Category Archives: Censorship

Denmark says it will take measures to protect teachers' freedom of expression and prevent the risks of "self-censorship".

The Danish government has stated that teachers should be able to speak about certain subjects, including cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, the Holocaust, women's rights, and LGBT+ issues.

The ruling Socialist party said it would begin discussions in parliament on "freedom of expression" in January.

"It is unacceptable for violence and threats to create self-censorship and censorship in schools," said Danish Justice Minister Nick Hkkerup.

"All teachers must feel free and safe in their teaching, and Parliament has an obligation to ensure this," he added.

Last week, Denmark's opposition had a majority support its proposal for school teaching on cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.

The cartoons -- which were first published by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten in 2005 -- triggered an unprecedented wave of anti-Danish sentiments in several Muslim countries. Islam strictly forbids any depiction of Mohammed.

The cartoons were also connected to the 2015 terror attack on the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo in Paris, which killed 12 people.

Last year, French history teacher Samuel Paty was beheaded after showing cartoons of Mohammed during a lesson on freedom of expression.

Denmark has said that many teachers in the country fear "violence or threats of violence" related to their work.

"Teaching in primary schools must, of course, include teaching about democracy and freedoms, and the Muhammad crisis -- as a major event in Danish history -- is a natural part of that teaching," the justice ministry said in a statement.

"We must not and will not accept teachers being met with threats when they do their work."

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Denmark pledges to protect teachers from threats against free speech - Euronews

By Michael Gryboski, Christian Post Reporter | Thursday, December 16, 2021Unsplash/Souvik Banerjee

A conservative pro-family group is accusing Twitter of suspending one of its leaders after posting a tweet denouncing the surgical mutilation of minors suffering from gender dysphoria.

Jon Schweppe, director of policy and government affairs with the American Principles Project, reportedly had his Twitter account suspended over the tweet posted on Tuesday. The major social media site accused him of engaging in hateful conduct.

Twitters hateful conduct policy states that accounts may not promote violence against, threaten, or harass other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease.

Schweppes now-deleted tweet came in response to South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem championing efforts to ban biologically male trans-identified athletes from competing in girls sports in her state.

Now we hope that governors will likewise be emboldened to continue the fight against the evil gender ideology being forced on Americas children by joining Arkansas and Tennessee in banning the chemical castration and surgical mutilation of minors suffering from gender dysphoria, tweeted Schweppe.

On Wednesday evening, according to the APP, Twitter suspended Schweppe and would not reinstitute his account until he deleted the tweet, which he did.

Schweppe filed an appeal of the decision, arguing that he is advocating for protecting children from violence. However, his appeal was rejected because the Twitter support team found that a violation did take place.

In a statement emailed to supporters, APP President Terry Schilling denounced Schweppe's temporary suspension as the work of would-be dictators in Silicon Valley.

Throughout most of the country, there would be little controversy in saying that children should not be the subject of procedures that sterilize and mutilate their young bodies. In fact, advocating on behalf of those procedures would be considered hateful, stated Schilling.

But in the screwed-up world of Twitters woke censors, trying to protect young kids actually constitutes hateful, violent speech. Inside their impenetrable, left-wing bubble, they cannot imagine how any reasonable person would hold these views.

Schilling believes that it is terrifying that people with such views hold so much power over our national discourse. He called on Republicans in Congress to commit to reining in the unaccountable influence of Big Tech should they regain the majority next year.

Twitter has come under fire from conservatives and Republican elected officials for censoring right-wing views on the platform.

In August, Republican Rep. Doug Lamborn of Colorado sent a letter to then-Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey denouncing the websites troubling double standard for banning former President Donald Trump but allowing the Taliban to have accounts.

It is clear that the Taliban is a violent organization, wrote Lamborn, adding that he did not find a single fact check on any of their tweets, nor any warnings for false or misleading content.

It is impossible to see how the accounts of [Taliban members] Zabihullah Mujahid and Yousef Ahmadi do not violate your policies.

In late May, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a law that allows private citizens to sue major social media companies if they believe they were wrongfully censored on a platform.

Many in our state have experienced censorship and other tyrannical behavior firsthand in Cuba and Venezuela, stated DeSantis earlier this year.

If Big Tech censors enforce rules inconsistently, to discriminate in favor of the dominant Silicon Valley ideology, they will now be held accountable.

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Twitter suspends conservative activist who criticized 'surgical mutilation of minors' - The Christian Post

SLJ rounds up censorship news around the country, withreports of books threatened withremoval in Arizona, Iowa, Missouri, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

Scottsdale, AZ: The Paradise Valley Unified School District Governing Board voted December 2 to not renew an employment contract for Horizon High School principal Linda Ihnat after parents from the school raised concerns about an AP English summer reading assignment. Parents notified the school district in November that they opposed the decision by the school last summer to give students the option of reading So You've Been Publicly Shamedfor an AP English class. The 2015 book by British journalist Jon Ronson contains interviews with internet personalities who have been publicly shamed online and compares it to how public shaming was popular in Colonial America as a state-sanctioned punishment. Parents complained that some of the quotes and references in the book were inappropriate for high school students, 12 Newsreported. The book, which was one of the options for the AP English summer reading assignment, contains references to orgies and bestiality.

Des Moines, IA: Two Iowa Republican leaders want to pursue legislation that would make it a felony offense for school officials, including teachers, to provide "obscene materials" to students. Iowa Senate President Jake Chapman (R) posted on Facebook in November that he plans to introduce legislation that penalizes teachers and librarians for providing what he views as "obscene material" in schools, according to an Axiosreport. The Facebook post followed a Johnston Community School District meeting he attended where a committee reviewed two award-winning books that deal with race: The Hate U Giveby Angie Thomas and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indianby Sherman Alexie, the Des Moines Registerreported. Chapman, who was joined by Republican state Sen. Brad Zaun, told school district committee members, "I don't know why the school thinks that they're above the law, but I intend to do something about it.

North Kansas City, MO: Two books about LGBTQ+ experience George M. Johnsons All Boys Arent Blueand Alison Bechdels Fun Home were removed from four high schools in North Kansas City in October. The North Kansas City School District removed the books from its four high schools after Jay Richmond, president of the Northland Parent Association, objected to the books at North Kansas City Schools board of education meeting in October, according to the Kansas City Star. The Northland Parent Association, a nonprofit representing parents in Clay and Platte counties, MO, has been on the frontline of the local book ban push. The group, which has also sued over enforcing district mask and quarantine mandates, has encouraged parents to protest the books at local school board meetings, deeming some to be pornographic. At a November 22 school board meeting, high school students in the school district condemned the group'sefforts.At the same meeting, the North Kansas City School District agreed to return the two books to high school library shelves in the district, the New York Daily Newsreported.

Wake County, NC: Parents and community activists filed criminal complaints on November 30 with the Wake County Sheriffs Office, accusing the Wake County Public School System of keeping books they claimed were obscene and pornographicin high school libraries. Thebooks targeted includeGender Queer: A Memoirby Maia Kobabe, All Boys Arent Blueby George M. Johnson, George (now titled Melissa)by Alex Gino, and Lawn Boyby Jonathan Evison. The parents and activists opposed the sexual language and image in the books. Any decision on whether to file criminal charges against the school system will be up to Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman, the Charlotte Observerreported. Julie Page, one of the Wake County parents who filed a complaint, told the Charlotte Observer that the books have no educational value. Page also filed a grievance with the Wake County school system.

Fairfax County, VA: Fairfax County Public Schools removed two booksGender Queer: A Memoirby Maia Kobabe and Lawn Boyby Jonathan Evisonfrom its high school libraries after public comments during a Fairfax County School Board meeting in September, WUSA9 reported. Both of the targeted books were then submitted to a book challenge under thecounty school system's processfor challenging school materials. Stacy Langton, a Fairfax City resident, was one of the speakers at the county school board meeting in September, arguing that the books contained pedophilia and pornographic material. On November 23, Fairfax County Public Schools announced it would reinstate the two books that were pulled from high school libraries. The school district determined the challenges were "found to be without merit" and the two books could return to the shelves of its high school libraries. Two committees formed by Fairfax County Public Schools to review Gender Queerand Lawn Boy found that neither book includes pedophilia nor material that qualifies as obscene, under the definition in Virginia law.

Spotsylvania County, VA: At a November 8 meeting, the Spotsylvania County School Board directed staff to begin removing books that contain sexually explicit material from library shelves after a parent raised concerns at a board meeting about books available through the Riverbend High Schools digital library app. The parent expressed particular concern about the book, 33 Snowfishby Adam Rapp, which tells the story of three homeless teenagers attempting to escape from pasts that include sexual abuse, prostitution, and drug addiction. The board voted 6-0 to order the removal. Two board members, Courtland representative Rabih Abuismail and Livingston representative Kirk Twigg, said they would like tosee the removed books burned, the Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star reported. A week later, the Spotsylvania County School Board voted to reverse its decision to remove "sexually explicit" books from school libraries after hours of public comment. Abuismail and Twiggcontinued to opposekeeping the books in school libraries, WUSA9 reported.

Harrisonburg, VA: In November, two Harrisonburg City Public Schools parents expressed concern about the graphic novel Gender Queer: A Memoir.One parent expressed concern at a school board meeting and one via email to superintendent Michael Richards. Neither parent followed the proper protocol for objecting to books or course material. Despite the school systems policy for the review of challenged materials, Richards ordered the bookpulledfrom the shelves of Harrisonburg High School, the Daily News-Record reported. Richard then formed a committee to review not only Gender Queer: A Memoirbut to establish criteria for dealing with similar books in the future. Richard expects the committee will make its recommendations on pulling the book by winter break in December, according to the Daily News-Record.

Waupaca County, WI: The book review committee of the Manawa School District has decided to retainLooking for Alaskaby John Green in the districts middle school and high school libraries. Resident Stacey Trinrud told the district's book review committee in November that the book contains detailed sexually explicit encounters andbad language and normalizes dishonesty, hazing, underage drinking, and smoking, the Waupaca County News reported.District library media specialist Jen Krueger spoke at the review committee meeting, saying that a pluralistic society is a diverse one where the people in it believe all different kinds of things and tolerate each others beliefs, even when they do not match their own. After reading the novel, committee members voted 9-0 to retain the book as an option to students, according to a post on ParentSecurityOnline.

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'Looking for Alaska' Gets a Reprieve in WI; Scottsdale Principal Loses Job After Assigned Reading Controversy | Censorship Roundup - School Library...

There is a new scourge befouling the media landscape, one that our self-appointed mandarins have declared themselves eager to combat: misinformation.

The Aspen Institutes Commission on Information Disorder recently released a report that blamed misinformation for a range of social problems: Information disorder is a crisis that exacerbates all other crises Information disorder makes any health crisis more deadly. It slows down our response time on climate change. It undermines democracy. It creates a culture in which racist, ethnic, and gender attacks are seen as solutions, not problems. Today, mis- and disinformation have become a force multiplier for exacerbating our worst problems as a society. Hundreds of millions of people pay the price, every single day, for a world disordered by lies.

With $65 million in backing from investors such as George Soros and Reid Hoffman, the newly organized Project for Good Information also vows to fight fake news wherever it roams. As Recode reported, the groups marketing materials claim, Traditional media is failing. Disinformation is flourishing. Its time for a new kind of media. The project is run by Democratic operative Tara Hoffman, whose company ACRONYM created the app that spectacularly bungled the Iowa Democratic caucus vote in 2020.

And as Ben Smith reported in the New York Times, the Shorenstein Center at Harvard University has been hosting a series of meetings with major media executives to help newsroom leaders fight misinformation and media manipulation. Even Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has apologized for his platforms role in spreading misinformation.

The origin of this new wave of portentous declarations and hand-wringing can be found in the Trump years. In an insightful piece in Harpers, Joseph Bernstein labels this effort Big Disinfo.

Its a new field of knowledge production that emerged during the Trump years at the juncture of media, academia, and policy research, he writes. A kind of EPA for content, it seeks to expose the spread of various sorts of toxicity on social-media platforms, the downstream effects of this spread, and the platforms clumsy, dishonest, and half-hearted attempts to halt it.

As Bernstein argues, As an environmental cleanup project, it presumes a harm model of content consumption. Just as, say, smoking causes cancer, consuming bad information must cause changes in belief or behavior that are bad, by some standard.

Big Disinfo has gained in popularity in mainstream media outlets in part because it claims to solve the problem of bad information while placing blame for it on anyone other than mainstream media. In fact, those diagnosing our illness and prescribing the cure are themselves purveyors of the infodemic they claim is upon us.

The Aspen Institutes commission, for example, includes several people who have actively engaged in misinformation efforts. As the Washington Free Beacon reported, one of the commissions advisers, Yoel Roth, was the Twitter executive who blocked his sites users from sharing the New York Post story about Hunter Bidens laptop just before the 2020 election.

Adviser Renee DiResta is something of a misinformation wunderkind as well: She was an adviser to American Engagement Technologies, which, the Beacon reports, is a tech company that created fake online personas to stifle the Republican vote in the 2017 special Senate election in Alabama.

The commissions co-chair, Katie Couric, is also familiar with manipulating facts to yield favorable outcomes. She admitted in her recently published memoir that she had removed and edited statements made by Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg about athletes protesting the playing of the national anthem. Ginsburgs criticism of the practice might have angered her fellow liberals, Couric feared.

Commissioner Rashad Robinson, head of the activist group Color of Change, also helped spread misinformation by promoting the hate-crime hoax of actor Jussie Smollett even after it was clear Smollett, who last week was convicted on criminal charges related to the staging of the attack, was lying. And then there is commission member Prince Harry, an expat British ex-royal with few qualifications but a lifetime of evidence of his own questionable judgment (such as dressing up as a Nazi and, more recently, whining to Oprah about the family that funds his lavish lifestyle).

Earlier this year, Harry declared the First Amendment bonkers.

The Aspen Commissions report says there is no such thing as an arbiter of truth, and yet our media gatekeepers have claimed that mantle for themselves with decidedly mixed results for some time.

Consider the fact that Russiagate, a yearslong effort to prove that Donald Trump was being blackmailed and controlled, proved untrue yet was given constant media attention, while the story of Hunter Bidens laptop and its contents, which proved true, was actively suppressed with the explicit purpose of protecting Joe Bidens chances of becoming president. We live in a surreal information moment when the lie was given ample airtime and featured prominently in print, while the truth was smothered and labeled disinformation.

And yet our self-appointed misinformation warriors have proven unwilling to engage in self-reflection. Harvards Shorenstein Center used the New York Posts story on Hunter Bidens laptop computer as the basis for one of its case studies during its recent misinformation sessions.

The lesson that the centers leaders drew, however, was not the one anyone who values the truth should follow. According to the Times, the Shorenstein Center claimed that the Hunter Biden story offered an instructive case study on the power of social media and news organizations to mitigate media manipulation campaigns. In other words, the suppression of information deemed by experts to be misinformation was precisely the kind of Good Information objective we should be pursuing. The research director of the center, Joan Donovan, told the Times that the Hunter Biden case study was designed to cause conversation its not supposed to leave you resolved as a reader.

But what is there to resolve about the fact that the Fourth Estate eagerly embraced the role of chief information censor on behalf of a Democratic candidate for president?

Misinformation and disinformation are nothing new. Propaganda, political dirty tricks, and deliberate lies have been with us a while and have often been a point of pride for their practitioners. It was not that long ago that Ben Rhodes, then a top aide to President Barack Obama, boasted about creating an echo chamber in the media to spread falsehoods about the details of Obamas Iran nuclear deal.

It is true that misinformation has taken on greater significance thanks to the scale and speed of the social-media platforms that spread it. But the new sanctimony about misinformation should be leavened with some healthy skepticism about the movements major actors.

As Bernstein noted, in some sense the disinformation project is simply an unofficial partnership between Big Tech, corporate media, elite universities, and cash-rich foundations. The crusade against misinformation is an approximate mirror image of Donald Trumps war against fake news.

Control of information is control of one of the most valuable commodities in the developed world: peoples attention. And people want their confirmation biases affirmed. But scholars and commissioners studying misinformation also suffer from confirmation bias. Contra the proposals made by panels and commissions on misinformation, the most radical thing we could do right now isnt to give more power to elites or the federal government to control information.

Their record of late Russiagate, Hunter Biden, the Covington kids, the Wuhan lab-leak hypothesis, Border Patrol officers with whips, the Kyle Rittenhouse trial has not been stellar. It would be far better for the health of the information ecosystem that these supposed experts are always invoking if reporters focused on shoring up what were once unassailable tenets of journalism balance, iron-clad sourcing, and critical independence from and skepticism about the powerful. Instead, they are powers handmaidens.

From Commentary

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Inside the hypocrisy of media manipulators, censors who claim to fight misinformation - New York Post

The Michigan Civil Rights Commission last week took a stand in favor of academic freedom, passing a resolution opposing two pieces of state legislation that would ban Critical Race Theory in K-12 public schools.

The commission on Monday, Nov. 22 discussed Senate Bill 460 and House Bill 5097, asserting a stance against any and all legislation that promotes censorship and book banning.

The resolution states that the proposed legislation provides for censorship for educators and gives students an inaccurate and incomplete account of the history of the United States.

Critical Race Theory (CRT) is a framework in education aimed at fostering understanding of race and racism on an institutional and structural level.

Its most often taught in colleges and universities. As it is not currently being taught in K-12 schools anywhere in Michigan, both bills would preemptively prevent Critical Race Theory in classrooms.

CRT arose as a political talking point around the country in connection with the New York Times 1619 Project, a collection of essays and literary works that drew focus to the onset of slavery in the United States and its impact on American history.

Conservatives in Michigan argue that Critical Race Theory inaccurately characterizes U.S. history and could sow division among students.

Senate Bill 460, sponsored by Sen. Lana Theis, R-Brighton, and House Bill 5097, sponsored by Rep. Andrew Beeler, R-Port Huron, were both introduced in the Michigan Legislature earlier this year.

Related: Michigan lawmakers debate bill to ban critical race theory in schools

Under Theis legislation, public school districts in Michigan would be banned from teaching Critical Race Theory, material from the 1619 Project or other anti-American and racist theories, including that the United States is a fundamentally racist country, that the Declaration of Independence or the U.S. Constitution are fundamentally racist documents and that an individual, by virtue of his or her race, is inherently racist or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously.

Under Beeler legislation, public school districts in Michigan must not, in any way, include the promotion of any form of race or gender stereotyping or anything that could be understood as implicit race or gender stereotyping. Examples of race or gender stereotyping, according to the bill, are statements, beliefs or ideas that individuals hold a collective quality or belief or bear collective guilt for historical wrongs on the basis of their race or gender.

The bills were referred to the Senate Committee of the Whole and the House Committee on Education and Career Readiness, respectively.

Related: Candidate for governor threatens to wipe out Education Department over Critical Race Theory. Actually, he cant.

The Civil Rights Commission resolution goes on to mention that the U.S. Constitution protects teachers and students who have a First Amendment right to freedom of speech in the classroom, stating:

... Academic freedom is fundamental to fact based, historically accurate knowledge, delivered by trained educational professionals. No facts, ethnicities, languages, races and cultures should be removed from history.

The resolution also referred to comments made by state Superintendent Dr. Michael Rice at an Aug. 10 Michigan Board of Education meeting, in which he said students need to learn about race and racism.

The only Republican member of the commission, Ira Combs, Jr., said he doesnt believe Critical Race Theory is a legitimate terminology.

I would prefer that it be called critical race history, Combs said. Teach the history, teach the facts and let the chips fall where they may.

Combs abstained from voting on the resolution. It passed with support from five commissioners: Commission Chair Stacie Clayton, Commission Vice Chair Zenna Faraj Elhasan and Commissioners Richard Corriveau, Gloria Lara and Portia Roberson. Commissioners Regina Gasco-Bentley and Anupama Kosaraju were absent from the Nov. 22 meeting.

Clayton clarified that the resolution was meant to neither support nor oppose Critical Race Theory.

What our resolution is doing is supporting academic freedom for teachers so that they are able to teach historically and factually, and not remove any parts of history that might make some uncomfortable such as ethnicities or race or gender, Clayton said.

Related:

Critical Race theory isnt taught in Michigan schools, so why is it such a hot topic? - mlive.com

Amid debate over critical race theory, Michigan college creates K-12 curriculum based on conservative perspectives - mlive.com

Michigan lawmakers debate bill to ban critical race theory in schools - mlive.com

Berated and interrogated: School board meetings have become untenable amid mask mandates, critical race theory - mlive.com

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Michigan Civil Rights Commission says Critical Race Theory ban would censor teachers - mlive.com

Tom Leatherbury| Special to the Globe-News

To use his words, Texas Gov.Greg Abbott has a problem when it comes to censorship and double standards. Abbottrecently assertedthat Big Tech companies are the ones with a big problem when it comes to censorship and double standards, but those claims could be easily used to categorize one of the host of new laws that the governor encouraged the Texas Legislature to pass to compel speech the government approves and suppress speech the government disapproves the new social media censorship law, House Bill 20.

This unconstitutional law attacks the very companies that facilitate safety and well-being for their users by combating misinformation the same companies that Abbott is courting to bring good-paying jobs to Texas.

Abbott has praised House Bill 20, signed into law on Sept.9, 2021, for protecting Texans from wrongful censorship on social media platforms. The law prevents tech companies with 50 million monthly users or more from banning users based on political or religious viewpoints wherever those viewpoints are expressed. The law also requires multiple disclosures about content moderation practices and processes by these companies, sets a 48-hour deadline for the review and removal of illegal content, and creates nearly insurmountable obstacles for email service providers to block spam and other unwanted messages.

While the bills supporters may claim the law is protecting the First Amendment rights of Americans, in reality, the law tramples the free speech of private American companies. House Bill 20 is even more draconian than a recent Florida law that a federal judge held unconstitutional on multiple grounds and preliminarily enjoined from taking effect.

Judge Hinkles injunction against this Florida law set the record straight, stating that the First Amendment says "Congress"shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech or of the press. The Fourteenth Amendment extended this prohibition to state and local governments. The First Amendment does not restrict the rights of private entities not performing traditional, exclusive public functions. In short, the First Amendment provides that a state government, like Florida and Texas, cannot abridge the speech rights of a private company, like Google.

The Florida federal court concluded that tech companies are private entities with First Amendment rights of editorial discretion and that state governments do not possess the power to disregard these rights. However, Gov.Greg Abbott and the Texas Legislature do not seem to care about this federal court ruling or the United States Constitution. They disregarded both by passing House Bill 20 and signing it into law.

Texas taxpayers will bear the financial burden of watching House Bill 20 being declared unconstitutional now that NetChoice and the Computer and Communications Industry Association have filed a lawsuit against the state of Texas to invalidate House Bill 20.

Aside from infringing on companies constitutional rights, laws like House Bill 20 make it more difficult and expensive for companies to create enjoyable and secure products for users. Technology companies have stepped up and have made robust investments to keep products family-friendly, clean from hate speech and misinformation, and safe from illegal activity.

House Bill 20s drastic measures could easily impose significant additional costs on tech companies. Preventing companies from moderating content might score Texas politicians some cheap political points, but it will cost users and taxpayers severely. Texas officials should be empowering tech companies to continue their efforts to enhance safety from hate speech and misinformation, not disincentivizing them with costly, unfair, and unconstitutional laws and regulations.

Perhaps the largest insult to tech companies and Texans can be attributed to Abbotts double standards. He is using House Bill 20 to target and hurt the very companies that he is actively recruiting to invest in the state of Texas. On one hand, Texas is courting tech companies to bring good-paying jobs and economic vitality to the people of Texas, but on the other, the governor and other Texas officials are on a mission to punish the same companies who could bring those immense benefits to our economy.

It's time for Abbott to embrace the economic free market principles that have made Texas attractive to so many businesses and stop encouraging the passage of unconstitutional legislation.

Tom Leatherbury is the director of the First Amendment Clinic at Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law and Texas counsel to Electronic Frontier Foundation in NetChoice v. Paxton, the constitutional challenge to House Bill 20. The views expressed are his own.

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Leatherbury: Meet Greg Abbott: The governor of censorship and double standards - Amarillo.com

China's internet censorship machine has expanded to include crypto media outlets and mining pools in a continued attempt to minimize Chinese users' exposure to the crypto market ecosystem.

Chainnews, one of the major Chinese crypto media outlets established since 2017, is now shutting down all channels of content production and distribution.

Meanwhile, Chinese internet service providers have taken further steps to detect and block domestic miner IPs from connecting to major mining pool services, based on a China Telecom document seen by The Block.

These moves are signs that China is not loosening its grip over the crypto industry even if its most severe crackdown efforts ever since the summer has already dampened retail interests and forced businesses and executives to either cut ties with the Chinese market or physically move overseas.

Earlier this month, the mobile apps and web domains of at least three major Chinese language crypto media outlets Chainnews, ODaily and BlockBeats all became inaccessible almost at the same time. Since then they have switched to their official Telegram channels to distribute newsflashes to subscribers and changed to new web domains.

Yet still, after much thought, Chainnews editor-in-chief said in his WeChat news feed on Friday that the platform is shutting down entirely and expressed his genuine gratitude toward everyone in the community that has been with it over the years. Other outlets like ODaily and BlockBeats are still operating on new web domains but their mobile apps are inactive, which has limited their readership reach on the mobile front.

This comes months after popular market information sites such as CoinMarketCap, CoinGecko and TradingView were blocked by China's Great Firewall.

According to a recent document made by China Telecom and seen by The Block, the top Chinese internet service provider has come up with a detailed solution to detect domestic miner IPs that have communicated with mining pools' URLs.

Based on its ongoing detection, it can either cut off the internet service to specific IPs or manually blacklist the URLs that mining pools use to connect with individual equipment.

As of writing, the domains of almost all the 10 biggest mining pools by real-time hash rate for both Bitcoin and Ethereum are not accessible from IPs inside China, based on The Block's verification.

Among them, F2Pool, ViaBTC, BinancePool and BTC.com have seen sharp real-time hash rate declines by around 10% for either Bitcoin or Ethereum over the past 24 hours.

2021 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

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China's crypto censorship reaches over news outlets and mining pools - The Block Crypto

When a staffer at the independent media website Iwacu in the central African state of Burundi tried to visit the outlet online in late October, they received an error message instead. Hum. Nous ne parvenons pas trouver ce site; the site could not be found even though the local media regulator had promised to unblock it in February.

A report published in August found Burundian networks using technology from Chinese company Huawei to block Iwacu and other news sites. The report was funded and published by PrivacyCo, the parent company of privacy research and advice website Top10VPN.com. Co-authors Valentin Weber and Vasilis Ververis, PhD candidates at the University of Oxford and Humboldt University of Berlin respectively, told CPJ in a recent video call about their research tracking Huawei equipment known as middleboxes to internet networks in 72 countries, 18 of which were using the devices to block news or other websites. (Weber has since joined the German Council on Foreign Relations as a cyber research fellow.)

In Cuba, the report found the sole state-controlled internet service provider ETECSA using Huawei technology to block independent news website Cubanet, among others; authorities in Cuba have subjected Cubanet and its journalists to frequent restrictions. Readers can bypass blocks using virtual private networks (VPN), but many news outlets must shift their work to other sites or social media. In Egypt, a number of outlets have gone out of business after being blocked.

Middlebox devices can examine the packets of data that facilitate browsing and communication using a process called deep packet inspection. DPI has benign, even essential functions, like making connections faster or caching content for future access, but it can also be used to manipulate or filter information, the authors said. In the wrong hands, a middlebox could divert visitors to a rogue website designed to steal passwords or install malware, for example.

Such intrusions are hard to detect, but the 18 countries in the report acknowledge blocking notifying users via their browsers that the content they are trying to access is restricted making censorship a starting point for researchers to assess whether countries are using middleboxes to undermine human rights, according to Weber and Ververis.

Glenn Schloss and Rob Manfredo of Huaweis U.S. corporate communications team acknowledged CPJs request for an interview when the report was initially published, but did not subsequently respond to emailed questions.

The interview with Weber and Ververis has been edited for length and clarity.

You describe Huaweis middleboxes performing online behavior management where does that term come from?

Weber: It comes from Huawei marketing material relating to a specific middlebox, the ASG5000 series. We found it in a Chinese language source, so its our translation, but I think it matches the capabilities well it can detect traffic and act on it, managing the behavior of [internet] users in various contexts and venues.

Why are you concerned about the security implications of middleboxes on national networks?

Weber: Important traffic is flowing through these devices but the policies [for the data Huawei receives from them] sometimes werent clear what happens to the data, or whether it can be transferred further. For different continents or territories, we found a database location in Mexico for Latin America for example but you wouldnt know what happens once the data is transferred there.

Ververis: An analogy for a consumer would be a cleaning robot that sends data to the vendor about the dimensions of your house. Hopefully its in good faith, but I would not be surprised if that data was being sold or analyzed [for other purposes].

Should individuals on a network be concerned that a middlebox could access private information, or passwords, for example?

Ververis: Usually you should not be worried when youre visiting websites, especially websites that use some kind of encryption or secure layer [like HTTPS, which prevents others from reading or intercepting information exchanged between a reader and the websites that they visit]. We all know that you shouldnt connect to open WiFi, [but instead] use a VPN or Tor [on untrusted networks], and [log in to accounts with] two-factor authentication.

But its difficult to protect against a strong adversary. Lets say youre a journalist on a network that you dont trust. The network can gain a lot of information from your connectivity, and middleboxes can [be used to facilitate a cyberattack].

How did you detect that these middleboxes were being used to block websites?

Ververis: We use open data from the Open Observatory of Network Interference, which collects network measurements from volunteers all over the world. When youre sending and receiving a request from a web server you get back some metadata, and we were able to find the specific Huawei tag added to these responses. That might reveal the device, the model, sometimes the version. The middlebox we found had already been found in 2017 OONI research on Cuba.

Its only possible to do this research if the data is provided openly, the way OONI does. Other entities like Cloudflare and Google, or the transparency reports from social media companies, dont help researchers and journalists find out whats going on.

You found 18 countries blocking content with middleboxes, up from seven in an earlier study you did in 2019. What does that suggest?

Ververis: We have more data from OONI now than before, but censorship has [also] been increasing. Its actually quite surprising that [so many countries] use the same device, so there may be more to unpack there whether its cheap, or easy to deploy, we dont know.

Is Huawei providing maintenance on these devices or facilitating how they are used?

Ververis: In general, infrastructure [used by internet service providers] should be maintained by the vendor. You usually pay for a license to keep using it [for a specified period].

Weber: The devices report back to the vendor, sending error notices and other information, so the manufacturer might be incentivized to act on that, for example to provide software updates. We also expect that Huawei is likely to provide keyword lists or broad categories for blocking to the customers.

Your report found websites in the news and media category were among those most subject to blocking what do you take that to mean?

Ververis: News and political advocacy were among the higher categories, though in some countries we have much more data than in others. There are [also] other [blocking] methodologies. In Cuba, they still use the Huawei middlebox, but theyre also deploying something else. Either it doesnt have a tag or its the same equipment thats been changed, or, most probably, other devices.

The research is not conclusive, but our goal was to raise awareness. If one vendor and one device can do so much damage, what happens with the other dozens or even hundreds that are also out there?

Weber: We uncovered the tip of the iceberg. If there has been some political censorship in a country, even if its just a few websites, we can expect there to be more.

Would you argue Huawei is more likely to facilitate censorship because of its origins in China, one of the most censored countries in the world?

Weber: Like all other companies, Huawei is profit driven, which means they will sell anywhere they can make money. Weve seen that Blue Coat Systems, a company based in the U.S., was selling to regimes that were questionable. There are very few international regulations that would inhibit any of these companies [from] selling wherever there is an opportunity.

[Editors note: Researchers at the University of Torontos Citizen Lab have reported products sold by Blue Coat Systems being used to censor and surveil internet traffic around the world in the past, including in Syria in 2011, despite a U.S. trade embargo. The company which has since been acquired and restructured, according to Forbes told the Wall Street Journal that the technology had been transferred without its knowledge.]

What is a companys responsibility if it supplies a middlebox to a customer that uses it to censor news under local law?

Weber: There are best practices to engage customers abroad and do risk assessments. I havent seen much evidence that Huawei does this.

If youre a manufacturer selling to law enforcement or government entities, you have to assess their human rights record. Its too easy to say, We dont know how its going to be used. We were able to find questionable use of the technology, a multi-million or multi-billion-dollar company should be able to as well.

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How Chinas Huawei technology is being used to censor news halfway across the world - CPJ Press Freedom Online

Online video streaming service Disney+ appears to have censored an episode of The Simpsons in Hong Kong which references the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre.

The 12th episode of the 16th season was first broadcast in 2005 and sees the family visit China, where the cartoon family visits the mummified body of ex-leader Mao Zedong. The newly-launched Disney+ platform skips from episode 11 to 13.

The missing show entitled Goo Goo Gai Pan includes a line of tanks, referencing the iconic tank man photo, as well as a joke placard inside Tiananmen Square stating on this site, in 1989, nothing happened. The episode is still accessible when viewers enable VPN circumvention tools.

The Tiananmen Massacre occurred on June 4, 1989 ending months of student-led demonstrations in China. It is estimated that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people died when the Peoples Liberation Army was deployed to crack down on protesters in Beijing.

HKFP has reached out to Disney for comment.

The massacre has been heavily censored in China for decades.

Meanwhile, following the onset of the Beijing-imposed national security law last June, Hong Kong has arrested leaders of the Alliance, which organised annual commemorations of the 1989 crackdown. The authorities have banned the annual vigil in Victoria Park citing Covid-19, textbooks have been censored, museum exhibits seized, and the University of Hong Kong has demanded the removal of a monument to the dead.

Last month, Hong Kongs legislature passed a bill which enables the government to ban films deemed contrary to national security from being screened and published in the city. Any person who exhibits an unauthorised film could face up to three years in jail and a HK$1 million fine. However, the the new does not apply to streaming platforms.

When asked if YouTube or other online platforms would be affected, a spokesperson for the Commerce and Economic Development Bureau told HKFP in August that other laws apply to the internet: [TV] broadcast and the Internet are subject to other applicable law and regulations. Whether an act constitutes a crime or otherwise would depend on its specific circumstances and evidence, and cannot be taken in isolation or generalised, they said.

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Disney+ appears to censor episode of The Simpsons in Hong Kong referencing Tiananmen Massacre - Hong Kong Free Press

Comedian Vir Das said that all art comes from a pure place and that no creator thinks about plaudits or brickbats when theyre making something. Das has been at thecentreof a storm after the release of a video on his YouTube channel, in which he spoke about coming from two Indias.

In an interview on the sidelines of his International Emmy nomination, he told NDTV that he doesnt think the iron fist of censorship will strike down on artists more strongly in the future. He said, Any type of art, whether its poetry or writing or acting or comedy, it comes from a pure place. And good artists are able to exhibit that purity in the simplest way possible. Then, you either get a response that people like it or you get a response that people dont like it. I dont know any good artists that are thinking about the response while theyre creating.

Asked why partnering with a global platform is an option that he has taken even though he has his own YouTube channel where he isnt bound by any restrictions, the comedian said, Theres no censorship for me on Netflix. They just say, Make people laugh, and I do. Thats the only expectation weve ever had with each other. What Im proud of withour work with each other is, as comedian grow, youre always worried that special after special after special shouldnt look like same guy, fancier suit, bigger room. Thats the wrong journey for an artist to take. In fact, weve gone in the opposite direction. We started with a stadium, then we went to America, and then we came back to India and just sat on a doorstep. We brought humility into comedy, and I enjoyed taking our culture to the world.

In his now-viral two Indias video, the comedian highlighted the duality of the country, with one observation about violence against women attracting the ire of not just certain politicians, but also actor Kangana Ranaut.Daslater urged audiences to watch the clip in its entirety, and not fall prey to edited versions.

Das called the video his love letter to India. I have made my country laugh for 10 years now. I have devoted my life to writing about my country. We are here at the Emmys because I wrote a love letter to my country. As long as I am able to do my comedy, I want to keep writing love letters to my country, Das said previously.

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Vir Das doesnt think censorship will get worse, says art comes from a pure place - The Indian Express