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By Dustin Volz | WASHINGTON

WASHINGTON Nearly 80 rights groups on Wednesday accused Facebook (FB.O) of "racially biased censorship" and failing to be more transparent about its removal policies and cooperation with law enforcement, adding to criticism the company has faced in recent months over its management of content on its network of 1.8 billion users.

The sharp rebuke, sent in response to a December letter from Senior Vice President Joel Kaplan, reflected increasing impatience among advocacy groups that say Facebook has inadequately addressed their concerns despite repeated promises of action from senior executives.

Instead, the groups wrote, Kaplan's response "merely explains current, publicly available Facebook policies and fails to address the modest solutions to racially biased censorship we presented in earlier letters and meetings." SumOfUs, Center for Media Justice and the American Civil Liberties Union were among the signatories.

In his letter, Kaplan acknowledged Facebook's community operations team "sometimes get things wrong" but said the company was committed to correcting mistakes and working with outside partners.

Facebook has been persistently criticized in the past year over how it polices everything from harassment and extremist propaganda to gun sales and news hoaxes on its enormous platform, a multifaceted challenge the company has often responded to with tweaks of its existing terms of service and community standards. More recently, the company has faced controversy regarding displays of violence broadcast in live video.

Last week the company announced a new "Journalism Project" intended to improve and deepen its relationship with news organizations, one of a series of moves taken in response to a storm of opprobrium that it did not do enough to tackle the problem of fake news stories during the U.S. presidential campaign.

In their letter, the rights groups said their organizations had experienced an "uneven application" of Facebook's community standards and drawbacks that come with relying on users to report abusive content. Racial justice activists routinely have content that discusses racism or protests removed, they said, while harassment and threats targeting users on the basis of race, religion and sexual orientation are "thriving" on Facebook.

"This pattern of censorship represents a double standard, one that seems to be addressed only through direct activist intervention or significant media attention," the groups wrote.

Facebook employs a multilayered system to handle more than a million content complaints a day. Most complaints are flagged by users and reviewed by low-level staffers and contractors who consult a thick rule book to interpret and apply its comparatively spare community standards that users are asked to follow.

The rights groups made several recommendations to Facebook in its letter, including allowing users to appeal removals not just for profiles or pages but individual posts.

They also recommended giving users a written justification when a post is removed, producing a public report that would include figures on content removals and the number of takedown requests submitted by law enforcement, and additional training on racial discrimination for content reviewers.

The coalition requested a meeting by early February at Facebook's Menlo Park headquarters to discuss its concerns and recommendations.

(Reporting by Dustin Volz)

WASHINGTON Outgoing U.S. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler warned Republicans against dismantling the Obama administration's landmark "net neutrality" protections that bar internet service providers from slowing consumer access to web content.

DAVOS, Switzerland Open markets and global trade have been blamed for job losses over the last decade, but global CEOs say the real culprits are increasingly machines.

SAN FRANCISCO Ride-hailing company Uber Technologies Inc. has hired the man behind Google search to work closely with Chief Executive Travis Kalanick and help grow the company's self-driving car program.

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Facebook dismissive of censorship, abuse concerns, rights groups allege - Reuters

Forbes

Facebook Should Do More To Address Censorship And Harassment Issues, Rights Groups Say Forbes The group asks Facebook to provide a simple and accessible appeals process, increase transparency around content removal and carry out an external audit to review the human rights outcomes of its censorship, stating that the company's current audits ... Facebook dismissive of censorship, abuse concerns, rights groups allegeReuters Facebook Slammed For 'Racially Biased Censorship'Vocativ Facebook slammed by rights groups for 'racially biased censorship' in hate speech takedownsInternational Business Times UK Telegraph.co.uk -PCMag India -CNET all 8 news articles »

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Facebook Should Do More To Address Censorship And Harassment Issues, Rights Groups Say - Forbes

New York Times

Clearing Out the App Stores: Government Censorship Made Easier New York Times There's a new form of digital censorship sweeping the globe, and it could be the start of something devastating. In the last few weeks, the Chinese government compelled Apple to remove New York Times apps from the Chinese version of the App Store. Apple increases App Store prices by 25% following Brexit voteThe Guardian Apple App Store prices rise in UK, India and TurkeyBBC News all 88 news articles »

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Clearing Out the App Stores: Government Censorship Made Easier - New York Times

Daily Report: A New Form of Censorship in App Stores New York Times Different governments have different ways of controlling what information their citizens do or do not see. In recent years, technology used to do things like blocking websites or choking off social media feeds has become crucial to those ...

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Daily Report: A New Form of Censorship in App Stores - New York Times

Swiss-based PGP end-to-end encrypted email provider, ProtonMail, now has an onion address, allowing users to access its service via a direct connection to the Tor anonymizing network in what it describes asan active measure aimed at defending against state-sponsored censorship.

The startup, which has amassed more than two million users for its e2e encrypted email service so far, launching out of beta just over a year ago,says its worried about an increased risk of state-level blocking of pro-privacy tools pointing to recent movessuch as encryption messaging app Signal being blocked in Egypt, and the UK passing expansivesurveillance legislation that mandates tracking of web activity and can also require companies to eschew e2eencryption andbackdoor products.

The service also sawa bump in sign ups after the election of Donald Trump as US president, last fall withweb users apparently seekinga non-US based secureemail provider in light of the incoming commander-in-chiefs expansive digital surveillance powers.

Given ProtonMails recent growth, we realize that the censorship of ProtonMail in certain countries is inevitable and we are proactively working to prevent this says co-founder Andy Yen in a statement on the launch. Tor provides a way to circumvent certain Internet blocks so improving our compatibility with Tor is a natural first step.

Users of the Tor browser can now reach ProtonMail directly using its new onionaddress: https://protonirockerxow.onion

Its alsowritteninstructions onhow to set up ProtonMail over Tor here.

Users accessing ProtonMail via Tor will have their connections anonymized meaning the email servicewont be able to see (and thus couldnt be forced to divulge) theirtrue IP address.

Of course its still possible to browse to ProtonMails main website via Tor but it points out the directonion address has a few advantages such as providing e2e encryption on the Tor level; meaning the encryption applied by Toris present until theconnection reaches ProtonMailsinfrastructure(vs a non-onion Tor connection not havingTor encryption beyond the last node), therebymaking it hard for an attacker to perform a man-in-the-middle attack ona users connection.

The onion site also provides end-to-end authentication, which ProtonMailsays helps mitigate some of theweaknesses with the existing Certificate Authority (CA) systemthats used across much of the Internet pointing out thatmanyCAsare trusted by default and some can be under direct government control. For this reasonits also using an onion site with HTTPS only also as a backup in case Tor itself is ever compromised.

If someday Tor were to be compromised, enforcing HTTPS adds another layer of security for the end user. Similarly, Tor also provides security in case HTTPS is compromised. The notion ofHTTPS being compromisedis one that we take seriously, considering that there are hundreds of CAs thatare trusted by default, with many of them under direct government control in high risk countries, itwrites in a blog about the launch.

Thus, by using our onion site, your emails are protected by three layers of end-to-end encryption, theres Tors encryption on the outer layer, HTTPS in the middle layer, and PGP as the final layer of defense for the emails themselves.

Another motivating factor it flags for launching theTor hidden serviceis to bolster itsdefenses against DDoS attacks given its harder for attackers to determine the physical locationand IP address of the onion site, so itcould offer a workaround for accessing ProtonMail in the event ofa sustained DDoS attack taking its web addressoffline.

ProtonMail suffered a major incident on that front back in November 2015, with theemail service going down for more than 24 hours. Yen tells TechCrunch it still gets major DDoS attacks routinely, although he reckonsitsdefenses and network are now able to withstand them without user impact.

That said, the resistance of Tor to standard DDoS attacks is something that is interesting to us, particularly since DDoS attacks have continually grown in size over the past year, he adds, although he emphasizes it is still a secondary motivation compared to the concerns we have about compromises in the certificate authority system and government mandated blocking.

ProtonMailsonion site is described as experimental at this point, so its warning reliability may not be as high as our standard site even above and beyond the typically slower connectionTor users generally get.

Even without using Tor, your ProtonMail inbox is still strongly protected withPGP end-to-end encryption,secure authentication(SRP), and optionaltwo-factor authentication. However, ProtonMail definitely hasusers in sensitive situations where the extra security and anonymity provided by Tor could literally save lives, it adds.

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ProtonMail adds Tor onion site to fight risk of state censorship - TechCrunch