“The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Visualizing Impact launched Onlinecensorship.org today, a new platform to document the who, what, and why of content takedowns on social media sites. The project, made possible by a 2014 Knight News Challenge award, will address how social media sites moderate user-generated content and how free expression is affected across… Continue Reading
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Category Archives: Censorship
Article calls out harassment, disparagement of highly underrepresented female Wikipedia editors
It may well be that nobody knows if you are a dog (canine) on the internet, but if you are a female editor at Wikipedia, you are in a small and disparaged minority, The Atlantic: “..In 2011, an internal study estimated that less than 10 percent of Wikipedia editors are female. The disparity is even… Continue Reading
CRS – National Security Letters in Foreign Intelligence Investigations
National Security Letters in Foreign Intelligence Investigations: A Glimpse at the Legal Background, Charles Doyle, Senior Specialist in American Public Law. July 31, 2015. “Five federal statutes authorize intelligence officials to request certain business record information in connection with national security investigations. The authority to issue these national security letters (NSLs) is comparable to the… Continue Reading
DOJ Prevailed Over Google on Email Privacy Case
Ryan Gallagher – The Intercept: “The Obama administration fought a legal battle against Google to secretly obtain the email records of a security researcher and journalist associated with WikiLeaks. Newly unsealed court documents obtained by The Intercept reveal the Justice Department won an order forcing Google to turn over more than one year’s worth of data from the Gmail… Continue Reading
Canarywatch.org Reaches 50 Canaries
EFF – “We’re excited to announce that Canarywatch has added its 50th canary: First Look Media, the parent company for The Intercept—the news site created by journalists Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, and Jeremy Scahill.EFF- “Warrant canary” is a colloquial term for a regularly published statement that an internet service provider (ISP) has not received legal… Continue Reading
Human Rights World Report 2015
“World Report 2015 is Human Rights Watch’s 25th annual review of human rights practices around the globe. It summarizes key human rights issues in more than 90 countries and territories worldwide. In his keynote, Human Rights Watch Executive Director Kenneth Roth reflects on a year so tumultuous, “it can seem as if the world is… Continue Reading
Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index 2015
“The Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index ranks the performance of 180 countries according to a range of criteria that include media pluralism and independence, respect for the safety and freedom of journalists, and the legislative, institutional and infrastructural environment in which the media operate. Top of the list, as so often, are three… Continue Reading
Libraries After Charlie Hebdo: The Threat of Violence, The Fear of Self-Censorship
Lisa Peet – Library Journal – “Although written texts often evoke strong, sometimes contentious reactions, political cartoons and caricatures can be equally incendiary. According to Barbara Jones, executive director of the Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) of the American Library Association. (ALA), “Cartoons are a particular problem in our office—graphic novels and books with cartoons… Continue Reading
Global Chilling: The Impact of Mass Surveillance on International Writers
PEN America – “Global Chilling: The Impact of Mass Surveillance on International Writers is a new report demonstrating the damaging impact of surveillance by the United States and other governments on free expression and creative freedom around the world. The report’s revelations, based on a survey of nearly 800 writers worldwide, are alarming. Concern about… Continue Reading
The Tightening Web of Russian Internet Regulation
Tselikov, Andrey, The Tightening Web of Russian Internet Regulation (November 20, 2014). Berkman Center Research Publication No. 2014-15. Available for download at SSRN: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2527603 “Over the past two years, systematic Internet regulation has increased more in Russia than anywhere else in the world. A series of progressively more restrictive legislative developments between the summer of 2012… Continue Reading
On Modeling the Costs of Censorship
Michael Carl Tschantz, Sadia Afroz, Vern Paxson, J. D. Tygar (Submitted on 10 Sep 2014) “We argue that the evaluation of censorship evasion tools should depend upon economic models of censorship. We illustrate our position with a simple model of the costs of censorship. We show how this model makes suggestions for how to evade censorship. In particular, from… Continue Reading
Study: Government Blocks Specific Journalists From Accessing Information
David Sorota: “As states move to hide details of government deals with Wall Street and as politicians come up with new arguments to defend secrecy, it was revealed this week that many government information officers block specific journalists they don’t like from accessing information. The news comes as 47 federal inspectors general sent a letter to lawmakers criticizing “serious… Continue Reading
