Category Archives: Censorship

The Federal Communications Commission has let it be known it is deciding whether to levy a fine on Stephen Colbert for making a vulgar joke about President Trump during a monologue on May 1. Furthermore, last week, Code Pink activist Desiree Fairooz was convicted of laughing during January confirmation hearings for Attorney General Jeff Sessions. And on Tuesday, May 9, reporter Dan Heyman was arrested for shouting questions at Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price at the West Virginia Capitol in Charleston.

From an essay by the Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei that appeared in Sundays New York Times: At first glance ... censorship seems invisible, but its omnipresent washing of peoples feelings and perceptions creates limits on the information people receive, select and rely upon. ... Censoring speech removes the freedom to choose what to take in and to express to others, and this inevitably leads to depression in people. Wherever fear dominates, true happiness vanishes and individual willpower runs dry.

P.S. A few more pre-presidential mentions of Trump in the media, this one in our very own Chronicle: In 2005, when Carolyne Zinko profiled Cypress Semiconductor founder (then-CEO and president) T.J. Rodgers, he mentioned that his favorite TV shows didnt include The Apprentice. The way I feel about Donald Trump is the way priests, ministers and rabbis feel when they look at Jimmy Swaggart, he said. In the view of Rodgers, a corporate titan, Trump prostitutes the profession.

Furthermore, in 1998, filmmaker Tom Bullock worked on a never-released indie comedy acted and directed by John Broderick, onetime member of the San Francisco Mime Troupe. In the movie, set in Ukraine, a hotel maid suggests a scheme involving taking her beautiful girlfriend to the U.S. Well marry her off to someone like Donald Trump, and well all get rich, right? An American tourist responds, They never give up! The Russians never give up!

P.P.S. What a difference a year makes. Janice Hough notes that while much has been made of the age difference between French President-elect Emmanuel Macron, 39, and his wife, Brigitte, 64, no ones said very much about the ages of Trump, 70, and Melania, 46.

Following up:

That house on 14th Street, with the sign inviting passersby to vote on paint colors, was owned by the beloved art dealer Ruth Braunstein, who died last year. Its now owned by her daughter, jewelry designer Marna Clark, who writes that there were 100 votes and many comments. The best, she says, was a commenter who circled 20 votes and wrote Fake Votes next to the circle. The house will be up for rent soon.

Many readers wrote that BEAR DWN, on a license plate that mystified Eileen Denny Alexander, refers to the official slogan of University of Arizona athletic teams. The name of the campus gym is Bear Down, writes Scott McKinzie; Bear Down, Arizona! is the fight song, and the crowd at sporting events chants Bear Down. The football and basketball teams, however, are the Wildcats.

The bear in Bear Down, is not a noun but a verb. According to university legend, an auto accident in 1926 put the football teams quarterback on his deathbed. When his coach came to visit him, the stricken quarterback told him to tell the team to bear down.

A third of the San Francisco Giants players are working out wearing tDCS headsets that deliver a weak electric current to the brain to improve performance. This treatment is called transcranial direct current stimulation. This was confirmed early this week by Geoff Head, official sports scientist of the Giants.

But, with homage to Herb Caen, its not his name thats the item. Combined with training, this gizmo which retails for $749, but Im assuming the Giants get a discount is said to accelerate improvements in muscle memory, strength, explosiveness, and endurance.

Good luck to the Giants, and I suppose its good that theyre getting some help. But I cant understand why, if doping isnt allowed, this sort of treatment is OK.

P.S. In other sports news: The biggest victory on Monday, May 8, writes Dan St. Paul, was not the series-ending beatdown by the Warriors over the Jazz. It was the in-your-face shot block of Sally Yates on Ted Cruz. Standing O!

Leah Garchik is open for business in San Francisco, (415) 777-8426. Email: lgarchik@sfchronicle.com; Twitter: @leahgarchik

Public Eavesdropping

Yes, its a difficult conversation to have. But that doesnt mean we have to have it.

Young woman on cell phone, overheard on McAllister Street by Kary Schulman

The rest is here:
Policing the language and the laughter: Is it censorship? - San Francisco Chronicle

Mashable

Donald Trump Jr. takes to Instagram to accuse Twitter of censorship Mashable Donald Trump Jr.'s Instagram post Thursday morning included the hashtags: #obamacare, #censored, #twitter, #freespeech, and #thought. Why all the hashtags? Well, Trump Jr. seems to believe Twitter is censoring him on the platform. To summarize, this is ...

More here:
Donald Trump Jr. takes to Instagram to accuse Twitter of censorship - Mashable

The American Library Association promotes the freedom to choose or the freedom to express one's opinions even if that opinion might be considered unorthodox or unpopular, and stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of those viewpoints to all who wish to read them. The following is a list of frequently asked questions on banned and challenged books:

A challenge is an attempt to remove or restrict materials, based upon the objections of a person or group. A banning is the removal of those materials. Challenges do not simply involve a person expressing a point of view; rather, they are an attempt to remove material from the curriculum or library, thereby restricting the access of others. Due to the commitment of librarians, teachers, parents, students and other concerned citizens, most challenges are unsuccessful and most materials are retained in the school curriculum or library collection.

Books usually are challenged with the best intentionsto protect others, frequently children, from difficult ideas and information. SeeNotable First Amendment Cases.

Censorship can be subtle, almost imperceptible, as well as blatant and overt, but, nonetheless, harmful. As John Stuart Mill wrote in On Liberty:

If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. Were an opinion a personal possession of no value except to the owner; if to be obstructed in the enjoyment of it were simply a private injury, it would make some difference whether the injury was inflicted only on a few persons or on many. But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.

On Liberty, John Stuart Mill

Often challenges are motivated by a desire to protect children from inappropriate sexual content or offensive language. The following were the top three reasons cited for challenging materials as reported to the Office of Intellectual Freedom:

Although this is a commendable motivation,Free Access to Libraries for Minors, an interpretation of theLibrary Bill of Rights(ALA's basic policy concerning access to information) states that, Librarians and governing bodies should maintain that parentsand only parentshave the right and the responsibility to restrict the access of their childrenand only their childrento library resources. Censorship by librarians of constitutionally protected speech, whether for protection or for any other reason, violates the First Amendment.

As Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., inTexas v. Johnson, said most eloquently:

If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.

If we are to continue to protect our First Amendment, we would do well to keep in mind these words of Noam Chomsky:

If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.

Or these words of Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas ("The One Un-American Act."Nieman Reports, vol. 7, no. 1, Jan. 1953, p. 20):

Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us.

Throughout history, more and different kinds of people and groups of all persuasions than you might first suppose, who, for all sorts of reasons, have attemptedand continue to attemptto suppress anything that conflicts with or anyone who disagrees with their own beliefs.

In his bookFree Speech for MeBut Not for Thee: How the American Left and Right Relentlessly Censor Each Other, Nat Hentoff writes that the lust to suppress can come from any direction. He quotes Phil Kerby, a former editor of the Los Angeles Times, as saying, Censorship is the strongest drive in human nature; sex is a weak second.

According to theChallenges by Initiator, Institution, Type, and Year, parents challenge materials more often than any other group.

No. The ALA'sOffice for Intellectual Freedom(OIF) receives reports from libraries, schools, and the media on attempts to ban books in communities across the country. We compile lists of challenged books in order to inform the public about censorship efforts that affect libraries and schools. The ALA condemns censorship and works to ensure free access to information. For more information on ALA's efforts to raise awareness of censorship and promote the freedom to read, please exploreBanned Books Week.

See the original post here:
Banned & Challenged Books | Banned & Challenged Books

MENDHAM - A borough man who is President Donald Trump's campaign director has accused CNN of censorship because the news company would not run a Trump ad accusing CNN of producing "fake news."

The 30 second ad focused on Trump's accomplishments and superimposed the words "fake news" over several TV journalists, including Wolf Blitzer of CNN, and others from MSNBC, PBS, ABC and CBS. CNN said it would run the ad only if the "fake news" words were removed.

This is censorship pure and simple," the campaign director, Michael Glassner, said in a statement on May 2. "By rejecting our ad, CNN has proven that it supports censorship, is biased and fears an opposing point of view. President Trumps loyal supporters know the truth: The mainstream media mislead, misguide, deceive, and distract. CNN epitomizes the meaning of fake news and has proven it by rejecting our paid campaign ad.

Glassner was not available for further comment. He is married to Borough Councilwoman Christine Glassner.

The donaldjtrump.com website reported on May 2 that "mainstream media" had refused to run an ad entitled First 100 Days." The ad highlights the President's first 100 days in office, "exhibiting clear vision, resolute leadership and an uncompromising dedication to the American people, just as he promised throughout his campaign.

It is absolutely shameful to see the media blocking the positive message that President Trump is trying to share with the country. It's clear that CNN is trying to silence our voice and censor our free speech because it doesn't fit their narrative," said Glassner.

The website said "CNN takes issue with the ads message calling out the mainstream media for peddling fake news and not reporting on the fact that President Trump is making America great again."

CNN said in a statement that it had requested the Trump campaign to remove the "false graphic" that says the mainstream media is "fake news."

The mainstream media is not fake news, and therefore the ad is false. Per our policy, it will be accepted only if that graphic is deleted. Those are the facts, the CNN statement said.

The Trump campaign had accused the mainstream media of reporting "fake news" for not reporting on the fact that President Trump is making America great again.

A narrator in the ad claims that America has rarely seen such success, and listed several purported achievements from Trumps first 100 days in office.

You wouldnt know it from watching the news, the narrator says, before the words fake news are briefly superimposed on the reporters.

Glassner, 53, was first hired as Trumps deputy national campaign manager in August 2015. He is a former chief of staff and top advisor to Sarah Palin's 2008 run for vice president when she ran with Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., for president.

Glassner also was an adviser to former Sen. Bob Dole, R-Kans., during his presidential campaign.

The Washington Post reported in June 2016 that Glassner had a role in developing Trumps plan to bar Muslims from entering the U.S. He said a ban would have nothing to do with religion but a result of those who attacked the World Trade Center.

Read more:
Mendham man leading Trump re-election campaign, accuses CNN of 'censorship' - New Jersey Hills

New York Times

Ai Weiwei: How Censorship Works New York Times At first glance, the censorship seems invisible, but its omnipresent washing of people's feelings and perceptions creates limits on the information people receive, select and rely upon. The content offered by the Chinese state media, after its ...

Read the rest here:
Ai Weiwei: How Censorship Works - New York Times

Four major television networks ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN have come under fire from the Trump camp for censorship after refusing to air a political ad over its reference to fake news.

Jamestown Associates, which produced the 30-second spot touting President Trumps record during his first 100 days in office, said Friday that the networks decision to reject the paid ad is unprecedented.

No matter your ideology, the notion of censorship should send a chill up your spine, said the Republican political consulting firm.

The First Amendment is first for a reason no right is more fundamental and inherently American than freedom of speech, said the Jamestown statement. Yet, CNN, CBS, ABC, and NBC decided you cannot see it on their airwaves. To our knowledge, this has never happened before.

Presidential daughter-in-law Lara Trump, a consultant for Donald J. Trump for President, which paid for the ad, denounced the move as an unprecedented act of censorship in America that should concern every freedom-loving citizen.

Apparently, the mainstream media are champions of the First Amendment only when it serves their own political views, said Ms. Trump, who is married to the presidents son Eric. Faced with an ad that doesnt fit their biased narrative, CNN, ABC, CBS, and NBC have now all chosen to block our ad.

At issue is a clip showing five prominent television news personalities overlaid with the words FAKE NEWS.

The voice-over says that America has rarely seen such success, but you wouldnt know it from watching the news.

Two networks NBC and CNN released statements saying that they would run the ad only if the phrase fake news were removed. CBS declined a request for comment.

Consistent with our policies, we have agreed to accept the ad if the inaccurate graphic which refers to journalists as fake news is corrected, said an NBCUniversal spokesperson.

In its statement, CNN said that the mainstream media is not fake news, and therefore the ad is false. Per our policy, it will be accepted only if that graphic is deleted. Those are the facts.

The ad ran afoul of ABCs guidelines prohibiting ads that include personal attacks and requiring political ads to be sourced and verified.

We rejected the ad because it did not meet our guidelines, said an ABC spokesperson. We have previously accepted Trump ads and are open to doing so in the future.

The five personalities shown in the ad MSNBCs Andrea Mitchell and Rachel Maddow, CNNs Wolf Blitzer, ABCs George Stephanopoulos and CBS Scott Pelley are among Mr. Trumps most visible critics in the media.

Fox News has aired the ad, said Jamestown creative director Len Khodorkovsky.

The $1.5 million television and digital ad campaign launched Monday.

See original here:
Networks accused of 'censorship' for refusing to air pro-Trump ad ... - Washington Times

Associates connected to President Donald Trump lashed back at CNN, ABC, CBS, and NBC's refusal to broadcast his recent ad as an assault on free speech and "an unprecedented act of censorship," according to the U.K.'s Independent.

"Apparently, the mainstream media are champions of the First Amendment only when it serves their own political views," Lara Trump, wife of President Trump's son Eric, said in a Trump campaign press release.

"Faced with an ad that doesn't fit their biased narrative, CNN, ABC, CBS, and NBC have now all chosen to block our ad. This is an unprecedented act of censorship in America that should concern every freedom-loving citizen."

CNN claimed its refusal of the "false" ad was based on the "Fake News" graphic covering the faces of news anchors Andrea Mitchell of NBC, Scott Pelley of CBS, George Stephanopoulos of ABC, Wolf Blitzer of CNN, and Rachel Maddow of MSNBC. CNN said it would air the ad if the "Fake News" graphic was removed.

ABC echoed CNN's position, according to the report.

"We rejected the ad because it did not meet our guidelines," an ABC spokesperson told the Independent. "We have previously accepted Trump ads and are open to doing so in the future."

The Trump campaign reportedly spent $1.5 million to air the ad.

2017 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

Read more here:
Trump Team Decries Censorship, Media Refuses 'Fake News' Ad - Newsmax

Having witnessed a handful of letters to the editor supporting state Sen. Anthony Bouchards conduct at the University of Wyoming, it seemed a contrary point of view was appropriate.

Who elected Bouchard to oversee UW? No one except Bouchard. The single-issue gun rights candidate took it upon himself to threaten at least one faculty member as he flaunted his faux-power recently on the UW campus. The leadership of the Wyoming Legislature needs to reign him in, assuming they want to, and that is a major assumption.

UW has experienced numerous attempts to deny academic freedom. There was a McCarthy-era witch hunt to censor textbooks at UW. Powerful legislators once attempted to close the law school when they didnt like a book by a law professor proposing removing cattle from public lands. The then-president of the state Senate felt UW should screen faculty to assure they would teach only Wyoming values.

Then there was Carbon Sink, a sculpture created to make a statement about climate change. The Wyoming Mining Association and their legislators felt it unfairly criticized the mining industry. They persuaded the then-UW president to destroy the sculpture.

Censorship is nothing new at UW. But this incident is different. Coming onto the campus to berate students and threaten faculty is a step too far.

Bouchard claims to know all there is to know about the Second Amendment, but he knows nothing about the First. Memo to Anthony: The First Amendment comes just before the Second. Its the one guaranteeing free speech and academic freedom, even when you dont like what you hear.

It seems the freshman Laramie County state senator showed up during the recent Shepard Symposium on Social Justice. He saw a notice online, decided he didnt like what he read and headed for the campus to make a nuisance of himself.

The presentation was the work of a couple of UW students exploring unique threats faced by African-American males by those carrying concealed weapons. Even before he heard the presentation, Bouchard decided it was race baiting.

Following the presentation, which Bouchard reportedly interrupted frequently with irrelevant assertions about the Second Amendment, Bouchard became disruptive. He made it known he was a state senator before engaging the students and a faculty member in a bizarre conversation.

Seemingly related to nothing, Bouchard complained about the response time of campus police. According to witnesses, he said he thought about detonating an explosive device on the campus to test their response time.

Then he turned his venom on the students and their academic work, telling their instructor, I vote on funding for this school. It was his way of threatening her as he asserted that he attended because, I think I should know what I should vote against. Bouchard told the media he intends to take a closer look at what is being taught at the university.

Why are we spending money for a teacher to teach this kind of stuff, he said.

Well Bouchard, taxpayers spend money on teachers like her for much the same reason we spend money on legislators. We spend that money in the hopes of hiring people with the ability to think critically about the problems that confront our state. In the case of the faculty member you attacked, we are getting our moneys worth.

So, Bouchard, you know whatever it is you think you know about the Second Amendment. Heres a brief lesson on the First Amendment and how it protects students and faculty from bullies: Fifty years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court decided a case titled Keyishian v. Board of Regents. Justice William Brennan wrote, Our nation is deeply committed to safeguarding academic freedom, which is of transcendent value to all of us, not merely to the teachers involved.

In other words, your election to the state Legislature gave you no authority to threaten students and faculty. Indeed, it gave you the responsibility to protect their rights as vehemently as you seek to protect the rights of gun owners.

Rodger McDaniel lives in Laramie and is the pastor at Highlands Presbyterian Church in Cheyenne. Email: rmc81448@gmail.com.

Continued here:
McDaniel: Censorship is nothing new at UW - Wyoming Tribune

Christopher Furlong/Getty

Addiction research can produce results that governments and funders are not keen to share.

Kypros Kypri was pleased to receive funding from a government agency in the Australian state of New South Wales to study problem drinking. But when the contract arrived in 2012, he was surprised to find a demand that the agency could review and sign off on any reports before they were published. Other language allowed the agency to terminate funding without notice or explanation.

Kypri, who now studies the epidemiology of alcohol-related injuries at Australias University of Newcastle, saw this as a threat to academic freedom and so fought for months to have the fine print removed. Eventually, it was. But he has since realized that his experience is not unusual. In March, Kypri and his colleagues published the results of a survey indicating that many researchers who study addiction think that funders have interfered with their work most commonly by censoring it (P. Miller et al. Addict. Behav. 72, 100105; 2017).

The survey was completed by 322 authors who had published in the journal Addiction, and a little more than one-third of them reported interference at least once in their careers. That proportion must be taken with a pinch of salt it is possible that researchers who had experienced interference were more motivated to respond to the survey than those who had not, for example. And some of the reports go back almost a decade. But the survey nevertheless captures more than 100 experiences of research interference, spread across Europe, Australasia and North America.

There is a long and well chronicled history of private companies striving to keep tight reins on the results of research that they fund, particularly when it comes to studies of tobacco or pharmaceuticals. The survey showed that this remains a problem despite public attention, which is disappointing. Indeed, respondents reported their perception that such interference is on the rise.

But there has been less attention paid to censorship by government agencies, which is perhaps motivated by fears that politically sensitive results will highlight flaws in public programmes and so generate bad publicity. Some researchers and academic institutions accept clauses such as those that Kypri encountered as standard contract language. More should object, as he did.

Survey respondents highlighted a fear that standing up to funders could jeopardize their future funding opportunities particularly given that emerging for-profit research organizations might be more willing to accept limitations on their publications and study designs. Other researchers may believe the clauses to be harmless and unlikely to be brought to bear on their work.

To accept such limits, however, runs counter to the public interest. And the addiction-research survey shows that such clauses are not harmless. One European respondent said a epidemiology publication had been blocked because it was not in the interest of the sponsoring government department; another, from North America, said the government had enforced a request from an industry representative to remove recommendations in an epidemiology report. Researchers from Australasia looking at fatal drug overdoses said that after they published data that were embarrassing to the government department, they were denied access to that departments data. Interference can also come in other forms. Researchers must be wary of limits that public or private funders may attempt to place on study design or data sharing. For example, one senior researcher in North America said that his team was allowed to access a particular data set only if it agreed not to ask a politically sensitive question about the effectiveness of a government policy. Journals and journalists should make it a habit to inquire about the conditions, if any, imposed on researchers by their funders, so that those conditions can be disclosed when results are disseminated to the wider public.

Trends in some countries are encouraging. Kypri has encountered many researchers in the United States who say their institutions would not let them accept research contracts with clauses that allowed funder interference. In 2016, the UK government was forced to exempt scientific research contracts from new rules that would have banned government-funded organizations from lobbying for change.

Since his experience in 2012, Kypri has begun to systematically collect examples of clauses in government contracts that could enable interference in research. He worries that in some areas, particularly his own Australia, the clauses have become so common that they are viewed as normal. But his experience shows that it is possible to push back and perhaps even find compromises that satisfy both funder and researcher without compromising research integrity.

More here:
Censorship of addiction research is an abuse of science - Nature.com

Matthew Prince, chief executive officer of Cloudflare, speaks at a 2011 conference in China. Li Yuze/ Xinhua via Zuma

This story originally appeared on ProPublica.

Since its launch in 2013, the neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer has quickly become the go-to spot for racists on the internet. Women are whores, blacks are inferior and a shadowy Jewish cabal is organizing a genocide against white people. The site can count among its readers Dylann Roof, the white teenager who slaughtered nine African Americans in Charleston in 2015, and James Jackson, who fatally stabbed an elderly black man with a sword in the streets of New York earlier this year.

Traffic is up lately, too, at white supremacist sites like The Right Stuff, Iron March, American Renaissance and Stormfront, one of the oldest white nationalist sites on the internet.

The operations of such extreme sites are made possible, in part, by an otherwise very mainstream internet companyCloudflare. Based in San Francisco, Cloudflare operates more than 100 data centers spread across the world, serving as a sort of middleman for websitesspeeding up delivery of a site's content and protecting it from several kinds of attacks. Cloudflare says that some 10 percent of web requests flow through its network, and the company's mainstream clients range from the FBI to the dating site OKCupid.

The widespread use of Cloudflare's services by racist groups is not an accident. Cloudflare has said it is not in the business of censoring websites and will not deny its services to even the most offensive purveyors of hate.

"A website is speech. It is not a bomb," Cloudflare's CEO Matthew Prince wrote in a 2013 blog post defending his company's stance. "There is no imminent danger it creates and no provider has an affirmative obligation to monitor and make determinations about the theoretically harmful nature of speech a site may contain."

Cloudflare also has an added appeal to sites such as The Daily Stormer. It turns over to the hate sites the personal information of people who criticize their content. For instance, when a reader figures out that Cloudflare is the internet company serving sites like The Daily Stormer, they sometimes write to the company to protest. Cloudflare, per its policy, then relays the name and email address of the person complaining to the hate site, often to the surprise and regret of those complaining.

The widespread use of Cloudflare's services by racist groups is not an accident.

This has led to campaigns of harassment against those writing in to protest the offensive material. People have been threatened and harassed.

ProPublica reached out to a handful of people targeted by The Daily Stormer after they or someone close to them complained to Cloudflare about the site's content. All but three declined to talk on the record, citing fear of further harassment or a desire to not relive it. Most said they had no idea their report would be passed on, though Cloudflare does state on the reporting form that they "will notify the site owner."

"I wasn't aware that my information would be sent on. I suppose I, naively, had an expectation of privacy," said Jennifer Dalton, who had complained that The Daily Stormer was asking its readers to harass Twitter users after the election.

Andrew Anglin, the owner of The Daily Stormer, has been candid about how he feels about people reporting his site for its content.

"We need to make it clear to all of these people that there are consequences for messing with us," Anglin wrote in one online post. "We are not a bunch of babies to be kicked around. We will take revenge. And we will do it now."

ProPublica asked Cloudflare's top lawyer about its policy of sharing information on those who complain about racist sites. The lawyer, Doug Kramer, Cloudflare's general counsel, defended the company's policies by saying it is "base constitutional law that people can face their accusers." Kramer suggested that some of the people attacking Cloudflare's customers had their own questionable motives.

Hate sites such as The Daily Stormer have become a focus of intense interest since the racially divisive 2016 electionhow popular they are, who supports them, how they are financed. Most of their operators supported Donald Trump and helped spread a variety of conspiracy theories aimed at damaging Hillary Clinton. But they clearly have also become a renewed source of concern for law enforcement.

In testimony Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Chief Will D. Johnson, chair of the International Association of Chiefs of Police Human and Civil Rights Committee, highlighted the reach and threat of hate on the Internet.

"The internet provides extremists with an unprecedented ability to spread hate and recruit followers," he said. "Individual racists and organized hate groups now have the power to reach a global audience of millions and to communicate among like-minded individuals easily, inexpensively, and anonymously.

"Although hate speech is offensive and hurtful, the First Amendment usually protects such expression," Johnson said. "However, there is a growing trend to use the Internet to intimidate and harass individuals on the basis of their race, religion, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, disability, or national origin."

A look at Cloudflare's policies and operations sheds some light on how sites promoting incendiary speech and even violent behavior can exist and even thrive.

Jacob Sommer, a lawyer with extensive experience in internet privacy and security issues, said there is no legal requirement for a company like Cloudflare to regulate the sites on their service, though many internet service providers choose to. It comes down to a company's sense of corporate responsibility, he said.

"There is a growing trend to use the Internet to intimidate and harass individuals on the basis of their race, religion, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, disability, or national origin."

For the most part, Sommers said, a lot of companies don't want "this stuff" on their networks. He said those companies resist having their networks become "a hive of hate speech."

Jonathan Vick, associate director for investigative technology and cyberhate response at the Anti-Defamation League, agrees. He said that many of the hosts they talk to want to get hate sites off their networks.

"Even the most intransigent of them, when they're given evidence of something really problematic, they do respond," he said.

Cloudflare has raised at least $180 million in venture capital since its inception in 2009, much of it from some of the most prominent venture capital firms and tech companies in the country. The service is what's known as a content delivery network, and offers protection from several cyber threats including "denial of service" attacks, where hundreds of computers make requests to a website at once, overwhelming it and bringing it down.

Company officials have said Cloudflare's core belief is in the free and open nature of the internet. But given its outsize role in protecting a range of websites, Cloudflare has found itself the target of critics.

In 2015, the company came under fire from the hacker collective Anonymous for reportedly allowing ISIS propaganda sites on its network. At the time, Prince, the company's CEO, dismissed the claim as "armchair analysis by kids," and told Fox Business that the company would not knowingly accept money from a terrorist organization.

Kramer, in an interview with ProPublica, reiterated that the company would not accept money from ISIS. But he said that was not for moral or ethical reasons. Rather, he said, Cloudflare did not have dealings with terrorists groups such as ISIS because there are significant and specific laws restricting them from doing so.

In the end, Kramer said, seedy and objectionable sites made up a tiny fraction of the company's clients.

"We've got 6 million customers," he told ProPublica. "It's easy to find these edge cases."

One of the people ProPublica spoke with whose information had been shared with The Daily Stormer's operators said his complaint had been posted on the site, but that he was "not interested in talking about my experience as it's not something I want to revisit." Someone else whose information was posted on the site said that while she did get a few odd emails, she wasn't aware her information had been made public. She followed up to say she was going to abandon her email account now that she knew.

"The entire situation makes me feel uneasy," she said.

Scott Ernest had complained about The Daily Stormer's conduct after Anglin, its owner, had used the site to allegedly harass a woman in the town of Whitefish, Montana. After his complaint, Ernest wound up on the receiving end of about two dozen harassing emails or phone calls.

"Fuck off and die," read one email. "Go away and die," read another. Those commenting on the site speculated on everything from Ernest's hygiene to asking, suggestively, why it appeared in a Facebook post that Ernest had a child at his house.

Ernest said the emails and phone calls he received were not traumatizing, but they were worrying.

"His threats of harassment can turn into violence," he said of Anglin.

Anglin appears quite comfortable with his arrangement with Cloudflare. It doesn't cost him much eitherjust $200 a month, according to public posts on the site.

"[A]ny complaints filed against the site go to Cloudflare, and Cloudflare then sends me an email telling me someone said I was doing something bad and that it is my responsibility to figure out if I am doing that," he wrote in a 2015 post on his site. "Cloudflare does not regulate content, so it is meaningless."

Representatives from Rackspace and GoDaddy, two popular web hosts, said they try to regulate the kinds of sites on their services. For Rackspace, that means drawing the line at hosting white supremacist content or hate speech. For GoDaddy, that means not hosting the sort of abusive publication of personal information that Anglin frequently engages in.

"There is certainly content that, while we respect freedom of speech, we don't want to be associated with it," said Arleen Hess, senior manager of GoDaddy's digital crimes unit.

Both companies also said they would not pass along contact information for people who complain about offensive content to the groups generating it.

Getting booted around from service to service can make it hard to run a hate site, but Cloudflare gives the sites a solid footing.

Amazon Web Services, one of the most popular web hosts and content delivery networks, would not say how they handle abuse complaints beyond pointing to an "acceptable use" policy that restricts objectionable, abusive and harmful content. They also pointed to their abuse form, which says the company will keep your contact information private.

According to Vick at the ADL, the fact that Cloudflare takes money from Anglin is different from if he'd just used their free service.

"That's a direct relationship," he said. "That raises questions in my mind."

Some companies offering other services vital to success on the web have chosen not to do business with Anglin's The Daily Stormer. Google, PayPal and Coinbase, for instance, have chosen to cut off his accounts rather than support his activities. Getting booted around from service to service can make it hard to run a hate site, but Cloudflare gives the sites a solid footing.

And, by The Daily Stormer's account, advice and assurances. In a post, the site's architect, Andrew Auernheimer, said he had personal relationships with people at Cloudflare, and they had assured him the company would work to protect the site in a variety of waysincluding by not turning over data to European courts. Cloudflare has data centers in European countries such as Germany, which have strict hate speech and privacy laws.

Company officials offered differing responses when asked about Auernheimer's post. Kramer, Cloudflare's general counsel, said he had no knowledge of employee conversations with Auernheimer. Later, in an email, the company said Auernheimer was a well-known hacker, and that as a result at least one senior company official "has chatted with him on occasion and has spoken to him about Cloudflare's position on not censoring the internet."

A former Cloudflare employee, Ryan Lackey, said in an interview that while he doesn't condone a lot of what Auernheimer does, he did on occasion give technical advice as a friend and helped some of the Stormer's issues get resolved.

"I am hardcore libertarian/classical liberal about free speechsomething like Daily Stormer has every right to publish, and it is better for everyone if all ideas are out on the internet to do battle in that sphere," he said.

Vick at the ADL agrees that Anglin has a right to publish, but said people have the right to hold to task the Internet companies that enable him.

"Andrew Anglin has the right to be out there and say what he wants to say. But the people who object to what he has to say have a right to object as well," he said. "You should be able to respond to everybody in the chain."

See the original post:
This Tech Company's Anti-Censorship Stance Is Helping Hate Speech - Mother Jones