalysis.

With a simple cipher, you can use aids like letter frequency tables to work out which ciphertext letter represents which plaintext letter.A secure encryption scheme needs to be secure no matter who knows about the mechanics of the scheme, and the ciphertext must withstand cryptanalysis attacks.

Robust digital schemes dont work on letters and characters one at a time as serial ciphers do. They work through the data a chunk at a time and are called block ciphers.

They manipulate the bitsall those ones and zeroesinside each block according to the rules of complicated mathematical transforms embedded inside the encryption algorithms.If an algorithm uses a block size of 128 bits itll work its way through the data in chunks of 128 bits. If the last chunk to be processed is smaller than 128 bits, it is padded to 128 bits.

There are many block encryption schemes available. The Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) is the official encryption standard of the U.S. government. Different encryption schemes use different algorithms and different block lengths and make use of different combinations of mathematical transforms.

RELATED: What Is "Military-Grade Encryption"?

That all sounds very thorough, but how do we prevent an unauthorized person from using the same encryption scheme to decrypt our encrypted data?

Well look at a special case first. Its possible to encrypt data using a one-way transform. This is the very antithesis of ROT13 because the resulting ciphertext cannot be reverted to plaintext. More accurately, it cant be decrypted within a practical timeframe. This type of encryption is used in hashing functions where a string of plaintext is hashed into a string of ciphertext, called the hash or hash string. All of the hash strings are the same length.

How is this useful? Well, a secure website wont store your password in plaintext. Your password is hashed and the hash string is stored. Your password is never retained. When you next log in and enter your password, it is hashed and the hash string is compared to the hash string that is stored in your account details. If they match, you can enter. If you enter an incorrect password the two hash strings wont match and you are not allowed in.

This lets the website use authentication without having to store the passwords in an exposed form. If they get hacked, none of the passwords are compromised. Hashing techniques may also add unique, random data called asalt to the passwords before they are hashed. This means all hashes are unique even if two or more users happen to have chosen the same password.

To prevent unauthorized people from decrypting data, a key is used that identifies who encrypted it and who can decrypt it. A key is a long sequence of bytes generated by a complex algorithm. They typically range in size from 128 bytes to 2048 bytes or more. The key is used by the encryption algorithm when it is encrypting the plaintext. The key size is independent of the block size.

To protect locally stored data, entire hard drives can be encrypted. The encryption is tied to the login identity of the user and the key is generated automatically and applied automatically. The user doesnt have any direct interaction with the key, and the key never needs to be sent to anyone else.

Because the key is tied to the login identity of the user, removing the hard drive from the computer and connecting it to another computer will not allow access to the data. This type of protection safeguards data that is static or at rest.

If your data must be transmitted you need to consider how you will safeguard your data in transit.

When you connect to a website and see a padlock symbol in the address bar, you know youre connected to a website that is secure, right? Well, sort of.What it actually means is that the connection between your computer and website is encrypted using SSL/TLS encryption.

Thats a good thing, but it doesnt verify the security of the rest of the website. The website might be storing passwords in plaintext and using a default admin password on the database. But at least if you see thepadlock, you know your communication with the website is encrypted.

This encryption is possible because your browser and the website use the same encryption scheme with multiple keys. At the start of a connection session your browser and the website exchange public keys. A public key can decrypt something that has been encrypted using a private key.

Your browser and the website exchange their public keys and then encrypt using their private keys. Because each end of the connection has the other ends public key, each end can decrypt the information they receive from the other end. The private keys need never be exposed.

Releasing a public key is safe. A public key cannot be used to fraudulently encrypt data. So although you receive a copy of a websites public key, you cant impersonate the genuine website because you dont have the private key. This raises the question of authenticity. How do you know the website is the genuine owner of the public and private key pair, and not a copycat site that somehow stole both keys from the genuine website?

Certificates are used to verify the identity of websites. These are issued by Certification Authorities once they have verified the identity of the applicant. The website sends the certificate as part of the handshake at the start of a connection session so that the web browser can validate the certificate.

It does this by contacting the Certificate Authority and decrypting some information on the certificate. This requires yet more keys. Your browser has public keys of major Certificate Authorities as part of its installation bundle. And there are yet more keys involved. As well as exchanging public keys, your browser and the website create unique session keys to further secure their communications.

Once your browser has verified the authenticity of the site and the strength of the encryption, it places the padlock in the address bar.

RELATED: How to Turn on "Enhanced Safe Browsing" in Google Chrome

The concept of public and private keys crops up again and again in encryption. A common method of securing emails in transit uses pairs of public and private keys. Public keys can be exchanged safely, private keys are not shared. Messages are encrypted using the senders private key. The recipient can use the senders public key to decrypt and read it. They can use their own private key to encrypt a reply.

OpenPGP is a well-known encryption scheme that follows this model, with a twist.

The senders email client generates a random key.This is used to encrypt the email message.The random key is then encrypted with the recipients public key.The encrypted message and the encrypted random key are sent to the recipient.The recipients email program uses their private key to decrypt the random key which is then used to decrypt the message.

The purpose of the extra step is to allow an email to be sent securely to multiple recipients. Your email client doesnt need to encrypt the entire email separately for every recipient, just the random key.

Of course, secure email systems also face the question of authenticity. You have to trust the public key that has been sent to you. Keys are tied to email addresses. Having the public key sent to you from the email address youll be conversing with is a good first step. Most email clients can show the email address associated with a public key.

Another method of checking the authenticity of a public key is to obtain it from a repository. The public keys uploaded to repositories are verified by the repository before theyre made public.

At least, encryption underpins our digital lives if were doing it right. Avoid unsecured remote connections of any type (whether remote working or buying online), use email clients capable of encrypting private messages, and use messenger apps with end-to-end encryption.

Lbhe cevinpl vf vzcbegnag, hfr gur nccebcevngr gbbyf gb fnsrthneq vg. As Caesar might have said.

RELATED: What Is End-to-End Encryption, and Why Does It Matter?

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What Is Encryption, and How Does It Work? - How-To Geek