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Jan 30th 2020

MOSCOW

ANASTASIA PATLAY thought something was amiss when she checked the young mans ID. He seemed a couple of years below the strict 18+ requirement for this performance of Out of the Closet, a play adapted from interviews with gay men and their families. That restriction was not the choice of Ms Patlay, the director, but a demand of Russian federal law, which since 2013 has banned the promotion of non-traditional sexual relationships to minors. A photocopy of his passport, which Ms Patlay snapped on her phone, suggested he had recently turned 19. Perhaps she was being paranoid, but Teatr.doc, which specialises in verbatim dramas assembled from real-life documents and transcriptsand has long been described as Russias most controversial theatre companyhad already had enough trouble from the authorities.

Her hunch was vindicated; the spectator was a plant sent by a far-right group. Shortly after the show began, he and his friend walked out to rendezvous with a dozen more agitators. Together they accused the theatre staff of illegally exposing children to gay propaganda. (The passport had been doctored; in reality, the youngster was 15.) Then they invaded the auditorium, stopping the play and shouting homophobic slurs. Police were called and a fight broke out; Teatr.doc complained about the invasion, the saboteurs that a minor had been admitted.

No charges were brought, but that sting last August turned out to be the start of a protracted ordeal for the Moscow-based company at the hands of ultraconservatives. Despite all the official pressure that Teatr.doc had suffered, this campaign was (and is) a new and different problem. It encapsulates the dual challenge of artistic censorship in Russiawhich, as Vladimir Putins rule has progressed, has come to be enforced by freelance outfits as well as the state, and as much for supposedly moral reasons as over political dissent.

Teatr.doc was founded in 2002 by Elena Gremina and Mikhail Ugarov, husband-and-wife playwrights who were inspired by verbatim drama workshops in Russia led by the Royal Court theatre of London. Its shows elicited strong responses from the start, not only because of the contentsubjects included homelessness, immigration and HIVbut also their style and everyday language. Productions that drew particular ire (and acclaim) included September.doc, in which actors read comments made in internet chat rooms following the Beslan school siege of 2004, and One Hour Eighteen Minutes, a reference to the time doctors were denied access to Sergei Magnitsky, a whistle-blowing lawyer, before he died in police custody. They went after things that ail the society, says John Freedman, a critic and translator of Russian drama, and they did it in a way that was quite direct.

Despite its quality, Teatr.doc only ever played in small venues. It has been obliged to find a new one three times in the past six years after leases were terminated, supposedly because of noise and safety complaints. Bomb scares have been reported at several performances, shutting them down, but no explosives have been found. Instead, police have exploited the scares to check audience members documents.

It might seem odd for the authorities to expend so much effort on niggling an experimental troupe. But as well as being a salutary demonstration of power, such treatment nudges the Kremlins opponents to rally round artists who can be caricatured as libertine extremists. Some alternative targetspop stars, sayhave higher profiles, but also followings too big to alienate. Teatr.doc is not the only cutting-edge company to have faced official harassment. Kirill Serebrennikov, director of the Gogol Centre theatre in Moscow, spent almost 20 months under house arrest as part of an ongoing embezzlement case.

In 2018 both of Teatr.docs founders died, leaving the company to be run by Ms Greminas son, Alexander Rodionov; many wondered if it would carry on. It did, but the intimidation continuedonly in a new form. A month after the sting on Out of the Closet, protesters threw foul-smelling chemicals through the window during a performance of War is Close, a play about the conflict in eastern Ukraine. Again, no charges were brought. Instead, at the end of last year authorities launched an investigation of Teatr.doc following a complaint from an activist group called the National-Conservative Movement. It accused the theatre of disseminating LGBT propaganda, justifying terrorism in War is Close, and promoting drug use in another production. Staff were questioned; the theatre handed over the scripts of the plays for review.

Last month police said they would not bring criminal charges, in what Ms Patlay called a victory for common sense. But her adversaries have not gone away.

In this parallel censorship drive, far-right agitators have taken aim at several other shows and exhibitions. Side by Side, an LGBT film festival, has been picketed, as have art shows with religious themes. In 2015 the director of a Siberian opera house was forced out after his staging of Wagners Tannhuser was deemed sacrilegious by Orthodox Christians. Such independent provocateurs are scarier than the authorities, says Ms Patlay, because they are unpredictable and they are new. She thinks they have been emboldened by the increasingly reactionary rhetoric of Russias politicians. And they appear to operate with the states tacit consent. The lack of punishment for them and the inaction from policeit sends a signal that we are not defended.

On the contrary, says Valentina Bobrova, the National-Conservative Movements founder. Outfits like hers may further the Kremlins bid to stoke a culture war between conservatives and those it portrays as radicals, but she insists the movement is privately funded and has no links with the authorities. She says she never had much hope that her complaint would close the companyand that it is not the likes of her but liberal voices that hold too much sway in modern Russia. Teatr.doc is an enemy of our country that is working from within, she says. We cannot stay quiet and we decided to act. She was behind the disruption of Out of the Closet, too. Her members are looking out for other signs of anti-Russian activity.

Ms Patlay worries about the effect of all this on the audience, who might conclude that you have to be particularly brave to go to the theatre. And we dont have the right to ask spectators to be brave. As to whether Teatr.doc has managed to change Russian society, she is illusionless. I dont think the percentage of decent people has increased, she accepts. But those people who are still here, who havent emigrated, perhaps it is a support of some kind. At the very least, she says, the company has shown it is possible to talk openly about things that others would rather hush up.

This article appeared in the Books and arts section of the print edition under the headline "The many ways to censor cutting-edge art in Russia"

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The many ways to censor cutting-edge art in Russia - The Economist

If you didnt know beforehand, you knew Elizabeth Warren was an authoritarian when she gave the most unsettling possible argument against the death penalty: She doesnt want the death penalty because she wants criminals to die in prison. The maximum, maximum punishment, she argued, is to keep them in prison for all of their days."

Today, Warren released her plan for combating election interference and disinformation. My colleague Brad Polumbo rightly worries about a chilling crackdown on free speech.

Its important to specify that Warren only calls for criminal penalties on people who knowingly spread false information about when and how to vote in U.S. elections. Lying in order to suppress the vote is pretty bad, and fraud isnt protected by the First Amendment. But pay close attention to Warrens bigger argument here, and it gets worrying.

Warren is trying to criminalize "voter suppression." Voter suppression efforts of any kind offend basic American values, she writes. Then she links to a study about voter suppression.

That study condemns lots of methods of voter suppression, including demobilization. One example of voter suppression condemned by the study Warren links to: The night before Election Day, ads appeared urging people to boycott the election because neither of the presidential candidates would serve black voters.

So, if Warren becomes our president and runs for reelection, imagine a GOP-affiliated super PAC runs an ad in black neighborhoods saying Warren says shes been good for African Americans. She hasnt. The Warren administration might decide that this ad wasnt a bona fide effort to win votes for the GOP, but to discourage votes for Warren. The Warren administration might also decide that this ad is false or misleading.

What then? Will she jail the head of the super PAC?

Free speech is not popular these days on the Left. Now that California Sen. Kamala Harris is out of the race, Warren is the most authoritarian Democrat remaining. She wants to crack down on a specific form of political speech that she claims harms the republic. That is something to worry about.

Excerpt from:
Yes, you should be afraid of Elizabeth Warren the censor - Washington Examiner

The National Security Councils records office, which is coordinating the review, apparently intends to scour the book not just for classified material but for information implicating executive privilege a privilege that Mr. Trump and his lawyers have construed expansively in other contexts though executive privilege is decidedly not a permissible basis for prior restraint. The White House has sent Mr. Bolton a letter expressly warning him against publishing the book.

Of course Mr. Boltons case is unusual, and it is possible that public and congressional pressure will force the White House to review his manuscript promptly and fairly. (Prominent Republicans, for their part, seem to be focused on persuading Mr. Bolton to withdraw his book, or failing that, on limiting the books audience to the senators hearing the impeachment case against Mr. Trump.)

But the spectacle of White House censors deciding, without any real constraint, whether to permit a former government official to publish a manuscript critical of the president should nonetheless provoke alarm.

The necessary changes to this process have been obvious for years: Prepublication review should apply to fewer people and fewer secrets. There should be narrower submission requirements, clearer censorship standards, enforceable deadlines and a meaningful right of judicial review. Mr. Boltons case surely underscores the urgency of these reforms.

Its not just Mr. Boltons rights at issue here. Former government officials often have unique insights about the operation of government. When censors suppress these voices, they inflict a constitutional injury on the public as well. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote for a unanimous Supreme Court in 2014, Speech by public employees on subject matter related to their employment holds special value precisely because those employees gain knowledge of matters of public concern through their employment.

Mr. Bolton is an unlikely standard-bearer for the publics right to know, having worked at the highest levels of an administration notorious for its hostility to the First Amendment. But everyone who values an informed public, and an accountable government, should be troubled that the fate of Mr. Boltons book is in the hands of the White House, and that government censors have so much control over what we will read, and when we will read it.

Jameel Jaffer is the executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. Ramya Krishnan is a staff attorney at the institute.

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Originally posted here:
We May Never See John Boltons Book - The New York Times

From time to time we hear that a totalitarian government has locked down Internet access for a part or all of their country. Normally, that is about all we hear about the situation. In the case of India, not normally thought of as a Totalitarian government, we have a unique opportunity to look at what they are censoring as they began to relax the total lockout of Internet services that was put into place in Jammu and Kashmir.

The lift of total censorship began on January 14th, when Internet Service Providers were ordered to install firewalls that would only allow access to 153 government-approved websites. As was pointed out by The Wire, No Mainstream News in List of 153 Whitelisted Websites Under Kashmirs First Govt Firewall. TheWire.in noted that Conspicuously absent from the list that includes Gmail, Netflix, Zomato, Oyo Rooms and Paytm are news and social media websites.

The order from the Principal Secretary to the Government, Home Department to the ISPs stated that the Internet shutdown was because there have been number of reports of the use of internet in cross border terrorism/terror activities, incitement, rumour-mongering, etc. as also misuse of pre-paid mobile connections by anti-national elements.

I would invite others to make relevant observations in the comments sections, or in your own publications linking back to this page. The list is intended to be a faithful representation of the new order, which can be found on the JK Home Office website as Home-05(TSTS) of 2020.

While the order has been commonly described as containing 300 URLs, there are a handful of duplicates, where a URL was included both with a trailing slash and without the slash. It should also be noted that there are a very large number of websites included by Top Level Domain, due to the inclusion of the TLDs: Ac.in (most academic institutions in India will be included here), Gov.in (most government offices and services in India will be included here), and Nic.in (most network infrastructure services from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology is included here.)

It is curious how it was decided which websites to include and not to include. For example, why include Adidas and Reebok, but not Nike? Im sure the programmers are thrilled to see that Github and StackOverflow are included! What other observations strike you as interesting? Please comment or Tweet about them!

*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from CyberCrime & Doing Time authored by Gary Warner, UAB. Read the original post at: http://garwarner.blogspot.com/2020/01/how-does-government-censor-internet.html

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How does a government censor the Internet? A rare peek from Jammu and Kashmir - Security Boulevard

The New York Times took a break from flogging the impeachment circus to recently committing a true act of journalism, making the point that people become angry when a government of the authoritarian left suppresses important information.

The national socialist media normally champions the authoritarianism of China exemplified by their being impressed that they can build a hospital in six days.

China has a record of getting things done fast even for monumental projects like this, says Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations.

This authoritarian country relies on this top down mobilisation approach. They can overcome bureaucratic nature and financial constraints and are able to mobilise all of the resources.

However, the New York Times recently noted a downside to systems of centralized control: As Virus Spreads, Anger Floods Chinese Social Media.

The government usually keeps a tight grip on what is said, seen and heard about it. But the sheer amount of criticism and the often clever ways in which critics dodge censors, such as by referring to Xi Jinping, Chinas top leader, as Trump or by comparing the outbreak to the Chernobyl catastrophe have made it difficult for Beijing to control the message.

The condemnations stand as a rare direct challenge to the Communist Party, which brooks no dissent in the way it runs China. In some cases, Chinese leaders appear to be acknowledging peoples fear, anger and other all-too-human reactions to the crisis, showing how the party can move dramatically, if sometimes belatedly, to mollify the public.

The left is based on authoritarianism, but it cannot admit this basic truth. The authoritarian socialists in China cannot be honest with their people in normal, everyday matters. This destroys any trust the people have in their government, so even when it may tell the truth in an emergency, no one will accept this as the truth.

Thus, they are already behind the eight ball when it comes to these situations, making them far worse. There are times when government has an important role in society, but when it aggressively asserts control and is deceptive, this negates that role. They cant very well admit that they lied before, but they are being trustworthy now.

While they can use brute force to get things done, the same doesnt hold true for intellectual endeavors. Those take a meritocracy of sorts, the kind of thing authoritarianism tends to suppress.

While leftists secretly love authoritarianism, the stark reality of an emergency shows that freedom based societies are better prepared to deal with them. They can be honest with people because they had to do that in the past. They can also solve the problem faster because they are intellectually equipped to do so.

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The New York Times finally realizes that censorship and socialism are bad ideas in an emergency The New York Times finally realises that censorship...