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Paul Merrell

Facebook Says It Is Deleting Accounts at the Direction of the U.S. and Israeli Governments - 0 views

theintercept.com/...he-u-s-and-israeli-governments

OpenWeb censorship Facebook Instagram Israel U.S.

shared by Paul Merrell on 29 Jan 18 - No Cached
  • In September of last year, we noted that Facebook representatives were meeting with the Israeli government to determine which Facebook accounts of Palestinians should be deleted on the ground that they constituted “incitement.” The meetings — called for and presided over by one of the most extremist and authoritarian Israeli officials, pro-settlement Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked — came after Israel threatened Facebook that its failure to voluntarily comply with Israeli deletion orders would result in the enactment of laws requiring Facebook to do so, upon pain of being severely fined or even blocked in the country. The predictable results of those meetings are now clear and well-documented. Ever since, Facebook has been on a censorship rampage against Palestinian activists who protest the decades-long, illegal Israeli occupation, all directed and determined by Israeli officials. Indeed, Israeli officials have been publicly boasting about how obedient Facebook is when it comes to Israeli censorship orders
  • Facebook now seems to be explicitly admitting that it also intends to follow the censorship orders of the U.S. government.
  • What this means is obvious: that the U.S. government — meaning, at the moment, the Trump administration — has the unilateral and unchecked power to force the removal of anyone it wants from Facebook and Instagram by simply including them on a sanctions list. Does anyone think this is a good outcome? Does anyone trust the Trump administration — or any other government — to compel social media platforms to delete and block anyone it wants to be silenced? As the ACLU’s Jennifer Granick told the Times: It’s not a law that appears to be written or designed to deal with the special situations where it’s lawful or appropriate to repress speech. … This sanctions law is being used to suppress speech with little consideration of the free expression values and the special risks of blocking speech, as opposed to blocking commerce or funds as the sanctions was designed to do. That’s really problematic.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • As is always true of censorship, there is one, and only one, principle driving all of this: power. Facebook will submit to and obey the censorship demands of governments and officials who actually wield power over it, while ignoring those who do not. That’s why declared enemies of the U.S. and Israeli governments are vulnerable to censorship measures by Facebook, whereas U.S and Israeli officials (and their most tyrannical and repressive allies) are not
  • All of this illustrates that the same severe dangers from state censorship are raised at least as much by the pleas for Silicon Valley giants to more actively censor “bad speech.” Calls for state censorship may often be well-intentioned — a desire to protect marginalized groups from damaging “hate speech” — yet, predictably, they are far more often used against marginalized groups: to censor them rather than protect them. One need merely look at how hate speech laws are used in Europe, or on U.S. college campuses, to see that the censorship victims are often critics of European wars, or activists against Israeli occupation, or advocates for minority rights.
  • It’s hard to believe that anyone’s ideal view of the internet entails vesting power in the U.S. government, the Israeli government, and other world powers to decide who may be heard on it and who must be suppressed. But increasingly, in the name of pleading with internet companies to protect us, that’s exactly what is happening.
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

France Implements Administrative Net Censorship | La Quadrature du Net - 0 views

www.laquadrature.net/...-administrative-net-censorship

france net censorship disproportionate measures against terrorism and child pornography democracy ignoring required court order

shared by Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 09 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 09 Feb 15
     
    "Paris, February 6, 2015 - After review by the French Cabinet last Wednesday, the implementation decree for the administrative blocking of pedopornographic and terrorist websites was published today. This decree implements the provisions of to the Loppsi Act (15 March 2011) and the "Terrorism" Act (13 November 2014), both of which La Quadrature du Net opposed. It gives the government the power to directly order French telecom operators to block access to websites deemed to convey content relating to child abuse or terrorism, without any court order."
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 09 Feb 15
     
    "Paris, February 6, 2015 - After review by the French Cabinet last Wednesday, the implementation decree for the administrative blocking of pedopornographic and terrorist websites was published today. This decree implements the provisions of to the Loppsi Act (15 March 2011) and the "Terrorism" Act (13 November 2014), both of which La Quadrature du Net opposed. It gives the government the power to directly order French telecom operators to block access to websites deemed to convey content relating to child abuse or terrorism, without any court order."
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