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Australias top governmentscientist is likeningPresident Donald Trumps changes at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to scientific censorship under Soviet Union dictator Joseph Stalin.

Chief Scientist Alan Finkel, speaking during a roundtable discussion in Australias capital city ofCanberra, said Monday that science is literally under attack in the United States, according to the Guardian:

TheTrump administrationhas mandated that scientific data published by the United States Environmental Protection Agency from last week going forward has to undergo review by political appointees before that data can be published on the EPA website or elsewhere.

It defies logic. It will almost certainly cause long-term harm. Its reminiscent of the censorship exerted by political officers in the old Soviet Union.

Every military commander there had a political officer second-guessing his decisions.

Finkel was referring to a decisionby the Trump administration last month for political appointees toreview all the scientific data foundby scientists at the EPA before it can be cleared for publication.Doug Ericksen, communications director for Trumps EPA transition team, said that the review also applies to information on the agencys website and social media accounts.

And in January, EPA staffers said that the Trump White House ordered the agencyto remove its webpage on climate change a move that ruffled the feathers of many environmentalists.

If the website goes dark, years of work we have done on climate change will disappear, one unnamed EPA staffer told Reuters last month, adding that some employees were working to preserve the data stored there.

Were taking a look at everything on a case-by-case basis, including the web page and whether climate stuff will be taken down, Ericksentold the Associated Press. Obviously with a new administration coming in, the transition time, well be taking a look at the web pages and the Facebook pages and everything else involved here at EPA.

Climate Central reported last weekthat the EPA has, in fact, started removing Obama-era information from the government website. Theyre mostly scrubbing it of anything that has a hint of Obama, Gretchen Goldman,research director for the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said.

The administration, however, has downplayed the ordeal. White Housepress secretary Sean Spicer, who first denied Trumpdirectly orderedthe EPAs data scrub, said in January that the communications clampdown on scientific datawas not out of the ordinary, telling reporters, I dont think its any surprise that when theres an administration turnover, that were going to review the policy.

ButGeorge Gray, who was theassistant administrator for the EPAs Office of Research and Development under former PresidentGeorge W. Bush, told the Guardian that scientific studies are typically reviewed at lower levelsand rarely by political appointees.

Scientific studies would be reviewed at the level of a branch or a division or laboratory, he said. Occasionally, things that were known to be controversial would come up to me as assistant administrator and I was a political appointee. Nothing in my experience would go further than that.

Finkel, for his part, sees the White Houses decision as akin to Stalins efforts to censor science.

Soviet agricultural science was held back for decades because of the ideology of Trofim Lysenko, who was a proponent of Lamarckism, he said. Stalin loved Lysenkos conflation of science and Soviet philosophy and used his limitless power to ensure that Lysenkos unscientific ideas prevailed.

As the Smithsonian Magazine outlined, Lysenko was Stalins director of biology and he led a group of animal and plant breeders who rejected the science of genetics. He worked to discredit the genetic discoveries of Gregor Mendel and Thomas Hunt Morgan, attacking them for being foreigners with idealistic ideas that were the product of bourgeois capitalism.

Lysenko argued that he could quickly force plants and animals and even the Soviet people into forms that could meet practical needs and that those characteristic changes could be passed on to their offspring a debunked theory known as Lamarckism.

One of Lysenkosmost infamous claims was that he changed a species of spring wheat into winter wheat after just a few years. That was, of course, impossible, but it fed into Stalins mantra that the Soviet government could create the perfect utopia.

So while Western scientists embraced evolution and genetics, Russian scientists who thought the same were sent to the gulag. Western crops flourished. Russian crops failed, Finkel said. Today, the catch-cry of scientists must be frank and fearless advice, no matter the opinion of political commissars stationed at the U.S. EPA.

Last week, the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works suspended rules to approve Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to lead the EPA without any Democrats present. The Democrats boycotted Pruitts hearing last Wednesday, citing concerns over his rejection of climate change science.

A date for the Trump appointees full Senate vote has not yet been set, but given Republicans lead the Senate, his nominationis expected to be approved.

Read more:
Australia's chief scientist: Trump's EPA changes akin to Stalin's censorship of science - TheBlaze.com

Dear Compton, censorship is the subject of this comment.

Some of you think the Compton Herald has crossed the line, become reprobate, turned its back on the people, and indeed, imploded simply because a perceived enemy of some of you has been given access to our pages.

No such villainy has happened. The craft of Journalism requires an ethical imperative to present the truth underscored by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

The First Amendment prohibits the making of any law respecting an establishment of religion, ensuring that there is no prohibition on the free exercise of religion, abridging the freedom of speech, infringing on the freedom of the press, interfering with the right to peaceably assemble, or prohibiting the petitioning for a governmental redress of grievances.

It was adopted on Dec. 15, 1791, as one of the 10 amendments that constitute the Bill of Rights.

This First Amendment is not some archaic doctrine written by men in a bygone era, now relegated to dusty, brittle pages shuttered in an old dark room. Not remotely true. The First Amendment, notably the passages, there is no prohibition abridging the freedom of speech, infringing on the freedom of the press breathes free.

That includes the City of Compton.

One thing that an objective newspaper will incite, adhering to fairness in reporting and assuring free expression for all is rancor from factions determined to suffocate the voice of an opposing view. That is exactly what is currently playing out on a national stage between President Donald Trump and the media he wants to silence.

In Compton, there is tremendous dissension against Mayor Aja Brown. The city may very well be split straight down the middle. Thats to be expected in politics.

But what is not to be expected is censorship by the local newspaper. The rancor in this town to muffle certain elected individuals is at a fever pitch. The Herald never will participate in any such offense.

We may pen editorials and comment to oppose or affirm certain individuals for public office, and we will scrutinize public officials in Compton and publish their scurrilous activity, but that is left to the discretion of the editorial board of the Herald.

Everyone has an equal voice at the Compton Herald. Individuals may pen opposing views, but they must take care not to libel, or present information that is uncorroborated.

Lets be clear, the Compton Herald does not now, nor ever will bend to the will of the public, which would render censorship through this medium if it were possible.

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COMMENT: No censorship at the Compton Herald, no sir! - Compton Herald

Trickle-Down Censorship: An Outsiders Account of Working Inside Chinas Censorship Regime. By JFK Miller. Hybrid Publishers. Kindle Edition, 184 pp., US$7.99

As we enter a post-truth world or so we are told theres probably no better time than to curl up with JFK Millers Trickle-Down Censorship: An Outsiders Account of Working Inside Chinas Censorship Regime. It serves well as a timely reminder of the dangers in the other direction state control of truth and non-truth alike.

Miller, who has a relaxing chatty style, punctuated by occasional chunks of drier journalese to explain some background issue, takes a well-paced, gently humorous, sometimes self-deprecating dip into life working as an editor on thats Shanghai, a listings magazine, in the mid-2000s. At times, its almost like sitting down with an old friend for a pint in the pub and listening to his stories about those crazy times in China battling with the censors. Its easy reading despite the difficult and oft-depressing topic.

This is Millers first book, but you might know him through his excellent website whyiwrite.net, an insightful spread of interviews with authors, many of whom have written about China. Here in his own book, richly annotated, hes done a nice job of peeling back the oily curtain of media control on the mainland.

Youd be forgiven for wondering how could anyone possibly fill 250 plus pages just on censorship? Is there really that much to say? They censored this. Then they censored that. Now there are not censoring this but still censoring that. I dont know why theyre censoring that but not this, but now they are censoring this again.

Fear not, Miller does more than just regale stories about how his magazine was shaped and shaved by Minitrue (his nickname for the faceless men and women who said no). He organizes the book thematically rather than chronologically and provides a lot of context and color when tackling each. So we meet the many faces of Chinese censorship: everything from banned political topics to the golden rule (report only the good not the bad), the impact of sensitive anniversaries to the play of propaganda (nicely described by Miller as the yang to censorships yin), and from self-censorship (that imaginary policeman looking over your shoulder as you type) to sex and pornography.

Miller has to cut a photo of a model showing the faint shadow of a nipple beneath a gossamer top. Thats all it takes, apparently, to shut down a magazine in China: a solitary tit, scarcely enough to excite an oversexed schoolboy.

Censorship in China is well covered, but a decent discussion of the export of censorship is not, and that I feel is something sorely missing in this book. Miller is in a distinctly good position to do so now, living in the West and having an insiders experience of the subtleties of the censorship machine in action.

A chilling development of recent years has been an effort by Beijing to buy or bully the right to apply its censorship rules or spread propaganda across borders. This can be seen from state media produced China Watch pullouts inserted into mainstream newspapers such as The Washington Post and The Telegraph in London, to denying visas to journalists from publications that report on dubious wealth acquisitions at the top of the Chinese Communist Party leadership.

Indeed, the book itself appears to be a minor victim of this very phenomenon. The front cover features a bold red and yellow design (reminiscent of the PRCs own flag colors) of a map of China and Taiwan. In alignment with Chinas One China policy the two appear as a single country. Despite Taiwans lack of a seat at the UN, it does have de jure independence (and a dwindling number of diplomatic allies; 21 at the last count) and, I would argue, it is commonly shown outside China as a separate country.

I asked Miller by email about the cover, and this was his thoughtful reply:

I never really pondered it until you asked. It never occurred to me that I shouldnt have Taiwan there. I suppose that after living on the mainland for six years that I grew accustomed to the idea that Taiwan is part of China I suppose I just wanted a map on the front cover to represent the China I came to know through the eyes of my censors, i.e. one with Taiwan. Plus if I left it off which never occurred to me anyway I would have been making a statement on Taiwan independence. This book just wasnt the place to weigh in on one of the thorniest issues in geopolitics and, anyway, it would have deviated from my core subject which is censorship and self censorship.

The problem is of course, whether you include Taiwan or not, its a political statement either way. Perhaps his choice of cover is nothing more than simply the remnants of his training in Shanghai. And six years is a long time. Right at the beginning of the book he writes: My ability to self-censor is well honed. It should be; I have been doing this for six years. In the self-mocking patois of the Chinese Internet I have been harmonized.

The absurdities of censorship make for a rich topic and some of Millers best stories are based on the perplexing decisions of his censors. At one point in 2007, after Miller is assigned by his boss to start a news digest, he plans to include an image of Osama bin Laden on the front page. No, say his censors, because Being a sensitive figure, Osama bin Laden hasnt been confirmed to exist.

Miller also offers us a rare glimpse of the human side of censorship. The main, and perhaps only character, in Trickle-Down is his boss Li, with whom he seems to have a love-hate relationship. More hate than love I suspect: Lis hair is spiked at the top like a toilet brush, and he is variously described as manipulative, eccentric, under-handed, money-mad, but devilishly charming (I was fond of him at times). The real treat is saved for near the end of the book, as Miller meets his censors for the first time when they come to Shanghai for a meeting and a lunch. Ill leave you to read the book yourself to find out what they are like.

As his life unfolds in China, Miller describes how his feelings about censorship, which started off as a kind of cheerful courtesy he must offer because he is a guest in the country, morphs into a kind of grumbling acceptance until by the end his own self-censorship sparks fear and self-loathing even though he admits his publication was largely froth and bubble and not serious investigative journalism. I imagine that writing this book is an effort to make some amends to himself on that score.

Dinah Gardner is a freelance writer living in Taiwan.

Continued here:
Book Review: Trickle-Down Censorship - Asia Sentinel (blog)

Facebooks application for Patent 0350675 is either a smart method to use artificial intelligence to root out fake news or a potentially dangerous way of imposing censorship on muckraking media and political satire.

The threat of censorship is especially worrisome now that the search for fake news is becoming automated, with computers guided by artificial intelligence aiding human censors.

Facebook is a leader. It has applied for a patent for a computer device that would have the capability of sweeping through Facebook posts, searching for keywords, sentences, paragraphs or even the way a story .The computer would spot content that includes objectionable material. This vague phrase seems to leave the door open for Facebook to censor opinion or unconventional posts that are out of the mainstream, although the company denies it has that intent.

I heard about such automated searching last year when I was working on a story for Truthdig about an organization called PropOrNot. It had compiled a blacklist of more than 200 news outlets that it said were running pro-Kremlin propaganda, and Truthdig was on the list. In the course of finding out how PropOrNot compiled the list and how Truthdig was added to it, I interviewed a well-known communications scholar, professor Jonathan Albright of Elon University in North Carolina.

Albright told me the information was collected basically through an algorithm, or set of instructions to a computer for sweeping or scraping websites or other material on the internetsimilar to what intelligence agents do in examining emails.

The computer would be instructed to tag words, sentences, paragraphs or even how the story is framed. I theorized that was how PropOrNot works, scraping sites in search of material that would fit its description of purveyors of Russian propaganda. Apparently, Truthdig and some other publications were incorrectly caught up in a PropOrNot sweep. PropOrNot, which operates in anonymity, told me my description of its methodology was generally correct.

In the course of our conversation, Professor Albright told me Facebook was trying to develop a patent for a fake-news detection system.

His fear is that it is turning into a form of censorship or could be developed as censorship. He said he was concerned that Facebook, Google or the government could develop filters to determine what is [supposedly] fake and make decisions about that. They could hunt for particular words, sentences and ways the news is framed. Dissent could be filtered out, as could articles with unusual, non-mainstream slants. There are going to be keywords and language that will not be standard, and alternative voices will be buried, Albright said.

That concerned me. I dont, of course, like fake news of the kind that proliferated during the last election and afterward. Facebook, with its millions of users, is a target for people posting false news. Aware of that, Facebook has partnered with well-known news and fact-checking organizations to root out such news. They are ABC, FactCheck.org, The Associated Press, Snopes and PolitiFact.

I wanted to know how Facebook and these organizations determine what exactly constituted fake news. Thinking of how PropOrNot wrongly portrayed Truthdig and other news media as purveyors of Kremlin propaganda, I feared that Facebook and its news collaborators could end up wrongly censoring posts, particularly those of opinion-oriented publications and websites like ours.

I found the Facebook patent application (a Facebook representative told me the company often applies for patents and that shouldnt be taken as an indicator of future plans). I also discovered an article last November by Casey Newton on The Verge website explaining the application, which was most helpful to me, a non-technical person.

The application envisions using artificial intelligence to scan material that is scored by the computer and given a value. Based on that, it can be determined whether the content items include objectionable material.

Determining what passes Facebook tests are the social networks community standards. The standards, in brief, ban some nudity, hate speech, images glorifying sadism or violence, bullying and promotion of suicide, terrorism and organized crime. Violation of these standards could mean removal of a post from the Facebook site or its relegation to the bottom of the newsfeed, severely limiting readership.

I asked Facebook how this worked. A representative said that once a post is flagged, either by a person or the computer, it is turned over to teams of multilingual employees who are trained in maintaining community standards.

What about opinions that many consider outrageous or wrong? In December 2015, I wrote a column comparing Donald Trump to Hitler, and people told me I was wrong or at least way off the mark. Would comparing Trump to such an evil mass murderer constitute hate speech and be a violation of the standards? The Facebook representative said the company was not seeking to censor opinion or limit freedom of expression.

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebooks founder and CEO, has acknowledged that dealing with an opinion piece requires caution. In a Facebook post, he wrote that many stories express an opinion that many will disagree with and flag as incorrect even when factual. I am confident we can find ways for our community to tell us what content is most meaningful, but I believe we must be extremely cautious about becoming arbiters of truth ourselves.

Others are not sure how this would work out. I asked USC professor Mike Ananny, another respected internet communications scholar, if Facebooks automated data search, combined with its community standards, could be used to censor Truthdig or similar opinion journals.

Its a good question, he replied in an email. I dont believe Facebook would intentionally try to bury opinion sites like Truthdig, but ultimately, we have to take them at their word because we dont have the access required to interrogate and audit their systems. Even if it has intentions that we think align with our editorial values, we just dont know how these intentions play out when they are translated into opaque algorithmic systems.

Kalev Leetaru, a senior fellow at the George Washington University Center for Cyber & Homeland Security, wrote in Forbes last December, Remarkably, there has been no mention of how Facebook will arbitrate cases where journalists object to one of their articles being labeled as fake news and no documented appeals process for how to overturn such rulings. Indeed, this is in keeping with Facebooks opaque black box approach to editorial control on its platform. We simply have no insight into the level and intensity of research that went into a particular label, the identities of the fact checkers and the source material they used to confirm or deny an article the result is the same form of trust us, we know best that the Chinese government uses in its censorship efforts.

Leetarus mention of China brings to mind a new law that initiates an American government effort to identify and counter what officials consider propaganda from foreign nations.

In December, President Barack Obama signed legislation authored by Republican Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio and Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut that greatly increases the federal governments power to find and counter what officials consider government propaganda from Russia, China and other nations and provides a two-year, $160 million appropriation. It would create a web of government fake-news hunters.

Portmans office said the legislation establishes a fund to help train local journalists and provide grants and contracts to NGOs, civil society organizations, think tanks, private sector companies, media organizations, and other experts outside the U.S. government with experience in identifying and analyzing the latest trends in foreign government disinformation techniques.

Its bad enough that Facebook and its media colleagues will be scrubbing and scraping for fake news, deciding whether investigative or opinion articles fit into that category. Creating a government fake-news search complexespecially with this Trump administrationis much worse.

Journalisms job is to cover government deeds and to shed light on actions that reporters, editors, publishers and the public consider wrong. It is journalisms obligation to investigate and explain government on behalf of the public.

This is muckraking, the word I used at the beginning of this column.

Merriam-Webster says the word dates back to the 17th century and means to search out and publicly expose real or apparent misconduct of a prominent individual or business. The Cambridge Dictionary says muckraking is trying to find out unpleasant information about people or organizations in order to make it public.

President Theodore Roosevelt used the term as an insult to reporters. They, being contrarians, wore the term as a badge of honor, as they still do.

Theres a difference between muckraking and fake news. Determining the difference is too difficult for a computer, even one with the smartest kind of artificial intelligence.

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See the original post:
Will Facebook's Fake-News Detection System Lead to Censorship? - Truthdig

EFF recently received dozens of pages of documents in response to a FOIA request we submitted about Operation Choke Point, a Department of Justice project to pressure banks and financial institutions into cutting off service to certain businesses. Unfortunately, the response from the Department of Justice leaves many questions unanswered.

EFF has been tracking instances of financial censorship for years to identify how online speech is indirectly silenced or intimidated by shuttering bank accounts, donation platforms, and other financial institutions. The Wall Street Journal wrote about the Justice Departments controversial and secretive campaign against financial institutions in 2013, and one Justice Department official quoted in the article stated:

"We are changing the structures within the financial system that allow all kinds of fraudulent merchants to operate," with the intent of "choking them off from the very air they need to survive."

While Operation Choke Point was purportedly aimed at shutting down fraudulent online payday loan companies, we became concerned that this campaign could also affect legal online businesses.

EFF filed FOIA requests with the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and the Federal Trade Commission. The documents EFF received from the DOJ are primarily correspondence between members of Congress and the Department of Justice. In that correspondence, Congress members raised concerns about Operation Choke Point, asked questions about how it operates, and stated that this is an issue that constituents are sending letters about.

Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) and Rep. Kenny Marchant (D-TX), for example, emailed the Department of Justice with specific questions about how the Department defines a high risk financial business.

In the correspondence we received, the DOJ overwhelmingly replied with form letters that didnt describe the criteria the Department used to decide whether a company was considered high risk, how many companies were currently labeled high risk, whether a company would ever know if it was considered high risk, or any appeal process for companies to have themselves removed from that category.

Rep. Sean Duffy (R-WI) wrote a letter to then Attorney General Eric Holder describing how two community banks in Wisconsin were bullied by regional agents of the FDIC, who told them to stop working with prominent online lenders:

These banks were informed that if they chose to ignore the FDIC's request, they would face "the highest levels of scrutiny they could imagine," and were given no explanation, details of complaints, or any evidence as to why these demands were being made.'

Duffy called these threats "outrageous" and "intimidation tactics."

Other members of Congress wrote to the Department of Justice about how Operation Choke Point was hampering opportunities for law-abiding Native American tribes and the Hispanic community.

Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA), who cosponsored the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act and advocates for additional financial regulation, expressed deep concern about the Department of Justice stepping beyond the bounds of the law with Operation Choke Point. In his letter to Holder, he stated:

As much as I would like to see stronger regulation of consumer lenders, I've sworn to uphold the U.S. Constitution. Accordingly, I must oppose efforts to "legislate by prosecution" and legislate by "criminal investigation," even if I agree partly or completely with the ultimate substantive aim.

He also said, "[y]our department should conduct criminal investigations for the purpose of enforcing laws we havenot laws you (and I) might wish we had."

Unfortunately, the responses from the Department of Justice left more questions than answers. Vital details about Operation Choke Pointincluding what industries beyond online loans may be impacted, the exact criteria for labeling a business high risk, and the tactics used to pressure banks into participationare still unknown.

Many people believe that Americas financial institutions may need additional regulation, and some may believe that online lenders should face additional scrutiny. However, an intimidation squadron secretly pressuring banks to cut off businesses without due process is not the right way forward. As weve seen with digital booksellers, whistleblower websites, online publishers, and online personal ads, payment providers often cave to pressurewhether formal or informalto shut down or restrict accounts of those engaged in First Amendment-protected activity. In order to foster a future where digital expression can flourish, we need to ensure that necessary service providers like banks and payment processors dont turn into the weak link used to cut off unpopular speech.

But that requires transparency. We need more information about how the government is pressuring financial institutions. Unfortunately, the Department of Justices nonresponses to Congress dont get us any closer to understanding this complicated issue.

Check out the most recent documents EFF got in response to its FOIA request on Operation Choke Point. See documents EFF received earlier on this program.

Go here to read the rest:
Documents About Financial Censorship Under Operation Choke Point Show Concern from Congress, Provide Few ... - EFF