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by Ari Paul

Coda (1/10/20) appears to have been the first to break the story of Instagrams Soleimani censorship, as part of the sites focus on authoritarian tech.

Instagram, and its parent company Facebook, took down posts regarded as too sympathetic to Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who was assassinated January 3 in a controversial US airstrike. The news website Coda (1/10/20) was credited with breaking the news, and Newsweek (1/10/20) also reported that

Iranian journalists have reported the censorship of their Instagram accounts. Posts about Soleimani have disappeared from Instagram, which is currently the only operational international social media site within Iran.

According to the Facebook corporation, as quoted by CNN (1/10/20), removal of such posts is required by US sanctions; the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, of which Soleimani was a commander, was designated as a terrorist organization by the US government in April:

As part of its compliance with US law, the Facebook spokesperson said the company removes accounts run by or on behalf of sanctioned people and organizations.

One might rightly ask: What constitutes a post supportive of the late military commander? According to the CNN report, merely posting a photo of the general could get the Facebook authorities to take a post down.

The International Federation of Journalists condemned the censorship:

The measures have gone even further, and some accounts of Iranian newspapers and news agencies have now been removed from the social media platform. This poses an immediate threat to freedom of information in Iran, as Instagram is the only international social media platform currently still operating in the country.

The Washington Times (1/11/20) reported:

Ali Rabiei, a spokesperson for the Iranian government, complained from his Twitter account on Monday this week about the disappearance of social media discussions about Soleimani, accusing Instagram of acting undemocratic and unashamed.

Much of the coverage has centered on the fact that Instagram is one of the few social media networks not widely restricted in Iranthus, the blackout serves as a way of censoring information going into Iran. In fact, the US government news agency Voice of America (1/7/20) reported that the Iranian government was clamping down on social media posts too critical of Soleimani, and NBC News (8/21/19) reported on how Iranians used networks like Instagram to skirt government regulation. (The irony here is thick.)

Facebook says that in order to comply with US sanctions laws, it removes posts that commend the actions of sanctioned parties (CNN, 1/13/20).

But this news has also gotten journalists and press advocates worried about what this means for free speech and the First Amendment in the United States. On the one hand, as a private company, Facebook is free to make its own rules about acceptable content. Yet if the network is removing content because it believes it is required to do so by law, that is government censorshipand forbidden by the Constitutions guarantee of freedom of the press.

Shayana Kadidal, a senior managing attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, told FAIR that while it was possible for the US government to restrict media companies from coordinating with sanctioned entities and providing material support to the IRGC, the US government cannot restrict Americans from engaging in what he called independent advocacy.

Independent advocacy, as the law stands, cant be banned, he said. For [Instagram] to remove every single post would mean it was pulling posts that are protected.

The Washington Post (1/13/20) reported that free speech advocates were worried, with the director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation calling it legally wrong. Others concurred:

Eliza Campbell, associate director at the Cyber Program at the Middle East Institute in Washington, DC, [said] that the existing laws had failed to keep up with online speech, calling it a field of law that hasnt been written quite yet.

The terrorist designation system is an important tool, but its also a blunt instrument, she said. I think were walking down a dangerous path when we afford these platformswhich are private entities, have no oversight, and are not elected bodiesto essentially dictate policy, which is whats happening right now.

Emerson T. Brooking, a resident fellow at the Atlantic Councils Digital Forensic Research Lab, [said] that Facebook and Instagram are taking a very aggressive position and it may not be sustainable. He said it could result in Facebook removing any speech of any Iranian mourning Soleimanis death and could represent a harsh new precedent.

In the wake of the Soleimani assassination, the wrong joke can be career-ending (New York Times, 1/11/20).

Regardless of whether the government directed Facebook to take this action, the fact that a media company felt the need to do so is proof of a chilling effect on speech. Who, specifically, is to decide what is so unabashedly pro-Soleimani material that it violates US sanctions? Is an article that merely acknowledges that many Iranians mourned Soleimani and denounced his killing a violation? Is an anti-war editorial that doesnt sufficiently assert Soleimani was no angel constitute such a crime? Could satirical material that facetiously supported the Tehran regime get censored? (The last item isnt so hypothetical: A Babson College professor was fired for jokingly encouraging Iran to follow Trumps lead by targeting US cultural sites.)

All of these questions, and all this ambiguity, should be enough evidence that this kind of censorship would be capricious and unfairly applied, and thus inappropriate in the face of free speech protections.

Free press advocates in the United States should think seriously in the coming days about how to respond. If sanctions can be invoked by a social media network to take down certain content, what is next? In order not to find out, well need a concerted pushback to Facebooks censorship from journalists and civil libertarians.

You can send a message to Facebook via Twitter: @Facebook (or @Instagram). Remember that respectful communication is the most effective. Feel free to leave a copy of your message in the comments thread of this post.

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Facebook's Soleimani Ban Flies in Face of First Amendment - FAIR

When David Shanks presents himself at international conferences, his peers recoil slightly.

Id introduce myself as, Hi, Im David from New Zealand. New Zealands chief censor, he says. And basically these people would take an involuntary step backwards, almost, on many occasions.

Shanks is an independent, government-appointed official whose role is essentially that of a content regulator responsible for classifying, restricting or banning any material he deems objectionable that New Zealanders can access, including everything from Hollywood blockbusters to terrorist videos, child pornography to t-shirts and pamphlets. It is not an unusual role worldwide, although the scope of his job is broader than most.

But fellow attendees at the annual world meeting of classifiers those responsible for rating or, at times, restricting access to content in their countries omit the c-word from their job titles, he says.

They would introduce themselves and they were the head of the classifications group or general manager, Shanks says referring to his counterparts in other countries when he speaks to the Guardian in his offices in Wellington, New Zealands capital. What Ive kind of realised is Im the last censor standing in the western world.

At a time when the word censorship has never been more fraught, Shanks says the worlds classification bodies no longer even include it in the names of their organisations. It is rife with negative associations, from state suppression of information synonymous with autocratic authoritarian regimes in North Korea and China, Shanks says to a term thrown about liberally on social media to describe anything from being challenged on ones views to de-platforming speakers from events or venues.

But Shanks defends it. The interesting thing is, if you dont have any authority that makes those calls, you abdicate to private sector and also to a group of invisible kind of bureaucrats and groups, he says. Its still happening in various ways, but its happening in a disaggregated, disorganised way that nobody can make any sense of.

Perhaps New Zealands adoption of a system where a single, all-powerful individual along with a staff of fewer than 20 people makes decisions about an entire countrys access to content might have escaped global notice. But in March last year, a gunman stormed two mosques in the New Zealand city of Christchurch, killing 51 worshippers and injuring dozens more.

The attacks were streamed in a Facebook Live video by the shooter, and Shanks had ruled it was illegal to possess or share it within days of the attack. Those convicted of distributing publications deemed objectionable can face up to 14 years in jail. Several cases related to the Christchurch video are progressing through New Zealands courts.

Shanks decision to ban the shooting video captured global attention, particularly in the United States, where First Amendment rights are inviolable. Americans were tickled by Shanks job title, and taken aback that he had the power to bar New Zealanders from watching the footage.

He received death threats. We shoot people in the face who have that sort of approach around here, one emailer warned, adding that Shanks better not bring your censoring ways over here to the land of the free.

But his decision to prohibit the video, he says, has not been an ideological or moral one. Shanks has, he insists, been rational, professional and dispassionate.

He watched the 17-minute broadcast the day after the shootings as New Zealand roiled with grief, determined that this like numerous torture-kill videos from Iraq, Syria and Myanmar he had been forced to watch during his tenure as censor would be assessed against the framework he and his team had developed, rather than against his emotions.

The world is an incredibly brutal place and at times is incredibly cruel, Shanks says. We cant just insulate our public from that.

Sometimes, in other words, the public should bear witness to violence. But in this case and in the case of a manifesto purportedly written by the Christchurch gunman, and a later video game based on the killings the potential harms, and exhortations to further violence, were too great to allow, Shanks says.

The former lawyer talks a lot about the science of harm something measurable, quantifiable as a justification for the work he does.

Youve got to protect freedom of expression, he says. Youve got to protect this vital ability to have opinions, to spread them, to access information of any kind.

The only reason to diverge from that principle, ever, he says, is to prevent harm something he consults groups ranging from medical experts to high school students about. Before the Christchurch event he was appointed in May 2017 many of his highest-profile decisions had related to films and television series that dealt with self-harm, including in the show 13 Reasons Why, and the Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga vehicle A Star is Born, both of which feature suicides.

He is beyond making definitive decisions by himself about whats damaging, he says. Actually I listen to the young people on a panel and they go, Can you just warn us if there is self-harm in it? And can you make sure that we protect young people who we know are going to be impacted by it?

The same applies to pornography Shanks does not want to be New Zealands arbiter of taste, and instead favours education on sex and consent.

As chief censor, Shanks can have a cinema opened specially for him to preview a new film, and can chalk up binge-watching television series as overtime. But the job has taken a toll.

The kind of curious thing is you dont know whats going to be particularly harmful for you, and everyones got different vulnerabilities and resilience, Shanks says. I really dont like watching people get shot. Its something I found out in this role.

His relationship with his children 15, 12 and 6 is much more kind of open and richer than it typically would have been were he not the chief censor, he says. Its about actually figuring out how you can reconnect with your kids and talk about stuff that might be a feature of their online world.

Shanks teenage daughter had sent him a text when he appeared on breakfast television in December to discuss a report on New Zealanders pornography habits. She and her friends had thought it was really great he was talking openly about such matters.

In an era where access to ultra-violent material is unprecedented and where, Shanks says, many people believe anything they can find via Google is legal some of the public upsets besetting Shanks predecessors seem quaint in comparison. The previous chief censors highest-profile cases included an outcry over the banning of a young adult novel that contained drugs and sex, and the censoring of a brand of campervans that featured rude slogans.

Now Shanks finds himself wrangling with what social media giants have wrought on the quantity and availability of content including an unstoppable torrent of child sexual abuse material which he likens to the proliferation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere following the building of vast corporate transnational empires over the past 100 years.

I sort of cant help but see parallels with this massive digital industrial complex, he says. These huge transglobal, transnational corporations are making vast amounts of money by exploiting a new resource which is us, our data and our attention.

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'I'm the last censor in the western world': New Zealand's David Shanks tackles the c-word - The Guardian

While it is unfortunately a regular part of life today that websites can go down so much so that there are now services that track to see if a website or Internet Service Provider (ISP) is down. Much of the time this is due to a technical problem at a localized level, but in some cases outages impact an entire region, such as when a severed fiber optic cable disrupted Internet access in December for parts of Eastern Europe, Iran and Turkey.

That recent outage rendered Google and its services unavailable to users in the region for a mere 30 minutes a perhaps typical timeframe for an unintentional outage. In other cases including Iran today countries limit Internet access to control the flow of information, such as Egypt during the 2011 Arab Spring demonstrations.

Then there is the issue of whether a service should be shut down if there is a legitimate and imminent threat. Acyber attack today could impact critical infrastructure and seriously cripple a governments ability to communicate. This was seen in recent years in the ransomware attacks on such cities as Baltimore and Atlanta. While critical infrastructure, including the electrical grid, wasnt impacted, in both cases EMS and payroll systems were affected for extended periods of time.

The question is, what should an IT team do if they expect such an attack? Is shutting down servers, blocking access, and closing ports really an option?

It is a curious question, and something that has not come up yet, explained Sasha Romanosky, Ph.D., policy researcher at the RAND Corporation.

It isnt entirely clear what can be shut down when were talking about network systems, Romanosky admitted to ClearanceJobs. Is this a case of sending people home while turning off the web servers or something more extreme?

Even during the terrorist attacks of 9/11, shutting down servers would have been a complex ordeal. Today there are multiple systems of computer networks, including cloud storage.

The modern web services have so many different layers between the user and the data that it isnt just flipping a switch, said Romanosky. There are routers, load balancers, multiple connection ports and then you get to the web servers, but the actual data could be on other servers. Shutting down doesnt make sense.

For a business, the better solution may be to prepare for an attack and then have a recovery plan in place, should some sort of attack occur.

Any organization with sensitive or criticaldata should constantly be fearful of security threats, suggested Jim McGregor, founder and principal analyst at TIRIAS Research.

As a result, they should be constantly upgrading and maintaining their security platform, McGregor told ClearanceJobs. Eventually, AI will improve security and reduce the threats, but never eliminate them.

There have been cases where governments have shut down Internet access, but even in those extreme cases, that doesnt mean all services were shut down. The connected world of 2020 is very different, and exponentially more complex, than that of even just 2001.

In nation state attacks I could see that by disconnecting you can reduce the ability for someone to attack you, said Romanosky. That could include no public facing IP address and no access, and perhaps that could protect the servers and data, but that is something extremely monumental.

Such a drastic move could still allow the government to conduct business via an intranet.

You could drop traffic off the ISP, and those with internal access could still conduct normal business, added Romanosky. The Department of Defense (DoD) relies on systems that could do just this, so I suppose it isnt the craziest thing to do.

However, even if there is only internal access it remains a network, and all it takes is one point to be breached externally and in such an instance, the network might have remained online.

This is why shutting down doesnt really make sense in most situations. It locks out those who might need access during a crisis and unless literally every system is switched off, there remains the chance that a rouge actor could find a way to access the information.

In business recovery and continuity it isnt about limited access, but it is about mirroring the data and services to another area, much like backing up your data, explained Romanosky. That is generally considered a best practice.

The Internet is anything but compartmentalized today, even if more and more content is hosted in the cloud, simply because it is so interconnected.

At the other extreme we hear about Russias Balkanization of their Internet and how it could be separate and not connected to the rest of the world, said Romanosky. That requires big muscle movements. Moreover, in countries where the Internet is more managed by the government or dictator it would be possible to shut part of it down. Weve seen countries do this in times of civil unrest.

Whether its a government trying to keep information out, or a company trying to protect the information within, its clear protecting IT isnt as simple as just shutting a system off. A government agency that opts to shut down one system could impact related systems in ways that might not have been foreseen.

As to when you should pull the plug that is a difficult decision and I dont think there is a clear answer, added McGregor. If there is that great of a concern, then the system probably already has a full backup and contingency plans.

Read more:
Shut It Down: Critical IT Systems, Outages and Censorship - Not as Simple as Flipping a Switch - ClearanceJobs

Social media platforms have the obligation to permit equal access to all perspectives. And, people, as well as companies, should be free to air out their views regarding a particular matter.

The Internet is an ideal platform for sharing and exchanging ideas. People and organizations use social media platforms for various things such as debate forums, disseminating values, and social media censorship among other things.

Censor political speech

As the presidential elections approach, there are frequent and urgent calls for government regulations which proscribe social media platforms from censoring political speech. The majority of these calls presume that government regulations will not encroach on the First Amendments rights of the platforms as they are only platforms and not publishers.

However, according to the U.S. Supreme Court, private social media platforms can systematize the speech on their platforms as they have similar First Amendment rights to private publishers. Hence, any government regulation which prohibits the authority of a platform to censor speech will indeed lead to viewpoint censorship thereby violating the First Amendment rights of the platform.

Usual government regulations

The censorship powers of social media platforms are not beyond the reach of government regulations. The government should consider adopting due process regulations which necessitate that platforms implement clear rules regarding the speech that they ought not to allow on the platform and protect against the arbitrary execution of these rules on users. In comparison to regulations which forbid platforms censoring authority, due process regulations can withstand First Amendment challenges because they do not inhibit platforms from controlling the viewpoints that people express on these platforms.

Do they have the right to censor?

The First Amendment provides exemplary protection which inhibits the government from limiting your right to manifest your viewpoint(s). Apart from controlling government regulations, it also protects against various types of censorship, for example, forms of compelled speech and speech restrictions set in grants conditions. So, platforms have the right to censor.

Due process regulations are different

Despite the ability of the First Amendment to limit government censorship, the government can still address the dangers of biased platforms. Due process regulations are different as they do require platforms to modify their message, hence their ability to withstand First Amendment difficulties. Furthermore, due process regulations address most of the concerns that people raise. And, these regulations enable users to know the rules earlier so that they can develop content that complies with these rules.

Kinds of censorship

As aforementioned, there are various kinds of censorship that the First Amendment protects against. Coming up with an essay on a political topic can be challenging. But, with professional assistance from Essay Kitchen, drafting an outstanding and impeccable article will not be an issue.

What can we do?

Social media platforms have the obligation to permit equal access to all perspectives. And, people, as well as companies, should be free to air out their views regarding a particular matter. Furthermore, the First Amendment protects against the intervention of the government in limiting your ability to express your thoughts and opinions. Hence, people should say no to government regulations that censor social media. The government should not control what people say and how they say it.

In conclusion, there should be no restrictions on how people choose to express their views and share their ideas. The First Amendment aids in limiting government censorship and people should embrace it.

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Censorship On and By Social Media Platforms - Legal Reader

Germany: Response to satirical childrens video exposes self-censorship of the media By Dietmar Gaisenkersting 11 January 2020

The week before Christmas, German broadcaster WDR posted an online video of a childrens choir singing an updated version of a satirical song Meine Oma fhrt im Hhnerstall Motorrad (My grandmother rides a motorcycle in the chicken coop), which was then made the subjected of a hysterical media storm.

In earlier versions, the grandma possesses many strange and wonderful things, such as a radio in her hollow tooth, glasses with curtains, a cane with a taillight or has a revolver in her garter. The chorus runs, My grandma is a very smart woman (meine Oma ist ne ganz patente Frau). The song and an English translation of the lyrics can be found here.

In the on-demand video WDR put online, the broadcasters Dortmund childrens choir sings a new version of the satirical song, which ends in the chorus Meine Oma ist ne alte Umweltsau (My grandma is an old environmental sow).

It is a harmless satire, which, according to its authors, is intended to use exaggeration and humour to target the conflict between the generations. The children sing about the discount meat-eating, SUV-driving and cruise ship travelling grandma. At the end of the video, a girl quotes Greta Thunberg saying, We will not let you get away with this.

The way the West German Broadcasting Corporation (WDR) then dealt with the so-called Umweltsau video is a prime example of how the media censors itself under the slightest pressure from the right and spreads the ideology of the far-right.

Spiegel Online, based on a Twitter survey by social media analyst Luca Hammer, has shown how right-wing trolls unleashed a tirade against the video.

His evaluation shows that the first accounts tweeted against the video on December 27, the article says. However, the first tweets about it hardly get any attention. But then the spark jumps over accounts that are too wide-reaching to be assigned to the right-wing spectrum. Many tweets complain about an instrumentalisation of children or speak derogatorily of state broadcasters. Starting from here, the outrage spreads quicklyuntil it finally reaches right-wing conservative multipliers and the first media reports appear.

Granny Gate is a typical example of right-wing outrage and mobilisationboth in terms of structure and in terms of issues and arguments, Patrick Stegemann, author of a book on Right-wing mobilisation, told Spiegel Online. Environmental issues have become insanely popular in right-wing mobilization lately, Greta [Thunberg] is the enemy personified of the right.

The Umweltsau song, according to Stegemann, is not an isolated case. Right-wing influencers and groups have tried again and again to provoke outrage. A lot of bait is thrown outand as soon as something catches, the machine really goes off, then it goes around.

The right wing did not stop at this Twitter tirade. On December 28, about one hundred right-wingers demonstrated in front of the broadcasters building in Cologne. Further demonstrations followed, which had been called by those around such neo-Nazi outfits as the Brotherhood of Germany, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the extreme nationalist Identitarian Movement.

Choirmaster Zeljo Davutovic was accused of instrumentalising the singing children, AfD associations called him a child molester and tweeted his telephone number. The right-wing blogger Jrgen Fritz published the names and photos of members of the production team on his Facebook page. Some WDR employees received death threats, which should be taken seriously in view of the extreme right-wing murders of recent yearsfrom the neo-Nazi National Socialist Underground (NSU) to the murder of leading Christian Democrat Walter Lbcke, to the attack on the synagogue in Halle.

But instead of standing up and protecting the WDR journalists and defending the freedom of press, opinion and satire, the broadcasters management, the state government and other media outlets stabbed them in the back.

WDR quickly removed the video from all its internet platforms. WDR director-general Tom Buhrow, who has also been chairman of the ARD, a joint organisation of Germanys regional public service broadcasters, since the beginning of the year, apologized explicitly. On the evening of 28 December, WDR broadcast a special radio program in which Buhrow himself apologized without ifs and buts for the video.

North Rhine-Westphalias state premier Armin Laschet (Christian Democratic Union, CDU) personally joined in, tweeting that the debate on the best forms of climate protection was being escalated by WDR into a generational conflict. Never should children be instrumentalized by adults for their own purposes. With the song, WDR had crossed the boundaries of style and respect for older people. In a guest article for the weekly newspaper Zeit, Laschet wrote, In these times, we urgently need a strong public broadcasting service that serves social cohesion, corresponding to its mission statement.

Deputy state premier Joachim Stamp (Free Democratic Party, FDP) also condemned the video, Perhaps we should make a joint effort for the new decade not to describe people in general as sows, pigs etc.

In the tabloid Bild, the editor-in-chief personally spoke out against the video, its makers and WDR. The paper quoted Bundestag (federal parliament) Vice President Wolfgang Kubicki (FDP) saying, The fact that a childrens choir is being abused to denounce and re-educate speaks against the TV makers and is a fatal reminder of the failed former East Germany.

In an open letter to Buhrow, more than 40 TV authors have expressed their solidarity with the makers of the video, demanded it be immediately reposted and accused the WDR director of falling into the trap set by right-wing trolls and abandoning his staff. Among the signatories of the solidarity declaration are authors of programmes such as Neo Magazin Royale, Dark and the heute Show.

The dispute over the song lacks any rational basis,, the letter says. Even the word satirical freedom seems inappropriate when the threshold of indignation is so low that it is ruptured by every other pop song. A (!) fictional grandmother discriminates against an entire generation just as little as the alcoholic father from Papa Was a Rollin Stone does not mean all men are unfit for marriage.

Writing about Tom Buhrow, the letter goes on to say, A media manager whose handling of modern, right-wing propaganda shows so much naivete and awkwardness and who is not able to defend his staff on the simplest questions of freedom of the press and freedom of opinion, endangers precisely these freedoms. He should draw the consequences.

In a statement, the WDR editors office also supported the producers of the video and sharply criticized Buhrow. We are stunned, it says, that the program director of WDR 2 has a video with a satirical childrens song deleted, and above all about the fact that director Tom Buhrow gives in so easily to a shitstorm apparently orchestrated by right-wing extremists, hastily distances himself editorially and not only apologizes in person, but also publicly (and repeatedly) in the process, (live on WDR 2, among others), instead of backing them up in the face of staged outrage against WDR and the other public broadcasters. According to the editors representatives, the internal freedom of broadcasting had thus been violated.

On Tuesday, a private meeting of editors took place at WDR, where Buhrow faced the criticism of about 700 employees. About 30 speakers made emotional contributions, one participant told the news magazine Der Spiegel. For some, the question arose as to whether it would be possible to employ satire at all in the future. Although Buhrow had stressed that everyone should continue as before, he had also said in principle that he would do the same again.

The WDRs self-censorship in the case of the Umweltsau video is symptomatic of the ruling elites shift to the right. In the face of growing social tensions, they are arming themselves both internally and externally and are no longer prepared to tolerate criticism and dissenting opinionseven if only in the form of satire.

Those who do not adhere to self-restraint and censorship are to be intimidated and attacked. The persecution of Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning, who are in prison for having exposed war crimes, sets an international precedent for this development. It is not the perpetrators of crimes and grievances who are being prosecuted, but those who expose and criticise them.

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Germany: Response to satirical children's video exposes self-censorship of the media - World Socialist Web Site