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Last Thursday, Twitter sued the federal government. At issue was a demand from the Department of Homeland Security that Twitter reveal the user(s) behind an account critical of the Trump administration. The government withdrew its request the next day, and the issue seemingly drew to a close.

But this is not the end.

The DHS request came on the heels of another Trump administration move that could be viewed as hostile to internet freedom. On April 2, President Trump signed a bill passed last month releasing internet service providers (ISPs) like Verizon and AT&T from having to protect consumer data, in effect jeopardizing peoples privacy and opening them up to surveillance. And FCC Chair Ajit Pai is planning to weaken net neutrality rules, which would allow ISPs to create fast lanes for preferred internet traffic while slowing other traffic sources.

If we dont have net neutrality, the ISPs could slow people who are talking about, for example, going to a rally, says Kate Forscey, associate counsel at Public Knowledge, a free speech organization. Its not just about streaming Netflixits about fundamental engagement in a democratic environment. Against this backdrop, the DHSs attempt to strong-arm Twitter looks less like a defeat and more like a testing of the waters.

These developments dont on their own spell internet censorship. Rather, they lay the groundwork for it: They create the conditions that allow a regime, whether its headed by Trump or another administration down the line, to squelch dissent. Its part of a broader trend around the world, in which numerous governments are whittling away at internet freedoms.

On a global level social media platforms have been facing growing censorship over the past year, says Jessica White, an analyst at Freedom House, an independent watchdog organization. Twitters lawsuit put an end to one attempt by the Trump administration to undermine free online expression, but it is unlikely to be the last. It is just the freshest in a long string of ploys by governments around the world to solidify their power over online communities.

In the US, social media companies have abided by an uneasy truce with the government, cooperating in criminal investigationsalbeit reluctantlyby handing over user data. What makes Twitters most recent case noteworthy, however, was that the account in question, @ALT_USCIS, broke no laws and only used Twitter to voice dissent. The handle is a reference to the US Citizenship and Immigration Services, an office within DHS, and its tweets were supposedly the voice of current and former federal employees disillusioned with the Trump administration. After news of the lawsuit broke, the government withdrew its request and Twitter dropped the suit.

Yet attacks on free expression, particularly on social media, have been on the rise, at the same time as countries around the world are experiencing record-breaking protests. In March, for example, Russia saw its largest protests in five years after word of them spread on social media and messenger apps. The government responded by arresting hundreds of activists, in particular the people who had led the resistance movement online, charging them with extremism and organizing unlawful meetings. But even relatively more open governments are feeling the pressure to corral social mediatake Brazil, for example, which temporarily blocked WhatsApp three times last year for not handing over user information.

Controlling dissent through censorship is a tried-and-true tactic of authoritarian governments, which have a long history of cracking down on newspapers, radio, and TV. Social media got a pass at first because its new, and people who run these regimes are old, says Joshua Tucker, a politics professor at New York University who specializes in Russian and Slavic studies. Now, he says, restrictive governments recognize that it is important to control because of its importance for protest.

Tucker and his colleagues recently analyzed the tactics authoritarian regimes use to control their countrys social media and found that governments often struggle to adopt effective measuresat least at first. Chinas infamous Great Firewall, the surgically precise, vast technical and legal apparatus that many people think of when they think of internet censorship, was established in 1997, in the internets early days. Outside China, however, the internet developed freely, making technically sophisticated filtering operations like Chinas virtually impossible without the same aggressive investments in infrastructure. During the failed coup in Turkey in 2016, for example, the government attempted to shut down Facebook and Twitter, primarily through DNS blocking and traffic throttling. But because the Turkish government does not have centralized control over the internet and relies on ISPs to carry out its orders, these measures were relatively easy to circumvent.

After trying and failing to restrict access to content, Great Firewall-style, governments are instead resorting to one of two approaches. Online, they are engaging on social media to try steer the narrative, either through their own posts or using bots and trolls. Offline, they are taking legal actions that change who is held liable for certain kinds of language.

Changes to legal infrastructure are a big deal, Tucker says. By changing who is responsible for content, you can change the ownership structure of and access to online space.

In Russia, for example, the government reportedly preferred a strategy of engagement on social media until roughly 2012, when Putin returned to power amid massive protest. Then the government pivoted to focus on the second strategy, attempting to control social media through legislative actions: It passed anti-extremism laws restricting access to content related to political opposition under the guise of fighting terrorism. The change in approach prompted Freedom House to revise its designation for Russia from partly free in 2014 to not freeand one of the most locked down in the world.

The same transition is now under way in Zimbabwe, where the internet is still classified as partly free. Robert Mugabe, 90, has been experimenting with ways to restrict social media access since the summer, when the country saw the largest protests in the dictators 30 year rule, organized primarily through WhatsApp. In January, Mugabe tried raising mobile data rates, putting internet access out of reach for the vast majority of the population. The move backfired, affecting government officials as much as ordinary citizens, so the rate hike was reversed days later. The battle is not yet over, says Nhlanhla Ngwenya, director of the Zimbabwe chapter of the Media Institute of Southern Africa. The government already has an arsenal of legislative instruments to impinge on my rights online.

A bill passed in 2015, for example, gives Zimbabwes government access to user data collected by ISPsnot too far off from the USs new ISP bill and the DHSs Twitter meddling. Now the Zimbabwean legislature is considering a bill that redefines cyber terrorism to include any language critical of the state, while also making ISPs liable for the content they host. If the bill passes, the government will have the authority to order ISPs to take down any material it finds objectionable.

This is coming up not only in places like Zimbabwe, but also in Europe and the US, White says. There are legitimate reasons for trying to regulate speech online, such as banning harassment and hate speech, which are not protected under the First Amendment. But laws that dictate what speech is acceptable and what is not are often dicey, and can be a slippery slope to censorship, Tucker says. Germany and Italy are both contemplating bills that would criminalize fake news. California recently tried the same. Says White: In terms of creating legal provisions criminalizing fake news, thats very tricky.

Whether the goal is restricting online extremism or the spread of fake news, the legal framework is largely the same. When democratic countries start implementing similar provisions its very problematic, White says. One of the key questions is who gets to decide whats true or not. To create a centralized body thats gets to decide what is fake news or not, that doesnt seem like a great idea.

In 2016, Freedom House ranked the US as having one of the most free webs in the world. Trumps first 100 days are likely to knock it down a few rungs. Specific steps have been taken that provide us with reasonable grounds to consider downgrading the US, says White, although at this point they cant tell by how much. Now Freedom House lists the US under countries to watch, along with Zimbabwe, the Philippines, and Denmark. With countries around the world reconsidering their internet freedoms, democracy falters.

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Internet Censorship Is Advancing Under Trump - Backchannel

A young woman overcome by tear gas shot is carried away by fellow demonstrators when opposition activists clashed with riot police in Caracas on April 10, 2017.

Photo by FEDERICO PARRA/AFP/Getty Images

The Netizen Report offers an international snapshot of challenges, victories, and emerging trends in internet rights around the world. It originally appears each week on Global Voices Advocacy. Afef Abrougui, Mahsa Alimardani, Ellery Roberts Biddle, Oiwan Lam, Weiping Li, Leila Nachawati, and Sarah Myers West contributed to this report.

Protesters in Venezuela have been mobilizing almost daily and in large numbers since the Supreme Court of Justice temporarily nullified the National Assembly on March 30, a move that many described as a self-inflicted coup. The change sparked international outrage.

Although the court reversed course days later and reinstated the National Assembly, public unrest has continued, forcing public officials to confront the economic and political crisis that has been ongoing since 2014. Alongside political turmoil and rising rates of violent crime, the global drop in the price of oil, the countrys main export, has left Venezuela with staggering inflation rates for more than three years. Inflation has not fallen below 50 percent since 2014. It exceeded 100 percent in 2015, and reached 800 percent at the end of 2016. President Nicolas Maduro has repeatedly blamed the United States for the downturn in the oil market.

Citizen media have become increasingly important for Venezuelans throughout this period, as the Maduro administration has sought to maintain tight control over official and corporate media outlets. A mainstay of critical reporting on the country, CNN, was kicked off of cable television in February 2017.

This has left citizen media outlets among the few sources of information regarding protests and crackdowns that readers can turn to. Perhaps as a result, numerous independent journalists have experienced harassment and physical threats while on assignment in recent weeks. Elvis Flores, a cameraman for the online channel VPITV, was arrested midbroadcast while filming protesters in Caracas. For nine hours he held in custody, where he was reportedly beaten. VPITV and other popular web TV channels including Vivoplay and El Capitolio TV were blocked from April 7 onward, according to Venezuelan netizens. In response to the censorship, protesters have united around the hashtag #VzlaTrancaContraElGolpe (Venezuela blocks the coup).

Womens rights campaigners face online threats in Kuwait Kuwaiti human rights defender Hadeel Buqrais received a rash of online threats after she took part in a march in Kuwait City calling for womens rights in Saudi Arabia. The march was part of the Namshi Laha, or Walking for Her, campaign, which launched online last week. There have been attempts to block the campaign, and other participants involved in the campaign have also been targeted with insults on social media, according to Frontline Defenders.

Southeast Asian lawmakers use fake news fears to justify censorship Multiple governments in Southeast Asia are leveraging the issue of fake news as a justification for stricter laws and to harass journalists. In Singapore, Minister for Communications and Information Yaacob Ibrahim said the country will soon amend its Broadcasting Act in order to ensure that overseas content providers [are] in line with our community values, including the need to uphold racial and religious harmony.

In the Philippines, House Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez filed a bill mandating that social media companies verify the identity of users before registering them on their networks, in what he describes as an effort to more easily prevent users from creating fake accounts and spreading fake news.

Russian authorities block Zello, amid trucker protests Russia's media regulator announced plans to block Zello, a mobile push-to-talk app that Russian long-haul truckers have used to organize protests in recent months. Roskomnadzor, the authority responsible for monitoring Russian media, has publicly stated that Zello failed to submit company information necessary to be included on the federal Registry of Information-Dissemination Organizers, a list of online platforms that Roskomnadzor oversees.

Irans internet, between Rouhani and a hard place As presidential elections approach in Iran, the contrast between the relatively moderate current president, Hassan Rouhani (who is expected to seek re-election), and political hardliners is increasingly visible. In the first-ever Iranian government press conference to be broadcast over Instagram Live, Rouhani boasted about many of the achievements of his administration, including the effort to improve internet speeds in Iran, which indeed have seen a tenfold increase. He also claimed that if it wasnt for the efforts of his administration, all social media platforms would have been sacrificed. Although Facebook is still blocked inside Iran, Instagram has remained uncensored throughout the Rouhani administration, along with other popular foreign platforms such as WhatsApp and Telegram.

Nevertheless, some people have paid high prices for their participation on said platforms. On March 14, 12 a dozen administrators of news channels on the messaging app Telegram were arrested by Irans hardline Revolutionary Guards, who said the channelswhich are chiefly reformist and moderate in their political leaningsrepresented a threat to national security. To the chagrin of the judiciary, President Hassan Rouhani has since called for an investigation of the arrests, underscoring the political cleavage between the two entities.

Apple TV bows to Chinese censorship demands In the first week of April, the Apple TV app store blocked the satirical news show China Uncensored from users based in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. The creators of the show said that while they understand why the show is censored in China, they do not think the block in Hong Kong and Taiwan is justified. They sent a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook demanding the company unblock the show in Hong Kong and Taiwan within 30 days.

Originally posted here:
Netizen Report: Censorship Spikes in Wake of Venezuela's Self-Inflicted Coup - Slate Magazine (blog)

1. After the country celebrated its first female leader when Park Geun-hye became President in February 2013, she was removed from office in March 2017 for corruption.

2. While South Korea ranks in the upper-third of Transparency Internationals 2016 Corruption Perception Index, it does not stack up well with its peer group.

3. Among the 35 OECD developed economies, just six countries rank worse than South Korea: Mexico, Turkey, Greece, Italy, Hungary and Slovakia. Most of them are economically less advanced than South Korea.

4. Moreover, 50% of South Koreans polled said corruption had increased recently an unsurprising sentiment amid the far-reaching presidential scandal.

5. A key factor in this perception of corruption is the dominant role of the chaebols the large, often family-owned and family-run industrial conglomerates in South Korea.

6. It is not by accident that the countrys largest industrial group, Samsung, finds itself at the center of the corruption charges that led to the ouster of President Park.

7. The chaebols dominance over the South Korean economy and the high level of business concentration that this represents create a dangerous chokehold over the economy and politics.

8. Moreover, as the unfolding of the recent corruption scandal generated a lot of government backlash to reporting on it, South Korea dropped 10 places between 2015 and 2016 in the global rankings on media freedom.

9. South Korea has long struggled with press freedom, according to Reporters Without Borders, which ranked it 70th in the 2016 World Press Freedom Index.

10. One reason is that the country has laws on the books that allow imprisonment for defamatory or pro-North Korean reporting. Both often prompt self-censorship among journalists.

Sources: The Globalist Research Center, Transparency International, Reporters Without Borders and New York Times

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South Korea: Corruption & Self-Censorship - The Globalist

A profile in The College Voice, the student newspaper of Connecticut College,ofan activist-turned-artist named Mike Alewitz details his radical, politically charged career that is characterizedas muchbythe provocative works heproduced as bythe incidents of censorship theworks inspired.

Alewitz, aformer professor atCentral CT State University,who earned his MFA from theMassachusetts College of Art in 1983, is best known for his murals depicting the American labor movement. According to the profile author, his "stories are a routine of acceptance and decline, of struggle and movement. His pieces are vibrant, loud, colorful. They declare to be acknowledged."

In the profile, Alewitz, now in his 60s, tellsthe story of his life's work through a tour of his Connecticut home, identified "by its fiery red exterior and vibrant pink detail," where he sits at his dining table accompanied bya make-up smeared mannequin and a "large, plastic bunny with long white ears."

His story begins as an undergraduate at Kent State University, where his witnessing of the Kent State massacrefurthered his motivationas an anti-warorganizer. At the time of the massacrehe was the university'sChairman of the Student Mobilization Committee Against the War (SMC). After the shooting,

he left to become an organizer for anti-war movements, traveling to Austin, Los Angeles, Cleveland, New Orleans, Virginia, Boston, New Jersey. At the time he began working for the union movement, he was in industry as a railroad worker and machinist. He even laid some of the railroad tracks in New London, Connecticut that remain about half a mile from his house. While working, Alewitz picked up sign painting and billboard painting before going to the Massachusetts School of Art in his late thirties. He considers this the beginning of his art career. I had the background, he tells me. I could render.

As an MFA student, Alewitz had his first encounter with the censorship of his work. A column he painted in tribute to a local back man killed by the police was subsequently graffitied by the police and then painted over by the authorities. Since then, the profile explains, "Alewitz has been devoted to agitprop work, a combination of agitation and propaganda, which he also refers to as 'high grade street art'."

Alewitz garnereda reputation for works that paid tribute to labor groups, such as the International Confederation of Energy and Mine Workers and UNITE The Union of Needletrades, Industrial, and Textile Employees, murals that reflected his political perspective;his sense of antipathy toward the capitalist system. The author notes that an adjacent room in his house is lined with booksKarl Marx, Frederick Engels, and Lenin.

Yeah, hetells the profile writer,Im the real deal.

According to the profile, Alewitz keeps boxes of press articles about incidents of censorship his works have produced. In 1999, for example, he was funded to produce a series of muralscalled Dreams of Harriet Tubman. The central mural he painted "shows Harriet Tubman holding a gun and on either side of her are red swirling waves. Silhouettes of people cluster and crowd at her feet." The mural was never made public, however:

Youre in a place where there are statues with white men with guns everywhere and they cant his voice trails off as he tells me the story. I painted the only image of a womana Black womanwith a gun. After the mural was rejected, Alewitz issued an offer for a free mural but no one would provide a wall. Everybodys afraid, he says. It was censorship and not the kind that helps your career.

Alewitzs history with censorship iswell known to NCAC.In 2014, for example, the Museum of the City of New Yorkrefused to display his mural at the inaugural exhibition of the museums Puffin Gallery for Social Activism.Despite the overtly left-leaning politics of the Puffin Foundation,which commissioned the mural for theireponymous gallery, the museum was reluctant to be associated with the murals unvarnished, left-wing, pro-labor views.NCAC urged the museum and the foundation to open a dialogue about how this mural, which depicts the struggles of radical labor and civil rights movements in our society, can be presented to the public.

Read the rest of the interview withThe College Voice, which takes the readerthrough Alewitzs house and studio, floor by floor, mural by mural, story by story. As the profile writer comments:

There is a book in every one of these stories, he says. [] There are novels behind his paintings and behind those novels are history books. His house is a time capsule.

Summer Wrobels interview with Mike Alewitz, The House on Federal Street: Meet New Londons Resident Censored Artist, appeared in The College Voice on April 4, 2017. Read the full piece here.Take a tour through one of Alewitzs mural proposals here.

Read more:
An Art Career Intertwined with Censorship: The Murals of Mike Alewitz - Blogging Censorship (blog)

This spring, the Open Campus Initiative was formed to explore the limits of free speech on Harvard's campus by inviting controversial speakers across the ideological spectrum, starting with Jordan B. Peterson. In response to Petersons statements on gender nonconformity and reports of harassment from his previous lectures, many students took issue with his invitation, echoing the backlash to Harvard Financial Analyst Club's invitation of Martin Shkreli this February. Although we have qualms with the mission statement of OCI and disagree with Petersons statements, we nonetheless recognize OCIs potential value and the difference in the two groups purposes and processes.

As we have previously argued, since HFAC never provided any justification for Shkrelis invitation, it seems that they invited him simply for the sake of publicity. Under the guise of valuing free speech principles, HFAC gave Shkreli a platform to praise himself, all while censoring questions regarding his controversial legal and financial decisions and impeding the press from reporting on the event. Rather than informing the campus discussion, HFAC used the controversy to indulge in Shkrelis oversized persona. The difference in intellectual weight between Shkreli and Peterson aside, OCI displayed much more respect for campus discourse. Not only did OCI moderate the discussion wellwith the event moderator continually pressing Peterson and rejecting simple talking point answersbut they also allowed attendees to ask questions directly, as protesters silent through the talk ultimately did.

OCIs understanding of First Amendment principles therefore comes off as much more genuine. Freedom of speech is valuable because it allows individuals from across the ideological spectrum to engage with one another. The resultant clash strengthens and advances our best ideas, and prevents our campus from becoming an echo chamber. If OCI continues to properly moderate controversial speakers, substantially engaging with and scrutinizing them, they will have enriched campus discourse and helped move towards the ideal of free speech that informs their mission.

Nevertheless, it is important to recognize that the benefits of broadened discourse come with an uneven distribution of cost. Petersons comments regarding gender nonconformity, seen as inconsequential or valid among some students, are direct attacks on the identities of others. Regardless of one's personal view about the necessity of engaging with uncomfortable ideas, everyone should recognize the potential emotional burden that students bear in countering these proposals.

This is not to say that students should be insulated from concepts with which they disagree or even that such debate is unimportant. The better informed that students are, the better they will be able to engage with contrary viewpoints once they exit Harvard. Refusing to debate speakers who we find uncomfortable is unproductive, and including them in a conversation does not necessarily validate their views. As OCI has shown, it is possible to frame such speech so that we may confront it, placing it on an operating table rather than an oratory lectern.

Nonetheless, the backlash to Petersons comments highlights the need for support in these debates. Free speech is too often championed for more privileged members of discourse, making unqualified support of it tone-deaf to those who potentially have a part of their identity at stake. Those who have the privilege to do so should help shoulder that burden and debate against ideas which are more targeted at marginalized individuals.

To reach the truth, we must consider all ideasnot just ones that we are comfortable with. Organizations that invite controversy in the name of free speech should use that controversy to further campus discourse rather than to simply garner publicity. We commend OCI for leaving a positive first impression, but it is crucial to continue to hold that speech accountable through proper moderation and engagement, lest we celebrate regressive speech where we should instead challenge it.

This staff editorial solely represents the majority view of The Crimson Editorial Board. It is the product of discussions at regular Editorial Board meetings. In order to ensure the impartiality of our journalism, Crimson editors who choose to opine and vote at these meetings are not involved in the reporting of articles on similar topics.

On-Campus Interview Participation Drops

The program, which brings employers on campus for full-time job and summer internship interviews, saw a 13 percent drop in sign-ups compared to last year.

Students Welcome Earlier On-Campus Interviews

A combination of faculty pressure and student demand brought about the shift in the timing of OCIs first week, which is traditionally marked by a high concentration of interviews with financial firms.

'A Quiet Place' Overcomes Constraints

Plays often rely on elaborate lighting, lavish costumes, and richly decorated sets to entertain; A Quiet Place featured none of these. But, in spite of some elements that made the play feel unfinished, this 80-minute production was never boring.

Islamophobia, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Islamophilia

Rather than shrouding Islam with implicit speech regulations, why not debate it?

With Provocative Speakers, New Group Aims to Test Free Speech Values

Originally posted here:
Moderation Over Censorship - Harvard Crimson