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Category Archives: Censorship

China must look beyond censorship and economic power to win hearts and minds – South China Morning Post

Posted: February 5, 2024 at 6:27 am

Feel strongly about these letters, or any other aspects of the news? Share your views by emailing us your Letter to the Editor at [emailprotected] or filling in this Google form. Submissions should not exceed 400 words, and must include your full name and address, plus a phone number for verification. Shortly after Taiwan elected independence-leaning candidate William Lai Ching-te as leader, Chinese President Xi Jinping said the Chinese Communist Party must win the hearts of people in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan by strengthening patriotic and reunification forces.

Although this election could be seen as merely a regional issue, its impact extends far beyond the islands coast. How can China win the hearts of Chinese inside and outside of mainland China?

Censorship and propaganda are becoming less effective in ensuring social harmony. A globalised China in a digitalised era means that the government can no longer completely control information. Many mainland Chinese gained full access to information related to the Taiwanese election via the internet. Some even flew to Taiwan to observe the election.

Therefore, China cant return to the closed-door policy and maintain its stability merely through propaganda and censorship.

Censorship and economic power are not enough to win Chinese hearts. In an ever-changing environment, China has to change.

Christophe Feuille, Bordeaux, France

Joseph Chan, chairman, Silk Road Economic Development Research Centre

Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu commences a very public display regarding the implementation of Article 23 legislation, vowing to actively explain it. Is this to be done in a similar manner to local elections, where English was barely used? Are we to assume non-Chinese-speaking residents of Hong Kong are exempted? Laws are implemented to serve all and one hopes to see a multilingual discussion of Article 23.

Mark Peaker, The Peak

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‘The View’ Producers Forced To Censor Ana Navarro’s Expletive As She Talks About Biden – Daily Caller

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'The View' Producers Forced To Censor Ana Navarro's Expletive As She Talks About Biden  Daily Caller

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How China Censors Critics of the Economy – The New York Times

Posted: at 6:27 am

Chinas top intelligence agency issued an ominous warning last month about an emerging threat to the countrys national security: Chinese people who criticize the economy.

In a series of posts on its official WeChat account, the Ministry of State Security implored citizens to grasp President Xi Jinpings economic vision and not be swayed by those who sought to denigrate Chinas economy through false narratives. To combat this risk, the ministry said, security agencies will focus on strengthening economic propaganda and public opinion guidance.

China is intensifying its crackdown while struggling to reclaim the dynamism and rapid economic growth of the past. Beijing has censored and tried to intimidate renowned economists, financial analysts, investment banks and social media influencers for bearish assessments of the economy and the governments policies. In addition, news articles about people experiencing financial struggles or the poor living standards for migrant workers are being removed.

China has continued to offer a rosy outlook for the economy, noting that it beat its forecast for economic growth of 5 percent last year without resorting to risky, expensive stimulus measures. Beyond the numbers, however, its financial industry is struggling to contain enormous amounts of local government debt, its stock market is reeling and its property sector is in crisis. China Evergrande, the high-flying developer felled by over $300 billion in debt, was ordered into liquidation on Monday.

The new information campaign is wider in scope than the usual work of the governments censors, who have always closely monitored online chatter about the economy. Their efforts now extend to mainstream economic commentary that was permitted in the past. The involvement of security agencies also underscores the ways in which business and economic interests fall under Mr. Xis increasingly expansive view of what constitutes a threat to national security.

In November, the state security ministry, calling itself staunch guardians of financial security, said other countries used finance as a weapon in geopolitical games.

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A Startup Allegedly ‘Hacked the World.’ Then Came the Censorshipand Now the Backlash – WIRED

Posted: at 6:27 am

Even so, a little more than two weeks after publishing its investigation into Appin Technology, on December 5, Reuters complied with the Indian court's injunction, removing its story. Soon, in a kind of domino effect of censorship, others began to take down their own reports about Appin Technology after receiving legal threats based on the same injunction. SentinelOne, the cybersecurity firm that had helped Reuters in its investigation, removed its research on an Appin Technology subsidiarys alleged hacking from its website. The Internet Archive deleted its copy of the Reuters article. The legal news site Lawfare and cybersecurity news podcast Risky Biz both published analyses based on the article; Risky Biz took its podcast episode down, and Lawfare overwrote every part of its piece that referred to Appin Technology with Xs. WIRED, too, removed a summary of Reuters' article in a news roundup after receiving Appin Training Centers' threat.

Aside from the injunction that Appin Training Centers has used to demand publishers censor their stories, Appin cofounder Rajat Khare has separately sent legal threats to another collection of news outlets based on a court order he obtained in Switzerland. Two Swiss publications have publicly noted that they responded to court orders by removing Khares name from stories about alleged hacking. Others have removed Khares name or removed the articles altogether without a public explanation, including the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, the UKs Sunday Times, several Swiss and French news outlets, and eight Indian ones.

This is an organization throwing everything against the wall, trying to make as many allegations in as many venues as possible in the hopes that something, somewhere sticks, says one person at a media outlet that has received multiple legal threats from people connected to Appin Technology, who declined to be named due to the legal risks of speaking out. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesnt. Unfortunately, in India, its worked.

Even before the EFF, Techdirt, MuckRock, and DDoSecrets began to push back against that censorship, some had immediately resisted it. The New Yorker, for instance, had mentioned a subsidiary of Appin Technology and Rajat Khare in a feature about India's hacker-for-hire industry in June of last year. It was sued by Appin Training Centers, but has kept its piece online while the lawsuit proceeds. (The New Yorker and WIRED are both published by Cond Nast.) Ronald Deibert, a well-known security researcher and founder of the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab, a group that focuses on exposing hackers who target members of civil society, had also mentioned Appin Technology in a blog post. Deibert received and refused Appin Training Centers' takedown threat, posting a screenshot of its email to his X feed in December along with his response: seven middle-finger emojis.

As the backlash to the censorship of reporting on Appin Technology's alleged hacking snowballs, however, it may now be going beyond a few cases where Appin Training Centers and Rajat Khares censorship attempts have failed, says Seth Stern, director of advocacy for the Freedom of the Press Foundation, who has written about the censorship campaign. Instead, it may be backfiring, he says, particularly for Appin Technology cofounder Rajat Khare. It does seem like a sort of dubious strategy to be stirring this up now, and I do wonder if he is starting to regret that given the coverage it's getting, says Stern. You could easily see that it'll do more reputational harm than good for Khare and for Appin.

MuckRock's Morisy says that attention is exactly the intention of his move, along with Techdirt and the EFF, to put a spotlight on the legal threats they've received. Its leveraging the Streisand effect to an extent. But also just finding ways to push back, says Morisy. There needs to be a cost for groups that are trying to silence journalists.

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Negative Takes on China’s Economy Are Disappearing From the Internet – The Wall Street Journal

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Negative Takes on China's Economy Are Disappearing From the Internet  The Wall Street Journal

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Let The Government Censor Away Through Agents It Controls, Say Cabal Of A.G.s To U.S. Supreme Court Wirepoints – Wirepoints

Posted: at 6:27 am

By: Mark Glennon*

This shouldnt be hard to understand: If you think government should have the power to censor what it says is false, then you dont believe in the bedrock of a democratic republic free speech.

But a group of state attorneys general apparently think government should have that power because thats exactly what they recently asked the U.S Supreme Court to make the law of the land.

Its in an amicus brief signed by 22 state attorneys general in what will be a historic case now pending before the Supreme Court on whether the government can bypass the First Amendment using private sector tech platforms as its agents to censor what the government doesnt like. Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul is among the signers.

The case is Murthy v. Missouri, formerly called Biden v. Missouri.

The Supreme Court has rarely been faced with a coordinated campaign of this magnitude orchestrated by federal officials that jeopardized a fundamental aspect of American life, wrote the federal appellate court in its ruling against the government.

In a fitting and splendid gift to America last Independence Day, a federal trial judge issued a 154-page ruling on the case laying out the facts against the government in detail. The evidence of tech manipulation directed by the government was so strong and the matter so important that the judge issued a temporary, sweeping order barring the Biden Administration and the rest of the federal government from most all contact with social media platforms.

The federal appellate court upheld the ruling though it changed the wording of the order.

Now comes the Supreme Court, which will hear the case this spring.

And enter the group of state A.G.s

The government will lose. The lawsuit will not be vacated. The only real issue is on what terms they will lose, which is what the A.G.s should have addressed. The evidence is simply too overwhelming to deny. The Biden Administration, including the FBI and the Center for Disease Control, strongarmed social media platforms to squelch unfavorable stories and elevate its narrative of the news about the Hunter Biden laptop scandals, Covid, President Biden, election integrity and more. Its all laid out in the trial courts ruling. Thousands of pages of evidence showing it are summarized therein. Read the trial courts memorandum yourself.

In a ruling of such importance and with such broad consequences, however, theres reasonable disagreement over exactly how to write out what the government must not be allowed to censor.

But the A.G.s brief doesnt do that, asking the Supreme Court to throw the case out entirely: Vacate the lower courts ruling entirely, the brief expressly requests.

Censor away, in other words.

To be specific, this is about stopping the government from skirting its First Amendment obligations by outsourcing censorship to private parties not bound by the First Amendment, like tech platforms, that can censor what they choose if acting on their own.

Government often publishes guidelines and information on foreign travel warnings, cybersecurity threats, scam artists, public health and the like. No problem. But free speech is denied when the government imposes its messaging on private news platforms to suppress competing viewpoints. Those efforts usually travel under the label of combatting misinformation, hate speech or the like.

The line can be difficult to draw. When does the government wrongly coerce and encourage censorship by tech platforms?

Suppose the FBI suggests you censor something. Maybe it would be like saying this, as one of the appellate judges put it perfectly during oral arguments: Thats a really nice social media platform you got there it would be a shame if something happened to it.

The appellate court drew the line between harmless government guidance and unconstitutional strongarming by issuing an order saying this:

The appellate court Defendants, and their employees and agents, shall take no actions, formal or informal, directly or indirectly, to coerce or significantly encourage social-media companies to remove, delete, suppress, or reduce, including through altering their algorithms, posted social-media content containing protected free speech. That includes, but is not limited to, compelling the platforms to act, such as by intimating that some form of punishment will follow a failure to comply with any request, or supervising, directing, or otherwise meaningfully controlling the social-media companies decision-making processes.

It reached that conclusion based after a long analysis in its opinion of court precedent, logic and practicality. That temporary order was put on hold by the Supreme Court pending its review, but its all but certain to be made permanent in some fashion, the appellate court concluded, and thats surely true subject only to whatever adjustments the Supreme Court sees fit.

How does the A.G.s brief justify throwing out the case entirely, disregarding rafts of evidence and precedent?

It doesnt.

It resorts to red herrings, first with a big list of ways government publishes routine guidance that should be permissible on matters that nobody has a problem with.

When it comes to whats at issue actually censoring what the government doesnt like Raouls brief claims the appellate court ruled that the mere existence of government amounts to coercion, and that it relied on a vague entanglement standard about government involvement with tech companies.

Those, too, are red herrings. Those factors had little role in the appellate courts ruling. Insofar as they were part of the analysis and should be downplayed, fine, tweak the ruling to fix that. The A.G.s might plausibly have argued for the Supreme Court to do that.

Instead, they asked the Supreme Court to throw out the whole lawsuit.

That result would gut free speech and lobotomize democracy.

For a more scholarly summary of the First Amendment infractions in Raouls brief, see the recent column here by my brother, Mike, a law prof. Better yet, read his new book on the full subject of the modern assault on free speech: Free Speech and Turbulent Freedom: The Dangerous Allure of Censorship in the Digital Era.

Illinois is among the worst offenders in that modern allure of censorship. Its long train of abuse and usurpations is often flagrant, listed in the columns linked below. Making that assault on free speech more terrifying is the abandonment by most media of its traditional role defending free speech. You will find little if anything in Illinois legacy media on the matters in that list.

Above all, know this: Your rights include the right to hear. The right to hear what the government doesnt want you to hear is a corollary of your First Amendment right to free speech, as the courts long ago ruled. Its that right to hear that is being stolen from you, and that right is directly at issue in Murthy v. Missouri.

That right was not given to you by the anybody in any level of government. Give it up and youve given up your democratic republic.

*Mark Glennon is founder of Wirepoints.

Illinois recent, long train of free speech abuses:

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Let The Government Censor Away Through Agents It Controls, Say Cabal Of A.G.s To U.S. Supreme Court Wirepoints - Wirepoints

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14 Massachusetts colleges land on restrictive free speech list: Censorship and terrible policies – Boston Herald

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14 Massachusetts colleges land on restrictive free speech list: Censorship and terrible policies  Boston Herald

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The Association of Appin Training Centers is waging a global censorship campaign to stop you from reading these … – MuckRock

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The Association of Appin Training Centers is waging a global censorship campaign to stop you from reading these ...  MuckRock

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Norway owns a part of Putin’s propaganda and censorship machine – The Independent Barents Observer

Posted: at 6:27 am

The Norwegian Government Pension Fund Global, also known as the Oil Fund, had a good year. The fund that is managed by the Norwegian Central Bank on behalf of the countrys Ministry of Finance in 2023 returned 16,1 percent, equivalent to 2,222 billion kroner (195 billion), CEO Nicolai Tangen of Norges Bank Investment Management announced this week.

As of 31st of December 2023, the fund had a value of 15,765 billion kroner (1,383 billion), of which 70,9 percent was invested in equities. The Oil Fund now holds about 1,5% of all of the worlds listed companies. It is the worlds largest single sovereign wealth fund.

Despite high inflation and geopolitical turmoil, the equity market in 2023 was very strong, compared to a weak year in 2022, Tangen said.

To a great extent, that turmoil is triggered by Russia and its war against Ukraine. Still, the Norwegian government fund continues to own a significant part of Russias leading companies. According to the list of holdings, there are 52 Russian companies in the portfolio.

The most valuable holdings are in the field of oil and gas, and especially the companies Gazprom and Lukoil, worth respectively 232 million NOK and 288 million NOK. The Fund also owns a 0,72 percent stake in Sberbank that has a value of 326 million NOK.

The Fund also owns more than one percent of companies such as Phosagro, Segezha Group, Rosseti, Bank St Petersburg PJSC and more. On the list are also companies sanctioned by the USA and EU, such as Sberbank and diamond producer Alrosa.

In addition, the Norwegians owns shares in several of the companies actively exploited by the Kremlin to censor and streamline public opinion.

The Oil Fund owns 0.47 percent of VK Holding, the technology company that operates social media vKontakte (VK). The social media now has more than 650 million accounts and is one of the most popular websites in Russia. In late 2021, Russian state-owned bank Gazprombankand insurance company Sogar acquired 57,3 percent of the VK shares and consequently secured full control over the company.

Few years earlier, founder and CEO Pavel Durov had been forced out of the company, reportedly following his refusal to hand over personal details of users to the FSB and his refusal to shut down a VK group dedicated to anti-corruption activistAleksei Navalny.

Over the last few years, the VK has blocked hundreds of accounts operated by independent journalists, civil society activists and other Kremlin critics. In 2022, the company blocked the pages of Aleksei Navalny, Ilya Yashin, as well Mikhail Khodorkovsky and media companies Meduza, MediaZona, Dozhd, Echo Moscow, Current Time and others.

On the list of ownership is also Yandex, the Russian tech company that is most known for its internet search engine. The Oil Fund owns 0,96 percent of company that is considered Russias biggest technology company.

One of the founders of Yandex was Arkady Volozh, a man who in 2017 showed Vladimir Putin around in the fancy downtown Moscow offices, but who five years later emigrated to Israel following war and Kremlin crackdown.

According to Meduza, the tech company was in 2023 taken over by a group of Kremlin-loyal oligarchs. It is now controlled by Vladimir Potanins Interros, Aleksei Mordashovs Severstal, Vagit Alekperovs Lukoil and bank VTB.

The Norwegian Oil Fund also owns minor shares in telecommunications companies MTS and Rostelecom.

The latter is Russias biggest state telecom company. Recently, the company has been busy developing an electronic distant voting system that is to be applied in the upcoming Russian presidential elections, company CEO Mikhail Oseevsky told Putin in a meeting in June 2023.

The most valuable Russian holding of the Norwegian Fund is Sberbank. The Norwegians own 0,72 percent of the company that is Russias biggest bank and one of the countrys major technology developers.

Sberbank is actively working in a wide field of tech development, including in artificial intelligence. When Putin visited the Rossiya exhibition on the 1st of February this year, he had a stop at Sberbanks stand.

In his meeting with Sberbank CEO German Gref in March 2023, Putin revealed that he is in constant contact with the Sberbank leader.

The 52 Russian holdings total only a tiny share of the Norwegian Oil Fund. Whereas the assets had a value of more than 31 billion NOK (2,72 billion) in 2019, they were in 2023 worth less than 1,5 billion NOK (131 million).

But the symbolic effect and moral aspect of holding stakes in Russias war economy and the system of repression, propaganda and censorship is significant.

In a comment to the Barents Observer, Communication Chief at the Norges Bank Investment Management Line Aaltvedt says that the investments in Russia are currently frozen, but that the goal of the Norwegian government is to sell all the holdings.

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Censorship? That’s just obscene! | Opinion | register-herald.com – Beckley Register-Herald

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Censorship? That's just obscene! | Opinion | register-herald.com  Beckley Register-Herald

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