Category Archives: Censorship

In ananalysispublished on March 13th, researchers from the University of Southampton suggest that the number of cases of coronavirus in China could have been reduced by 86% if the first measures, which were taken on January 20th, had been implemented two weeks earlier. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) demonstrates, based on the events in the early days of the crisis, that without the control and censorship imposed by the authorities, the Chinese media would have informed the public much earlier of the seriousness of the epidemic, saving thousands of lives and possibly avoiding the current pandemic.

Photojournalists at the National Peoples Congress. Photo: Lukas Messmer/HKFP.

October 18: Chinese press could have reported the chilling results of a pandemic simulation

The John Hopkins Center for Health Security, in partnership with the World Economic Forum and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, carries out asimulatedcoronavirus pandemic onOctober 18th, 2019, andalertsthe international community to the chilling results: 65million deaths in 18months.

If the Chinese internet were not isolated by an elaborate system of electronic censorship and the media were not forced to follow the instructions of the Communist Party, the public and the authorities would have undoubtedly been interested in this informationcoming from the United States, which echoed the SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) epidemic of 2003. SARS infected 8,000 people and caused more than 800 deaths, mostly in China.

December 20: the Wuhan city authorities could have informed journalists

One month after thefirst documented case, the city of Wuhan already has 60patients with an unknown SARS-like pneumonia, several of whom havefrequentedthe Huanan fish market. Despite the situation, the authorities do not see fit to communicate this information to the media.

If the authorities had not hidden from the media the existence of an epidemic outbreak linkedto a very popular market, the public would have stopped visiting this place long before its official closure on January 1st.

December 25: Doctor Lu Xiaohong could have expressed fears to the press

Doctor Lu Xiaohong, the head of gastroenterology at Wuhan City Hospital No. 5, beginshearingcases ofinfectionaffecting medical staff on December 25 and suspects from the first week of January that the infection is transmissible between humans.

If journalists sources in China did not face severe penalties ranging from professional reprimand to heavy prison terms, Doctor Lu Xiaohong would have taken responsibility for alerting the media, forcing the authorities to take action, which only happened three weeks later.

Dr. Li Wenliang.

December 30: whistleblowers early warning would have been picked up by the media

The director of the emergency department at Wuhan Central Hospital, Ai Fen, and a group of doctors launch an alert regarding a SARS-like coronavirus. Eight of them, including DoctorLi Wenliang, who later died from the illness, will bearrestedby Wuhan police on January 3rd for circulatingfalse rumors.

If the press and social media had been able to freely relay the information transmitted by whistleblowers on December 30th, the public would have realised the danger and put pressure on the authorities to take measures limiting expansion of the virus.

December 31: social media would have relayed the official alert in China

Chinaofficially alertsthe World Health Organisation (WHO) on December 31st but at the same time forces the WeChat discussion platform tocensora large number of keywords referring to the epidemic.

Without censorship, the social network WeChat, which has a billion active users in China, could have enabled journalists to broadcast reports and precautionary advice contributing to better compliance with the rules recommended by the health authorities.

World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland. Photo: U.S. Mission Geneva/Eric Bridiers.

January 5: the scientific media would have disseminated the coronavirus genome earlier

Professor Zhang Yongzhens team at the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Centre manages to sequence the virus onJanuary 5th, but the authorities seem reluctant to make the genome public. On January 11th, the day China confirms its firstdeathfrom the virus, the researchers leak information on open source platforms, which will result in the punitive closure of their laboratory.

If the Chinese authorities were transparent, they would have immediately communicated the coronavirus genome sequence to the scientific media, saving the international community precious time in their research for the development of a vaccine.

January 13: the international community would have anticipated the risk of a pandemic

The first case of coronavirus infection outside of China, a tourist from Wuhan, is reported in Thailand.

If the international media had had full access to information held by the Chinese authorities on the scale of the epidemic before January 13th, it is likely that the international community would have taken stock of the crisis and better anticipated it, reducing the risk of the epidemic spreading outside China and possibly avoiding its transformation into a pandemic.

Here is the original post:
Reporters Without Borders: If the Chinese press were free, the coronavirus might not be a pandemic - Hong Kong Free Press

The National Coalition Against Censorship is closely following developments in the United States that could threaten our civil liberties as responses to the coronavirus pandemic test governments and social structures worldwide. During a global public health crisis, medical needs are, understandably, prioritized. But our needs are many-faceted. As governments work to limit the spread of COVID-19, we must vigilantly protect our rights to freedom of speech and expression and defend our ability to both share and access information. And as public spaces, schools and cultural institutions shutter, however temporarily, we must look for ways to continue civil discourse, to promote artistic and cultural expression and to engage with one another as fellow citizens and humans.

NCAC continues to track and monitor pandemic-related issues that threaten to chill free speech or infringe on our rights to express ourselves, share information, think, create and explore ideas. We will update this list as the situation develops. If you have specific censorship concerns or questions, please reach out.

In the days before a national state of emergency was declared, it was revealed that Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) meetings regarding the coronavirus had been classified since January. HHS oversees the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), among other agencies. Meetings were held in a secure area usually reserved for military or intelligence operations. In addition to preventing information from being shared with the public, holding classified meetings prevents health, legal, and other experts without upper level security clearance from participating. As Defending Rights and Dissent writes, It is an abuse of the classification process to classify deliberations about a public health crisis. The American people have a right to know the extent of the threat posed by the coronavirus and what steps to take. They have a right to accurate public health information. Government officials should not be covering up information in order to downplay the extent of the threat or hide their own missteps. And now more than ever, we need strong whistleblower protections. (Emphasis ours)

It can be tempting, in times of crisis, to label dissent as dangerous. But our democracy demands participation, and we must be allowed to access dissenting views and express our own. Disagreement and debate are crucial to thoughtful decision-making.

We must be able to question our governments response to this pandemic from all angles. In an attempt to write the legacy theyd prefer, Chinese censors have taken harsh steps to track and punish those criticizing the government online, rather than allow a robust and necessary assessment of how the pandemic began, spread and was handled. What happens next time, when no lessons are permitted to be remembered? The Chinese government has also expelled US journalists, limiting dissemination of accurate information about the virus from its source.

Another example of overbroad control of information is Morocco. Authorities there have criminalized misinformation in misguided efforts to prevent panic, but their power to punish speech has been extended to voices critical of the government and its response to the crisis.

Censorship of science by the US government takes the form of distorting, discouraging, and redacting research results for political reasons. The final result is suppression of vital information. (See here for information on censorship of climate science and stem cell research.) The Trump Administration has shown a willingness to muzzle scientists and early attempts to keep discussions of coronavirus classified raise concerns about the motivations behind overly stringent control on vital scientific information and medical expertise, as well as about its human cost.

Scientists and medical professionals must be free to share their knowledge and recommendations, even when it puts pressure on governments.

Nations across the globe are instituting travel restrictions and full bans on entry for non-citizens. Travel bans can violate Americans First Amendment right to receive information by preventing citizens from interacting with the ideas and viewpoints of foreign nationals. Freedom of speech includes the ability to facilitate the free international exchange of people and ideas. These bans can be particularly devastating to artists and cultural producers vulnerable for speaking out in repressive regimes.

The nature of COVID-19 and its spread make these choices understandable, but we must ensure that these restrictions are medically necessary and as limited as possible within the recommendations of experts. Broad, indefinite travel restrictions can easily be manipulated by political motivations, as seen during the Ebola outbreak in 2014.

In the early stages of the coronavirus outbreak in the US, containment strategies involved the use of increased surveillance and tracking. These methods of infection-mapping can be useful, and necessary, during such times. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) cautions, though, that, any extraordinary measures used to manage a specific crisis must not become permanent fixtures in the landscape of government intrusions into daily life. There is historical precedent for life-saving programs such as these, and their intrusions on digital liberties, to outlive their urgency. EFF lays out principles for data collection and digital monitoring of potential carriers of COVID-19:

As Albert Fox Cahn, the executive director of theSurveillance Technology Oversight Project, told the New York Times: We could so easily end up in a situation where we empower local, state or federal government to take measures in response to this pandemic that fundamentally change the scope of American civil rights. Read more here

As a growing number of Americans work from home, or have their employment curtailed entirely, and practice social distancing, social media platforms are becoming increasingly important spaces for gathering, sharing news and disseminating information. Some have criticized the platforms for allowing misinformation to proliferate or for not cracking down on racist speech relating to the coronavirus. Social media companies are adapting their rules about what information is allowed in real time as the pandemic spreads. Largely, though, platforms like Facebook and Twitter have been praised for their management of information that could be damaging to public health and for providing access to social connection in a time of physical disconnection.

Social media companies, however, have a complicated relationship with free speech. As private companies, they are free to set their own user guidelines and content standards. But as public spaces, many (including NCAC) argue that they have a responsibility to respect the principles of free speech and protect their users rights to express themselves. While both Twitter and Facebook frequently extol their commitments to free speech, they often struggle to balance user needs, commercial concerns and free speech protections. In an effort to protect its content moderators from COVID-19, Facebook is shifting most of its content moderation decisions to its algorithmic tools, however some of its most sensitive decisions are being moved to other staffers. Unfortunately, the automated tools used by Facebook often get decisions wrong such mistakes will be much more frequent while human moderators are mostly absent. The scarcity of human decision-makers will also inevitably complicate an already difficult appeals process.

Read the rest here:
Free Expression and the Coronavirus Pandemic - Blogging Censorship

Quarantine got me on tik tok, Erin Foster told her 500,000 Instagram followers on Tuesday. Foster is hardly alone, but thats just about the worst place to be.

Communist China hampered the dissemination of information that could have prevented a pandemic, and were spending the resultant quarantine period passing time with a stupid app that censors on the partys behalf. Its easy to understand whyTikToks addictive appeal is heightened in a world of social distance. But if ever there were a time to resist the reach of Chinas long arm, its now.

Much like Britney Spears, TikTok is not that innocent. The app has been credibly accused of censorship on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party, and faces legal obligations to overturn its trove of data if the CCP asks. Vox outlined two major concerns about TikTok in December:

One of the more problematic implications is a 2017 Chinese law, which requires Chinese companies to comply with government intelligence operations if asked. That means that companies based in China have little recourse to decline should the government request to access data.

The second is what the Chinese Communist Party might do with that data.

TikTok collects data. As an app owned by Chinese company ByteDance, the CCP can access it. TikTok claims U.S. data is stored outside of China. But thats largely irrelevant, asAlex Stamos, director of the Stanford Internet Observatory told the Washington Post last fall. The leverage the government has over the people who have access to that data, thats whats relevant.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) echoed these concerns in a bipartisan letter to Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire sent in November (emphasis added): Security experts have voiced concerns that Chinas vague patchwork of intelligence, national security, and cybersecurity laws compel Chinese companies to support and cooperate with intelligence work controlled by the Chinese Communist Party. Without an independent judiciary to review requests made by the Chinese government for data or other actions, there is no legal mechanism for Chinese companies to appeal if they disagree with a request.

As the Post pointed out, TikTok is not part ofthe Global Network Initiative, a collection of companies that have pledged to resist unlawful or overly broad requests from governments to access user data, the group confirmed.

The GNI does annual checkups of its members, including Facebook and Google, to ensure theyre keeping their promises, that report continued. But not TikTok.

Stamos further observed that TikTok is operating under a political censorship regime, and noted the Chinese government has no problem telling [its companies] where they should come down in political debates. For instance, content about the Hong Kong protests was noticeably light on the platform last year.

Consider alsothe case of New Jersey teenFeroza Aziz, whose account was suspended shortly after she posted a video explaining the CCPs oppression of Uyghur Muslims. At first, TikTok said Aziz was suspended for violating its terrorism rules in a separate video, a satirical clip about dating that included a picture of Osama bin Laden. Then the company changed its story, blaming ahuman moderation error, and restoring the video, rendering its initial excuse highly suspect.

As you might expect, TikTok claims it does not censor content in the United States based on the CCPs demands. Again, the app is owned by ByteDance, which owns Chinas version of TikTok. On Douyin, of course, a broad range of supposedly subversive topics are banned. After shuttering its comedy app, ByteDances founder issued an apology for deviation of socialist core values.

Thats whose app were using during these quarantines which, by the way, could probably have been prevented had the CCP not perpetrated a clear and despicable cover-up of the virus. The product youre using to pass the time while stuck indoors is owned by a company that is necessarily complicit with the bad actors in China who helped put us in this situation.

With kids home from school and adults home from work, people are turning to TikTok for entertainment, and understandably so. The app is fun. Celebrities are flooding it with content. But there is a legitimate ethical question as to whether bored Americans should spend their isolation time boosting the fortunes and influence of a company that is complicit with the communist government that cost us lives and jobs.

We have time to kill on TikTok because of communist Chinas cover-up. TikTok is complicit with communist China. We can probably find better way to entertain ourselves while we ride out this terrible storm Chinese communists helped send our way.

More here:
Why TikTok Is The Worst Way To Waste Time In Quarantine - The Federalist

Index on Censorship and the Justice for Journalists Foundation (JFJ) have joined forces and come together to set up a project that monitors and catalogues attacks and violations against the media specifically related to the coronavirus health crisis.

In our daily work in the post-Soviet region, Justice for Journalists Foundation experts and partners come across grave violations of media freedom and media workers human rights. Today, we are witnessing how the corrupt governments and businessmen in many of the regional autocracies are abusing the current limitations of public scrutiny, JFJ Director Maria Ordzhonikidze said.

This major decrease in civil liberties allowed governments to continue pursuing their interests in a less transparent manner while media workers striving to unveil murky practices are facing more risks than ever before, she said.

These violations will be recorded on a map hosted on Index on Censorship and on the Justice for Journalists Media Risk Map.

The project has three main objectives: the first is to increase awareness about the importance of media freedom at this particular point in time. The second is to support journalists whose work is being hindered by highlighting their challenges to an international audience and, finally, to continue to improve media freedom globally in the long term.

Justice for Journalists Foundation will contribute to the joint project by expanding cooperation with its existing regional partners in Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan.

Index on Censorship will use the experience it has gained running other mapping projects to gather and compare media violations in each country and further analyse the data when the global crisis is over.

It has been just over a week that Index on Censorship and Justice for Journalists Foundation started collecting data and already the numbers of journalists from all over the world reporting to the map are on the increase.

Index on Censorship has already expressed concerns about the number of incidents showing how governments are using this extraordinary health crisis as an excuse to roll back personal and media freedom.

A few examples include Hungarys Prime Minister Victor Orban, who has proposed a Bill introducing emergency legislation that gives him the power to rule by decree with a significant detail that outlines how these powers could be used against those who publicise false or distorted facts that alarm or agitate the public, with a punishment of up to five years in prison.

Meanwhile, in Brazil, President Jair Bolsonaro has issued a provisional measure which means that the government no longer has to answer freedom of information requests within the usual deadline.

In South Africa, the government has stopped epidemiologists, virologists, infectious disease specialists and other experts from commenting in the media on Covid-19 and insists that all requests for comment be directed to the National Institute for Communicable Diseases.

If the legislations are not reversed at the end of the crisis, many of these incidents will have long term consequences.

Strong media freedom is essential during this time. It is at the heart of helping tackle a fast-moving crisis, it must hold governments accountable if their actions threaten the safety of their people and it remains vital in finding out where help is needed and in telling peoples stories.

For those who want more information or wish to contribute to this initiative by providing information on incidents email: [emailprotected] or [emailprotected]

Originally posted here:
Global initiative to monitor attacks on the media during coronavirus - The Shift News

Thousands of lives could have been saved if China allowed its media freedom to operate independently, the Reporters Without Borders (RSF) organization has claimed.

RSF published a statement Tuesday detailing how Chinese authorities suppressed whistle blowers and early warnings of the COVID-19 virus outbreak, which has since spread across the globe and killed more than 19,000 people.

"Without the control and censorship imposed by the authorities, the Chinese media would have informed the public much earlier of the severity of the coronavirus epidemic, sparing thousands of lives and perhaps avoiding the current pandemic," the RSF statement argued.

The pandemic originated in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in December, likely at a so-called "wet market" where live and dead animals are sold.

The Chinese Communist Party was accusedby President Donald Trump, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and othersof silencing whistleblowers and hiding the severity of the outbreak, which soon spread beyond its borders.

Tight restrictions appear to have stemmed the spread of COVID-19 in China, and officials have said that the peak of the outbreak has passed. There have now been more cases and deaths outside China than inside.

But RSF cited a University of Southampton analysis published earlier this month that argued the number of coronavirus cases in Chinawhich is rated 177th out of 180 in the 2019 RSF World Press Freedom Indexcould have been reduced by 86 percent if the restrictive measures implemented on January 20 had been put in place two weeks earlier.

RSF argued that the first red flag was missed in October, when the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security ran a simulated coronavirus pandemic alongside the World Economic Forum and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The simulation produced 65 million deaths in 18 months, a result RSF argued would have sparked interest and concern in China if media organizations were able to cover it or citizens were able to see it online.

Local Wuhan officials failed to inform the media of the outbreak, even when there were dozens of patients suffering the same mysterious illness and symptomsseveral of whom had visited the Huanan fish market where the virus is believed to have originated. The market was closed on January 1.

Dr. Lu Xiaohong was among the first medical workers to suspect that something seismic was occurring, having been told of multiple infections among staff at Wuhan City Hospital as early as December 25.

RSF argued that if journalists' sources did not face such strict punishments for speaking out, Lu may have raised the alarm and forced officials to acknowledge the problem.

A group of whistleblowers tried to do exactly that, but were arrested for circulating "false rumors" on January 3. Eight of these whistleblowers have since died of coronavirus.

Though China officially alerted the World Health Organization to the situation on December 31, officials moved to censor a number of related keywords on the country's tightly-controlled billion-user WeChat platform.

By January 5, a team at the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Centre had sequenced the virus, but the vital information was not released publicly. Only on January 11the day the first coronavirus death was confirmeddid researchers leak the genome to open source platforms, handing the international community a priceless element in their nascent hunt for a vaccine.

The first case outside China was confirmed on January 13. RSF argued that the international community "would have taken stock of the crisis and better anticipated it" if Chinese media had been able to cover the issue since December. This may have slowed its spread and avoided "its transformation into a pandemic," the organization argued.

Newsweek has contacted the Chinese embassy in Washington, D.C. for a response to RSF's assertions.

Read more from the original source:
China's Media Censorship Could Cost Thousands of Lives: Journalism Watchdog - Newsweek

Gorodetsky is a veteran in Murmansk media. In 2005 he established the B-Port, a news agency that has developed into a leading newsmaker in the north Russian region.

Since then, much has changed in regional journalism.

On the 25th March, the director and editor-in-chief announced that he is leaving the company he created almost 15 years. The reason is growing censorship from regional authorities, he explains in a post on Facebook.

The situation is such that our news arena is rapidly changing, and not in a good direction, Gorodetsky says.

The opinions and posts that are published on our site suddenly have become unwanted and a source of irritation, he adds.

According to the editor, his news agency is now increasingly often contacted from above and told to remove or change contents.

He argues that there have appeared absurd prohibitions and strange limitations and that it now is considered undesired to express personal opinions that diverge from settled truths.

The news team at B-Port will continue to deliver contents, but now without Gorodetsky.

Over many years I have invested not only power and resources, but also parts of my soul. And of course I will not allow my soul to be wiped by my feet.

According to MMK News, Gorodetsky owns the B-Port together with regional politician Igor Morar. Reportedly, a recent issue of conflict has been the news agencys coverage of the coronavirus.

See original here:
A champion in Murmansk media quits because of censorship - The Independent Barents Observer

Here we go again. When you're a cryptocurrency that has seen 99% of its value vanish since the crypto bubble of 2017 to early 2018, getting an articleor even a mention in Wikipediacan feel like an insurmountable task. Or it can feel like censorship.

To Charles Hoskinson, it feels like the latter. The founder of Cardano has taken to YouTube to complain about Wikipedia. In a 9:46-minute rant, he accused the community-run free encyclopedia of bias. He claimed that the site is hostile toward cryptospecifically, his crypto projectand threatened legal action.

At issue is a proof of stake Wikipedia page, which Hoskinson claims is badly out-of-date. He said that when certain Cardano community members (he didnt specify who they were) tried to edit the page to include a blurb on Ouroborosthe consensus algorithm that powers CardanoWikipedia volunteers promptly removed the changes.

This is another example of the existential danger to an industry when people rely on things that appear to be open but are actually controlled by a few people who are incredibly biased and who are not accountable to anyone else, he said.

Few people? Who is he referring to? We discovered that one of the offending editors is nocoiner gatekeeper David Gerard. Other crypto projects, notably Decred (which has since slipped five more ladder rungs to 41st cryptocurrency), have complained that Gerard has barred them from Wikipedia.

Yes David Gerard is the one who has been a censor. It has been going on for years since the Ethereum days. I don't know why he hates us so or where his ego comes from, Hoskinson, former CEO of Ethereum, tweeted.

Gerard, though, is not the only editor who has taken issue with the Ouroboros blurb.

In recent days, three other Wikipedia editors also removed the blurbonly to have Cardano members put it back in againwhile a fourth editor removed proposed links to the blurb.

Why? Wikipedia says the content is promotional and therefore verboten.

The text proposed above is hardly neutralit talks about diligent research and innovative features which lend credibility to it's[sic] claim, etc., an editor named Bonade wrote on Tuesday. That kind of wording is not appropriate in an encyclopedia, even if the content should be acceptable.

Hoskinson countered (during his video rant, which he also posted to Twitter) thats not the only instance where editors targeted Cardano. A Cardano Wikipedia page even enjoyed a brief existence before Wikipedia editors rudely snuffed it out in November 2018.

Thats unfair, especially, when historically, weve had a market cap larger than SpaceX, he argued, referring to Elon Musks aerospace project. It is very anti-crypto.

Hoskinson claimed the edits are unsubstantiated and hostile. What does Wikipedia want that the Cardano community isnt proffering up? Tell us the standard and well meet that standard...We are not afraid to have a debate. We are not afraid to represent our technology, and our progress," he said.

In fact, Wikipedia, which has been around since 2001, does have well-documented standards. For starters, to warrant an article on the site, a topic has to be notable. That means the topic needs to have significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject. Reliable sources include mainstream press and peer-reviewed academic presentations.

The way to get coverage in Wikipedia is to have substantial coverage in a high-quality mainstream sourcenot the crypto press, Gerard told Decrypt, which is crypto press. [ex, Josh Quittner, founding editor: What are we, chopped liver, Gerard?"]

Crypto media does not count as a reliable source because they're really about advocacy: promoting their hodlings, he wrote in an article detailing why Wikipedia editors are harsh on sourcing for crypto articles. Crypto projects are an ongoing firehose of spam, he wrote.

It is quite possible Cardano is adequately sourced; the next stage is an article entirely sourced from good sources, Gerard said.

But from Hoskinsons position, thats simply unjust. Where coins like Spankchain can have an article on Wikipedia. A lot of other cryptocurrencies and top 20s apparently have articles, and thats perfectly fine. But then we are not allowed to have an article for some reason, even though we have been mentioned by the US Congress. Weve been mentioned by the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Financial Times.

Spankchain does not have a Wikipedia page. We tried to find the reliable sources that Hoskinson listed but we couldnt find anything in mainstream beyond the slightest passing mention.

Meanwhile, citing Hoskinsons posted videoand the potential for a flood of Cardano fans to now rush in and defend the storyGerard has put the proof-of-stake article under extended confirmed protection. That means that from now on, it can be edited only by those who have at least 30 days' tenure on Wikipedia and have done 500 edits. And another editor has initiated an investigation into sockpuppetry, meaning one person in the Cardano community may be making edits to Wikipedia under different aliases, which Wikipedia does not allow.

More:
The face of crypto censorship on Wikipedia? - Decrypt

from the don't-be-Big-Brother's-little-brother dept

China keeps being China, despite all the problems it has at home. The coronavirus traces back to Wuhan, China, and it has become clear the Chinese government is doing what it can to suppress reporting on the outbreak.

The country has a fine-tuned censorship machine that works in concert with its overbearing surveillance apparatus to ensure the government maintains control of the narrative. "Ensures" is perhaps too strong a term because, despite its best efforts, information always leaks out around the edges.

Citizens of China have found numerous ways to dodge censorship and surveillance over the years. But they're not being helped much by American companies, which have more often than not complied with government demands for apologies, takedowns, and other efforts that ensure access to the Chinese market at the expense of their Chinese users.

The latest news is more of the same. A clever keyboard app that encrypted messages has been nuked from the Chinese app store by Apple following a takedown demand from the Chinese government.

Apple yesterday removed Boom the Encryption Keyboard, an app that allowed Chinese internet users to bypass censorship, from the China app store, according to its developer.

[...]

According to an email sent by Apple to [app developer] Wang Huiyu, the app was removed because it contained content that is illegal in China. The app is still available in other regions, including Hong Kong, he said.

Boom encrypted messages by changing the originating English or Chinese to a blend of emoji, Japanese, and Korean characters. To decrypt the messages, users simply copied the characters sent to them, which were reverted to their original state on the keyboard below. Not enough to thwart targeted surveillance, but more than enough to dodge blanket censorship efforts like keyword blacklists.

The app's developer suspects Boom was targeted by the Chinese government because it was being used to spread an article about the virus that was censored by the government shortly after its publication.

The article in question is an interview with Ai Fen, a Wuhan doctor who said she was reprimanded for alerting other people about the novel coronavirus. The article, published on March 10 by Chinas Ren Wu magazine, was deleted within hours of its publication. Various versions of the article, including those reproduced in emoji, English, and even Hebrew, emerged after the deletion as people scrambled to save Ais story

This is the sort of information American companies should be helping to spread, not shutting down at the behest of the parties who want to see this information buried. If this were a one-off, it would be worrying. But it's just another data point in a long string of incidents where American tech companies have endangered users in foreign countries, seemingly for the single purpose of maintaining market share.

Filed Under: app store, boom, censorship, china, codes, content moderation, emoji, encryption, keyboardCompanies: apple

More:
Apple Helps China Censor Citizens By Pulling The Plug On A Keyboard App That Encrypted Text Messages - Techdirt

By Ulrich Rippert 23 March 2020

The COVID-19 pandemic is highlighting the class character of politics. The health care system has been cut to pieces, hospitals privatised and trimmed for profit, laboratory capacities and nationwide treatment options massively restricted.

Despite warnings from China, no preparations have been made to protect the population. The government cares only about the interests of big business and is making unlimited financial resources available to corporations and banks. Although the danger of the virus was known, and public life has been drastically restricted, many workers are being forced to continue their work without adequate protection.

Resistance is growing against this criminal irresponsibility by the government and employers. Various opposition groups are forming on the internet to refute government propaganda and describe and fight against the dramatic conditions in hospitals, rescue stations, care facilities and factories, but also the devastating effects of government measures on workers in precarious employment.

Politicians have responded to this opposition with calls for censorship and dictatorial measures.

At the beginning of the week, Lower Saxonys state Interior Minister Boris Pistorius (Social Democratic Party, SPD) called for sanctions against the distribution of so-called fake news in connection with the Coronavirus pandemic. He demanded that the government urgently intervene, saying, It must be prohibited to publicly spread false allegations about the supply situation of the population, medical care or cause, ways of infection, diagnosis and therapy of COVID-19.

According to Pistorius, the government must examine whether bans could already be based on the infection protection law. If not, the penal code or the law on administrative offences should be amended as quickly as possible.

The greatest misinformation currently being spread comes from the government itself. It claims that the German health care system is well prepared for the spread of the pandemic, and no one need worry. For weeks, the government played down the dangers.

Now that reality has refuted its propaganda, any criticism of it is to be criminalised and suppressed. If Pistorius has his way, the government will rigorously enforce its monopoly on information and opinion. This is a call for censorship and dictatorship.

Pistorius has long been known as a right-wing social democrat in the tradition of Gustav Noske, who during the November Revolution in 1918 allied with the German army and far-right Freikorps to suppress working-class opposition to the bourgeois order.

For seven years as Lower Saxonys interior minister, he has been advocating a strict right-wing course against refugees and for stepping up the repressive powers of the state. In summer 2017, he presented an SPD position paper on domestic policy, the central point of which was strengthening the federal police force financially and with more personnel. One year later, more than 10,000 people demonstrated in Hanover against the new police law of Lower Saxony, which Pistorius had drafted, because it massively expands the powers of the security authorities while at the same time restricting elementary civil rights.

With his call for censorship and police-state measures, Pistorius speaks for a party that has always responded to crisis situations and resistance from the population by calling for the strong state and dictatorial measures. Pistorius comes from the same political stable as former German Chancellor Gerhard Schrder, who brutally smashed up the welfare systems with the Hartz laws. For the past three years he has also been living in a relationship with Schrders fourth wife, Doris Schrder-Kpf, from whom the former chancellor separated in 2015.

There is no doubt that the fight against the pandemic requires the restriction of social contacts and individual freedom of movement. However, it must not be allowed that the conditions for a dictatorship are created under the slogan necessity knows no law! The coronavirus pandemic, its ominous health, social and economic consequences and the drastic measures required to combat it raise the question of who exercises power and controls the statethe financial oligarchy or the working class?

The ruling class everywhere is trying to use measures against the Corona crisis to strengthen its power. According to information from DPA and Der Spiegel, the president of the Bundestag (federal parliament), Wolfgang Schuble (Christian Democratic Union, CDU), for example, has proposed to the leaders of the parliamentary groups that they expand the Emergency Laws by amending the constitution.

The Emergency Laws, which were passed in May 1968 in the midst of the largest workers strikes and student protests of the post-World War II period, give the state quasi-dictatorial powers in crisis situations (natural disaster, uprising, war). Among other things, they allow for the Bundestag and the Bundesrat (the upper chamber of parliament) to be replaced by an emergency parliament, the Joint Committee. This committee consists of only 48 selected members but has the full powers of both chambers of parliament and would thus largely override the existing parliamentary system. Schuble has now brought up the idea of including a similar regulation in the constitution for the case of an epidemic.

The deployment of the Bundeswehr (armed forces), which Defence Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer announced at a press conference on Thursday, must also be seen in this context. For the time being, the focus is on logistical tasks. The Bundeswehr has five hospitals of its own, 3,000 doctors, mobile military hospitals as well as logistics and transport capacities that can be used in the fight against the virus.

But Kramp-Karrenbauer has more in mind. In addition to the deployment of up to 50,000 soldiers, there is also talk of mobilizing 75,000 reservists. At the press conference, the defence minister emphasized that the troops will only be properly deployed when the civilian authorities and organizations have reached the end of their capabilities. She claimed that in the area of security and order, assistance from the military would only be available under strict conditions, but in a daily order to the troops she wrote, We will help with health care and, if necessary, with ensuring infrastructure and supplies as well as maintaining security and order.

Chief of Staff Alfons Mais wrote to soldiers saying the Bundeswehr now had the task of maintaining operational readiness for any required support. We are at the beginning of a road whose direction and length we cannot yet estimated, he declared.

In Bavaria, the conservative state government declared a disaster situation last Monday. This enables them to take far-reaching measures against the spread of the coronavirus and to call on citizens to help in the form of services, material and work. However, the disaster situation also means a far-reaching encroachment on democratic rights, which can be used to suppress social and political opposition. The working class must be on its guard.

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German government prepares for internet censorship and deployment of the armed forces - World Socialist Web Site

Apple yesterday removed Boom the Encryption Keyboard, an app that allowed Chinese internet users to bypass censorship, from the China app store, according to its developer.

Wang Huiyu, a New York-based Chinese citizen in his 20s, told Quartz that he developed Boom together with one of his university classmates during the outbreak of the coronavirus. Part of the motivation for Wang to develop the app, which went live on Feb. 15, was to offer people a chance to counter rigid online surveillance, and to provide them with an entertaining private messaging app.

According to an email sent by Apple to Wang, the app was removed because it contained content that is illegal in China. The app is still available in other regions, including Hong Kong, he said.

I designed the app because I wanted to remind people of the importance of privacy, and my target customers are people born after 1995 or 2000. I feel those under 20 will be able to accept new things and ideas the fastest, said Wang.

Boom encrypts text, both in Chinese and English, by turning them into emoji or Japanese or Korean characters, as well as rearranging lines of text in random order. The receivers of such messages can decrypt them by copying the emoji or characters using the app, with the original text then displayed automatically on the keyboards interface. As Chinas blanket online censorship relies heavily on the detection of key words or even pictures containing sensitive words, apps like Boom can help users avoid such scrutiny.

Another app developed by Wang, which offered animated wallpapers featuring political figures including former Chinese leader Jiang Zemin, was also removed (link in Chinese) from Apples mainland China app store on the same day as Boom, he said.

Apple has removed apps from its China app store in the past for containingillegal content. Among the apps that have been pulled were Quartzs news app, which was removed from the China app store last year.

Apple did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

While most apps that enable encrypted messages and communications have long been banned in China, Wang said he suspects Boom drew the attention of authorities because of the way Chinese internet users quickly moved to preserve a particular coronavirus-linked article from being scrubbed by censors recently.

The article in question is an interview with Ai Fen, a Wuhan doctor who said she was reprimanded for alerting other people about the novel coronavirus. The article, published on March 10 by Chinas Ren Wu magazine, was deleted within hours of its publication. Various versions of the article, including those reproduced in emoji, English, and even Hebrew, emerged after the deletion as people scrambled to save Ais story, part of a broader wave of efforts by internet users in China to prevent censors from removing crucial stories and memories related to the epidemic. Wang said downloads of Boom from mainland China surged after the incident.

Apple has been repeatedly accused of bowing to China by removing apps, such as a Hong Kong live map app that allowed protesters to crowdsource police movements during last years protests in the city.

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Encryption app to avoid coronavirus censorship removed by Apple in China - Quartz