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Category Archives: Censorship

A leak-hosting site looks to thaw the chill of censorship

Columbia Journalism Review: “In November, Reuters published a special investigative feature headlined, “How an Indian startup hacked the world.” The story alleged that a hacking-for-hire firm called Appin had stolen secrets from executives, politicians, military officials, and wealthy elites around the globe. (Appin has denied this.) A few weeks later, however, the story was taken… Continue Reading

Protecting Students from Faulty Software and Legislation: 2023 Year in Review

EFF: “Lawmakers, schools districts, educational technology companies and others keep rolling out legislation and software that threatens students’ privacy, free speech, and access to social media, in the name of “protecting” children. At EFF, we fought back against this overreach and demand accountability and transparency. Bad bills and invasive monitoring systems, though sometimes well-meaning, hurt… Continue Reading

The Atlas of Surveillance Hits Major Milestones: 2023 in Review

EFF: “If you haven’t checked out the Atlas of Surveillance recently, or ever before, you absolutely should. It includes a searchable database and an interactive map, and anyone can download the data for their own projects. As this collaboration with the University of Nevada Reno’s Reynolds School of Journalism (RSJ) finishes its fifth year, we… Continue Reading

International Threats to Freedom of Expression: 2023 Year in Review

EFF: “2023 has been an unfortunate reminder that the right to free expression is most fragile for groups on the margins, and that it can quickly become a casualty during global conflicts. Threats to speech arose out of the ongoing war in Palestine. They surfaced in bills and laws around the world that explicitly restrict… Continue Reading

Read it yourself: All 673 books removed from Orange classrooms

Orlando Sentinel: “These books are among the 673 rejected by Orange County Public Schools this year [read free] for fear they violate a new Florida law that prohibits “sexual conduct” in books available to students. The books were in teachers’ classroom libraries. The books will get another review by OCPS staff, and could be returned… Continue Reading

The lives upended by Florida’s school book wars

Washington Post (read free): “…The battle over what children should be allowed to read in school has riven Florida’s Escambia County School District. It’s part of a national battle, as school book objections surge to historic highs across the country. In Escambia County, the controversy kicked off in 2022, when a high school language arts… Continue Reading

Inside America’s School Internet Censorship Machine

Wired [read free]: “…WIRED requested internet censorship records from 17 public school districts around the US, painting a picture of the widespread digital censorship taking place across the country. Our investigation focuses on Albuquerque Public Schools (APS), one of the largest school districts in the US, which provided the most complete look at its web-filtering… Continue Reading

EU Fundamental Rights Report 2023

European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights Report 2023 reflects on the developments and shortfalls of human rights protection in the EU in 2022. Its focus section covers the fundamental rights implications of the aggression in Ukraine for the EU and the challenges that arose. For example, the EU’s Temporary Protection Directive provided welcome access to… Continue Reading

Texas board rejects many science textbooks over climate change messaging

The Texas Tribune: “A Republican-controlled Texas State Board of Education on Friday rejected seven of 12 proposed science textbooks for eighth graders that for the first time will require them to include information on climate change. The 15-member board largely rejected the books either because they included policy solutions for climate change or because they… Continue Reading

Virtual Cloud Portals

Dark Clouds: Can Government Agencies Evade Public-Records Laws by Storing Documents in Privately Owned Digital Portals? Frank D. LoMonte, Adjunct Instructor, University of Georgia School of Law. Newsroom Legal Counsel, Cable News Network, Inc. J.D., University of Georgia School of Law, 2000. B.A., Georgia State University, 1992. “Laws enabling the public to inspect government records… Continue Reading

Human Rights Declined in 3 out of 4 Countries since Global Rule of Law Recession Began in 2016

“The rule of law has once again eroded in a majority of countries this year, according to the World Justice Project (WJP) Rule of Law Index 2023. More than 6 billion people live in a country where the rule of law weakened between 2022 and 2023.  Since authoritarian trends pushed the world into a rule… Continue Reading