Category Archives: Censorship

Ari Shaffirs new two-part special Double Negative hit Netflix today. Presented in two episodes, Children and Adulthood, the special is a sprawling look at where the comedian is at in life right now. Hes getting older, exploring his sexuality, and dealing with pressure from family and friends, all in front of the backdrop of a world that is kind of fucked. He breaks down the overarching message of the special like this: One side is what Im against, the other side is what Im for in this life Ive chosen. Ari and I had an in-depth chat about the development of the material, the business side of shooting your own special, and the difficult dance between comedy purism and Comedy Centrals censorship.

Your new special Double Negative is divided into two parts: Children and Adulthood. What led to you dividing this release into two separate sections?

Generally I try to have some kind of through line in my specials. Otherwise, I find it just becomes sort of a collection of bits, which is fine, but its sort of more like a Van Halen album than awhat is it, Sea Change by Beck?

Right.

Yeah, thats a breakup album. Theres a reason theyre all together. If you add another song in thereits like, Im going to save this one for myself because it doesnt fit. So I just need a through line, even if its just in my head. With this one I couldnt really center on a through line. The bits were sort of everywhere, unlinked. I had all this stuff on children and then I had all this other stuff that wasnt quite enough for a special. At the time, I was listening to a lot of Smashing Pumpkins because me and Big Jay (Oakerson) saw them at Rock on the Range in Columbus a few years before. It was so bad. It was just Billy Corgan. He had people that looked like the regular band and he played all of his old songs at double speed just to get through them. He just did it for the money. He walked half the crowd. I dont even know if I stayed for the whole thing. I was mad at him for a couple of years. Then I was like, Well, let me remember what I liked about them. So I started listening to the old albums: Gish, Siamese Dream, and Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. That one is such a good album. I listened to it over and over again. As I was listening to it I thought, I could apply this to my special and have like a double album.

Then I started thinking about how to break this down in a twofer kind of way. One is all about children because thats the pressure Im getting from my family a little bit and my friends, who are like, Come on, man. Why arent you having a kid yet? Im getting more and more in my thoughts about why I dont want that. Theyre like, Why? Well, let me tell you why. The screaming and you being tired all the time is a negative. Plus, this positive thing that Im going through, you cant do if you have a wife and kids. You cant go to Thailand for two weeks and explore your homosexuality. Youre not going to have STD call drama with random girls. This is a life youve given up. Some of its good, some of its bad. It really started to form in my head that way. One side is what Im against, the other side is what Im for in this life Ive chosen.

Once the segments started to become clear in your head, how did you structure them for the stage, being that its essentially two shows worth of material?

I really worked it. I took it to Edinburgh. I started taking intermissions at the ones I did in Scandinavia. I wanted to see what it felt like to close on each one. Ive seen people do this thing when theyre getting ready for their late night sets where they do their five that theyre going to do for late night and then they keep going and do the rest of their 15-minute set. But you dont know what it feels like to close on your closer joke. So I was doing that. I would flip flop nights, doing adulthood first or children first and then take an intermission. It was going well, but then I talked to (Joe) Rogan about it and he said, Thats all well and good, but thats a Scandinavian crowd who might be used to that stuff. You try to do that in America and theyre going to revolt. Youve got to do it in America before you tape the special. So I started running it like that with little intermissions. I told the clubs to book me a 10 or 15-minute opener and then I ran an hour-and-a-half to an hour-and-45 until I felt like I had two strong closers and two completely free-standing, yet together, specials.

How much did the material change once you brought it back to the States?

It needed more jokes in there for sure. Edinburgh audiences are hoity-toity smart people who are willing to see things like that. I learned that the attention span here is not quite as long and I needed to throw some more tags in there. Theres also other things, like abortion material. Out there it didnt play very well. The attitude here that Ive found in people who are going to comedy clubs is that theyre for a womans right to choose, but then they also think something is wrong with you if youre doing it. You know what its like: I heard she had four abortions. Oh, what?! In the UK and Scandinavia its more just like a procedure if you have to get one, just get one, no big deal. So those jokes didnt hit as hard there, but when I got back here people were more shocked by them.

Where did you record these two sets?

Cap City.

Any reason in particular that you chose Austin?

I have a list of all of my favorite clubs and I want to shoot at all of them. My CD, my first release, was at the Comedy Works in Denver, one of the best clubs in the country. Then I went back to the original room at The Comedy Store, which is probably my favorite room. Then Cap City.

The two sections of Double Negative have slight variations in aesthetic, plus a wardrobe change.

I had to decide how I was going to shoot it. I didnt want two separate locations because I didnt want two separate specials. I wanted it more like a front side and back side. Chappelles special was two separate specials recorded years apart. I dont know why they put those together, to be honest. But theres a George Carlin album FM & AM. It was right after he became dirty and he was exploring his clean side and his dirty side. He had one clean album and one dirty album, like two sides of the coin. So I decided to do it at the same location, but make it a little different. Change the wardrobe, change the color scheme of the set.

This is your first time working with Netflix, which means you probably had to front the whole production and then shop it and sell it, right?

Yeah, it was a risk for sure. I was at the point where I didnt want tothe last special I did I got a call about two weeks before I shot. I was in Appleton, Wisconsin. I try to go up at really shitty clubs for two or three weeks beforehand. Sometimes I dont even tell people Im going, no promoting it at all. Ill just be like, Give me the minimum you would give somebody with no draw. Im not going to tell anybody Im here. I just want to get this stuff real sharp in front of people who dont know me.

So anyway, I was doing that in Appleton, which is actually a really good room, and I get this call saying, Hey, your closer that youre planning on doingwe cant show it. At first they were like, We have notes. I was like, I dont want notes. I dont want them. Keep them to yourself. If you want to cut stuff, cut stuff. They were like, Youre going to need to hear this. We cant show your whole closer. I was like, Why? They said it was just an S&P rule. It was some rule about how you cant describe the smell of a vagina or something like that. I had already worked on it the way I wanted to, so I had to figure out what I was going to close with. When they told me that, right then I thought, I cant ever let you have control over what I do again. As long as I have enough money where Im not destitute, Ive got to do it myself with no notes. Its my special, not anyone elses.

So I talked to my agent and manager and told them what I wanted to do and they said, You might lose a lot of money. I was like, Im willing to. I live like a fucking pauper. So I saved up enough money. This is why I saved up money not so I could take a vacation, but so I can do this, build my special the way I want. I figured if it didnt work I could make $10,000 of it back in iTunes sales and then, lesson learned, I cant do that anymore. But I did sell it. So now this is the way Im always going to do it. Get out of my way, let me do what I want, and then Ill show you what I have. Its like a painter or an artist. They just say, Heres my work.

I remember when Paid Regular came out on Comedy Central it was advertised as uncensored. It sucks to hear the backstory of you having to drop your closer. Your special was censored before it was even finished.

Its not the way comics are supposed to do things. Its like the show I did, This Is Not Happening. The first day we had a meeting where we had to go over the stories with the comics. I remember raising my hand in the meeting and being like, Well, we could go over their stuff with them or we could trust professional comedians to be prepared on their own when theyre doing comedy. They all kind of laughed. I was like, Its not funny. Let them do what they want. We shouldnt be giving them any notes. Im a comedian and I dont want to give them notes. Anyone else who is not doing it should never tell anyone. Get out of peoples way and let them be who they are. If they make a mistake, fine, thats on them.

I saw that you were doing an Off-JFL thing in Montreal. They have your show listed as Ari Shaffirs Renamed Storytelling Show. I assume that Comedy Central is keeping the rights to This Is Not Happening as they are bringing Roy (Wood Jr.) in. But what are your plans to continue doing the show the way you created it? Will you be taking it back to stages and

Ive always done it on stages. I never really stopped doing it throughout the year. I do it at the Bell House, different spots, festivals. Its like, whatever, man. Theyre not going to stop me from being a comic. Its like, fine, do whatever you feel that you have to, but Im going to keep going.

What are your plans once the special drops? Are you going to beef up touring or are there any other big projects in the works?

Im trying to build my next hour. Im trying to do it all about Judaism. Im building that slowly. Im writing stuff. I want to do a travel book. I want to do a roast battle in the Belly Room. You know, just fun stuff. I want to be home for a while. Im not going to start touring again until December or January. I want to build my new hour here in the city.

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Ari Shaffir Moves from Censorship to Creative Control with 'Double Negative' - Splitsider

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos poses on a lorry in Bangalore.

Manjunath Kiran/AFP/Getty Images

Among big American tech companies, the race for India is on. With 355 million internet users (and rapidly growing) up for grabs, its no surprise that firms like Facebook, Netflix, and Amazon are investing billions of dollars to make inroads in the worlds largest democracy.

But as they do, theyre running up against a particular conundrum: how to cater to the countrys cosmopolitan consumers without offending its more conservative classes, including the right-wing government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In a surprising number of cases, companies are erring on the side of censorshipfor instance, by blocking images of dead cows and ads for anti-nationalist home goods.

Indias approach to internet governance isnt in the same league as the heavy-handed censorship of neighbor and rival power China though, which has historically blocked popular websites including Google, YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook through its Great Firewall. India represents a softer form of sanitization. By law, the nation offers a constitutional protection of free speech and limits the governments ability to crack down on online content. But that doesnt mean the internet has become a free-for-all. For example, India frequently leads the world in government requests to Facebook for account data and for content removal (mostly related to local laws against anti-religious or hate speech). Many companies also choose to pre-emptively clean up content to appease the government and avoid backlash from of Indias culturally conservative classes.

As noted in a post by the Centre for Communication Governance at National Law University, Delhi on Legally India, the practice of self-censorship is particularly widespread among international video streaming services. The authors suggest that the platforms may be trying to find their place in the Indian market without drawing attention for the wrong reasons.

This May, Netflix released a censored form of the Hindi dramedy Angry Indian Goddessesfor viewers in India, even though it made an uncensored cut available for foreign audiences in April. According to Indian digital news site MediaNama, it seems that the streaming service released the version of the filmwhich covers stigmatized issues like homosexuality, rape, and castethat had been approved for theatrical release by the Indias Central Board of Film Certification. But that body doesnt have jurisdiction over online content from platforms like Netflix and recently implied it has no intention of regulating online content in the foreseeable future.

Instead, it appears Netflixs decision was a case of self-censorship. According to the films production company and director, the American company requested the edited version of the movie first, apparently preferring to stream the version that cut references to the Indian government, blurred an image of an Indian goddess, and cut out dialogue referring to an Indian figure, the holy Hindu bovine cow, and, for unknown reasons, the words guitar and lunch.

Business is Business. They would rather censor stuff and stay on the good graces of the government of India than appease users and risk controversy, wrote one Reddit user in a discussion about the streaming services seemingly arbitrary censorship decisions in the country.

After getting complaints from confused India-based viewers, Netflix released an uncut version of the movie in June.

Amazon Prime Video also routinely eliminates nudity and other inappropriate content from its vast streaming catalog. Since its 2016 launch in India, many TV shows and films available in the region have been edited to the point where plots elude human comprehension. Among others, Amazon heavily cut an episode of Jeremy Clarksons car show The Grand Tourthat featured the host driving a car out of animal carcasses. Despite complaints, Amazon defended the move to Mashable India, saying it wanted to "keep Indian cultural sensitivities in mind. Considering the recent episodes of violence allegedly tied to beef consumption, Amazon may have thought it incendiary to show the dead body of an animal so highly revered in Hindu circles.

Amazon has also had to mind its online merchandise. The everything store came under fire in January for selling doormats with the Indian national flag design. (In India and other South Asian countries, feet on such a symbol would be considered an insult.) Upon learning of the product, Indias Foreign Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj tweeted, Amazon must tender unconditional apology. They must withdraw all products insulting our national flag immediately. In a subsequent tweet, she threatened to withhold and rescind visas from Amazon employees if action was not taken quickly. The company swiftly complied.

Tinder, too, hasnt been immune. The hookup app took criticism earlier this year after releasing a seemingly tone-deaf video ad for potential Indian users, which featured a conservative mother surprisingly approve of her daughters date, saying, From my side, there is a right swipe for this."

Some criticized what they saw as a regressive message at odds with the apps reputation for facilitating casual sex. Others pointed out how not OK their parents would be with them meeting up with strangers in a culture where open dating has traditionally been taboo.

If ma knew her daughter is on a hang-and-maybe-bang app, shed kick me outta the house, not sweetly send me off to drunk-make out with a rando, one user told BuzzFeed India.

When Tinder India CEO Taru Kapoor was asked about the video by Huffington Post India, she admitted the ad might not have been perfectly executed. But, she said, it was part of a larger effort the company would continue to make to show that online dating could appeal to a broad range of Indian users. Although differing from Amazon Prime Video and Netflixs self-censorship, the advertisement tied into a broader trend of appealing to more conservative audiences.

As huge profit margins and success in the Indian markets are already demonstrating, that may not be an unwise business decision.

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American tech firms are preemptively censoring content in India. - Slate Magazine (blog)

In one experiment, researchers at the Citizen Lab found that a photo of Liu Xiaobo posted to an international users WeChat social media feed was visible to other users abroad but was hidden from users with Chinese accounts.

The heightened yet uneven censorship in recent days has elicited frustration and confusion among Mr. Lius supporters.

On the day after Mr. Lius death, one user posted on his WeChat feed: Did you see what I just sent? No, I cant see it. For the last two days, this has been the constant question and answer among friends.

The aggressive attempt at censorship is just the latest indication of the strong grip that the Chinese government maintains on local internet companies. In addition to automatically filtering certain keywords and images, internet companies like Baidu, Sina and Tencent also employ human censors who retroactively comb through posts and delete what they deem as sensitive content, often based on government directives.

Failure to block such content can result in fines for companies or worse, revocation of their operational licenses. Censors have been on especially high alert this year in light of the Communist Partys 19th National Party Congress in the fall.

Over the years, the constant cat-and-mouse game between Chinese censors and internet users has led to the rise of a robust internet culture in which censorship is normalized and satire and veiled references are par for the course.

So even as censors stepped up scrutiny in recent days, many savvy Chinese internet users found ways to evade those efforts. In tributes to Mr. Liu, users referred to him as Brother Liu or even XXX. They posted passages from his poems and abstract illustrations of Mr. Liu and his wife, Liu Xia.

Over the weekend, however, the tributes gave way to scathing critiques as friends and supporters of Mr. Liu reacted angrily to the news of Mr. Lius cremation and sea burial under strict government oversight.

One user took to his WeChat feed on Sunday to express disgust with the use of Mr. Lius corpse in what some called a blatant propaganda exercise. Swift cremation, swift sea burial, he wrote. Scared of the living, scared of the dead, and even more scared of the dead who are immortal.

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Liu Xiaobo's Death Pushes China's Censors Into Overdrive - The ... - New York Times

BBC News

Why China censors banned Winnie the Pooh BBC News The blocking of Winnie the Pooh might seem like a bizarre move by the Chinese authorities but it is part of a struggle to restrict clever bloggers from getting around their country's censorship. When is a set of wrist watches not just a set of wrist ... Winnie the Pooh is the latest victim of censorship in ChinaVox Chinese Censors Have Apparently Blocked 'Winnie the Pooh' Over a Silly MemeGizmodo China censors Winnie the Pooh on social mediaFOX 61 Financial Times -NBCNews.com -Global Risk Insights -The Guardian all 117 news articles »

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Why China censors banned Winnie the Pooh - BBC News

After President Trump won the 2016 election, Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, was hit with a wave of complaints from liberals claiming "fake news" on his social media platform had contributed to the Republican's victory. Zuckerberg responded by setting up a board to vet false reports and stacked it with left-leaning media outfits: Snopes, Politifact, FactCheck.org, ABC News and Associated Press (which just issued writing guidelines discouraging use of the phrase "pro-life" in favor of "anti-abortion").

And in May, Zuckerberg placedNew York TimesveteranAlex Hardiman at the helm of Facebook's News products, in charge of overseeing monetization and collaboration with other news organizations.

It's this same department that manipulated news content to artificially bump left-leaning causes while suppressing conservative stories. A 2016 report reveals that former Facebook staff admit they "routinely suppressed news stories of interest to conservative readersfrom the social network's influential 'trending' news section."

Facebook news curators also claimed they were ordered to artificially inject topics into the trending section (e.g., Black Lives Matter), even when they weren't popular, while deleting articles related to the GOP. According to reporter Michael Nunez,

Facebook's news section operates like a traditional newsroom, reflecting the biases of its workers and the institutional imperatives of the corporation. Imposing human editorial values onto the lists of topics an algorithm spits out is by no means a bad thing but it is in stark contrast to thecompany's claimsthat the trending module simply lists "topics that have recentlybecome popular on Facebook."

The Wall Street Journalreported in 2016 that Facebook had been caughtcensoring conservative, pro-Israel postswhile allowing liberal, pro-Palestinian content.

Even more concerning, in 2015 Zuckerberg wascaught agreeing to German Chancellor Angela Merkel's requesttohelp get rid of anti-immigration posts on social media.

The conversation, caught on a hot mic, involved messages about the refugee crisis, with Zuckerberg admitting "we need to do some work" on the issue.

"Are you working on this?" Merkel asked him.

"Yeah," Zuckerberg answered.

Shortly after, Facebook implemented its "Initiative for Civil Courage Online" to delete what it deemed "racist" or "xenophobic" comments. But Douglas Murray at the Gatestone Institute warned it was a tool for further censorship of legitimate conservative voices.

"The sinister thing about what Facebook is doing is that it is now removing speech that presumably almost everybody might consider racist,"said Murray, "along with speech that only someone at Facebook decides is 'racist.'"

Last year, WikiLeaks exposed anattempted meet-up between Zuckerberg and the Clinton campaignin order to give the entrepreneur advice on how to "move the needle on the specific public policy issues he cares most about."

Although Zuckerberg hasnever publicly identified as Republican or Democrat, and has contributed to candidates of both parties in the past, according to Federal Election Committee records, his political action committee made its biggest one-time donation to the Democratic Party in San Francisco in 2015 when it wrote a check for $10,000. He's also been open about his criticism of Trump and his immigration policies.

And it's not just Facebook. Other internet giants are also in on the conservative targeting: Google, Vimeo, YouTube, Twitter.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said in June 2016 that Google was "directly engaged in Hillary Clinton's campaign."

"The chairman of Google, Eric Schmidt, set up a company to run the digital component of Hillary Clinton's campaign," Assange declared at a journalism forum in May 2016. A number of Google employees appear in theWikiLeaks Clinton email archives, noting a cozy relationship with the Democrat leader. Evidence shows the search engineskewed resultsfor hits pertaining to Clinton's health back when it was a hot topic.

Google also had a close association with Obama: It was the single most frequent visitor to his White House, averaging one visit per week.

"Google controls 80 percent of the smartphone market through its control of Android," Assange noted, "and if you control the device itself that people use to read then anything that they connect to through that device you have control over as well."

The video hosting platform Vimeo is also targeting voices that don't fit the leftist narrative. Over the course of two years, it's deleted content and shut down accounts of ministries that help homosexuals leave the gay lifestyle.

In March, Vimeo deleted without warning 850 videos from Christian ex-homosexualDavid Kyle Foster's website. When Foster wrote to ask why,Vimeo responded, "To put it plainly, we don't believe that homosexuality requires a cure and we don't allow videos on our platform that espouse this point of view. ... We also consider this basic viewpoint to display a demeaning attitude toward a specific group, which is something that we do not allow."

And last year, Vimeo took down the account of Restored Hope, a group of ministries that help rid individuals of unwanted same-sex desires. It also closed down the account of theNational Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality, headed by the late Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, a pioneer in reparative therapy.

Foster has called Vimeo's actions "pure religious bigotry and censorship."

Social media giant Twitter has displayedbias against the pro-life message, censoring ads critical of Planned Parenthood while giving the abortion giant free rein to spread its misinformation online.

"Planned Parenthoodis allowed to promote their pro-abortion and misleading messages, whileLive Actionis barred from promoting any content exposing abortion andPlanned Parenthood," said Live Action CEO Lila Rose in June, after Twitter removed the pro-life group's ability to advertise.

Contents of banned ads were benign, including a tweet that declared thatPlanned Parenthoodis "about abortion, not women's health care," accompanied by a brief, all-text video casting doubt on the abortion conglomerate's "healthcare services."

More than ever, conservatives are at the mercy of those controlling the organs of social communication, and must find a way to preserve their voice on the internet in the face of increasing encroachments. Church Militant relies heavily on various online platforms to publish and promote our content, and we recognize the growing threat of censorship from the powers that be, most who hate the message of the Catholic faith.

Just this past week, Church Militant was the target of hackers, who were able to take down the site for a full day. Although no internal information was compromised, our message the message of Christ in His Church was kept from being disseminated to the millions who regularly view our programming as well as to new viewers who need to hear the truth.

Church Militant has taken beginning steps to protect the apostolate and its content by purchasing our own internal server but it comes at a cost $50,000, to be precise. If you believe in the mission of Church Militant and want us to continue spreading the light of the Faith, reporting on issues that matter to Catholics, and being the voice for authentic reform in the Church, consider donating to ourPreserving Catholics campaignto cover the cost of our server. We're grateful for any amount, large or small. We are especially grateful for your prayers in support of our work.

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The Coming Censorship From the Left - Church Militant

The Knesset on Monday approved a law allowing the court-ordered blocking or removal of internet sites promoting criminal or terror activity, marking the first introduction of laws restricting the internet in Israel.

We are closing an enforcement gap of many years during which the existing law was disconnected from the migration of crime to the internet, said Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan, whose office oversees the Israel Police. The new law will give the police the necessary tools to fight criminals, felons, and inciters who have moved their activities online.

The law targets illegal gambling websites, prostitution and child pornography advertisements, online dealing of hard drugs and synthetic cannabinoids and the websites of terror groups.

Clearing the Knesset plenum in its second and third reading with 63 lawmakers in favor and 10 opposed, the law stipulates that a district court judge who has received special permission by the court president may issue an order to internet providers to block websites linked to criminal activity.

Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan attends a meeting at the Knesset, Jerusalem, May 17, 2017. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

An internet provider that does not comply with the court order will be imprisoned for two years, the law says.

The court order may only be issued if it is essential to halting the criminal activity taking place online; or essential to prevent the exposure of the Israeli user to an activity that, would it be done in Israel, would be a crime, and the websites activity has some connection to Israel; or if the website belongs to a terror organization.

In certain cases, if the owner of the website is Israel-based, the court may order the provider to seek the websites removal, rather than merely restricting access, it said.

The courts may also order search engines to remove the websites from their search results and may rely on classified government testimony to make their decision. All affected parties must be present in court, the law said, unless they were summoned and failed to appear.

Due to warnings from rights groups that the law poses a slippery slope toward additional censorship, the final version of the legislation dictates that rights groups may appeal the decisions. It said the Justice Ministry must report to the Knessets Justice, Law and Constitution Committee once a year the number of requests for court orders to restrict internet content and for what crimes.

In addition to the law, lawmakers over the past year have been seeking so far unsuccessfully to advance legislation for court-mandated removal of Facebook content calling for violence against Israelis, as well as a law that would restrict access to online pornography.

The Knesset plenum on Monday also approved a bill in its first reading that would allow police to block cellphone users from their service providers for 30-day periods if there is a reasonable basis to assume the device is being used for criminal activity such as drug-dealing or prostitution. The bill was approved with 27 MKs in favor, with none opposed, and requires two more readings to become law.

Originally posted here:
To tackle online crime, Israel approves web censorship law - The Times of Israel

A century ago last month, America came close to formally empowering government censorship of the modern news media. That might seem like ancient history, but the censorship monster rises anew whenever a president finds himself under intense scrutiny and seeks to stifle coverage he doesnt like.

Donald Trump is waging a particularly angry campaign to harness press freedoms, including implied advocacy of violence against the fake news media, threats to yank reporters credentials and increasing bans on live TV coverage of White House press briefings.

The 1917 Espionage Act was an effort by Congress, supported by President Woodrow Wilson, to block any accidental or deliberate revelation of national security secrets as the United States fought the First World War. The original version explicitly outlined executive powers to censor newspapers prior to publication. Luckily, more reasonable minds prevailed and press censorship provision was withdrawn before the bill passed.

Even so, Wilson insisted, Authority to exercise censorship over the press is absolutely necessary to the public safety. This newspaper had solidly backed Wilson on other national issues, but our editorials then match our position today: The president was as wrong as he could be.

The Supreme Court has consistently viewed prior restraint of the press as unconstitutional, a position most notably affirmed when President Richard Nixons administration sought to prevent The New York Times and Washington Post from publishing the Pentagon Papers in 1971, citing the 1917 Espionage Act.

The concern in 1917 was that reporters covering the war might come across secret information about troop movements, intelligence and strategies that could make it into print. Those were all valid concerns.

But several months into World War I, this newspaper noted, there had not been a single case of secret information being divulged, either accidentally or deliberately. Reporters and editors were capable of performing their jobs and being patriots at the same time, a June 1917 Post-Dispatch editorial said. Autocracies thrive when the press is muzzled, it added.

These issues have arisen anew in recent years as government leakers like Edward Snowden and Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning stole top secret electronic files and dumped them on reporters. News organizations awkwardly had to self-censor, deciding which items were too sensitive for publication.

Trump seems less concerned about publication of classified information than about being embarrassed by reports of his own actions and words. Prior restraint is banned because such extraordinary powers cannot be entrusted to presidents under news media scrutiny.

The public might not always like what the news media reports, but the freedoms we enjoy in this country would be a shell of what they are today if the original Espionage Act, as embraced by Wilson, had become law.

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Editorial: A century after Espionage Act, censorship temptation remains - STLtoday.com

An ACLU letter sent to Kansas Senator Mary Pilcher-Cook, 10th District, has resonated with at least one Gardner resident. Wes Rains, Gardner, recently sent a letter to Lee Moore, Gardner councilman, requesting Moore unblock his ability to post to Moores official city councilmans Facebook page.

Lee Moore

Recently, a more famous public official (state Senator) has practiced the same form of censorship that you have, and she now has been asked by the ACLU to cease this behavior, Rains said in his e-mail. I believe this to be a similar situation, and am considering writing to the ACLU myself to appeal to your better nature and judgement, but before I do that, I am asking you myself as a Gardner citizen and constituent and voter. Rains attached the American Civil Liberties Union July 5, 2017, letter to Sen. Pilcher Cook in his email to Moore. According to the ACLUs letter, blocking opposing views violates citizens well established First Amendment rights to criticize elected officials and express opinions of public concern. Censoring a constituents viewpoint violates the First Amendments Speech Clause. According to Moores response received by Rains and supplied to The Gardner News, I am not required by ordinance or by statute to maintain an official Facebook page. Therefore, my social media activity, all of it, is a completely private endeavor. In fact, all of the content I place on my page, is licensed to Facebook by virtue of the EULA they make you sign when you create the account. In fact, because they own the platform, they may even elect to censor me, should they so desire. So, to make the argument that I can somehow violate your First Amendment rights from within a platform that I do not own or otherwise have any authority over, beyond that licensed to me by the owner of the platform, and that I am not even legally obligated to use for official business is absolutely laughable. I mean, what are you going to do if Facebook bans you for violating their terms of service? Will you claim that is also a violation of your First Amendment right? Thanks for the laugh. You may engage with me anywhere you find me in public, over the phone, and through my official email just like constituents who have no access to Facebook. You may also share content from my page on CFG and engage me there. Until I am required by statute to maintain an official public social media presence, I will reserve the right to control the content associated with my name. That said, I think you were banned only because you were backing the opposition and got obnoxious with me when I was running for office and this page was servingas my campaign page. However, I checked and you are not even banned and have not been banned for a very long time. If I do ban you in the future, maybe all it takes is asking me nicely instead of threatening me. Enjoy your weekend. Cheers, Lee According to Doug Bonney, Kansas legal director for the ACLU, Social media has become an essential tool of communications between elected officials and their constituents, and blocking someone from an officials Facebook page violates the First Amendment and the well-established right of the public to criticize elected officials. On July 5, we sent a letter to Senator Pilcher-Cook outlining these concerns and requesting that she cease censoring the comments on her page and reinstate those who have been blocked. In an e mail to The Gardner News, Moore said there was not anyone currently blocked on his social media page, although he admits Rains was temporarily blocked during Moores election campaign two years ago. He also says he is unclear when Rains was unblocked. Nobody is currently blocked from posting comments on the Lee Moore Gardner City Councilman Facebook page, Moore wrote. However, he indicates that he reserves the right to limit abusive or harassing language and makes note that the social media platform is not required nor government owned. Moore says he will not be bullied, but that he will not try to use his Facebok page to silence opposing opinions. Thus, Mr. Rains email to me and the rest of the Governing Body was received by me as an ignorant, ill-conceived, and unprovoked threat, he writes. Although, the ACLU is an organization which holds no authority over me or the City of Gardner. Nevertheless, I will not be bullied. Likewise, I cannot and will not try to use my Facebook page as a tool to silence people who hold opposing opinions. However, I will also not tolerate comments from people who are unable or unwilling to maintain civility and basic relevance to the topic being discussed. The complete text of his response is adjacent to this story. Since the ACLUs letter was sent, it appears the problem with censorship is more widespread than originally thought, said Bonney, ACLU. Theres a lot more of this than I realized, he said. The core first amendment right is to speak and be heard by your elected officials, Bonney continued. When elected officials censor those voices, they are violating the First Amendments core principle. If elected officials dont voluntarily comply by allowing constituents to comment, Bonney said other options will be considered. We will evaluate our options, Bonney said. At this point, there are no individual lawsuits anticipated, but it may become necessary to file a lawsuit. ACLUs around the country are looking at this, Bonney said. Currently, there is at least one ACLU branch preparing a lawsuit. The American Civil Liberties Unions website says, Last month, we were contacted by a constituent of the 10th District of Kansas who had been blocked from the official Facebook page of Senator Mary Pilcher-Cook, the state senator representing her district. The constituent was blocked after leaving comments on the page expressing opposition to the policy stances taken by Senator Pilcher-Cook, which were also subsequently deleted. The ACLUs letter to Pilcher-Cook is available online at: https://www.aclukansas.org/en/news/aclu-letter-senator-pilcher-cook-regarding-facebook-page-censorship As of July 11, Rains said his posts to Moores page were still blocked.

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ACLU may sue over censorship of social media pages by elected officials - Gardnernews.com

This statement was originally published on freedomhouse.org on 13 July 2017.

Sarah Cook, Senior Research Analyst for East Asia

July, more than most other months, is loaded with politically sensitive anniversaries that keep Communist Party of China (CPC) censors and security forces on their toes.

First comes the July 1 anniversary of Hong Kong's transfer from British to Chinese rule. Then there is July 5, marking the 2009 ethnic violence in the Xinjiang region that sparked an unprecedented crackdown on its mostly Muslim Uyghur population. The very next day, July 6, is the Dalai Lama's birthday, and July 9 is the second anniversary of a sweeping repressive action against China's human rights lawyers. Finally there is July 20, the date in 1999 when the CPC banned the popular spiritual practice Falun Gong and began a massive - and often violent - campaign to eradicate it.

This year, the anniversaries overlap with other news stories that Beijing likely wants to quash, including an international uproar surrounding democracy activist Liu Xiaobo's belated release on medical parole with terminal cancer, and a campaign by exiled tycoon Guo Wengui to publicize corruption allegations involving top Chinese leaders.

It is not surprising in these circumstances that the CPC has tightened information controls. But the party has not simply intensified its efforts in the short term. It has also gradually adapted its methods to a changing technological environment, one in which mobile phones, social media applications, and digital surveillance are critical features.

The result is a new level of intrusiveness and sophistication, as well as danger for populations that are already at risk of severe human rights violations.

One of the escalating restrictions that may have the widest reach is a crackdown on virtual private networks (VPNs), which allow users to bypass official censorship. Several VPN applications have been disabled or removed from online stores since July 1. In a June 22 message to customers, prominent VPN provider Green said that after receiving "a notice from the higher authorities," it planned to cease operations on July 1, causing a ripple of conversations on social media about what circumvention tools could still be used. The latest initiative builds on increasing official efforts to stop the dissemination of such tools, including some that the authorities had long tolerated.

The applications' removal will have the secondary effect of cutting off software updates for users, leaving their devices more vulnerable to hacking. And while many use VPNs to access uncensored news or blocked social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, the tools are also used for security purposes, to protect businesses and activists from pervasive state surveillance.

Other recent controls have focused on ethnic and religious minorities. In Xinjiang, authorities in a district of the regional capital Urumqi issued a notice on June 27 instructing all residents and business owners to submit their "personal ID cards, cell phones, external drives, portable hard drives, notebook computers, and media storage cards" to the local police post for "registration and scanning" by August 1. One district employee told Radio Free Asia that the campaign was taking place throughout the city. The goal is ostensibly to identify and purge any "terrorist videos," but the action violates the privacy rights of Urumqi's three million residents and exposes them to punishment for a host of other possible offenses, including those related to peaceful religious or political expression.

In Tibet, the instant-messaging application WeChat has become increasingly popular in recent years, as it has across China. But using it to communicate about the Dalai Lama or his birthday is difficult and dangerous. A test conducted in January by the Canada-based Citizen Lab found that the Tibetan spelling for "Dalai Lama" was automatically deleted in WeChat messages. Meanwhile, at least two Tibetans are known to have been jailed for participating in a WeChat group commemorating the spiritual leader's 80th birthday in 2015. After a new spate of self-immolation protests took place in early 2017, Tibetans in Sichuan Province report that police are monitoring communication on the platform more closely and detaining those suspected of sharing information about self-immolations with overseas contacts.

These developments reflect a broader trend identified in a recent Freedom House report on religion in China. The study found that Chinese government tactics of religious control and persecution have been changing to incorporate new technologies and match the evolving communication habits of the public. Even in the absence of sensitive anniversaries, various modes of electronic surveillance have expanded dramatically at sites of worship and public spaces frequented by religious believers.

The CPC's information controls also appear to be spreading to traditionally less persecuted groups, like state-sanctioned churches and non-Uyghur residents of Xinjiang. Since March, authorities in Zhejiang have reportedly been implementing a campaign to install surveillance cameras in churches and possibly Buddhist temples, in some cases sparking altercations with police and violence against congregants. In Urumqi, the order to turn in digital devices for inspection applies to ethnic Han and Kazakh residents as well as Uyghurs, while local Kazakhs have reported increased monitoring and some prosecutions related to expressions of their Muslim faith in recent months.

The Chinese government's actions are partly a response to creative initiatives by minority activists to share their stories and perspectives in a heavily restrictive information environment.

"It is a nonstop game of cat-and-mouse," journalist Nithin Coca wrote in a June 27 article about China's high-tech war on Tibetan communication. "As the Tibet movement's digital-security abilities and training improve, the Chinese government implements more sophisticated hacking techniques."

Similarly, as Falun Gong practitioners devise new means of disseminating information to debunk vilifying state propaganda and expose abuses they have suffered, security forces have adapted by increasing electronic surveillance and deploying geolocation technology to find and arrest them. Local authorities in places like Jiangsu province have also upgraded anti-Falun Gong propaganda efforts, deploying LED rolling screens, cartoons, microblogs, and QQ messaging - including in schools - last month to demonize Falun Gong and other banned religious groups.

The result of the escalating controls is that there are even fewer avenues for persecuted groups and individuals to defend themselves, offer alternatives to the party line, or expose violence committed by officials. Meanwhile, other Chinese interested in knowing more about these and other censored topics find it increasingly difficult - and risky - to obtain information.

There is also a cost to the CPC. Such aggressive "stability maintenance" methods ultimately increase tensions with key populations, intensify resentment of the party's heavy-handed rule, and inspire anti-government activism and even violence, including among otherwise apolitical citizens.

From that perspective, while the CPC's efforts may successfully silence some critics this year, party leaders may face an even more daunting challenge next July.

This article was also published in the Diplomat on July 7, 2017.

Sarah Cook is a senior research analyst for East Asia at Freedom House, director of its China Media Bulletin, and author of "The Battle for China's Spirit: Religious Revival, Repression, and Resistance under Xi Jinping".

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China's newest censorship methods on display - IFEX

For filmmaker and professor of economics Suman Ghosh, the irony is difficult to miss. His 2011 Bengali feature film Nobel Chor , which was inspired by the theft of Rabindranath Tagores Nobel medal and became a politically controversial topic in Bengal, was cleared by the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC). Four years later Kadambari , a biopic based on Tagores special relationship with his sister-in-law, also got the CBFCs nod. Why then is his most recent venture, The Argumentative Indian , a one-hour documentary on economist and Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, facing the heat from the governments censorship body?

Ghosh has been asked to mute out four words/phrases Gujarat, Hindutva view of India, cow and Hindu India to get a goahead from the CBFC. The words in question are not part of the directors script but figure in Sens opinion in the course of a conversation with Kaushik Basu, a fellow economist and former chief economic advisor of the government of India. The documentary, which has been screened once in Kolkata for a select audience, was to be released this week, when it was stalled by the Kolkata office of the censor board. He has uploaded a trailer on Facebook.

Im still in a state of shock and trying to figure out what to do next so that film can be screened without beeping out the words, says the award-winning filmmaker whose first feature film Poddokkhep in 2006 won two national awards, including best actor for Bengali thespian Soumitra Chatterjee. Ghosh, a professor of economics at Florida Atlantic University, will be in India for another month because he has just started shooting for his next film, Basu Paribar , with Chatterjee and Aparna Sen. He hopes that he will be able to sort things out and The Argumentative Indian will be released before he goes back to the US.

The disturbing trend of arbitrarily curbing creative freedom of film directors started with Abhishek Chaubeys Udta Punjab , during the tenure of CBFC chairman Pahlaj Nihalani, who took charge in early 2015. More recently, the CBFC refused a release certificate to Lipstick Under My Burkha . And now I feel that the fact that Amartya Sen has been critical of the BJP government may be one of the reasons for the curbs on my film, Ghosh told ET Magazine over phone from Kolkata. He feels that the Bollywood film fraternity, along with their counterparts from regional cinema in India, should come together and raise their voices against the censor board to ensure that directors freedom of expression is not attacked.

Setting Limitations Ghosh is not the only filmmaker having problems with censorship. Madhur Bhandarkars much awaited Indu Sarkar , which is based on the Emergency period in India and scheduled for release this month, has run into rough weather with the CBFC having demanded 14 cuts. The things that CBFC is asking us to change will change the essence of the film. We would surely go to the Revising Committee or the Tribunal if need be, the director said in reply to ET Magazine s questions on email. The Revising Committee is the second panel with a different set of members from the Examining Committee (the first panel). The final panel is the Film Certificate Appellate Tribunal (FCAT), which usually comprises retired judges and senior industry members. There is nothing derogatory in the film and all the names that we are using have been used for many documentaries, books and have been reported in the public domain. Also, the film is a human drama; the Emergency is just the backdrop, Bhandarkar added. I would request people to let the film release, see it in totality and then judge. Asking for ban, burning effigies or asking people to blacken my face is not the way.

Lipstick Under my Burkha , which was grounded by the CBFC last October because of its lady-oriented content, is now scheduled for a release next week after the FCAT overturned the CFBC ruling. Director Alankrita Shrivastava feels that in a democratic country, the censor body should have no role to play beyond a basic certification of films. Citizens have a right to engage with and consume whatever content they want to and the censor authorities should not come with any moral baggage, says Shrivastava. Now that her film, which went on to win several international awards, has been cleared with an A certificate, she is relieved. Not allowing the film to be released in India at all would have created a wrong precedent, discouraged women directors and been a step against artistic freedom, she says.

Filmmaker Onir, whose Shab was released on Friday, says there is an urgent need to revise film censorship guidelines. The Cinematograph Act is completely illogical in the present context. We should only follow a basic certification system in keeping with the principles of freedom of creative expresssion, the director said, adding that he was fortunate that his new film, which is about relationships and set in Delhi, was cleared with an A certificate, without any visual cuts and he had to only mute four words.

Director Prakash Jha, who is also the producer of Lipstick has long called for the scrapping of the censor body for films in India and feels that only basic certification guidelines should be followed. If you give anyone the authority to decide what other people will watch, they will look at it from their own perspective which will be determined by upbringing, education and other factors. No one should be given such authority and an authoritarian mindset can only harm creative expression and freedom of film directors. I have always said this and continue to say it, Jha told ET Magazine. While he was expecting Lipstick to run into problems with the censor board, he was surprised that the body completely refused to release the film.

There was no response to an email with questions sent to the CBFC chairperson at the time of writing. The problem may not be only with CBFC, points out Mumbai-based film and TV editor Irene Dhar Malik. The I&B ministry too recently didnt grant screening certificates to three documentaries that were selected for the International Documentary and Short Film Festival of Kerala they were on Rohit Vermula, JNU & Kashmir.

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Why censor body should not be deciding the films you should watch and the words you should hear in them - Economic Times