Category Archives: Censorship

For millions around the world, internet outages have become the norm. For example, the Iranian government recently shut off the internet for nearly all of its population of more than 80 million. The authorities say this was done to silence protests over rising gasoline prices. But sometimes official motives for switching off the internet may be different from the actual ones.

Governments block internet content for three main reasons: to maintain political stability, protect national security, and impose traditional social values. The reasons vary from country to country. In fact, states with the most severe online censorship rely on all three motives at once.

The infographic below takes a look at the countries with the heaviest internet censorship. It also lists their motives for cutting down access to global websites.

For example, North Korea has the highest level of online restrictions in the world, with only 4% of the nation having access to the internet. The limited access that exists is controlled and censored by the government. The main motive behind this is to avoid the outside influence and information leak.

China is another example of severe internet censorship. The country uses advanced technologies to block IP addresses, obstruct access to various websites, and block search engines, such as Google, Facebook, Wikipedia, and others. This blockade is usually called the Great Firewall of China."

Saudi Arabia stands out among the most censored countries. It puts a strong emphasis on imposing its social and religious values. Saudi Arabia has blocked more than a million websites that contain any contradiction to Islamic beliefs. Any threat to Islamic social and political principles is also filtered and blocked.

According to research provided by the#KeepItOn campaign, there were 196 internet shutdowns across the world in 2018. 134 of them were in India, and the rest occurred in a wide range of Asian, African, and Middle Eastern countries.

The report states that official and actual causes of the internet shutdowns were different. In most cases (91), the blackouts were justified as a way to maintain public safety. Other reasons include national security protection (40), sabotage (2), stopping fake news and hate speech (33), and school exams (11). Six internet shutdowns happened for no reason, while the motives remained unknown in 13 cases.

Courtesy NordVPN

However, the actual causes differed from their official explanations. Government justifications rarely matched the causes reported by the media, civil society organizations, and free speech activists. The majority of shutdowns occurred in response to militant or terrorist activity (especially in the Kashmir area of India) (53), protests (45), communal violence (40), elections (12), maintaining information control (11), preventing cheating during school exams period (11), and other events, including religious holidays (16). The reasons for eight internet shutdowns were unknown.

Governments usually claim to be responding to public safety issues when they shut down the internet. The real reason, however, is often to suppress protests. By limiting access to the internet, they limit peoples ability to organize demonstrations. Similarly, shutdowns that are reported as fake news prevention may actually be the authorities responses to elections, community violence, or militant activities.

No matter what grounds are used to justify internet shutdowns, they violate human rights and our freedom of speech and expression. Luckily, there are tools that help people in need of secure connections.

A VPN (virtual private network) securely bypasses online restrictions and helps keep communications away from prying eyes. These services send internet traffic through an encrypted tunnel, which makes it almost impossible to hijack. It hides IP addresses and real locations. By connecting to another countrys server, users can set their location to virtually anywhere in the world.

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Infographic: The real reasons behind internet censorship around the world - MultiBriefs Exclusive

China-based TikTok has been accused of censorship about as many times as Facebook has been accused of providing questionable privacy. To help build user trust, TikTok is opening a location where moderators can be observed in action. The TikTok Transparency Center, announced on March 11, will allow outside experts to see how content moderation at TikTok works.

The center, which will be part of TikToks Los Angeles office, invites experts to evaluate the social platforms Trust & Safety standards. TikTok says those experts will be invited to see how moderators apply those guidelines in real life, including by reviewing posts that the software has flagged and looking at posts that the technology didnt catch.

The center will also allow experts to see how users communicate concerns and how staff responds. TikTok says the center will help experts see how the content that remains on the platform and the content thats removed from the platform line up with the networks newly updated Community Guidelines.

We expect the Transparency Center to operate as a forum where observers will be able to provide meaningful feedback on our practices, TikTok general manager Vanessa Pappas wrote in a blog post. Our landscape and industry is rapidly evolving, and we are aware that our systems, policies, and practices are not flawless, which is why we are committed to constant improvement.

TikTok says that content moderation is only the initial focus for the center. A planned second phase will allow experts to observe work in data privacy, security, and source code.

The TikTok Transparency Center is slated to open in May, shortly after TikToks new chief information security officer, Roland Cloutier, starts working with the company.

TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a company based in China, where censorship laws are strict. TikTok is regularly accused of censoring different topics, from transgender users to Tiananmen Square. Others have accused the app of being spyware. The company paid a $5.7 million fine last year for violating the Childrens Online Privacy Protection Act. Late last year, the U.S. government launched a national security investigation into the companys acquisition of Musical.ly due to a failure to obtain clearance from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States.

Meanwhile, TikToks short video format is continuing to grow last year, the platform was estimated to have 700 million new downloads.

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TikTok wants to prove its not censoring content by letting experts come watch - Yahoo Tech

2019 was a year of relative calm for the IDF Censor. According to official figures provided to +972 Magazine, Local Call, and the Movement for Freedom of Information last month following a freedom of information act request, the censor barred the full publication of 202 stories in media outlets, and partially redacted another 1,973 stories.

Compared with figures that we have been gathering dating back to 2011, last year saw the least direct censorship of news outlets over the past decade.

All media outlets in Israel are required to submit articles relating to security and foreign relations to the IDF Censor for review prior to publication. The censor draws its authority from emergency regulations enacted following Israels founding, and which remain in place to this today.

These regulations allow the censor to fully or partially redact an article, while barring media outlets from indicating in any way whether a story has been altered. However, while legal criteria defining the IDF Censors mandate are both strict and quite broad, the decision of which stories to submit for review remains in the hands of editors at media outlets.

The drop in intervention by the military censor in 2019 is even more apparent when compared to 2018, a peak year for censorship. That year saw 363 stories barred from publication (nearly one a day), while 2,712 more stories were partially redacted.

The shrinking of the scope of censorship was also accompanied by a drop in the number of materials filed by media outlets to the censor. In 2019, publications filed 8,127 stories for the censors review around 25 percent fewer than the year before which was itself a relatively low number.

Yet even in a weak year, this means that there are over 200 stories that journalists found newsworthy but could not make public, and more than 2,000 stories that faced some sort of external interference.

This is still a huge number, considering that no other country in the world that defines itself as a democracy imposes such an obligation on journalists to receive a government officials approval prior to publication. Since 2011, 2,863 stories have been scrapped by the censor and 21,683 stories have been redacted.

The military censor, of course, does not share information about the nature of the stories it conceals from the public, nor does it offer a monthly report of these activities. This makes it even more difficult to understand why there was such a drop in censorship last year.

In our report about 2018, we surmised that the spike in censorship may have been connected to Israeli air strikes in Syria and Lebanon. In 2019, however, Israeli politicians especially around the time of the elections in April and September openly bragged about taking such military actions. That public aspect could offer some form of explanation.

These figures which we are seeing year after year indicate a complex and problematic phenomenon, says Or Sadan, a lawyer with the Movement for Freedom of Information, who also heads the Clinic for Freedom of Information at The College of Management in Israel. The military censor literally prevents the public from being exposed to many pieces of information which media outlets have deemed worthy of reporting. The free press is the tool for the public to educate itself on developments in the country, including security-related matters.

In spite of security sensitivities, Sadan continued, the relevant bodies must keep the number of cases where information is withheld by the censor to a bare minimum, and only in extreme cases where there is an actual fear for national security. We will keep tracking these figures to learn about developments over the years.

Another aspect of the censors work is its operations in the Israeli national archives. Since the archives went fully online, and no longer have a physical library open to the public, the military censor has been reviewing all declassified materials, which has sometimes led it to hide files that had already been made public.

When the archives digitization began in 2016, the archival authorities submitted some 7,800 files for the censors review. In 2019, the number went down to 3,200. Unlike news pieces, the censor declined to inform us of how much archival material had been redacted, responding only that the vast majority of documents were approved for publication without alterations.

The military censors growing lack of transparency is itself a cause for concern. The censor is fully exempt from Israels Freedom of Information Act, and though it has essentially volunteered to answer +972s questions in recent years, its answers are getting shorter by the year.

In the first responses to our appeals in 2016, the censor released the number of archival documents that were redacted, and the number of cases in which the censor demanded that a media outlet remove information published without prior approval (an average of 250 cases a year). Despite repeated attempts, these figures have not been given to us in recent years. (You can read more about +972s policy vis--vis the censor here).

In the censors latest response, dated February 2020, we also did not receive any information about the number of books redacted by the censor a number that previously stood at several dozen a year.

The Chief Military Censor, Brigadier General Ariella Ben-Avraham, is stepping down from her position in the coming weeks, earlier than planned. According to several media reports, she will be joining the Israeli NSO Group a cyber company which produces spyware and has been associated with several dictatorships efforts to spy on journalists and human rights defenders.

During her first year on the job as chief censor, Ben-Avraham expanded her jurisdiction from mainstream media outlets to social media and independent outlets, including +972 Magazine, demanding they file stories with the censor for approval. Ben-Avraham also decided to stop answering our questions on the number of times the censor actively removed stories that had already been published.

This article was first published in Hebrew on Local Call. Read it here.

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IDF censor redacted two thousand news items in 2019 - +972 Magazine

People around the world are turning to an online dating app for coronavirus information from inside Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the mysterious respiratory illness that has ripped through hospitals and supply chains around the world.

The Chinese government's lack of transparency and top-down limiting of communication to the outside world has led to accusations of state-backed censorship of the virus's impact. In the past two months, several citizen journalists and medical professionals have been punished as a result of their attempts to warn the Chinese people and the global citizenry.

Now, people from Manhattan to Bangkok are utilizing a passport feature from the online dating app Tinder to gain access into the daily lives of Chinese citizens on the front lines of the outbreak.

[Click here for complete coronavirus coverage]

Tinder, one of the world's most widely-used dating apps, features an upgraded "Gold" membership, which allows users to move their phone's location to any spot in the world, including cities and areas in China that are known for their lack of ability to communicate with the outside world. Users from outside China are using the feature to ping into Chinese borders and get a better sense of what is really happening in cities that have been quarantined.

A United States-based Twitter account @drethelin announced he was setting his location to Wuhan in late January so he could "get the real scoop on what's going on." Another Twitter user, @philosophyhater, on Feb. 10, tweeted,"I just bought tinder gold and set my location to wuhan."

One person said their friend matched with a doctor, who told her that a couple hundred patients had recovered. The doctor, who used the name Laughing and whose profile picture featured him wearing a face mask, said he worked at Wuhan Union Hospital. He confirmed that young people who get the virus would likely only experience flu-like symptoms.

"Yes Tinder #LoveInTimeOfCorona," tweeted user @bon_plus. "So a friend shared this with me today, she made good use of her Tinder Gold and tried reaching out to people from Wuhan. Luckily, she was able to talk to a doctor based in Wuhan. PICS of their convo!"

Though the World Health Organization has said the coronavirus is not a sexually transmitted disease, the Centers for Disease Controls has warned that transmission of fluids is a leading cause for infection. To ward off the spread, Tinder has instituted a new warning that pops up on the app, instructing users to wash their hands, avoid touching their faces, and maintain social distance in public gatherings.

The coronavirus has killed more than 4,000 people worldwide and infected over 100,000.

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'Love in time of' coronavirus: Tinder being used to circumnavigate possible Chinese censorship of outbreak - Washington Examiner

Paul Gardner, University of Glasgow

Chinas political leaders will be hoping that when concerns about the coronavirus eventually start to recede, memories about the states failings early on in the outbreak will also fade. They will be particularly keen for people to forget the anger many felt after the death from COVID-19 of Dr Li Wenliang, the doctor censured for trying to warn colleagues about the outbreak. After Dr Lis death, the phrase We want freedom of speech was even trending on Chinese social media for several hours before the posts were deleted.

Dr Li had told fellow medical professionals about the new virus in a chat group on 30 December. He was accused of rumour-mongering and officials either ignored or played down the risks well into January. If officials had disclosed information about the epidemic earlier, Dr Li told the New York Times, I think it would have been a lot better. There should be more openness and transparency.

I am currently researching the Chinese party-states efforts to increase legitimacy by controlling the information that reaches its citizens. The lack of openness and transparency in this crucial early phase of the outbreak was partly because officials were gathering for annual meetings of the local Communist Party-run legislatures, when propaganda departments instruct the media not to cover negative stories.

However, the censorship in this period also reflects increasingly tight control over information in China. As Chinese media expert Anne-Marie Brady notes, from the beginning of his presidency, Xi Jinping was clear the media should focus on positive news stories that uphold unity and stability and are encouraging.

The deterioration in the medias limited freedoms under Xi Jinping was underlined by a visit he made to media organisations in 2016, declaring that, All Party media have the surname Party, and demanding loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

There have been a series of good quality investigative reports, notably by the business publication Caixin, since the authorities fully acknowledged the virus. As political scientist Maria Repnikova argues, providing temporary space for the media to report more freely can help the party-state project an image of managed transparency. However, the clampdown has undoubtedly had a significant effect on the medias ability to provide effective investigative reporting, particularly early on in the outbreak.

Online, there have been a succession of measures to limit speech the party deems a threat. These include laws that mean the threat of jail for anyone found guilty of spreading rumours. In an authoritarian regime, stopping rumours limits peoples ability to raise concerns and potentially discover the truth. A point made only too clearly by Dr Lis case.

The party focuses its censorship on problems that might undermine its legitimacy. Part of my ongoing research into information control in China involves an analysis of leaked censorship instructions collected by the US-based China Digital Times. This shows that between 2013 and 2018, over 100 leaked instructions concerned problems about the environment, food safety, health, education, natural disasters and major accidents. The actual number is likely to far exceed this.

For example, after an explosion at a petrochemical factory, media organisations were told to censor negative commentary related to petrochemical projects. And after parents protested about tainted vaccines, the media were instructed that only information provided by official sources could be used on front pages.

State media play a key role in the CCPs efforts to set the agenda online. My research shows that the number of stories featuring problems about the environment and disasters posted by Peoples Daily newspaper on Sina Weibo (Chinas equivalent of Twitter) fell significantly between 2013 and 2018.

Around 4.5% of all People Dailys Weibo posts between 2013 and 2015 were about the environment, but by 2018 had fallen to as low as 1%. Similarly, around 8%-10% of all posts by the newspaper were about disasters and major accidents between 2013 and 2015, but this figure fell to below 4% in the following three years.

The party wants people to focus instead on topics it thinks will enhance its legitimacy. The number of posts by Peoples Daily focusing on nationalism had doubled to 12% of the total by 2018.

As well as investigative reports on the outbreak in parts of the media, some Chinese individuals have also gone to great lengths to communicate information about the virus and conditions in Wuhan. However, the authorities have been steadily silencing significant critical voices and stepping up their efforts to censor other content they deem particularly unhelpful.

The censors do not stop everything, but as the China scholar Margaret E. Roberts suggests, porous censorship can still be very effective. She points out that the Chinese authorities efforts to make it more difficult for people to access critical content that does make it online, while flooding the internet with information the CCP wants them to see, can still be very effective.

When a problem cannot be avoided, my research shows that the propaganda authorities try to control the narrative by ensuring the media focus on the states efforts to tackle the problem. After a landslide at a mine in Tibet, the media were told to cover disaster relief promptly and abundantly. Coverage of such disasters by Peoples Daily focuses on images of heroic rescue workers.

This same propaganda effort is in evidence now. As the China Media Projects David Bandurski notes, media coverage in China is increasingly seeking to portray the Chinese Communist Party as the enabler of miraculous human feats battling the virus.

After Dr Lis death, CCP leaders sought to blame local officials for admonishing him. However, the actions taken against Dr Li were fully consistent with the Partys approach to controlling information under Xi Jinping.

It is impossible to know how many people have died, or might die in future, because people have decided to self-censor, rather than risk punishment for spreading rumours, or because the authorities have sought to avoid information reaching the public. The coronavirus outbreak highlights the risks of a system that puts social stability and ruling party legitimacy above the public interest.

Paul Gardner, PhD Candidate in Chinese Studies and Political Communication, University of Glasgow

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Censorship and Propaganda in the Time of the Coronavirus - Qrius

As the novel coronavirus continues to spread around the globe, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Tuesday accused the governments of China and Iran of censoring information about the outbreaks in their countries and putting the rest of the world at greater risk of its spread.

The top U.S. diplomat's sharp tone towards Beijing was matched by Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, who told Congress on Tuesday that the world is not getting reliable data out of China on issues like mortality rates.

But President Donald Trump seems to be out of sync with both of his Cabinet members and other top officials, praising Chinese President Xi Jinping and his government's handling of the outbreak even as his own administration's response comes under fire from Republican and Democratic members of Congress.

President Donald Trump and China's President Xi Jinping arrive for a state dinner at the Great Hall of the People, Nov.9, 2017 in Beijing, China.

"Censorship. It can have deadly consequences," Pompeo said Tuesday at the State Department. "Had China permitted its own and foreign journalists and medical personnel to speak and investigate freely, Chinese officials and other nations would have been far better prepared to address the challenge."

The flow of accurate information out of China, he added, is critical to assisting not just the Chinese people, but also "citizens across the world." He called on all governments to "tell the truth about coronavirus and cooperate with international aid organizations."

Testifying before the Senate Appropriations Committee, Azar said the administration is also uncertain if the data provided by China on the novel coronavirus outbreak has been full and transparent.

But both of those were at odds with Trump's own remarks just two days ago, praising Xi for "working very, very hard" and "doing a very good job."

"It's a big problem, but President Xi, he's working very hard to solve the problem, and he will solve the problem," Trump told reporters at the White House Sunday.

Trump also showered praise on his own administration's response in the U.S., saying Tuesday in India, "We have very few people with it. ... We're really down to probably 10. Most of the people are outside of danger now."

There have been 57 confirmed cases of the virus in the U.S., with three now released from hospital and no longer thought to be contagious. The majority of those -- 43 of the 57 -- are Americans repatriated from the Diamond Princess cruise ship or Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the outbreak. Only 14 are individuals that either arrived in the U.S. from China and checked into a hospital or caught the virus in the U.S. from a loved one who had traveled overseas.

But officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned Tuesday that the most recent data suggests another level of virus spread globally, with cases identified in more countries now and another level of virus spread.

People stand on a street behind a barrier to stop others from entering, in Wuhan in China's central Hubei province, Feb. 23, 2020.

"The data over the last week has raised our level of concern," said Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.

During his news conference in India, Trump also said the U.S. is "very close to a vaccine."

But his acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf told Congress Tuesday the U.S. was at least "months" away from developing one, with other advisers testifying one was still a full year away.

The various answers vexed Republican Sen. John Kennedy, who told Wolf his "numbers aren't the same as the CDC's. ... Don't you think you oughta contact them?"

Trump's administration has requested $2.5 billion from Congress for emergency supplemental funds to combat COVID-19, the virus's formal name. That funding would come from a $1.25 billion emergency cash requested from Congress as well as reprogramming existing money, including money Congress allocated to fight Ebola.

Democrats condemned the move as both insufficient to deal with the crisis and a short-sighted effort "to steal funds dedicated to fight Ebola," in the words of Sen. Chuck Schumer, amid the second largest outbreak of that deadly disease still lingering the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo speaks during a briefing at the U.S. Department of State, Feb. 25, 2020, in Washington, D.C.

The request "is indicative of his towering incompetence and further proof that he and his administration arent taking the coronavirus crisis as seriously as they need to be," the Senate Democratic Minority Leader added Monday.

It's not just Democrats, however, who have challenged the administration's response. Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., told Azar the administration's "request... is low-balling it possibly, and you can't afford to do that. ... If you low-ball something like this, you'll pay for it later."

Trump's top diplomat for Europe and his State Department also warned that Russia was spreading disinformation about the novel coronavirus outbreak on Saturday. Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Europe Philip Reeker and the agency's Global Engagement Center, which combats terrorist propaganda and foreign government disinformation, told AFP news agency that thousands of Russian-linked social media accounts are actively spreading alarm about the outbreak in a coordinated effort, including accusing the U.S. of creating the virus.

Pompeo said nothing about Russia's role Tuesday. But he did attack Iran's government for censorship as well.

"The United States is deeply concerned by information indicating the Iranian regime may have suppressed vital details about the outbreak in that country," he said, noting Iran is second to China in COVID-19 deaths.

Dr. Iraj Harirchi, the head of Iran's counter-coronavirus task force, tested positive for the virus himself, authorities announced Tuesday -- one day after he appeared at a news conference downplaying the danger posed by the outbreak in Iran and opposing a quarantine of Qom, the city with the largest number of infected patients and fatalities in Iran.

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Pompeo accuses China and Iran of censoring information about coronavirus outbreaks - ABC News

"The past never disappears, we are stuck with it, just like we are stuck within modernity. One just has to negotiate how to live with and against it at once," says Xandra Ibarra, aka La Chica Boom, the disruptive character she created and who the government of San Antonio, Texas, has been quick to suppress in the 21st century. Yes, we' re stuck.

Her video artwork "Spictacle II: La Tortillera" (2014) has been removed from a group show at the city's Arts Center for being considered "obscene." It didn't help that the curators of XicanX: New Visions - the exhibition that included the video art piece exploring the Chicanx and Latinx identity - had agreed to project the video in a curtained space and with a warning, officials censored it anyway.

Perhaps because, as Ibarra insists, while art is not required to be political or combative, "the display of sexual content continues to cause anxiety," adding that the goal of censoring works that address sexuality and racialized sex is the system's enforcement of "sexual normality."

A normality, or heteronormality, that the artist strikes like a piata filled with clichs and conventions. That's why, because she doesn't "marry" anyone, she's so annoying for some. Because there is no way to classify her; hers is the art of transgression.

In the video, La Chica Boom is shown as a Mexican housewife masturbating with a pot of spice and two tacos. That's what they'll tell you at first glance.

However, the artist's explanation does more justice to the meaning of the work:

"I used sexualized tropes of Mexicanidad to create a parodic persona, called La Chica Boom. Through this self-other, I explored the embodiment of what I call spichood or my own racial and sexual abjection, themes mostly taboo in activist and community organizing circles I belonged to," she tells us.

"La Tortillera" - a name for lesbian women, an insult or not depending on who's talking - is a long-running work. Ibarra had begun to use burlesque and Mexican "low-brow" humor to conceive a series of performances that she called "spictacles" that were performed in bars and nightclubs and with which she sought to laugh at depictions of Mexican and Chicano sexuality and gender.

"In these performances, I perverted Mexican iconographic symbols (like cockroaches, Catholic virgins, piatas, Mexican wrestlers/Luchadores, hot sauce) by combining them with sex acts like live masturbation, fisting and sex. While humor was very much a central part of this work, I didnt have the intention to work toward recuperating these racialized sex acts; instead this project was an attempt to inhabit my sexed spichood and hyperbolize my supposed differences to discover queer forms of pleasure," she concludes.

However, not everyone thought so...

Moral in a taco

"It was a decision that the city had all the right to make in a space owned by San Antonio," said the director of the Department of Art and Culture, Debbie Racca-Sittre, who came out in the face of criticism from artists and curators who described the withdrawal of the video as "censorship and banishment of queer, sexual, feminist and Latinx creative expression," as well as "an act of discrimination and flagrant homophobia," according to the organizers of 'XicanX' on networks.

The issue was so high profile that even the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC), a non-profit organization that seeks to defend freedom of expression, had to intervene. Last week, NCAC wrote a letter to San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg, stating that the removal of the video is a direct attack on the First Amendment of the Constitution.

The NCAC still went one step further and argued that the city's Department of Culture's definition of "obscenity" is "illegal," as it collides head-on with the historic 1973 case of Miller v. California. According to the so-called Miller Test, no material with literary, artistic, political or scientific value can be classified as 'obscene.'

"Although the work has a sexual content - as is the case with many contemporary artworks - it certainly does not meet the definition of obscenity held in Miller v. California," the NCAC letter notes. "By removing Ibarra's work from the exhibition at the Arts Center, the city of San Antonio is probably violating the artist's rights of free expression and exposing the city to both bad publicity and legal liability.

Master of provocation

A native of Oklahoma but of Mexican descent, Xandra Ibarra does keep one promise: not to leave us indifferent. In most of her works, as in her latest series of sculptures 'Kill your darlings,'she confronts us with monstrosity, the taboos that surround us and the notion of identity as a construct that can be as dangerous as a plague.

"I make work that brings me joy and I enjoy threatening the grip that prescriptive nationalist discourses and their signifiers have on me whether they be Chicano, American, Native and/or Mexican," Ibarra states. The roots are like the pea plant to her, strangling while allowing what has been sown to grow, allowing a piece of work to bear fruit.

Can you fight prejudice through art, break it down once and for all? I ask her one of those questions to which one expects a hopeful answer.

"Stereotypes don't die, they are eternally in a cycle of renewal," she replies. And judging by the silence of the San Antonio government, that answer that sees no way out is like life, a set of chained obstacles to be overcome.

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Art and Censorship: An artist's "too spicy" video that has censored the city of San Antonio - AL DIA News

Apple could be forced to disclose details of censorship requests from China and other nations after two major shareholder groups backed a proposal that would force the tech firm to make new human rights commitments.

The motion, set to be voted on by the companys investors on Wednesday, was prompted by numerous allegations of Apple kowtowing to Beijing and blocking apps from being used by Chinese customers.

If approved by investors, the scheme could have implications beyond China and potentially expose details of tensions between Apple and other jurisdictions. The California-headquartered tech giant has regularly clashed with the US government, including most prominently over requests for iPhones to be unlocked.

The human rights resolution was put forward by campaign group SumOfUs, which cited several concerns about Apples relationship with the Chinese state in its submission to investors.

Apple failed in an attempt to block the vote from taking place. And now the Guardian has learned that the proposal has the support of the influential corporate governance groups ISS and Glass Lewis.

Together these two firms advise the worlds largest institutional investors on how they vote at companys annual meetings, so their backing for the proposal is a coup for SumOfUs.

Ahead of Wednesdays annual meeting, ISS and Glass Lewis have sent reports to their clients, seen by the Guardian, explaining why they should back the proposal.

Glass Lewis said: [W]e believe that it would be prudent for the company to exhibit enhanced transparency around how it respects the right to free expression.

In their reports, both Glass Lewis and ISS highlighted various news reports of Apple making apps unavailable in China.

In 2016, it emerged that Apple had removed its iBooks Store and iTunes Movies services from devices owned by Chinese customers. In 2017, it removed several virtual private network (VPN) apps, which were used by Chinese citizens to bypass state censorship apparatus. And last year the company removed HKMap.Live, a controversial crowdsourced mapping app that was being used by Hong Kong protesters to track police activity.

The SumOfUs proposal would force Apples board to prepare an annual report on the companys policies relating to freedom of expression and access to information. The board would be compelled to state in the report whether they are publicly committed to freedom of expression and access to information.

They would also have to disclose a description of the actions Apple has taken in the past year in response to government or third-party demands that were reasonably likely to limit free expression or access to information.

SumOfUs believes the need to clarify Apples relationship with China is made particularly urgent by public outrage surrounding Beijings treatment of Uighur people sent to internment camps and pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong.

Despite backing from ISS and Glass Lewis, SumOfUs still faces an uphill battle to pass the motion because it is opposed by Apples board, which includes the companys chief executive, Tim Cook, and former US vice-president Al Gore.

Apple has issued a statement saying the proposal is unnecessary based on the extensive information that is already publicly provided to our shareholders and users.

The company currently publishes transparency data disclosing the number of government requests it receives by country for customer data and app removal.

For instance, Apple reported that between January and June last year, 288 apps were removed in mainland China for legal or platform violation. Apple stated that the majority of these requests related to pornography, illegal content and gambling.

But in its report to investors, ISS noted that the quantitative approach to the companys transparency report provides little context for the app removal requests from the Chinese government or explanation of the risks that may be involved.

Apple said in its statement that free expression is central to our company and its success but that it is obliged to comply with local laws and to protect the safety of our customers and employees, including by removing apps.

The company said: [W]hile we may disagree with certain decisions at times, we do not believe it would be in the best interests of our users to simply abandon markets, which would leave consumers with fewer choices and fewer privacy protections.

Originally posted here:
Apple may be forced to disclose censorship requests from China - The Guardian

Apple has always been keen on protecting its users privacy, as well as its own. However, The Guardian is reporting today that Apple might be forced to disclose information related to Chinese censorship requests.Apparently, there has been a proposal by campaign group SumOfUs, asking Apple to provide information in regards to its relationship with the Chinese government and the resulting censorship of Chinese customers. Concerns include Apple blocking certain apps from usage by Chinese customers or obstructing the Chinese peoples right of free expression.

Now, two influential corporate governance groups have backed up the proposal - Glass Lewis and ISS. They state that Apple should be more transparent in regards to the right of free expression.

The proposal would force Apple to provide an annual report of the companys censorship policies as well as a description of all the actions it took that could be considered limiting to free expression or obstructing access to information in response to government or third-party demands for the past year.

In opposition to SumOfUs stands the Apple board, including the company's CEO, Tim Cook, as well as former US vice-president Al Gore. Apple believes it has already provided enough information to its shareholders and users, giving as an example its report of the removal of 288 apps in the first half of last year, for legal violations. Most of them were related to illegal activities or content.

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A proposal could force Apple to disclose alleged censorship actions - PhoneArena

UW-Milwaukee University Relations rejected a poster for a talk titled Academic Freedom in the Age of Trump for its partisan tone last week, according to professors sponsoring the event.

However, the university reversed its decision after the incident caused controversy on Twitter, and a university spokesperson later said UW-Milwaukee never rejected the poster at all.

The university initially disputed the promotional poster due to its combination of the word Trump, the red color, and the imagery of books in chains, according to UW-Milwaukee professor Joel Berkowitzs blog post about the incident.

Berkowitz, who is also president of the UW-Milwaukee chapter of the American Association of University Professors, invited national AAUP officer Joerg Tiede to campus to speak on the topic of academic freedom. Tiede chose the title of his presentation and a UW-Milwaukee graphic designer created the poster, Berkowitz wrote.

Berkowitz and UW-Milwaukee AAUP officer Rachel Buff planned to promote Tiedes talk by sharing the poster on social media and displaying it on electronic screens across campus.

University Relations notified Buff it had rejected the ad Feb. 13, according to Buff and Berkowitz.

Buff and Berkowitz reported the university gave them options regarding the poster, including submitting a different design, emailing senior staff members in University Relations or appealing the rejection in a meeting that would take place the day before the talk.

But according to UW-Milwaukee Vice Chancellor of University Relations and Communications Tom Luljak, University Relations never told the professors they couldnt use the poster to promote the event.

The debate over the poster originated from UW-Milwaukees new approval policy for posters and fliers, Luljak said in an email. The new policy, which followed an August incident involving a poster for a criminal justice class featuring a black student wearing police tape as a scarf, requires a rotating team of three University Relations specialists.

After one of the specialists raised concerns that the academic freedom talk poster was political, a marketing manager notified the posters creators. Notification was the beginning of a conversation about how to proceed with the poster, and the university hadnt made a decision yet, Luljak said.

Berkowitz wrote in his blog that he hardly know[s] what to say to this explanation, first mentioned in an interview with Inside Higher Ed.

Since just about any decision made by a university employee or committee failing a student, rejecting someones application for tenure and promotion, firing someone, et al is subject to appeal, then I suppose one could claim that any of these things are the beginning of a conversation, Berkowitz wrote.

Buff and Berkowitz both shared news of the posters apparent rejection on Twitter, tagging the national AAUP account. AAUP made its own five-tweet thread on the incident, asking Irony aside, what message is @UWM sending in the Age of Trump?

Following tweets about the apparent rejection, Luljak approved the poster for use around campus.

When Rachel Buff sent her tweet, the matter was escalated directly to me, bypassing the brand standards committee, Luljak said. I quickly reviewed the ad in question and determined it was not a problem and gave the green light for it to be used.

However, those involved with the posters creation didnt find out about UW-Milwaukees decision until the next day, after AAUP and others on Twitter weighed in, according to Berkowitz.

After UW-Milwaukee approved use of the poster, Buff tweeted to thank everyone for speaking up and said this is what we call a win.

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'Academic Freedom in the Age of Trump' poster causes controversy, censorship concerns at UW-Milwaukee - The Daily Cardinal