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By DENA EAKLES | rural Ontario

The N-O-W School Board meetings are quite interesting these days. It seems there is a never-ending barrage of challenge to public in public schools. And while I support parental control, that right granted to parents in their own home does not and should not extend to other peoples children. My father was a great one for saying, Do as I say, not as I do, but he was also heavily invested in my being able to think critically and to be self-determining.

The March school board meeting brought a whole new attack on public, with accusations of pornography and a plea for teachers to be reeled in and books to be OKd by parents. Good luck with that. We live in the time of the internet. Everything is available to everyone.

But more importantly, as with the misused understanding of Critical Race Theory, the new term being used to strike fear and forced repression is pornography. It is important to understand, words like pornography and obscenity are legal terms. Books for teens are reviewed and judged not by a single moral code, but by the recognition that students have the right to receive information as noted in The First Amendment Right of Minors (more can be found in http://www.ala.org) For more, go to https://ccbc.education.wisc.edu/accusations-of-providing-pornography/.

It is really good to see so many people caring for their children, and from what I can tell, that includes the teachers of N-O-W as well. But I am not a fan of censorship. By all means, teach your children good ethics and morals, and may the first among them be Judge not lest you be judged (Matthew 7:1).

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Letter to the editor: The challenge of censorship - Thecountyline

The arrest of a reporter who held up a poster during a Russian news broadcast criticising the war in Ukraine reminds us how dictatorships operate. One of Vladimir Putins first acts on the home front, after sending his tanks over the Ukrainian border, was to pass a law specifying jail terms of up to 15 years for anyone who dares to disseminate fake news i.e. anything which contradicts his governments lies about the Russian war effort.

Britain is a very long way from that kind of suppression of speech. If a publication wishes to condemn Boris Johnson for his handling of the Ukraine war, Covid or for anything else, its writers and editors will not be disappeared. But the stories themselves might be. A speech by David Davis questioning government plans for vaccine passports was taken down from YouTube but online censorship is usually more subtle. Dissenting voices can be made harder to find online, or advertising removed from the videos.

The Spectator now encounters these censorship bots on a regular basis. If we publish academics who question the rigour of the science behind the governments mask policy, Facebook can stick a false information label on it with no obligation to identify a single false fact. Lionel Shriver incurred the wrath of YouTube censors by reading a version of her column online. The Socialist Workers Party had its Facebook page removed entirely. Arguments that go against the grain are identified and then gently buried or wrongly labelled as fake news. This ought to appall the government. Instead, it wants to put itself in charge of the process.

At first, Silicon Valleys pioneers put themselves forward as proud defenders of free speech: Twitter even described itself as the free speech wing of the free speech party. But now Twitter and other platforms have complicated censorship algorithms that either remove or downgrade (i.e., make it harder to find) stories that offend whatever orthodoxy is programmed into the system. When Twitter took down Donald Trumps account (while allowing spokesmen for the Taliban to stay on the platform) it was a huge demonstration of raw power: a social media company could delete a sitting president from what has, in effect, become the public sphere.

The motives of Big Tech are not ideological but financial. They want to make money from adverts and avoid regulation and will do whatever governments want to minimise the risk of that regulation. Their ability to tweak the news feeds of tens of millions of people gives them more power than Murdoch, Hearst or Beaverbrook ever wielded but unlike the press barons, the tech giants do not care about free speech. They happily cut informal censorship deals with governments as long as they keep their power and ability to make money.

Such a deal is about to take place through the Online Safety Bill currently going through parliament. It is based on an acceptance that Silicon Valley now censors the news published digitally in Britain, but government wants the power to set the terms under which it does so. As is always the case with state censorship, this is justified by citing the worst filth imaginable: child abuse, revenge porn,glamorisation of suicide, promotion of terrorism. But it never takes long before the legislative scope widens to include things that ministers just dont like. Nadine Dorries, who is overseeing the bill, has said that the more indelicate jokes of comedians like Jimmy Carr may fall on the wrong side of her line.

So the bill has presented social media companies with a choice: interpret the word harmful liberally and risk being fined or err on the side of caution and remove any content that might conceivably land them in trouble. We have already seen where this leads. During the pandemic, social media firms tried to guess what would and would not be seen as helpful by the government. At one stage, Facebook banned articles suggesting that Covid-19 might have originated in a Wuhan laboratory. It has since lifted this rule, but the episode shows the dynamic at play: what is removed is not so much what government bans, but what social media firms regard as risky.

Some will ask: why should we care about Facebook? And why should it not be trusted to moderate what is said on its platform? After all, no newspaper is compelled to publish content with which its editors dis-agree. But the problem is the sheer power and growth of digital media. A handful of private companies now control the way people find out information. More Britons get their news from Facebook than from any newspaper but the daily news feed is curated by the platforms algorithm. Whoever controls these algorithms controls the news.

Social media sites claim not to be publishers, merely platforms a distinction which has, until now, allowed them to escape legal action for the libellous or other illegal content that they host. Such is their global reach that their ability to censor their users, and to do so silently, puts them in an incredibly powerful position. Nick Clegg, who now oversees policy at Facebook, has been promoted to a position of influence greater than any newspaper proprietor. The Online Safety Bill empowers Silicon Valley giants rather than calling them to heel. But politicians, who have worked on this Bill for years, do not understand the nature of censorship bots - or the effect of algorithms in deciding what news people do and don't read.

It's ironic thatBoris Johnson, a former journalist and an erstwhile campaigner for free speech, is presiding over this legislation. Aides say that he is out of date and barely understands how anyone can get news from Facebook, let alone how that news is selected and censored.After office, he will soon find out how the censorship bots he's about to empower will judge his ownarguments. And how the power of Silicon Valley is already casting a shadow over the print press: all the more so when its bots are expected by the government to sure all articles are "safe".

Ms Dorries says he bill will give special exemption to journalists.But why should freedom of speech and opinion not be available to all? Are we really to pass a law where thestate decides who and who does not have the ability to say what they. please without fear of censure?

The BBC can often be guilty of a left-wing bias, but its power to influence national and international debate is tiny compared with the likes of Facebook, Google and Twitter. Why hasnt the government realised that this bill will unshackle rather than restrain these companies? It needs to re-examine the proposed legislation and stop seeing online harm purely from the point of view of protecting children from damaging internet content. Ministers cannot sit by and allow Silicon Valleys bots to stifle public debate.

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The soft censorship of the Online Safety Bill - The Spectator

The Taliban arrested three journalists from TOLO TV Thursday night, according to the Afghan television station.

The three employees were detained after airing a story about the Talibans censorship of a foreign drama series in Afghanistan.

TOLOnews head Khpalwak Sapai and colleague Nafay Khaleeq, the legal adviser to TOLO TV, were released hours after their arrest. Station presenter Bahram Aman remains in custody as of Friday.

Aman told the TOLOnews team on a phone call Friday that the Taliban have promised to release him after two meetings.

Officials from the Talibans General Directorate of Intelligence took the three employees into custody after nightfall on orders from the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.

The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), which was recently extended for another year, condemned the Talibans suppression of journalism.

UNAMA expresses its deep concern about the detentions of journalists and the ever increasing restrictions being placed on media in Afghanistan, the mission wrote. Time for the Taliban to stop gagging & banning. Time for a constructive dialogue with the Afghan media community.

The Washington, D.C.-based Committee to Protect Journalists released a similar statement, calling on the Taliban to immediately release TOLOnews journalist Bahram Aman, and stop its intelligence agency from arbitrarily arresting and intimidating media personnel.

It continued: Afghanistans once thriving independent media community cannot operate effectively under constant Taliban threats and harassment.

The Taliban took over the Afghan government shortly after U.S. troops began exiting the country last year, a move that raised concerns globally about human rights in Afghanistan.

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Taliban reportedly arrests journalists over story on censoring: report | TheHill - The Hill

Whipping themselves into a Freedom Fries-esque fit of censoriousness, a space industry conference has removed the name of celebrated Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, the first human to travel into space, from an event.

The nonprofit Space Foundation announced in a now-deleted note that in light of current world events it would be changing the name of a fundraiser from Yuris Night to A Celebration of Space: Discover Whats Next at its Space Symposium conference.

The focus of this fundraising event remains the same to celebrate human achievements in space while inspiring the next generation to reach for the stars, the deleted update notes.

Its a rather dubious show of solidarity with the Ukrainian people, especially considering that Gagarin worked for the USSR, a completely different country from modern day Russia. And the icing on the cake? Ukraine actually appears to be rather fond of Gagarin and his monumental achievement.

Erasing the name of the first person to ever fly to space while supposedly celebrating human achievements in space is bad enough.

But doing so in line with the milquetoast trend of disavowing all things Russian, including famous composers and food products, amid the countrys current invasion of Ukraine is just outrageous.

For instance, a 2011 Ukraine stamp commemorated the 50th anniversary of his pioneering space flight. And the recently-bombed Chernihiv Stadium was renamed by the Soviets as the Yuri Gagarin Stadium back in the 1960s, and is also still referred to as such by fans despite a new official name.

In a post published last year about Gagarins often-overlooked relationship with Ukraine, the countrys Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute noted that during his first and only visit to the capitol city in 1966, the cosmonaut had kind words to say about the countrys capital, which was part of the USSR at the time.

My friend Pavel Popovich told me a lot about the beauty of Kyiv, Gagarin reportedly said when visiting school children at a youth center, but what Ive seen with my eyes is incomparable to what Ive heard!

Its far from the first time on-Earth geopolitics have affected the world of spaceflight hell,NASA likely wouldnt have made it to the Moon as soon as it did if it hadnt been for the Cold War.

Space cooperation between the United States and Russia has led to decades of remarkable international unity and scientific research, even as politics have, on occasion, strained that delicate alliance.

Censoring Yuri Gagarins name will not help a single Ukrainian fend off Russias invasion, but it does serve as yet another reminder that fair weather activism often flies in the face of reality.

More on US-Russia space cooperation:NASA Says Its Astronaut Is Definitely Still Carpooling Back to Earth On A Russian Spacecraft

More bizarre Russia news:Elon Musk Threatens Vladimir Putin With Flamethrower

Care about supporting clean energy adoption? Find out how much money (and planet!) you could save by switching to solar power at UnderstandSolar.com. By signing up through this link, Futurism.com may receive a small commission.

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Space Conference Censors Name of First Human in Space Because He Was Russian - Futurism

Governments across the globe are restricting the flow of information. This has resulted in the rise of censorship, blocking, and internet shutdowns.

Accurate information is critical for society. And, for this, we need tools to circumvent censorship. In this story, well look at a set of basic tools that can help you stay free. Lets dive in.

Tor browser is one of the best ways to safeguard your privacy, and access the open web. When you visit an address, it uses multiple relays to hide your identity from the site and your Internet Access Provider.

In case authorities are blocking Tor relays, you can read our detailed guide about using bridges to browse safely.

Notably, some websites like Facebook, the New York Times, and more recently BBC, have released their own .onion addresses. These are special sites that rely on the Tor networks onion protocol, so that they cant be traced, and prevent being blocked in turn.

You can download Tor from its official website, or use one of its mirrors if thats not working.

If youre using Android, you can download it from the Play Store, F-Store, or in .apk file format. And if youre on iOS, you can try the Onion browser.

You probably have your most private and intimate conversations on the internet through chat apps. This is why its essential that no one else has access to them. End-to-end encryption is a basic security protocol that will prevent someone from snooping on your chat.

While WhatsApp technically has this protection, it collects a ton of metadata about you, including device activity, profile picture, and contact info.

Signal on the other hand, provides much more privacy. It only collects menial data and all your conversations are encrypted, so they cant be read by third parties.

If you dont want to give out your digits, you can go a step further and use Session. This doesnt require an email ID or phone number to sign up.

For folks who like decentralized end-to-end encrypted standards to run local servers, you can use apps built on the Matrix protocol, such as Element.

For offline, or hyper-local secure communications you can use Bridgify (which works on Bluetooth) or Briar (which works on Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and Tor network).

There are sites like Netblocks and Downdetctor that can give you a basic sense of service unavailability in your area.

However, for more pinpoint information like blocked sites and apps, you can use the Open Observatory of Network Interferences (OONI) probing app. It works on both desktop and mobile, and contains tests for websites, communication apps, VPNs, network performance, and Tor to check whats blocked.

Virtual Private Network (VPN) apps are one of the easiest tools to let you access blocked websites. They work by pointing you to a server at another location. When India banned porn sites in 2018, it was very easy for locals to access them through VPNs.

But its hard to suggest a particular service, because it might not work in your region or with the sites you want to access.

Digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has a guide for choosing the right VPN for you. Plus, Access Now, another organization promoting free access to the internet, has some useful recommendations.

This is just the tip of the iceberg theres a lot more to learn about staying secure and private online. With that in mind, here are some excellent guides:

If you think we should include a tool in this list, send us an email, or @ us on Twitter. Safe browsing.

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A beginners toolbox for fighting internet censorship