Monthly Archives: February 2021

EFF has been tracking the Turkish governments crackdown on tech platforms and its continuing efforts to force them to comply with draconian rules on content control and access to users data. As of now, the Turkish government has now managed to coerce Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok into appointing a legal representative to comply with the legislation via threats to their bottom line: prohibiting Turkish taxpayers from placing ads and making payments to them if they fail to appoint a legal representative. According to local news, Google has appointed a legal representative through a shell company in Turkey.

Out of the major foreign social media platforms used in Turkey, only Twitter has not appointed a local representative and subject itself to Turkish jurisdiction over its content and users policies. Coincidentally, Twitter has been drawn into a series of moderation decisions that push the company into direct conflict with Turkish politicians. On February 2nd, Twitter decided that three tweets by the Turkish Interior Minister Sleyman Soylu violated its rules about hateful conduct and abusive behavior policy. Access to these tweets was restricted rather than removed as Twitter considered them still in the public interest. Similarly, Twitter decided to remove and delete a tweet by the AKP coalition MHP leader Devlet Bahel, where he tweeted that student protestors were terrorists and "poisonous snakes" whose heads needed to be crushed, as the tweet violated Twitters violent threats policy.

Yaman Akdeniz, a founder of the Turkish Freedom of Expression Association, told EFF

This is the first time Twitter deployed its policy on Turkish politicians while the company is yet to decide whether to have a legal representative in Turkey as required by Internet Social Media Law since October 2020.

As in many other countries, politicians in Turkey are now angry at Twitter both for failing to sufficiently censor criticism of Turkish policies, and for sanctioning senior domestic political figures for their violations of the platforms terms of service.

By attempting to avoid both forms of political pressure by declining to elect a local representative, Twitter is already paying a price. The Turkish regulator BTK has already imposed the first set of sanctions by forbidding Turkish taxpayers from paying for ads on Twitter. In principle, BTK can go further later this spring. It will be permitted to apply for sanctions against Twitter starting in April 2021, including ordering ISPs to throttle the speed of Turkish users connections to Twitter, at first by 50% and subsequently by up to 90%. Throttling can make sites practically inaccessible within Turkey, fortifying Turkeys censorship machine and silencing speech--a disproportionate measure that profoundly limits users ability to access online content within Turkey.

The Turkish Constitutional Court has overturned previous complete bans on Wikipedia in 2019 and Twitter and YouTube back in 2014. Even though the recent legislation only foresees throttling sites access speeds by 50% or 90%, this sanction aims to make sites unusable in practice and should be viewed by the Court the same way as an outright ban. Research on website usability has already found that huge numbers of users will lose patience with only slightly slower sites than they expect; Delays of just 1 second are enough to interrupt a persons conscious thought process; making users wait five or ten times as long would be catastrophic.

But if the Turkish authorities think that throttling away major platforms that refuse to comply with its orders, they may have another problem. The new Internet Social Media law covers any social network provider that exceeds a daily access of one million. While the law is unclear as to what that figure means in practice, it wasnt intended to cover smaller alternatives -- like Clubhouse, the new invitation-only audio-chat social networking, iOS-only app. Inevitably, with Twitter throttled and other services suspected of being required to comply with Turkish government demands, thats exactly where political conversations have shifted.

During the recent crackdown, Clubhouse has hosted Turkish groups every night until after midnight, where students, academics, journalists, and sometimes politicians join the conversations. For now, Turkish speech enforcement is falling back to other forms of intimidation. At least four students were recently taken into custody. Although the government said the arrests related to the students use of other social media platforms, the students believe that their Clubhouse activity was the only thing that distinguished them from thousands of others.

Clubhouse, as with many other fledglings, general-purpose social media networks, has not accounted for its use as a platform by endangered voices. It has a loosely-enforced real names policy -- one of the reasons why the students were able to be targeted by law enforcement. And as the Stanford Internet Observatory discovered, its design potentially allowed government actors or other network spies to collect private data on its users, en masse.

Ultimately, while its the major tech companies who face legal sanctions and service interruptions under Turkeys Social Media Law, its ordinary Turkish citizens who are really paying the price: whether its slower Internet services, navigated cowed social platforms, or, physical arrest for simply speaking out online on platforms that cannot yet adequately protect them from their own government.

Go here to see the original:
Turkey's Free Speech Clampdown Hits Twitter, Clubhouse -- But Most of All, The Turkish People - EFF

The Tories war on woke is a hypocritical attack on an exaggerated enemy, and riddled with contradictions or hypocrisy (The Tories want a war on the woke as if theres nothing better to do, 15 February).

For example, the professed concern about no-platforming on university campuses is raised yet again, with the pledge of a free speech champion to prevent the banning of controversial speakers. So how would the Tories react if a student union or university department invited a former member of the IRA or al-Qaida to give a talk titled Why terrorism is justified in order to achieve our goals? The Tories and their allies in the press would probably demand that the university be closed down entirely. Besides, the government recently warned schools against teaching anti-capitalist views. So much for promoting free speech and encouraging an exchange of ideas.

The fact is that the Tories are doing what they always do when they cant provide an intelligent response to the actual issues raised, or want to divert attention from their (many) other policy failings: apply purportedly pejorative labels to their critics and opponents woke, do-gooders, militants, loony lefties, etc. In so doing, the Conservative aim is always to discredit critics, deny the legitimacy of their concerns or views, and thereby close down debate. In other words, the Tories pursue their very own cancel culture to ensure the dominance of rightwing views and values. Pete Dorey Bath, Somerset

There seems to be some confusion between freedom of speech and the right to be heard. The former is widely accepted as a fundamental right; the latter is subject to many caveats.

We do not have a fundamental right to be heard wherever and whenever we wish. I doubt that the academics, students and visiting speakers your article refers to (Proposed free speech law will make English universities liable for breaches, 16 February) have had any serious problems getting their views expressed freely in any number of ways. Their problem is that they are not being heard in a particular place, at a particular venue, and a particular time. This is an issue not directly related to free speech.

There is a profound irony hovering at the edge of this debate. The growth of the internet means that no one in this country need go voiceless. Indeed, most political and social groups look first and foremost to the web to express their ideas to a wide audience. The issue we face with the web is how to control its excesses.

Against this background, all British universities must have the right to oversee and determine the activities that take place on their campuses according to their circumstances and have a duty to do so. Peter Martindale Castle Bytham, Lincolnshire

Plans by the government to appoint a free speech champion for universities and tell cultural institutions that they must not airbrush British history is part of a Tory culture war. It has little to do with history and a lot to do with the Tories striking stances on things they think will win them votes.

At the same time, the ignorance that ministers like Oliver Dowden have about history and what historians do cannot go unchallenged. British history is not some static, unchanging thing. How each generation understands events and which bits of British history are discussed and remembered is subject to change. At least some of that relates to work that historians do to better understand British history.

I would suggest that Dowden reads Sheila Rowbothams Hidden from History and Peter Fryers Staying Power. Without those foundation texts, the history of women and ethnic minorities would have stayed airbrushed out of the historical record. Dr Keith Flett London Socialist Historians Group

View post:
A free speech champion will only impose Tory values - The Guardian

We learnt this week that Boris Johnsons government will be introducing new measures to strengthen free speech at universities, even creating a role called the Free Speech and Academic Freedom Champion. And we all know why, of course. How could we not notice that right-wing views are being silenced? Our right-wing government has been screaming about how much their views have been silenced on... every media platform in the country.

Now, I agree with the parts of the governments proposals, which state that free speech and the ability to put forward controversial ideas that challenge established thinking are essential in universities. The proposals also rightly state that there is a balance to be struck between protecting free speech and preventing hate speech. The problem is, this is the absolute last government which should be deciding how that balance is struck.

But first lets look at the plans themselves. They include effectively banning student unions from no-platforming certain external speakers based on their political views. Student unions have elected presidents with policy platforms which may not include inviting racists to use the food hall for rallies. Again, thats a balance issue.

The proposals mention that some students who voted for Brexit felt uncomfortable admitting so in class, and suggest that universities should take measures when staff and students face criticism for expressing lawful views. Its weird that a Free Speech Champion would be tasked with protecting against academic criticism. Im sure its a total coincidence that the governments flagship policy Brexit is the one they wish to protect. Although, if Id forced Brexit on a generation that overwhelmingly opposes it, I might be tempted to try to silence criticism, too. Doing it in the name of free speech, however thats a stroke of genius far beyond me.

The proposals also suggest mandating that student unions Codes of Practice formally oppose boycotts. Given that boycotts are a form of protest that was critical during the Civil Rights Movement, the idea that student unions would be formally mandated to oppose them is very worrying.

The proposal also specifically says a head of faculty should not force or pressure academics into decolonising the curriculum. This is troubling given that decolonising the curriculum is about ensuring that academia includes a more global perspective, rather than just the view from the UK. So the Free Speech Champion would be tasked with restricting universities to a strictly anglocentric viewpoint.

As a final bit of hypocrisy, the proposal cites the Human Rights Act, as a basis for the initiative. Thats funny because Boris Johnson was trying to opt out of parts of it six months ago. Added to this, the Act simply mirrors the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) an odd source of guidance for a government that doesnt need European laws anymore.

They cited the ECHRs Freedom of Expression but failed to mention that the ECHR simply bans public authorities from interfering with that right. It does not mandate that student associations have to create platforms for groups that go against the principles they were elected on. The ECHR even allows restriction in the interest of the protection of health and morals, which is what allows governments to criminalise hate speech and incitement.

Again, free speech is vital. I chose the Twitter handle @Femi_Sorry because I know I say controversial things and my sense of humour is dark as night. But heres the problem: this is the government under which Greenpeacewas placed on a terrorism watch list. This is the government whichbanned schoolsfrom using material from groups it considered anti-capitalist.

This is the government whose equalities minister said it was illegal to teach about white privilege as a fact, despite their own government website stating that black people are stopped and searched 10 times more than white people. This is the party that wouldnt let 16-17 year olds vote in the last election and when asked why, MP Tobias Ellwood said it was because we know it will favour one particular party.

This is the party which appointed former Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre as head of Ofcom, with MP Steve Baker admitting that it was to make our media regulation a bit more conservative and pragmatic in what is reported. This is the government whose prime minister got fired from two newspapers for lying.

This is the government whose Brexit campaign both lied and broke the law. This is the government whose prime minister caused a 375 per cent spikein hate crime by saying Muslim women looked like bank robbers.

This is the government whichimpersonated a fact-checkingwebsite during an election campaign. This is the government that was elected on 44 per cent of the vote, wields a majority of 80 MPs despite the majority voting for parties much further to the left of them, and yet somehow claims right-wing views are the ones being silenced in the UK.

How can a government that censors the facts in schools, got elected on a four year campaign of disinformation, treats environmentalists as enemies of the state, denies voting rights to young people because they would vote against them, seeks to deliberately restrict the media to conservative reporting, and whose rhetoric leads to racist attacks, be trusted to find the right balance between free speech, misinformation, and hate speech? The fact that theyre trying, should make us all very worried about the path were heading down.

The fact is there is a reason why academic institutions are more socially left leaning. They are the places with access to all of the data which shows systemic inequality in society, and human beings naturally think something should be done about inequality. So its not surprising that this government feels threatened by universities. Being aware of the injustices in the world, and being willing to challenge them, is the definition of woke.

Originally posted here:
The Conservative Partys free speech reforms are staggeringly hypocritical - The Independent

Protesting at Israeli minister Mark Regev at Soas university in 2017. This is the kind of protest that the Tories have a problem with (Pic: Guy Smallman)

It takes some brass neck to try and impose laws on universities defending free speech while shutting down the right to criticise Israel on campus. But thats what Tory education minister Gavin Williamson is doing

Included in proposals Williamson outlined last week are measures to protectand even promotebigoted views, while severely curtailing protest.

Free speech has never meant the right to speak unopposed or unchallenged. Its never even meant the right to be heard in respectful debate or to not be shouted down.

In fact, at its most radical, its meant the opposite.

The rich, the powerful and the right have never lacked space or opportunity to spread their ideas or spew their bile. They own the media outlets that give them a platformand set the boundaries of what is considered acceptable discussion.

Ordinary people have had to fight for their right to be heard.

Throughout history and across the globe, campaigns for free speech have been tied up with the right to organise and resist.

One of the best known examples is the Tolpuddle Martyrs, who were deported for forming a union in 1832. Another is the protesters who were killed in the Peterloo Massacre of 1819 demanding the vote and democratic rights.

The 19th century Chartist movement, the Suffragettes of the 20th century and the US Civil Rights Movement all tied in the right to organise and protest.

Radical

The Berkeley Free Speech Movement in California in 196465 fought for the right of students to organise politically and for academics to research and teach radical ideas.

There are genuine fights for free speech today. Palestinian societies fight for the right to organise in universities. There are campaigns against the Prevent legislation that silences Muslims. And LGBT+ activists are battling those who aim to keep trans people marginalised.

Today Williamson uses the language of free speech and academic freedom to push our rights back. He cited the case of Felix Ngole, a student expelled from a social work course after calling gay sex a wicked act, to justify his measures.

Williamsons policy paper complains that academics have been pressured to adjust their reading lists for ideological reasons.

Thats a reference to campaigns to decolonise the curriculumto change what is taught to reflect racism and oppression.

Students having a say over what they are taught is the kind of free speech Williamson doesnt like. So is their right to take action over it.

Williamson is forced to accept that the right to free speech includes the right to challenge or protest. But universities must not allow protest to prevent speech from being heard (for instance, by drowning it out).

More vaguely, protesters shouldnt intimidate speakers or audience members. The biggest threat to free speech on campus is Williamson and the Tories.

Muslims have borne the brunt of attacks on free speech. The force driving these attacks arent woke studentsits the state.

In universities, Muslims who want to organise politically, hold events, or invite outside speakers have to do so under the surveillance of the Prevent duty.

This requires universities to monitor students for signs of extremism or that they are being drawn into terrorismand report them to the authorities.

Universities are asked to vet speakers and events before deciding if they can go ahead.

Often theyll impose conditions on events, such as having them monitored by university officers, or even the cops. The governments Prevent strategy describes extremism as the active opposition to fundamental British values.

The main targets under this loaded definition are Muslims, and in particular Prevent aims to silence them from criticising Britain and its wars.

The most recently released statistics from the governments Office for Students cover the 2017-18 academic year. More than 62,000 events and speakers were subjected to scrutiny by their universities under the Prevent duty that year.

Of those more than 2,100 were only allowed to go ahead with conditions attached.

The National Union of Students surveyed Muslim students about how they felt about Prevent that same year. More than one third said theyd felt negatively affected by Prevent.

Safe

Respondents who reported having been affected by Prevent are significantly more likely than others to believe there is no safe space or forum on campus to discuss issues that affect them, the report said.

These students are also significantly more likely to note they would not be comfortable involving themselves in student debates around racism, Islamophobia, Muslim student provision, terrorism, Palestine or Prevent.

It also meant Muslims felt less comfortable running for elected positions in their student unions.

Even Gavin Williamsons policy document had to admit that parliaments Joint Committee on Human Rights found Prevent had a chilling effect on freedom of speech.

But it doesnt think anything should change, only saying that Prevent should not be used to shut down or discourage lawful speech.

Yet the Tories are determined to ensure that it does. They last month appointed William Shawcross to chair a review of Prevent.

Shawcross is a former chair of the Henry Jackson Society, a right wing think tank that blames Muslims for extremism.

He once said that, Europe and Islam is one of the greatest, most terrifying problems of our future.

His book, Justice and the Enemy, is sympathetic to the use of torture in Guantanamo Bay.

And now hell set the limits of free speech for Muslims.

See more here:
Gavin Williamson's 'free speech' is an attack on our rights to organise - Socialist Worker

Early last year, I found myself at dinner with someone influential in the Government, and lost no time in presuming to tell this person how important it was to fight and win the culture war.

On my high horse after a glass or three, I opined on how the culture war is a real war, with real consequences for peoples freedom and happiness, as well as their safety, and insisted that the major battleground was freedom of speech in institutions. Infractions of the right to legal free speech, I said, should be punished with fines, and there should be a body that watched universities in particular including their so-called diversity and inclusion policies like a hawk.

The Government bigwig nodded distractedly, and was soon engaged by someone more important than me. I felt a bit silly, forgot Id ever had the conversation, and went back to fuming inwardly about the state of free speech, cancel culture and the rise of woke both on and off campus.

I dont flatter myself that my wine-fuelled lecture to this senior figure a year ago had any impact. But that doesnt lessen my happiness at new evidence that the Government is taking the grim fallout from woke ideology seriously.

Last week, it announced proposed measures that would see universities forced to adhere to a free speech condition in order to receive funding. Under the rules, the Office for Students would be endowed with the power to impose sanctions, including financial penalties, for breaches of the condition. And the new measures would also make it easier for those punished no-platformed, prevented from speaking, or bullied or sacked for pursuing politically inexpedient research agendas to seek legal redress. In other words: bullying, censoring and cancelling people for having divergent opinions or asking unorthodox (read: conservative) research questions will no longer be the entirely consequence-free joyride it has so far been.

The announcement didnt come without a sting in the tail. There was the immediate adverse and totally predictable reaction from the woke Kool-Aid drinkers of the Left-wing press and beyond. It is hard to understand quite what makes so many supposedly progressive people come out in public against the defence of free speech, but thats the world we live in.

The Guardian immediately supposed that a free-speech champion would do the opposite of championing it, while the New Statesman proclaimed the proposals a half-baked mess. Even former education secretary Justine Greening took umbrage, as did David Blunkett, who (ironically) accused the Government of playing identity politics. It all made me rather want to crawl under the bed.

The politicians have their own axes to grind, but the whining of the Lefties was telling. It was, of course, entirely lost on them that the reason the Government needs to intervene at all is because they have so remorselessly and successfully pushed through their ideological agenda. It is they who have formalised horizon-squashing policies forbidding offence and exclusion and creating intimidating environments that appear to disallow certain thoughts, let alone certain questions to be asked or texts to be set.

Indeed, this has been possible because their own freedom has been untrammelled. Cambridge dons, including the woke-possessed Priyamvada Gopal and other professor-activists recently gathered at Gopals own college, Churchill, for a debate on the wartime prime ministers legacy on race. Apparently part of a year-long inclusivity review, the debate saw the man who saved Britain from the Nazis and won the war rebranded as backward, racist and a keen collaborator in a British Empire far worse than the Nazis.

Indeed, some might wonder at the total freedom with which these educators have gone around comparing Churchill to Hitler, as Professor Kehinde Andrews of Birmingham University has been blithely doing for some time, and to great acclaim. The woke-agogues have heartily availed themselves of the privileges of free speech for years; they just dont think the same freedom should be extended to anyone else.

The fight for free speech is going to be long, precarious and complex. These measures are a nice burst of artillery, but will not, alas, be nearly enough on their own. For cancel culture has spread right through to the very air the students breathe; students who are encouraged to call out peers and friends when they make an offensive slip of the tongue both in and out of class. Asking questions has already become too hard; none but the bravest students now risk querying, say, blanket condemnation of the Empire, or the integrity of concepts such as white fragility or white supremacy.

Meanwhile, academic staff are also under huge social and peer pressure to fall into line. The new laws will help when they are publicly shamed and rendered professionally untouchable, but will be scant help for all the private social punishment they face.

The rule of intimidation that has been eroding free speech on a grand scale is now at its most dangerous on a far more micro, atmospheric level than the Government can hope to control. Who wants to speak their mind, even among friends, when those very friends might turn on you for a wrong word?

At the end of the day, no legislation in the world can stop someone from losing their friends.

See the article here:
Free speech on campus is to be protected, but the war against cancel culture rages on - Telegraph.co.uk

A UI law professor and state representative argues that Iowa Republicans are perpetrators of free speech.

Kate Heston

Christina Bohannan, Representative-Elect for the Iowa House of Representatives in District 85, holds a Biden-Harris sign in the air. Patrons celebrate the Biden Harris presidential victory in Mercer Park on Sunday. The event was hosted by Johnston County Supervisor RoyceAnn Porter. Patrons celebrate the Biden Harris presidential victory in Mercer Park on Sunday. The event was hosted by Johnston County Supervisor RoyceAnn Porter.

As a law professor, I am a strong defender of free speech. Defending free speech as a constitutional principle means defending the right of people to speak even when I disagree with their message.

As a Democratic state representative from Iowa City, I recently heard a lot about how Iowa Republicans believe they are victims of First Amendment violations. The Iowa House Government Oversight Committee held hearings to review complaints that the regent universities had infringed on conservative students free speech rights. In the University of Iowa case, the College of Dentistry dean admitted the college was wrong to schedule an inquiry for a student who criticized the colleges statement opposing an Executive Order issued by then-President Trump.

I readily concede that the UI made a mistake. Under the First Amendment, a state university should not punish anyone for commenting on a matter of public concern. It is antithetical to the universitys educational mission to foster debate. I was glad to see that university officials immediately recognized their mistake and reversed course.

But there is another side to this story. Iowa Republicans claim they are victims of free speech violations, but they are also perpetrators. Several of them introduced bills that blatantly violate principles of free speech and association.

Here are just a few of the egregious examples from the first five weeks of the legislative session:

Iowa House and Senate leadership should have pronounced these bills dead on arrival. Instead, they breathed life into them by assigning them to committees and allowing them perhaps to advance to the floor. Even if these bills dont ultimately pass, they damage our educational system every time they are publicly debated.

When conservatives believe their free speech rights have been violated, they are right to call it out. But our Republican state legislators also need to clean up around their own doorstep. And they should certainly stop playing the victim when they hold all the political power in the state and are wielding it to suppress the free speech of thousands of Iowans.

Christina Bohannan, Democratic state representative, Iowa House District 85; University of Iowa Law Professor

View original post here:
Guest Opinion | Both sides now: free speech and politics in Iowa - UI The Daily Iowan