Disinformation » Censorship

Anonymous’s ‘Black March’ Media Survival Guide

ckn — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 13:39:24 +0000

"copyrighted media won't be allowed while internet is censored"

Anonymous and other various Internet freedom groups are calling on people to boycott the corporate media for the entire month of March 2012 in efforts to affect the bottom line of organizations calling for the imposition of The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. ACTA will profoundly restrict the fundamental rights, freedom of expression and communication privacy of Internet users the world over.

For those of you who intend to participate in the boycott, there is plenty of public domain and Creative Commons licensed media that, for now, is freely available for you to download and enjoy, enough for the entire month of March.

The following is by no means an exhaustive list of sources to help you remain entertained while participating in the Black March Boycotts.

Video

Audio / Music / Sound

Text / Books / Magazines / Literature

Please dig in, re-view some classics and enjoy our open media heritage, while it remains free and open, and feel free to post your suggestions of Black March safe media.

Yet Again, YouTubers Ask Obama About Drug Reform

DeepCough — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 21:37:40 +0000

Isn’t it funny how a Democrat refuses to listen to the people who put him in power? From Alternet:

“We need to rethink and decriminalize our marijuana laws.”

Can you guess which 2012 presidential candidate said the above statement? You’d be forgiven for thinking Ron Paul, or even Gary Johnson, since both have publicly advocated for reforming our country’s drug laws. You’d be forgiven for guessing anyone but Barack Obama, based on his actions during the past few years, but it was. It may be hard to believe, but President Obama is the same person who once called for reforming our marijuana laws, and deemed the drug war an “utter failure” during his 2004 campaign for the US Senate. Despite previous calls for reform, on Monday night, when faced with over 70,000 individuals urging him to address the issue of marijuana prohibition, Obama’s only response was his silence. NORML and Law Enforcement Against Prohibition posted two of the most popular questions submitted to the White House’s recent Q&A on YouTube, alongside hundreds of others on the topic of marijuana law reform, but Obama offered no response or acknowledgement.

This recent attempt at citizen engagement, entitled “Your Interview With the President,” was launched to coincide with the State of the Union Address. The concept was simple. Anyone could submit a text or video question through the White House YouTube channel, before the public voted on them over the course of the week. The highest rated questions would be selected for Obama to address. On Tuesday, January 24th, NORML submitted a question of our own, which inquired:

“With over 850,000 Americans arrested in 2010, for marijuana charges alone, and tens of billions of tax dollars being spent locking up non-violent marijuana users, isn’t it time we regulate and tax marijuana?”

The question exploded in popularity and received more than 4,000 votes in the first several hours, making it the 2nd highest rated question. Much to our surprise, that evening the question was removed from the YouTube channel and flagged as “inappropriate.” In response, an upset contingent of citizens flooded the page with marijuana law reform questions…

[continues at Alternet]

Twitter Censorship Outrage

majestic — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 14:49:00 +0000

Talk about cat amongst pigeons: Twitter’s announcement that it will enable country-specific censorship has the twittersphere in uproar. From Al Jazeera:

In an announcement on its official blog, the micro-blogging service Twitter has said it will enable country-specific censorship of content on the site.

True to the form of the medium, the service was immediately abuzz with questions, criticisms and conspiracies about Thursday’s announcement.

In a bid to show the service can still be used for dissent, some users have called for a boycott on Saturday, organised around the hashtag #TwitterBlackout.

In a Forbes article highly circulated on the micro-blogging site early Friday, Mark Gibbs wrote that San Francisco, California-based Twitter was committing “social suicide” with the censorship announcement.

Gibbs’ article raised fears of an algorithm incapable of understanding the sarcasm that permeate the 140-character blasts comprising the service’s contents.

That “computer-driven” filtering for the up to 9,000 tweets per second the service produced last year could not possibly take context and tone into consideration.

Whereas Gibbs said the announcement equated to Twitter having “dug their own grave”, Alex Howard, a DC-based correspondent for Radar, a blog about emerging technologies, said “the fact that Twitter says they will transparently show the rest of the world what’s being censored is actually quite interesting, even innovative”.

A departure

Howard, who has little doubt the service will implement the country-specific censorship, said: “I don’t think this system was introduced to be symbolic.”

He says the proposal laid out in the blog post entitled “Tweets still must flow” could be a departure even from a similar practice by the search company, Google.

“Google makes raw data available of government requests for information but not the information itself,” Howard said.

Twitter will probably follow this model while also in the process “highlighting the contents of tweets that governments are seeking to block and even regions it’s happening in”, he said.

Similary, Jillian York, director of international freedom of expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, does not doubt the proposal amounts to censorship, but says it is the “best middle road” for a company looking to expand globally…

[continues at Al Jazeera]

Warning: This Site Contains Conspiracy Theories

ralph — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 23:27:46 +0000

I am sure this question posed by Evgeny Morozov on Slate, “Does Google have a responsibility to help stop the spread of 9/11 denialism, anti-vaccine activism, and other fringe beliefs?” will be quite provocative for readers of Disinformation. As Evgeny Morozov writes on Slate:

In its early days, the Web was often imagined as a global clearinghouse — a new type of library, with the sum total of human knowledge always at our fingertips. That much has happened — but with a twist: In addition to borrowing existing items from its vast collections, we, the patrons, could also deposit our own books, pamphlets and other scribbles — with no or little quality control.

Such democratization of information-gathering — when accompanied by smart institutional and technological arrangements — has been tremendously useful, giving us Wikipedia and Twitter. But it has also spawned thousands of sites that undermine scientific consensus, overturn well-established facts, and promote conspiracy theories. Meanwhile, the move toward social search may further insulate regular visitors to such sites; discovering even more links found by their equally paranoid friends will hardly enlighten them. Is it time for some kind of a quality control system?

Motion Picture Industry Threatens Politicians

majestic — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 14:00:44 +0000

Former Sentator Chris Dodd

From the sickening department at Techdirt:

Reinforcing the fact that Chris Dodd really does not get what’s happening, and showing just how disgustingly corrupt the MPAA relationship is with politicians, Chris Dodd went on Fox News to explicitly threaten politicians who accept MPAA campaign donations that they’d better pass Hollywood’s favorite legislation … or else:

“Those who count on quote ‘Hollywood’ for support need to understand that this industry is watching very carefully who’s going to stand up for them when their job is at stake. Don’t ask me to write a check for you when you think your job is at risk and then don’t pay any attention to me when my job is at stake,”

This certainly follows what many people assumed was happening, and fits with the anonymous comments from studio execs that they will stop contributing to Obama, but to be so blatant about this kind of corruption and money-for-laws politics in the face of an extremely angry public is a really, really, really tone deaf response from Dodd.

It shows, yet again, that he just doesn’t get it. People were protesting not just because of the content of these bills, but because of the corrupt process of big industries like Dodd’s “buying” politicians and “buying” laws. To then come out and make that threat explicit isn’t a way to fix things or win back the public. It’s just going to get them more upset, and to recognize just how corrupt this process is. If Dodd, as he said in yesterday’s NY Times, really wanted to turn things around and come to a more reasonable result, this is exactly how not to do it …

[continues at Techdirt]

Let’s Prevent American Internet Censorship!

NickMeador — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 05:09:25 +0000

Writes Nick Meador:

[Note: This post has been censored by the author in protest of the "rogue sites legislation" (i.e., Internet censorship) currently being considered by U.S. Congress. The full text will be made available soon.]

Dear Internet friends,

As you may already know, I create audio/video mash-ups by crossing older films and music videos with newer music, with varying levels of editing to the original visual content. In a sense, it has become a hobby of mine over the past few years, and I find it very rewarding. My own activity has been inspired in some ways by the mash-up culture more prevalent in music during the last decade.

During my Masters of Journalism program in 2007-2008, I learned that this is legal behavior because of the “fair use” aspect of U.S. copyright law. That says people can use copyrighted works for non-commercial, transformative purposes that add value to the material but don’t hinder the profitability of the original “intellectual property.” In other words, I don’t make any money on these mash-ups; I just do it for fun, and to fulfill my democratic duty of keeping our public domain vibrant and progressive.

However, as Lawrence Lessig explains in his 2004 book Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity, copyright law has now become vastly overextended due to the new technology of the Internet. All traditional media content can now be duplicated and distributed online with little to no cost, and incredibly faster than what was possible in the “real world.” This has led to a boom in content-based social media sites like Facebook, YouTube, and Vimeo.

Companies that own copyrights to music, movies, TV shows, and other digital content have been fighting peer-to-peer (p2p) networking for almost a decade now, claiming that they’re losing money because of these new technologies (such as BitTorrent). But really, they haven’t fully demonstrated that online technologies are actually causing them to lose money. What bothers them the most is that they have lost control over distribution, as Rob Sheridan wrote in a now-legendary 2007 eulogy for the p2p music site Oink. (For more on why copyright law is broken, please see my 2010 essay “CC-BY: A Step Into the Belated Future.”)

Things have changed a lot in the past few years. Attempts by media conglomerates and their lobbying groups to sue copyright infringers — usually labeled as “pirates” — have totally failed. Citizens have shown no signs of stopping any of this behavior, because threats now seem empty, and arguments why they should stop don’t make any sense. So now companies are pushing Congress to pass “rogue sites legislation,” claiming that its purpose would be to prevent foreign websites from selling counterfeit or bootlegged goods.

But a bill like the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) or Protect-IP (that is, protect intellectual property) would do far more than that. First of all, the U.S. government would have to work with Internet service providers to limit access to those foreign sites. They’d also have the power to prevent payment or advertising services from working with foreign copyright infringers.

By the same means, the government could fine or shut down domestic websites for hosting copyrighted content without permission — or even for linking to such content! Critics say this could harm the Domain Name System (DNS) that holds the Internet together!

Now it gets more serious. These bills would make online copyright infringement a felony punishable by up to five years in jail! (For more on the specifics of SOPA, please see this article.)

According to AmericanCensorship.org, SOPA could pass as soon as Thursday, December 15. So as you can imagine, I’m feeling pretty anxious about the possibility of being labeled a felon for activity that should be totally and unquestionably legal!

You might think that if you don’t manipulate or remix copyrighted content that you’re in the clear — but actually these laws could target many other kinds of online activity. For instance, many have pointed out that even uploading a video of yourself singing a copyrighted song (i.e., almost any song you yourself didn’t write) could be punishable as a felony! You don’t even have to be singing the song. If you take a video of your friends and there’s a copyrighted song playing in the background, it would be a felony to upload that video to YouTube or Facebook!

Hopefully I have convinced you of the horrible consequences that will surely ensue if SOPA passes. I also recommend watching the video below. Please visit AmericanCensorship.org (or their partner site, FightForTheFuture.org) and follow instructions on how to spread the word to your friends, family, and colleagues (use the tag #censorshipeverywhere) — and (perhaps more importantly) how to tell your U.S. representatives why they should disobey financial interests and listen to their constituents!

Best regards,

Nick Meador

How to Break the Internet (Video)

ralph — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 22:34:45 +0000

Via AmericanCensorship.org:

The U.S. Congress is considering America’s first system for censoring the Internet. Despite public outcry, the Internet Censorship bill could pass at any time. If it does, the Internet and free speech will never be the same, here’s why:

Occupy This: Poetry Survives the Trashing of the People’s Library

Danny Schechter — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 20:59:17 +0000

Photo: David Shankbone (CC)

One of the clearest indicators of a fascist mentality is its contempt for ideas it disagrees with. The Nazis staged mass book burnings, and some religious zealots followed in their footsteps, in our country, by burning rock and roll records they considered the “Devil’s Music.” The war on Sarajevo began with the burning of its world acclaimed library by right-wing nationalists who found the city too multicultural for their tastes.

Here in New York, our liberal but opportunistically Republican Mayor, Michael Bloomberg, supports the New York Public Library. He also supported the right of that fanatic, fundamentalist minister Terry Jones, to burn the Quran to protest Islam. “I happen to think that it is distasteful. I don’t think he would like it if somebody burnt a book that in his religion he thinks is holy,” he said a year ago, “But the First Amendment protects everybody, and you can’t say that we’re going to apply the First Amendment to only those cases where we are in agreement.”

So what does this self-styled upholder of the First Amendment say today after the New York Police Department, under his command, trashed The People’s Library at Liberty Plaza (Zuccotti Park) the base camp of the Occupy Wall Street Movement? So far, he’s said nothing! You can see pictures of the destruction of the library at peopleslibrary.wordpress.com.

Amy Goodman was one of the few journalists who managed to get into the Park while the Police tore it apart, writing, “we saw a broken bookcase in one pile. Deeper in the park, I spotted a single book on the ground. It was marked “OWSL”, for Occupy Wall Street Library, also known as the People’s Library, one of the key institutions that had sprung up in the organic democracy of the movement. By the latest count, it had accumulated 5,000 donated books. The one I found, amidst the debris of democracy that was being hauled off to the dump, was Brave New World Revisited, by Aldous Huxley.”

I was in the Park this past Saturday with one of the People’s librarians. She pointed to one of only a handful of broken and waterlogged books that they recovered from the trash. She also noted that a new pile of books had been donated since the forced and brutal eviction earlier in the week. Among them was Howard Zinn’s collection of voices from the People’s History of the United States.

Also, this weekend, the Library issued a new PDF version of its unique and impassioned anthology of poetry, You can read the work here. Poets from all over the world are supporting the library, as the People’s library website explains:

Poets from around the world have been sending poems to the People’s Library in an effort to create a living/breathing poetry anthology in solidarity with the Occupy Wall St. movement. All poems are accepted into the anthology. The anthology is updated on a weekly basis. If you’d like a poem added to the anthology email stephenjboyer@gmail(dot)com and please include “occupy poetry” in the subject.

When I spoke with editor Stephen Boyer a week earlier, I commented that there was no introduction to the collection. He agreed it needed one, and honored me by inviting me to write it. It has now been integrated into the latest PDF. Here’s part of it: “Poems Are The Ultimate Weapon Of The 99%”

You see it here, dangling, in this book of Occupy poems, stuffed between improvised covers in a binder, virtually chained to a bookcase in the most improbable People’s Library ever created.

It is a growing collection, tethered this way, because so many read it, contribute to it and want it.

It is part of the amazing collection of the printed word, off the shelves of so many supporters and now sandwiched into a corner of a park housing an occupation to challenge the money state, based just two blocks away on the Street named after a Wall built centuries ago by slaves to hold back the Native Americans who were the first people displaced from this Island to make way for today’s overstuffed and over-bonused courtiers of commerce.

Wall Street has long occupied America, but now, with passion and a high sense of purpose, Americans and friends from all over, occupy THEM, and among the non-violent weapons in an ever-expanding arsenal of anger, are words on the page, poems of every kind, written to tweak and challenge the power of their many purses. All movements need their poets to set the tone, to raise the questions and express the sensibility.

And so it is true, I must confess, of OWS, where poetry lives in the hearts of this encampment of the engage, on this half-acre of enraged souls who have assembled to take a stand, to fight the power, and to build a community of the dispossessed and discontented in search of real democracy. There may be rage in this Park but also love and commitment without end.

We are here also in the memory of poets who have come before, like Brooklyn’s Walt Whitman whose poems and action echoed those who fought for the union to conquer slavery. Whitman once said: “To have great poetry there must be great audiences, too,” And Occupy Wall Street is a great audience with poetry readings every week along with the mic checks and the militancy.

Also, let’s not forget the beats like Allen Ginsberg who lived in Lower East Side New York, and whose life and work was a testament to the duty of the poet to provoke and inform, to fuse poesy and politics. Allen is here in spirit as are so many other New Yorkers of the word who powered movements in years gone by and feel so uplifted by this one.

The People’s Library emerged in a city that is cutting back on the hours its libraries are open, a town which has also seen the recent closures of major bookstores — including a Borders right up the block — because of failures in their Wall Street-driven speculative financing and expansion plans, Their own debts brought them down. Just as Mayor Bloomberg and his gendarmerie can’t evict an idea, the People’s Library will not be burned and only get stronger. In fact, occupiers continue turn their slogans into poems, like this one hurled at cops hidden behind plastic face masks: “Take Off Your Riot Gear. There’s No Riot Here!”

Danny Schechter writes about Occupy Wall Street on Al Jazeera, Progressive Radio Network other outlets and his News Dissector blog. He made the film Plunder the Crime Of Our Time. Please email comments to dissector@mediachannel.org

American Censorship Day

majestic — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 15:59:36 +0000

Today, November 16, 2011, is American Censorship Day. Congress is holding hearings on the first American Internet censorship system.

This bill can pass. If it does the Internet and free speech will never be the same. Amongst other aspects of the bill:

Website Blocking
The government can order service providers to block websites for infringing links posted by any users.

Risk of Jail for Ordinary Users
It becomes a felony with a potential 5 year sentence to stream a copyrighted work that would cost more than $2,500 to license, even if you are a totally noncommercial user, e.g. singing a pop song on Facebook.

Chaos for the Internet
Thousands of sites that are legal under the DMCA would face new legal threats. People trying to keep the internet more secure wouldn’t be able to rely on the integrity of the DNS system.

Visit Americancensorship.org to help fight against passage of the bill.

U.S. Government Could Hide Existence of Records Under Proposed Freedom of Information Act Rule

Join Or DIE — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 22:45:46 +0000

Open government? Jennifer LaFleur writes on ProPublica:

A proposed rule to the Freedom of Information Act would allow federal agencies to tell people requesting certain law-enforcement or national security documents that records don’t exist — even when they do.

Under current FOIA practice, the government may withhold information and issue what’s known as a Glomar denial that says it can neither confirm nor deny the existence of records.

The new proposal — part of a lengthy rule revision by the Department of Justice — would direct government agencies to “respond to the request as if the excluded records did not exist.”

Open-government groups object. “We don’t believe the statute allows the government to lie to FOIA requesters,” said Mike German, senior policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, which opposes the provision.

Ralph Nader on the Two-Party Dictatorship, Anwar al-Awlaki, Occupy Wall Street (Video)

Abby Martin — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 00:29:08 +0000

Via Media Roots:

Abby Martin of Media Roots talks to political activist and former presidential candidate Ralph Nader about Project Censored, the landscape of media censorship, the establishment co-opting of the tea party, the two party dictatorship in the US, Obama’s exacerbation of Bush era policies and the recent assassination of Anwar al-Awlaki:

Banned Books Week 2011

majestic — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 22:31:29 +0000

It’s Banned Books Week in America (Sept. 24-Oct. 1). Lest you think that America doesn’t ban books, the American Library Association has a long list of 11,000 challenged titles. At the head of the queue this year:

And Tango Makes Three, by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson
Reasons: homosexuality, religious viewpoint, and unsuited to age group
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie
Reasons: offensive language, racism, sex education, sexually explicit, unsuited to age group, and violence
Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
Reasons: insensitivity, offensive language, racism, and sexually explicit
Crank, by Ellen Hopkins
Reasons: drugs, offensive language, and sexually explicit
The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins
Reasons: sexually explicit, unsuited to age group, and violence
Lush, by Natasha Friend
Reasons: drugs, offensive language, sexually explicit, and unsuited to age group
What My Mother Doesn’t Know, by Sonya Sones
Reasons: sexism, sexually explicit, and unsuited to age group
Nickel and Dimed, by Barbara Ehrenreich
Reasons: drugs, inaccurate, offensive language, political viewpoint, and religious viewpoint
Revolutionary Voices, edited by Amy Sonnie
Reasons: homosexuality and sexually explicit
Twilight, by Stephenie Meyer
Reasons: religious viewpoint and violence

Media Roots on the Left/Right Paradigm

Abby Martin — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 05:18:54 +0000

Doug Mckenty from KZYX’s Thursday Morning Report conducts an hour interview with Bay Area artist and community activist Abby Martin of Media Roots, where she reports from “outside party lines”. They discuss the false left/right paradigm, the electability of non establishment candidates, the renaissance of citizen journalism, censorship in the corporate press and 9/11:

Project Censored Speaks About Media Censorship & 9/11 (Video)

Abby Martin — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 04:12:00 +0000

Peter Phillips from Project Censored speaks about media censorship and 9/11 at Oakland’s Grand Lake Theater’s film festival on 9/8/11:

Mickey Huff, Director of Project Censored, gives a short yet powerful talk about managed news and the media blackout surrounding 9/11:

www.projectcensored.org

Wikipedia Censoring 9/11 Truth

majestic — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 21:02:45 +0000

Whatever editorial credibility Wikipedia may once have had, this report in the New York Times totally destroys it:

As the nation marked this terrible anniversary, people invariably turned to Wikipedia to learn about the events of Sept. 11, 2001. Nearly two million page views were registered last September for the article “September 11 Attacks,” a typically Wikipedian effort with exhaustive, even picayune, details of the events, bolstered by nearly 289 footnotes. This September, the total page view number could be something like six million.

Likewise, readers have repeatedly turned to the article “9/11 Conspiracy Theories.” The article — similarly detailed with 299 footnotes purporting to explain accusations of faked video footage or controlled demolition of the two buildings — had 400,000 page views last September, and is on pace to have more than a million views this year.

One thing is certain, however. Not one of those visitors got to the conspiracy theories page by making a hypertext leap from a link in the main article about the Sept. 11 attacks. There is simply no mention of these theories, deemed fringe ideas, which have been repeatedly and officially discredited. They are written up in a variety of articles on Wikipedia, but they are kept on the fringe of the site.

This is no accident, but rather a Wikipedia policy concerning a topic as fraught with emotion as the Sept. 11 attacks. Thus the so-called gatekeepers of the media world — prominent newspapers, television news programs, newsweeklies — have an unlikely ally in Wikipedia, which bills itself as the encyclopedia anyone can edit…

[continues in the New York Times]

Stop Atos From Censoring the Web!

johnnyvoid — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 22:11:47 +0000

Call for solidarity from the UK! Poverty pimps and well known corporate slime Atos Origin have taken their harassment of disabled people one step further by using flaky legal threats to censor and close down websites in the UK which have been critical of them. At least three websites have now been hit by legal threats attempting to censor online criticism of the company.

The Carer Watch forum, which is an online meeting place for hundreds of disabled people and carers has been taken offline by the hosting company after legal threats made by Atos Origin regarding unspecified comments made on the forum. Atos Origin’s involvement in the condemn Government’s notorious health and disability testing has made them a target of fury amongst many disabled people, which has led to a fierce campaigning against them both on and offline. Atos are fighting back with the CarerWatch forum being only the latest website hit by Atos legal threats. Latest news: That Censored Carer Watch Post Revealed. Libelous? Or just a bullying attempt by Atos to censor free speech on the internet.

In May this year the Afteratos website was threatened with legal action over the use of their corporate logo in the spoof design above (use of corporate logos for parody is a grey area in UK law). Atos also threatened the site over their use of the phrase ‘Atos Kills’. Then last week Atos turned their attention to the aptly named ‘Atos Register of Shame’ claiming that:

“In particular we draw your attention to Atos Register of Shame which is purporting to be a register of health-care professional employees who have allegedly performed substandard medical assessments. This is a direct attack on Atos and the name of the website in and of itself is implying that Atos carries on its business in a manner which is shameful.”

Which is perfectly apt since the way Atos carries out it’s business is indeed shameful. Atos have come under heavy criticism from disability campaigners, charities and increasingly the medical profession for their administration of the government’s Work Capability Assessment and decisions made based on Atos’ computer system has tragically already led to sick and disabled people committing suicide. The Guardian reveals that 12 doctors are currently being investigated by the British Medical Association over their treatment of vulnerable people and may face being struck off.

Enough is enough — it’s time to call on the trusty internet to resist this intimidation and harassment of disabled people and supporters wanting to speak out against this company. Please tweet, blog, share — use the images here, or the phrase ‘atos kills’, let’s get spartacus style on the bastards. Please also consider republishing the offending post. If tweeting use the hashtags #atoskills #atos #atosorigin to let them know we’re talking about them.

For the latest websites which have defied these legal threats visit: johnnyvoid.wordpress.com/2011/08/27/the-great-atos-rebrand-update.

Entartete Kunst in Long Beach, California

Good German — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 20:19:24 +0000

The Prophet by Emil Nolde (1912)

Greggory Moore writes in the Long Beach Post:

Police Chief Jim McDonnell has confirmed that detaining photographers for taking pictures “with no apparent esthetic value” is within Long Beach Police Department policy.

McDonnell spoke for a follow-up story on a June 30 incident in which Sander Roscoe Wolff, a Long Beach resident and regular contributor to Long Beach Post, was detained by Officer Asif Kahn for taking pictures of a North Long Beach refinery.

“If an officer sees someone taking pictures of something like a refinery,” says McDonnell, “it is incumbent upon the officer to make contact with the individual.” McDonnell went on to say that whether said contact becomes detainment depends on the circumstances the officer encounters.

McDonnell says that while there is no police training specific to determining whether a photographer’s subject has “apparent esthetic value,” officers make such judgments “based on their overall training and experience” and will generally approach photographers not engaging in “regular tourist behavior.”

This policy apparently falls under the rubric of compiling Suspicious Activity Reports (SAR) as outlined in the Los Angeles Police Department’s Special Order No. 11, a March 2008 statement of the LAPD’s “policy … to make every effort to accurately and appropriately gather, record and analyze information, of a criminal or non-criminal nature, that could indicate activity or intentions related to either foreign or domestic terrorism.”

Among the non-criminal behaviors “which shall be reported on a SAR” are the usage of binoculars and cameras (presumably when observing a building, although this is not specified), asking about an establishment’s hours of operation, taking pictures or video footage “with no apparent esthetic value,” and taking notes.

Also listed as behaviors to be documented are “Attempts to acquire illegal or illicit biological agent (anthrax, ricin, Eboli, smallpox, etc.),” “In possession, or utilizes, explosives (for illegal purposes),” and “Acquires or attempts to acquire uniforms without a legitimate cause (service personnel, government uniforms, etc.).” Special Order No. 11 does not distinguish between how these behaviors should be handled and how (e.g.) photography should be handled.

Media Roots Radio: Spying, Fear & Self-Censorship, Building Up Your Community

Abby Martin — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 20:23:36 +0000

Via Media Roots:

This discussion covers U.S. imperialism: wars, costs, media and government propaganda; the culture of fear, self-censorship and the erosion of privacy in the US; information as power and how communication is an important tool to strengthen and build communities.

The above timeline is interactive. Scroll through it to find out more about the show’s music and to resources mentioned during the broadcast. To see a larger version of the timeline with clickable resources go to the soundcloud link below the player. If you would like to directly download the podcast click the down arrow icon on the right of the soundcloud display. To hide the comments to enable easier rewind and fast forward, click on the icon on the very bottom right.

For more information go to www.MediaRoots.org

Facebook Bans Nirvana’s ‘Nevermind’ Album Cover

ralph — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 15:09:29 +0000

Update: Even though several news outlets are reporting this, the album cover is still on Nirvana’s Facebook Page. I’m not sure if this smells like censorship or publicity stunt right now …

Looks like they haven’t managed to get completely get rid of it. Hard to believe this story is real. Lauren Schutte reports in the Hollywood Reporter via MSNBC:

Twenty years later, Nirvana is still managing to cause controversy.

The band, whose Nevermind album made waves when it was released in 1991 because of its cover art which featured a naked baby boy floating in a pool, has run into censorship yet again, this time on its Facebook page.

After product shots of the album (which is celebrating its 20th anniversary this fall) were uploaded to Nirvana’s Facebook page, the social networking company removed the photo citing a violation of its Terms of Use.

“Facebook does not allow photos that attack an individual or group, or that contain nudity, drug use, violence or other violations of the Terms of Use,” the notice read.

More on the Hollywood Reporter via MSNBC

Anonymous Launches Social Networking Site: AnonPlus

Pelliciari — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 17:51:37 +0000

AnonPlus is to be a new social networking site without censorship, but how different is it from other social networks? The Raw Story reports:

Infamous hacker group Anonymous launched Monday its own social network after being rejected by Google’s freshly-launched online community.

“Today we welcome you to begin anew,” the hacker alliance said at the website anonplus.com, which it described as a platform to distribute information.

“Welcome to the Revolution – a new social network where there is no fear…of censorship…of blackout…nor of holding back.”

The drive to build a social network came after the Anonymous account was suspended at the Google+ online community, which was launched last month by the Internet giant as a challenge to Facebook.

A message on the anonplus.com website promised that the Anonymous social network would be for everyone and listed online monikers of developers taking part in the project.

[Continues at Raw Story]

Media Roots Radio: News Censorship, Nuclear Energy, War & Revolution, 9/11 Truth, Be Your Own Leader

Abby Martin — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 04:01:47 +0000

Via Media Roots Radio::

This episode covers sensationalism in the corporate media about meaningless issues, media censorship about nuclear energy and the terrifying reality of Fukushima, issues surrounding war and US imperialism, the current global democratic revolution and the need for more artists to get involved in politics, Charlie Veitch’s 180 regarding 9/11 and the importance for us to be our own leaders in our quest for truth.

If you would like to directly download the podcast click the down arrow icon on the right of the soundcloud display. To hide the comments to enable easier rewind and fast forward, click on the icon on the very bottom right.

For more information go to www.MediaRoots.org

Wikileaks’ Mastercard Parody

JacobSloan — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 15:41:42 +0000

Wikileaks is suffering under a banking blockade. In response, they decided to help make Mastercard’s advertising more accurate:

Censorship, like everything else in the West, has been privatized.

For six months, five major US financial institutions, VISA, MasterCard, PayPal, Western Union and the Bank of America have tried to economically strangle WikiLeaks as a result of political pressure from Washington. The attack has blocked over 90% of donations, costing some $15M in lost revenue. The attack is entirely outside of any due process or rule of law. In fact, in the only formal review to occur, US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner found, on January 12, that there were no lawful grounds to add WikiLeaks to a financial blockade.

The Legal War on WikiLeaks … and Freedom of Information (Video)

ralph — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 20:33:07 +0000

Dylan Ratigan speaks to David House about the WikiLeaks grand jury:

New Apple Technology Stops iPhones From Filming Live Events

BananaFamine — Sat, 18 Jun 2011 18:48:49 +0000

F@ck you, Apple (had to get that out of my system). Fox News reports:

CUPERTINO, Calif. — Fans at concerts and sports games may soon be stopped from using their iPhones to film the action —as a result of new technology being considered by Apple, The Times of London reported Thursday.

The California company has plans to build a system that will sense when a person is trying to film a live event using a cell phone and automatically switch off their camera.

A patent application filed by Apple, and obtained by the Times, reveals how the software would work. If a person were to hold up their iPhone, the device would trigger the attention of infra-red sensors installed at the venue. These sensors would then instruct the iPhone to disable its camera.

Apple declined to comment.

For more information, see original article.

Happy Bloomsday, America!

Liam McGonagle — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 19:14:36 +0000

Hand drawing of Bloom by Joyce

June 16th is the annual celebration of Leopold Bloom’s doomed wanderings through Dublin in 1904, as chronicled in James Joyce’s classic novel “Ulysses”. And in the 21st century, reality finally catches up with and overtakes fiction.

In 1921 a U.S. court banned Ulysses on the grounds that some of its graphic depictions of nudity and sexuality constituted pornography under the Postal Code. And while that decision was reversed in 1933 by a judge who could only have failed today’s more rigorous selection processes for illiteracy and cretinism, the private sector came to the rescue of public morals when Apple banned an online illustrated version from its iStore last year.

However, that victory had an even shorter half-life. A couple months later, presumably realizing that it would lose it’s investment completely if it maintained the ban, and that nobody would likely access anything remotely smacking of literary merit anyway, Apple decided to give it a go after all.

Still, Ulysses can still claim numerous triumphs. We were reminded recently that the real-life tribulations of one Henry Kahn, great-grandfather of actress Dervla Kirwan, may have inspired the nightmare courtroom episode in the book. Kahn was forbidden by the notorious Sir Frederick Falkiner from testifying on his own behalf due to Kahn’s blatent, obstinate and willful Judaism.

While the “Double Castration” sentence handed down in the clearly Ulysses-inspired digression within Hunter S. Thompson’s “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” stands as a worthy literary heir (IMHO), the book’s actual legacy in the field of (juris)prudence is even greater. Aside the from the miscarriage of justice in the conduct of the Bradley Manning affair, Wisconsin’s miraculously “re-elected” supreme court justice David Prosser handed down an opinion on the controversial collective bargaining bill which, according to 50% of his colleagues, was riddled with error and faulty analysis.

And so it goes. The more things change, they more they stay the same. Although a court in 1921 may have affected offense by the onanistic happenings in Chapter 13 of Ulysses, “Nausicca”, in fact, courts invented public masturbation.

Another outrage against Onan from the Dystopia Diaries

Why Google Earth Can’t Show You Israel

imkaan — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 05:16:09 +0000

Hamed Aleaziz writes in Mother Jones:

Since Google launched its Google Earth feature in 2005, the company has become a worldwide leader in providing high-resolution satellite imagery. In 2010, Google Earth allowed the world to see the extent of the destruction in post-earthquake Haiti. This year, Google released similar images after Japan’s deadly tsunami and earthquake. With just one click, Google can bring the world—and a better understanding of far-away events—to your computer.

There is one entire country, however, that Google Earth won’t show you: Israel.

That’s because, in 1997, Congress passed the National Defense Authorization Act, one section of which is titled, “Prohibition on collection and release of detailed satellite imagery relating to Israel.” The amendment, known as the Kyl-Bingaman Amendment, calls for a federal agency, the NOAA’s Commercial Remote Sensing Regulatory Affairs, to regulate the dissemination of zoomed-in images of Israel.

Tennessee Makes Posting Offensive Pictures Online Illegal

HAL9000 — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 22:17:58 +0000

Timothy B. Lee writes on ars technica:

A new Tennessee law makes it a crime to “transmit or display an image” online that is likely to “frighten, intimidate or cause emotional distress” to someone who sees it. Violations can get you almost a year in jail time or up to $2500 in fines.

The Tennessee legislature has been busy updating its laws for the Internet age, and not always for the better. Last week we reported on a bill that updated Tennessee’s theft-of-service laws to include “subscription entertainment services” like Netflix.

The ban on distressing images, which was signed by Gov. Bill Haslam last week, is also an update to existing law. Tennessee law already made it a crime to make phone calls, send emails, or otherwise communicate directly with someone in a manner the sender “reasonably should know” would “cause emotional distress” to the recipient. If the communciation lacked a “legitimate purpose,” the sender faced jail time.

The new legislation adds images to the list of communications that can trigger criminal liability. But for image postings, the “emotionally distressed” individual need not be the intended recipient. Anyone who sees the image is a potential victim. If a court decides you “should have known” that an image you posted would be upsetting to someone who sees it, you could face months in prison and thousands of dollars in fines.

TSA Considering Banning Photography Of Checkpoints

BananaFamine — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 19:52:10 +0000

Carlos Miller writes on Pixiq:

The Transportation Security Administration is considering changing its policy on photographing security checkpoints after several videos depicting questionable incidents between passengers and TSA screeners were posted on Youtube.

News of the possible changes in policy was posted Friday on the TSA Blog, the same blog that posted that it is permissible to photograph checkpoints, even though most screeners act as if it has always been illegal.

The reason it is considering changing its policy stems from a Youtube video that was recorded in Phoenix when a woman opted-out of the metal detectors and chose to get patted down by a TSA screener.

The woman began yelling hysterically that she had been molested by the screener.

Meanwhile, the woman’s son was recording the incident and continued to do so, even though several TSA screeners told him he was breaking the law.

It is impossible to tell whether the woman was molested in the video, but it’s clear that the TSA screeners were creating their own laws in dealing with the videographer — as they’ve done so many times before.

This is what the TSA had to say about the incident…

For more information, see original article.

Iran To Introduce Islamically-Correct ‘Halal Internet’

JacobSloan — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 17:38:38 +0000

I was initially excited, in the assumption that ‘Halal internet’ referred to a way of ordering mouth-watering kebabs online. Fast Company explains:

The Iranian government is planning to wall-off much of the country’s online access. A high-ranking Iranian official has their new solution: A “Halal Internet” that will run as a nationwide intranet and be subject to extensive censorship.

According to Iranian Deputy Minister for Economic Affairs Ali Agha Mohammadi, the ”Halal Internet” project is expected to be completed in 18 months. Mohammadi explicitly cited China’s extensive internet controls as an inspiration for the project, which will be completed with the help of what the Minister calls “foreign consultants.”

Iranian Minister of Information and Communications Technology Reza Taghipour Anvari is also on record as a supporter of the plan. Persian-language financial paper Donya e Eqtesad cited him as praising the nationwide intranet’s ability to censor “dirty and unethical” content.

In nearby Pakistan, Fast Company has already reported on the growth of explicitly Islam-oriented Facebook rival MillatFacebook. As for the Iranian government, they already have competition for the “Halal Internet” branding effort–a New Jersey-based firm called HalalGate already markets internet filtering software called HalalInternet.

Cisco Systems Sued For Helping China Monitor Internet

Pelliciari — Tue, 24 May 2011 20:36:17 +0000

The Financial Times reports:

Senior executives at Cisco Systems worked closely with Chinese government security agents to tailor hardware and software they knew would be used to track, detain and torture followers of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement, according to a US federal lawsuit filed last week.

The suit accuses the networking company’s chief executive John Chambers and leaders of Cisco’s China business of close collaboration with Beijing, citing statements on company websites, at trade shows and in internal documents.

The 52-page complaint was brought by the Washington-based Human Rights Law Foundation, which has handled other legal issues for Falun Gong followers, on behalf of residents in the US and survivors of some said to have been killed in China for their participation in Falun Gong activities.

Cisco has faced criticism in the past for allowing its routers, which have the greatest share of the world market by revenue, to play a crucial role in China’s massive internet blocking and surveillance.

The suit says that by 2007 Cisco and its executives had “played a major role in the high-level design, implementation and post-production support” of a project called Golden Shield, “with solutions specifically tailored to isolate, surveil and suppress Falun Gong practitioners in China”.

[Continues at Financial Times]