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A new report on artistic freedom by the Danish free speech advocacy group Freemuse has recorded a sharp rise in attacks and censorship.

In its annual report, titled Art Under Threat, Freemuse documented 1,028 violations of artistic freedom throughout 78 countries in 2016. According to the group, the increase in registered cases between 2015 and 2016 amounts to a spike of 119 percent, rising from 469 violations.

The non-profit dividesits findings into categories, includingserious violations, for killings, attacks, abductions, imprisonments, and threats; and acts of censorship. In 2016 the organization counted 840 incidents of censorship and 188 serious violations.

Categorized amongst the serious violations are three killings, two abductions, 16 attacks, 84 imprisonments and detentions, 43 prosecutions, and 40 persecutions and threats.

Violations of artistic freedom in 2016. Graphic: courtesy of Freemuse.

Musicians were targeted most frequently, accounting for 86 cases of serious violations, followed by theatre with 32 serious violations, and visual arts with 27 serious violations. Meanwhile film was the most censored art form, amounting to 79 percent of censorship cases.

Iran, responsible for 30 cases, was once again the worst offender for serious violations of artistic freedom, making it the worst violator of artistic expression since Freemuse began recording data in 2012. Turkey, Egypt, Nigeria, China, Malaysia, Syria, Tanzania, and Uzbekistan also recorded dismal artistic freedom records, collectively making up 67 percent of globally recorded serious violations.

Top 10 serious violators of artistic freedom. Graphic: courtesy of Freemuse.

The worst practitioner of censorship in 2016 was Ukraine, responsible for a staggering 577 registered acts of censorship. Freemuse attributes this to a blacklist of 544 Russian films banned in the wake of the ongoing conflict between the two countries.

Other offenders making up the top 10 for recorded cases of censorship were Kuwait,China, Egypt, India, Russia, Turkey, USA, Pakistan, and Iran. Together these countries accounted for 88 percent of global censorship cases.

Top 10 practitioners of censorship. Graphic: courtesy of Freemuse.

Summarizing its findings, Freemuse explained that the drastic increase may be a consequence of rising global populism and nationalistic political views, resulting in a greater number of reported cases of artists being censored or persecuted. The organization also said that improvements in its own data collection and documentation methodologies, as well as its expanding network, resulted in a greater number of incidents being accounted for.

However the advocacy group stressed that the actual frequency and number of artistic freedom violations is almost certainly far higher. Factors including lack of public awareness, ability, political will, intimidation, cultural or social pressure, and the threat of punishment often prevent people from reporting serious violations and censorship.

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Artists Faced Sharp Rise in Attacks and Censorship in 2016, Report Says - artnet News

Photo illustration by Jeff Boyer / Times Union

Photo illustration by Jeff Boyer / Times Union

Editorial: Censorship in the Senate

THE ISSUE:

The Senate majority leader shuts down criticism of a Cabinet nominee.

THE STAKES:

Where do such heavy-handed tactics end at a time of one-party rule?

---

An extraordinary moment came Tuesday in the U.S. Senate when Sen. Elizabeth Warren was told to sit down. She'd gone too far, it seems, in criticizing a Cabinet nominee.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell shut down Ms. Warren on the grounds that Jeff Sessions of Alabama, President Donald Trump's pick for attorney general, is a senator himself, and as such should not be "impugned."

Whatever your political loyalty, this censoring of an elected representative marks a dangerous development for our democracy.

Ms. Warren, D-Mass., was speaking against Mr. Sessions' nomination Tuesday when the chair interrupted to remind her of Senate Rule 19, which states "no Senator in debate shall, directly or indirectly, by any form of words impute to another Senator or to other Senators any conduct or motive unworthy or unbecoming a Senator." Ms. Warren had been voicing a host of concerns about Mr. Sessions' record on civil rights, abortion, women and immigration. She quoted harsh criticism he had drawn in 1986, when Mr. Sessions was being considered for a federal judgeship, from then-Sen. Edward Kennedy and civil rights icon Coretta Scott King. She continued until Mr. McConnell and his GOP colleagues cut her off, a ruling sustained by a party-line vote.

Put aside that it's absurd to argue Mr. Sessions merits more tender treatment than any other nominee. Let's call this for what it is: The majority leader of what's called the world's most deliberative body stifling deliberation he disagrees with.

Mr. McConnell has employed this sort of partisan heavy-handedness in various ways before, notably in snubbing the Constitution by refusing to even consider former President Barack Obama's nominee for Supreme Court last year. That capped a long campaign of partisan obstructionism.

What we are witnessing what should matter to all Americans is nothing less than a breakdown of the norms of democratic government. Republican stonewalling of Mr. Obama's lower-level judicial appointments led Democrats to eliminate filibusters for those posts when they ran the Senate. Now Republicans may do the same on Supreme Court nominations. So much for a long-standing check on unbridled majority rule.

And now Mr. McConnell has introduced a new prospect: shut down whatever speech the majority doesn't like. What's next?

It's all the more alarming at a time of one-party rule in Congress and the presidency, and with Mr. Trump promising to pack the Supreme Court with ideologues. A top adviser to the president tells the free press to "keep its mouth shut" even as the Senate's leader says as much to one of the foremost women in the opposition party.

If they care nothing for the legacy this behavior is leaving our republic, Mr. McConnell and Republicans should at least weigh their own self-interest. Every bad precedent they enjoy setting today they will surely regret tomorrow.

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Editorial: Censorship in the Senate - Albany Times Union

The Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI), which monitors networks for censorship and surveillance, is launching Ooniprobe, a mobile app to test network connectivity and let you know when a website is censored in your area.

The app tests over 1,200 websites, including Facebook (FB, Tech30), Twitter (TWTR, Tech30) and WhatsApp. You can decide how long to run the test, but the default is 90 seconds and would test between 10 and 20 websites depending on bandwidth. Links to blocked websites are listed in red, while available sites are green.

Service providers, sometimes controlled by the government, don't always shutdown the internet entirely -- for instance, Facebook.com might be inaccessible while CNN.com still works.

"Not only we will be able to gather more data and more evidence, but we will be able to engage and bring the issue of censorship to the attention of more people," Arturo Filast, chief developer for the Ooniprobe app, told CNNTech.

To test connectivity, Ooniprobe mimics what a browser does when you connect to a website. It tries to establish a connection to a site's IP address and download the webpage. OONI compares the activity to the same test on an uncensored network. If it doesn't match, the site is likely being censored.

Created in 2012 under the Tor Project, OONI monitors networks in more than 90 countries through its desktop and hardware trackers, which are available to anyone. It publishes censorship data on its site. The organization has confirmed censorship cases in a number of countries, including Russia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Ethiopia and Sudan.

By introducing a mobile app, OONI can reach more people potentially affected by internet outages, especially in emerging markets where smartphones are more common than computers.

Related: This African country is taking an unprecedented step in internet censorship

In just the last week, at least two countries have experienced outages. Iraq shut down the internet while students took exams to prevent cheating, and in Cameroon, protests and unrest have led to ongoing outages in the country's English-speaking regions.

Ooniprobe tests web connectivity to not only figure out whether sites are blocked, but how they are being censored. For instance, an internet service provider can initiate a DNS-based block, so when you try to connect to a specific website, the page will say the domain is unknown or blocked. Ooniprobe can also check whether IP addresses are blocked, and looks for "middleboxes" or network devices that manipulate web traffic.

If the app detects a site is censored, it will list ways of getting around it. For instance, Ooniprobe might tell you to visit "HTTPS" versions of sites to circumvent "HTTP" blocking, or to download the Tor browser or the Orbot Android app. (Ooniprobe is used to find specific instances of censorship -- if the entire internet was blacked out, you would know.)

Ooniprobe is rolling out this week for iOS and Android.

Filast says Ooniprobe can help people see how censorship and surveillance impact them.

"They can better understand that this is something that isn't so abstract and so distant from them, but it's something they can actually understand how it's working," Filast said. "And maybe be less scared about it."

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Ooniprobe app helps people track internet censorship - Feb. 8, 2017 - CNNMoney

If youre having trouble with your internet connection, one of the first things tech support will ask you to do is to run a speed test. There are dozens of websites and apps that will, at the tap of a button, measure your network speedbut they cant tell you which sites you can actually access with that bandwidth. Even with a good connection, if youre in a country that censors the internet, whole swaths of the web might be out of reach.

Now, theres an app that will test your internet connection not for speed, but for freedom. The program, ooniprobe, is part of a 5-year-old project called the Open Observatory of Network Interference, or OONI. This project is sponsored by Tor, the organization behind the privacy-preserving Tor Browser.

OONI has made censorship-testing software available for years, but it has until now required downloading a desktop software package using a command-line toola step most computer users arent comfortable taking on. The new app will allow anyone with a smartphone to run a test. Mobile is where the next billion will come online, so this app fulfills a pressing need to put censorship detection in the hands of the people, said Deji Olukotun, the senior global advocacy manager at Access Now, an international digital-rights advocacy group.

I downloaded a beta version of the mobile app to give it a spin. (It will be made available in the iOS and Google Play app stores next week.) For now, the app only includes two of the many tools available on OONIs desktop software: a web-connectivity test and a probe that checks for hardware that censors or alters traffic on a network.

The connectivity test is straightforward. For each website on a preselected list, the test sends to requests: one from my smartphone and one from a server located elsewhere. If both requests return the same result, the URL passes the test and the program moves on to the next one. But if the pages load differently, its a hint that something fishy might be going on. If that happens, OONI will test for several ways that network could censor or block access to a URL.

The list of sites that the probe uses is the product of a collaboration between OONI and CitizenLab, a research group at the University of Toronto focused on technology and human rights. The sites on the list generally provide important services, host controversial content, or are likely to be censored for some other reason, said Arturo Filast, OONIs project lead and core developer.

The other test bundled in the app is simple but clever. It involves sending an invalid request to an echo server, a computer thats designed to send back an identical copy of any data it receives. If the bad request comes back in the same form it was sent, the path between the device and the echo server is likely unobstructed. But if the echo is modified in some way, something on the network might be manipulating the traffic that crosses it.

The tests certainly arent foolproof. When I ran the second test on the wi-fi network here in The Atlantics newsroom, it showed no evident tampering. But the first test found evidence of censorship on five sites: Two religious sites, a sports-betting site, the homepage of the DEFCON hacking conference, and a sex-doll site. When I tried visiting each in a normal browsersorry, IT departmentthey loaded without issue. (There are several reasons why the connectivity test might return a false positive, including when websites look different depending on the country theyre accessed from.)

By default, test results from OONIs desktop software or from the ooniprobe app are uploaded to a website called OONI Explorer, which aggregates the results into a browsable database and an interactive map. According to a page with highlights from OONIs findings, the project collected more than 10 million measurements from 96 countries between late 2012 and early 2016.

The map paints a stark picture of internet censorship around the globe. It doesnt show a single confirmed censorship case in the Western hemisphere, but reveals a rash of censorship across Asia and the Middle East. OONI only shows one confirmed case of censorship in AfricaSudan appears to block a handful of adult sites, according to a 2-year-old scanbut networks in many African countries havent yet been tested.

Perhaps surprisingly, the club of countries that censor their internet also includes several in Europe. Greece appears to block a dozen betting sites, while Sweden, Denmark, and Italy block several bit-torrent sites. Belgium has assembled a long blacklist of both types of sites. France, on the other hand, only blocks two: the homepages of a pair of Islamic terrorist organizations.

When you first download and install ooniprobe, the app warns that in some countries around the world, legal and/or extra-legal risks could emerge. Probing a network could be illegal or considered espionage, the developers write, or a user could get in trouble for requesting data from a site thats illegal in their country: The probe requests data from porn sites, hate-speech sites, and terrorism-related sites. (OONI says its not aware of a user ever facing consequences for running a test in the past.)

Filast says the forthcoming mobile app will allow more people to contribute to the worlds understanding of internet censorship patterns. Access to that information, he says, is a fundamental human right. He pointed to an example from East Africa: Last year, Ethiopians complained that their internet access was being censored in response to a wave of political protests, but there was little evidence to prove it. By running ooniprobe, Ethiopian activists found that the government was censoring media, human-rights, LGBTI-related, and political websites, among others, in addition to blocking WhatsApp.

OONI and Amnesty International collaborated on a report that laid out incontrovertible evidence of systematic interference with access to numerous websites, which was published in December. Today, Ethiopia is in a state of emergency, said Filast. Yet the published findings illustrate that censorship events took place beforehand. This type of information can potentially aid political discussions on an international level.

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Mapping Countries That Censor the Internet - The Atlantic

Womens Resource Center creates an event to talk about reasoning behind book censorship and the affect of the community on the flow of information. The event will be held Friday at noon.

Brian Bauer

Brian Bauer

Womens Resource Center creates an event to talk about reasoning behind book censorship and the affect of the community on the flow of information. The event will be held Friday at noon.

Megan Bradley, Contributing Writer February 9, 2017

The removal and restriction of certain books is no new phenomenon. Despite a more historical and dystopian portrayal, book censorship is still a current issue.

To address and inform about this issue, the office for Diversity and Social Justice Education is holding a Conversation Cafe titled Burn Before Reading: Book Censorship at noon on Feb. 10 at the Womens Resource Center. The Conversation Cafe will be hosted by Emily Knox, a specialist on intellectual freedom and censorship.

Conversation Cafe is a lunchtime series focused on current questions or issues that might be emerging around social justice issues. They are often facilitated by current or former students or faculty. We really draw upon the talent and questions that people are asking here on campus, said Ross Wantland, the director of diversity and social justice education.

Wantland said the issue of book censorship is an emerging question for students and faculty alike. Knox, the speaker for the Burn Before Reading discussion, clarified that sometimes books are challenged for the right reasons, such as being in the wrong place for its genre or reading level. However, a lot of the time books are censored because of disagreements or a thirst for power.

A lot of it is about control: of the flow of information, how children develop or what the community should believe, Knox said.

Her goal is to show that the power of reading is stronger than the power of censorship and there is no way to formally stop the flow of information in society.

Knoxs discussion of book banning will center on how an open flow of knowledge in society is important for social justice. She emphasized the importance of understanding the different people and places that reading can foster, and said students need to be exposed to ideas that are different from their own in order to grow and cultivate their own opinions.

The Conversation Cafe, which is typically on the second and fourth Friday of each month, has a different topic to focus on each week. Anyone is welcome to walk in and enjoy lunch while engaging with the different speakers that the program brings in.

The Lunch on Us programs provide a unique opportunity for people to dip their toes into the waters of these types of conversations, even if theyre studying areas that dont allow these conversations daily, Wantland said.

The lessons these programs can give students, Wantland said, are invaluable and can provide a strong basis for an understanding of different problems that affect campus life.

One of the students who is interested in this kind of discussion is Skylar Lipman, senior in ACES. Lipman found the event on Facebook and was intrigued by the title and topic as well as by the location of the event, the Womens Resource Center.

Censorship is an interesting topic to me, largely because it has to do with issues of choice and the power that comes along with this. Im also hoping to build some connections through the Womens Resource Center, as there is some very interesting work being done through there, Lipman wrote in an email.

Wantland said the importance of attending events such as the Conversation Cafes is that through the programs, his office is able to give a discussion space to issues that may otherwise not have homes around campus. Book censorship is one of these issues that Wantland is proud to be able to host.

Both Wantland and Knox emphasized the importance of students being able to use their years at college as a way to grow and develop views of the world. To Knox, this is largely facilitated through reading, which is why she believes in social justice and the flow of information working hand-in-hand.

Being in college is about being exposed to ideas you have not been exposed to before, and sometimes that might be uncomfortable. Part of the experience of higher education is being exposed and learning to work through them, you dont have to agree with all of them, Knox said.

features@dailyillini.com

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Conversation Cafe covers book censorship - Daily Illini