Arizona Bill Would Stop Censorship Of High-School Newspapers KJZZ A Supreme Court decision has ruled student newspapers don't have the same constitutional rights as other publications. But an Arizona state senator saw that as having a chilling effect and introduced a bill to stop school administrators from censoring ... |
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Arizona Bill Would Stop Censorship Of High-School Newspapers - KJZZ
Internet censorship in Pakistan is government control of information sent and received using the Internet in Pakistan.
Pakistan made global headlines in 2010 for blocking Facebook and other Web sites in response to a contest popularized on the social networking site to draw images of the Prophet Mohammad. In general, Internet filtering in Pakistan remains both inconsistent and intermittent, with filtering primarily targeted at content deemed to be a threat to national security and at religious content considered blasphemous.
In mid-2012 Pakistanis had relatively free access to a wide range of content, including most sexual, political, social, and religious sites on the Internet. The OpenNet Initiative listed Internet filtering in Pakistan as substantial in the conflict/security area, and as selective in the political, social, and Internet tools areas in August 2012.[1] Additionally, Freedom House rated Pakistan's "Freedom on the Net Status" as "Not Free" in its Freedom on the Net 2013 report.[2] This is still true as of 2016.[3]
Internet filtering in Pakistan is regulated by the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA) and the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) under the direction of the government, the Supreme Court of Pakistan, and the Ministry of Information Technology (MoIT). Although the majority of filtering in Pakistan is intermittentsuch as the occasional block on a major Web site like Blogspot or YouTubethe PTA continues to block sites containing content it considers to be blasphemous, anti-Islamic, or threatening to internal security. Online civil society activism that began in order to protect free expression in the country continues to expand as citizens utilize new media to disseminate information and organize.[1]
Pakistan has blocked access to websites critical of the government or the military.[1] Blocking of websites is often carried out under the rubric of restricting access to blasphemous content, pornography, or religious immorality.[4] At the end of 2011, the PTA had officially banned more than 1,000 porn websites in Pakistan.[4][5]
The Pakistan Internet Exchange (PIE), operated by the state-owned Pakistan Telecommunication Company Ltd (PTCL), was created to facilitate the exchange of Internet traffic between ISPs within and outside of Pakistan.[6] Because the majority of Pakistan's Internet traffic is routed through the PIE (98% of Pakistani ISPs used the PIE in 2004), it provides a means to monitor and possibly block incoming and outgoing Internet traffic as the government deems fit.[7]
Internet surveillance in Pakistan is primarily conducted by the PIE under the auspices of the PTA. The PIE monitors all incoming and outgoing Internet traffic from Pakistan, as well as e-mail and keywords, and stores data for a specified amount of time. Law enforcement agencies such as the FIA can be asked by the government to conduct surveillance and monitor content. Under the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Ordinance (PECO), ISPs are required to retain traffic data for a minimum of 90 days and may also be required to collect real-time data and record information while keeping their involvement with the government confidential. The ordinance does not specify what kinds of actions constitute grounds for data collection and surveillance.[1]
In April 2003, the PTCL announced that it would be stepping up monitoring of pornographic websites. "Anti-Islamic" and "blasphemous" sites were also monitored.[8] In early March 2004, the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) ordered Internet service providers (ISPs) to monitor access to all pornographic content. The ISPs, however, lacked the technical know-how, and felt that the PTCL was in a better position to carry out FIA's order. A Malaysian firm was then hired to provide a filtering system, but failed to deliver a working system.
In March 2012, the Pakistan government took the unusual step of touting for firms that could help build it a nationwide content-filtering service.[9] The Pakistan Telecommunications Authority published a request for proposals for the deployment and operation of a national level URL Filtering and Blocking System which would operate on similar lines to China's Golden Shield, or "Great Firewall".[9] Academic and research institutions as well as private commercial entities had until 16 March to submit their proposals, according to the request's detailed 35-point system requirements list. Key among these is the following: "Each box should be able to handle a block list of up to 50 million URLs (concurrent unidirectional filtering capacity) with processing delay of not more than 1 milliseconds".[9]
The Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy began after 12 editorial cartoons, most of which depicted the Islamic prophet Muhammad, were published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten on 30 September 2005. This led to protests across the Muslim world, some of which escalated into violence with instances of firing on crowds of protestors, resulting in more than 100 reported deaths,[10] and included the bombing of the Danish embassy in Pakistan, setting fire to the Danish Embassies in Syria, Lebanon and Iran, storming of European buildings, and the burning of the Danish, Dutch, Norwegian, French, and German flags in Gaza City.[11][12] The posting of the cartoons online added to the controversy.
On 1 March 2006 the Supreme Court of Pakistan directed the government to keep tabs on Internet sites displaying the cartoons and called for an explanation from authorities as to why these sites had not been blocked earlier.[13] On 2 March 2006, pursuant to a petition filed under Article 184(3) of the Constitution of Pakistan, the Supreme Court sitting en banc ordered the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA) and other government departments to adopt measures for blocking websites showing blasphemous content. The Court also ordered Attorney General Makhdoom Ali Khan to explore laws which would enable blocking of objectionable websites. In announcing the decision, Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, said, "We will not accept any excuse or technical objection on this issue because it relates to the sentiments of the entire Muslim world. All authorities concerned will have to appear in the Court on the next hearing with reports of concrete measures taken to implement our order".
Consequently, the government kept tabs on a number of websites hosting the cartoons deemed to be sacrilegious. This ban included all the weblogs hosted at the popular blogging service blogger.com, as some bloggers had put up copies of the cartoons particularly many non-Pakistani blogs.
A three-member bench headed by Chief Justice Chaudhry, summoned the country's Attorney General as well as senior communication ministry officials to give a report of "concrete measures for implementation of the court's order". At the hearing on 14 March 2006, the PTA informed the Supreme Court that all websites displaying the Muhammad cartoons had been blocked. The bench issued directions to the Attorney General of Pakistan, Makhdoom Ali Khan, to assist the court on how it could exercise jurisdiction to prevent the availability of blasphemous material on websites the world over.[14]
The blanket ban on the blogspot.com blogs was lifted on 2 May 2006.[15] Shortly thereafter the blanket ban was reimposed and extended to Typepad blogs. The blanket ban on the blogspot.com blogs was later lifted again.
Allegations of suppressing vote-rigging videos by the Musharraf administration were also leveled by Pakistani bloggers, newspapers, media, and Pakistani anti-Musharraf opposition parties. The ban was lifted on 26 February 2008.[16][17]
In 2006 the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority blocked five websites for "providing misleading informations".[18] Some allege that the websites' real crime was reporting on the Balochistan separatist conflict.[19]
YouTube was blocked in Pakistan following a decision taken by the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority on 22 February 2008 because of the number of "non-Islamic objectionable videos."[17][20] One report specifically named Fitna, a controversial Dutch film, as the basis for the block.[21] Pakistan, an Islamic republic, ordered its ISPs to block access to YouTube "for containing blasphemous web content/movies."[22] The action effectively blocked YouTube access worldwide for several hours on 24 February.[23] Defaming Muhammad under 295-C of the Blasphemy law in Pakistan requires a death sentence.[24] This followed increasing unrest in Pakistan by over the reprinting of the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons which depict satirical criticism of Islam.[22] Router misconfiguration by one Pakistani ISP on 24 February 2008 effectively blocked YouTube access worldwide for several hours.[23] On 26 February 2008, the ban was lifted after the website had removed the objectionable content from its servers at the request of the government.[16]
On 19 and 20 May 2010, Pakistan's Telecommunication Authority (PTA) imposed a ban on Wikipedia, YouTube, Flickr, and Facebook in response to a competition entitled Everybody Draw Mohammed Day on Facebook, in a bid to contain "blasphemous" material[25][26] The ban imposed on Facebook was the result of a ruling by the Lahore High Court, while the ban on the other websites was imposed arbitrarily by the PTA on the grounds of "objectionable content", a different response from earlier requests, such as pages created to promote peaceful demonstrations in Pakistani cities being removed because they were "inciting violence". The ban was lifted on 27 May 2010, after the website removed the objectionable content from its servers at the request of the government. However, individual videos deemed offensive to Muslims that are posted on YouTube will continue to be blocked.[27][28]
In September 2012, the PTA blocked the video-sharing website YouTube for not removing an anti-Islamic film made in the United States, Innocence of Muslims, which mocks Mohammed. The website would remain suspended, it was stated, until the film was removed.[29][30] In a related move, the PTA announced that it had blocked about 20,000 websites due to "objectionable" content.[31]
On 25 July 2013, the government announced that it is mulling over reopening YouTube during the second week of August. A special 12-member committee was working under the Minister of IT and Telecommunication, Anusha Rahman, to see if objectionable content can be removed. The Pakistan Telecommunications Authority, the telecom watchdog in the country, has already expressed its inability to filter out select content.[32]
On 21 April 2014, Pakistan's Senate Standing Committee on Human Rights requested the Federal Government remove the ban on YouTube.[33][34]
On 8 February 2015, the government announced that YouTube will remain blocked 'indefinitely' because no tool or solution had been found which can totally block offensive content.[35] As of June 2015 1,000 days on the ban was still in effect, and YouTube cannot be accessed from either desktop or mobile devices.[34]
The ban was lifted due to technical glitch on December 6, 2015 according to ISPs in Pakistan.[36] As September 2016, the ban has been lifted officially, as YouTube launched a local version for Pakistan.[37]
In June 2013, The Citizens Lab, an interdisciplinary research laboratory uncovered that Canadian internet-filtering product Netsweeper is functioning at the national level in Pakistan. The system has categorized billions of URLs and is adding 10 million new URLs every day. The lab also confirmed that ISPs in Pakistan are using methods of DNS tampering to block websites at the behest of Pakistan Telecommunication Authority.
According to the report published by the lab, Netsweeper technology is being implemented in Pakistan for purposes of political and social filtering, including websites of secessionist movements, sensitive religious topics, and independent media.[38]
In July 2013, Pakistani ISPs banned 6 of the top 10[39] public Torrent sites in Pakistan. These sites include Piratebay, Kickass torrents, Torrentz, Bitsnoop, Extra Torrent and Torrent Reactor.[40] They also banned the similar site Mininova.[41] However proxies for these torrent sites are still active and P2P connections are working normally.[42] This move lead to a massive public backlash, especially from the Twitter and Facebook communities of Pakistan. In the aftermath of such critique, the IT Minister of Pakistan, Anusha Rehman, deactivated her Twitter account.[43]
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Internet censorship in Pakistan - Wikipedia
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The popular digital currency Bitcoin, witha market capitalization of over $16 billion, was in the news over the weekend after it recrossed the $1,000/Bitcoin value threshold. Despite the buzz around Bitcoin, there is another cryptocurrency-related project that is poised to revolutionize the way in which we exchange.
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The Ethereum Project, an open source platform developed by 22-year old programmer Vitalik Buterin, is seeking to build upon the blockchain technology established by Bitcoin by allowing developers to use the blockchain to build decentralized applications.
The blockchain is a decentralized database where records and entries are virtually unchangeable. While Bitcoin utilizes blockchain technology to manage a currency, the Ethereum Project provides an open source environment where programmers can create applications on the blockchain.
Tristan Winters, a reporter at ETHNews, the leading online Ethereum news site, explained to me the Ethereum project in laymans terms: Ethereum is a world computer. Instead of hosting apps on a server, you host them on the Ethereum blockchain and p2p network (world computer). So the apps are censorship resistant and no one can shut them down, even if they want to.
Ethereum is driven by Ether, a cryptocurrency that acts as fuel for the system. According to the projects website, Ether is a necessary element that ensures that developers are writing quality applications:
Ether is a necessary element a fuel for operating the distributed application platform Ethereum. It is a form of payment made by the clients of the platform to the machines executing the requested operations. To put it another way, ether is the incentive ensuring that developers write quality applications (wasteful code costs more), and that the network remains healthy (people are compensated for their contributed resources).
Because of the open source nature of Ethereum, its has almost limitless functions. Developers have proposed and began work on decentralized file storage systems, financial systems, and business management systems.
Ethereum allows actors to create smart contracts, which are programs that run on the blockchain that can handle currency in a way that is unchangeable. Smart contracts can be used for a variety of business functions, such as the representation of shares, organizational voting, and fundraising.
The decentralized nature of the Ethereum blockchain would allow for social networks that are truly resistant to censorship. Unlike Facebook or Twitter, a social network operating on Ethereum wouldnt be accessed via centralized servers. Such a network would exist as a peer-to-peer network that lives on computers throughout the world. Because such a network would have no centralized body, censorship would be extremely difficult.
Although it is unclear what the future holds for the Ethereum Project and the value of Ether, it seems likely that there is increasing interest in decentralized applications that have the potential to liberate an increasingly centralized world.
Tom Ciccotta is a libertarian who writes about social justice and libertarian issues for Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter @tciccotta or email him at tciccotta@breitbart.com
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Ethereum Project Offers Censorship Resistant 'World ...
The bill would require schools to notify parents of any potentially sexually explicit classroom material and require that schools offer an alternative for the students of any parents who opt out. (Thinkstock)
WASHINGTON Virginias House of Delegates could take a final vote Monday on a bill that would require schools to notify parents of any potentially sexually explicit classroom material and require that schools offer an alternative for the students of any parents who opt out.
Opponents of the bill said it amounts to censorship in schools. Supporters said it is simply a requirement to keep parents informed and in control.
This does not prohibit any teacher from assigning any type of material they deem necessary or appropriate. It does not ban books. It does not ban any materials that teachers or school systems would like to have on their reading list and the like. It doesnt do that, the bills patron Del. Steve Landes, R-Augusta, said Friday.
This legitimately addresses a legitimate concern that parents raised, he said.
Del. Dave Albo, R-Springfield, described the bill as a compromise that strikes a fair balance.
I think that 99.99999 percent of the parents in Virginia would like to know if someone assigned a book that has scenes about sexual abuse of a child and infected sexual battery, Albo said.
Del. Alfonso Lopez, D-Arlington, said that even though this years bill set for a final vote is narrower than the bill that was vetoed by Gov. Terry McAuliffelast year, there would still be significant unintended consequences and problems.
More than likely, a teacher will not be able to do two entire lesson plans for the same class, sometimes on a very quick turnaround, after an objection from just one parent. This makes it much less likely that theyd be willing to even attempt to use anything that might be considered objectionable in their lessons, Lopez said.
He said it would be a form of censorship that could limit all kinds of classic art and literature.
For a junior taking AP English and learning iambic pentameter, what is less objectionable literary work that is the equivalent to any of Shakespeares plays? Lopez said.
Most importantly, what is an equivalent work to Toni Morrisons Beloved, which teaches us in a very raw and unflinching manner and terms about the horrors of slavery? he added.
The bill was originally triggered by a Fairfax County mother who protested the use of Beloved in her sons class when he was a senior in high school.
Lopez and Del. Vivian Watts, D-Annandale, warned of a potential black eye for Virginias reputation if the bill passes, and it becomes widely reported or mentioned on late-night TV.
Lopez cited the widespread reaction to the recent move in Accomac, Virginia, to pull To Kill a Mockingbird and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn following a parents complaint.
We will end up with excluding for all what might be objectionable to just a few, she added.
The bill advanced Friday on a voice vote to a final vote that is expected on Monday. The bill would then go to the state Senate.
Del. Nicholas Freitas, R-Culpeper, said this is simply a service for parents.
I dont care how many Pulitzer Prizes it has. If its sexually explicit material, that might be something as a parent that I want to be notified of, Freitas said.
Read the proposed bill on theVirginia General Assembly website.
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Censorship or parental control? Va. lawmakers divided on bill - WTOP
Slide: 1 / of 2. Caption: RadiTo
Slide: 2 / of 2. Caption: RadiTo
Reza Ghazinouri remembers the importance of pirate radio as a teenager growing up in in the city of Mashhad in northeast Iran. His father tuned in multiple times a day to the banned Farsi version of the BBC transmitted from neighboring countries, to hear the truth about Iranian political scandals like the impeachment of the countrys liberal minister of culture, and the shutdown of dozens of its newspapers. While Ghazinouri studied for his college entrance exams in 2003, hed listen to the US government-funded Radio Farda coverage of student protests against university privatization. I still remember those programs so clearly, Ghazinouri says, Every night Id imagine myself protesting like the students.
Today, Ghazinouri has found his own form of protest. Hes one of the creators of an app that aims to bring the same contraband audio to modern Iran in a revamped form: the pirate podcast. Today he and his fellow activists and coders at the Berkeley-based, Iran-focused app developer IranCubator will launch RadiTo, an audio app for Android uniquely suited to the conditions of the countrys internet. It navigates slow, expensive data connections, users who speak a variety of languages and dialects ignored by most podcast distributors, and trickiest of all, a draconian digital censorship regime. With RadiTo, the group hopes to evade that internet filtering and bring a rare stream of aural information about the outside world to the countrys burgeoning smartphone culture.
For now, the app works as a kind of digital radio tool, offering banned foreign channels like the BBC, Radio Farda, and Amsterdam-based Radio Zamaneh. But eventually RadiTo, whose name means Radio You in Farsi, plans to let anyone create their own podcast channel, serving as a kind of audio-only Iranian YouTube for illicit ideas and entertainment. This allows individuals to have a platform to broadcast whatever they want to broadcast, says Firuzeh Mahmoudi, one of IranCubators founders and the executive director of its creator United For Iran. Getting access to radio stations outside the country is imperative, and a platform where individuals can have channels to share information is critical.
Beyond mere news, RadiTo will offer audio channels devoted to other subjects forbidden in Iran. One show it plans to distribute, called Taboo, has in the last several months devoted episodes to censored topics like pre-marital sex, separatist groups, and the female orgasm. Another show will focus on Iranian mysticism, a controversial topic under Irans strict interpretation of Islam. Both shows are run by Iranians living in America; the subjects they cover, after all, are a form of thought crime in Iran. Irans digital censorship body, the Supreme Council for Cyberspace, has long blocked all internet content in the country that violates its tight restrictionseverything from political dissent against the countrys hardline regime to cultural content it considers anti-Islamic.
RadiTo has a few ideas about how to stay ahead of that filtering. It offers two ways to download RadiTo: both Google Play and trusted Telegram accounts, like the one run by pseudonymous Iranian activist and blogger Vahid Online. Iran doesnt currently block either method, Ghazinouri says, and since connections to Google Play are encrypted, the Iranian censors cant easily block downloads of RadiTo without blocking all connections to the Android app store that serves more than 70 percent of the countrys smartphone users. The server that hosts RadiTos content, Ghazinouri explains, is hosted on Amazon Web Services and encrypted, which similarly hides its data in a tough-to-block collection of other services. (The encrypted calling and texting app Signal recently used a similar tactic to circumvent blocking of the app in Egypt and the United Arab Emirates.)
Ghazinouri concedes that the government might still find a way to block the apps connections by, say, identifying the exact IP range of the apps Amazon servers, or using deep packet inspection to spot its data in transit. So the group also has a workaround in mind: In the case of a block, its ready to push an update to the app via both Google Play and Telegram that would embed a proxy function, routing its data over the Psiphon network, an anti-censorship tool created by the University of Torontos Citizen Lab, which bounces users connections through the computers of volunteers outside Iran. Individual Farsi audio apps from broadcasters like Radio Zamaneh do have their own Android apps, but probably arent as well prepared to play the cat-and-mouse game of censorship evasion, argues Ghazinouri. The Iranian government comes up with new censorship techniques all the time, says Ghazinouri. You always have to have a Plan B.
Iranians can already access some of these services piecemeal, through proxies and other workarounds. But RadiTo on top of censorship circumvention, RadiTo also has features that solve uniquely Iranian problems. Its interface offers not only Farsi and English, but four other Iranian minority languages: Balouchi, Iranian-dialect Turkish, Kurdish, and Arabic. And it allows users to download content and listen offline, a crucial setting in a country where a lack of infrastructure and intentional government throttling slows internet speeds to an expensive trickle. Theres no other Iranian app that offers all this, says Fereidoon Bashar, an internet activist and developer at the Toronto-based technology lab ASL-19, which is working with IranCubator on future apps for the same market. Its accommodating not just the user experience, but also the internet ecosystem that exists in Iran, the limited access to data.
RadiTo is only the first official launch for IranCubator. In the coming months, it hopes to launch a dozen apps, all tailored for Iranian users and the challenges of Irans cloistered internet. Later in February, for instance, IranCubator plans to release a tool called Hamdam, aimed at womens health education. Hamdam will include a period tracker, information about marriage rights and divorce, and advice about dealing with domestic violence.
IranCubator founder Mahmoudi says she hopes the groups human-rights focused apps can collectively ride the growing wave of mobile device adoption in Iran, where 40 million people already own smartphones, with a million more added every month. Iranians are tech-savvy and globally minded. They want to be in a county thats more democratic and worldly, says Mahmoudi. All the indicators are there. Technology is the right tool to engage people where they want to engage.
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A Pirate Podcast App Takes on Iran's Hardline Censors - WIRED