Archive for the ‘Censorship’ Category
U.S. urged to do more to counter China’s growing censorship system – Washington Times
A version of this article appeared in the daily Threat Status newsletter from The Washington Times. Click here to receive Threat Status delivered directly to your inbox each weekday.
Chinas communist government has sharply increased censorship and information controls under President Xi Jinping, posing a growing threat to U.S. security and the free flow of information globally, according to a report by a congressional China commission.
To block Chinese attempts to sow divisions within the United States and preserve freedom of information worldwide, the United States must be more effective in countering Beijings growing information control system, said the report, released Tuesday by the United States-China Economic and Security Review Commission.
Censorship in China focuses primarily on domestic control, but its effects pose a major challenge to U.S. diplomatic, economic and national security interests, the report concluded.
The reports authors say Beijings information controls make up the worlds most elaborate and pervasive system of censorship. The ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) uses censorship to secure political legitimacy and shape popular behavior through public opinion guidance, the report says.
Beyond its borders, China is sharply increasing efforts to combat ideas and narratives Beijing perceives as threatening, the report said.
The lines of effort include disinformation campaigns to sow divisions within U.S. society, the report said.
China also punishes private U.S. companies and people who voice positions opposed by the Communist Party.
China is exporting censorship tools to other authoritarian states and calling for greater state control of the internet. Those actions challenge U.S.-backed norms and agreements that seek to promote the global free flow of information, the report said.
China uses censorship to advance Beijings anti-democratic geostrategic goals. One goal is isolating rival Taiwan and laying the groundwork for eventual cross-strait unification, the report said.
These challenges necessitate that the United States takes action to safeguard its domestic information space and to preserve a free and open internet, both of which are vital factors for continued U.S. economic prosperity and individual liberty, the report said.
The federal government also needs better efforts to counter Chinese disinformation campaigns that are used as de facto censorship outside of China, the report said.
One example, the report said, was Beijings official false assertion that the COVID-19 virus was produced in a U.S. Army lab and then brought to China.
It said U.S. intelligence must share information on activities by state-backed Chinese hacking groups, such as Dragonbridge, that engage in sophisticated information operations.
The U.S. must impose tighter export controls to block China from obtaining advanced hardware and software for its censorship system, the report says.
The 116-page report, Censorship Practices of the Peoples Republic of China, was produced under contract by the Center for Intelligence Research and Analysis, part of the think tank Exovera.
Frank Miller, Exovera vice president for intelligence integration, said Chinas censorship apparatus is multifaceted and uses removal efforts and deterrence to control content it opposes.
Companies and media outlets that use online content reflecting Beijings deterrence directives and measures are complicit in the censoring of news and/or Western liberal thoughts from the Chinese populace, he said.
Our recommendations to the commission were essentially to use the power of Congress to encourage means to counter the CCP censorship apparatus, especially where the spillover effect includes the U.S. populace, Mr. Miller said.
Expanding under Xi
The study said the Chinese government significantly expanded the censorship system since Mr. Xi came to power in 2012 and focused on solidifying control over internet content. The effort involved new laws, regulations and technical methods to monitor and supervise online activity and became increasingly sophisticated with the rise of artificial intelligence systems.
Before 2012, Chinas internet users, dubbed netizens, operated in a vast online community that often allowed for vibrant debate, including some that touched on Communist Party politics. Under Mr. Xi, however, censors cracked down on such freewheeling internet exchanges by imprisoning or silencing those they said had engaged in online dissent and debate.
Censorship controls in China are spread among several Communist Party and state institutions that collectively control information for the population of some 1.4 billion people.
An example was the governments ability to manage what the report said was an acute crisis set into motion by draconian COVID-19 lockdowns. Censors also targeted what the ruling party calls historical nihilism CCP code for the negative effect on communism produced by the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.
At the same time, the CCP allows for limited discussions of sensitive topics that do not directly threaten its hold on power, such as Chinas role in the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict, the report said.
Other sensitive discussions permitted by Chinese censors include exchanges highlighting government corruption.
All criticism of senior party leaders, the legitimacy of one-party communist rule or the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre of pro-democracy protesters is strictly blocked.
Employees and executives of Chinese internet providers face detention and other penalties if company censors fail to monitor and control content online.
Guiding global opinion
Overseas, the censorship apparatus is engaged in what the report called international public opinion guidance. The effort employs many of the same tools used for domestic information control.
Chinese information agents can flood the zone on foreign social media outlets to hijack and deflate discussions opposed by Beijing, such as the ongoing harsh repression of ethnic Uyghurs in western China and Tibet.
To influence online discussion of the Russia-Ukraine war, Chinese government censors seek to control overseas discussions using tactics similar to those for domestic censorship. Chinese citizens can discuss the conflict openly, but any discussion of how the war could affect plans for a future Chinese attack on Taiwan is blocked or muted through state-linked trolls.
The report recommends developing and deploying emerging telecommunications technology, such as satellite-based internet constellations, that can impose costs on Chinese censorship systems.
Satellite-supplied internet service, such as that from Starlink, has the potential to undermine the CCPs stranglehold over data flows into and out of China, the report said. China is already working to counter the potential use of satellite clouds to prevent the systems from weakening censorship.
The report called on the State Department to improve its public diplomacy in China. Diplomats should provide better reporting on misconduct and misgovernment by the government and the Communist Party.
Access to objective information plays a key role in enabling Chinas citizenry to hold their government accountable, especially during inflection points such as the 2019 COVID-19 pandemic outbreak, and the subsequent 2022 anti-lockdown protest movements, the report said.
The government should increase federal grants to groups such as the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts while supporting research and independent journalism.
Independent journalism and scholarly research have been central to undermining [Chinese] censorship of sensitive topics, ranging from the 2019 pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong to the CCPs mistreatment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang, the report said.
Here is the original post:
U.S. urged to do more to counter China's growing censorship system - Washington Times
Tags:
Libraries, Beacons of Freedom, Now Face the Dangers of Censorship – Flagpole – Flagpole Magazine
Marian, madame librarian Heaven help us if the library caught on fire. So sang Robert Preston in The Music Man, the 1962 movie about a smooth-talking grifter trying to bilk the citizens of a small Iowa town. Today, libraries and librarians face troubles as campaigns are waged across America against books that might contain controversial content.
Near Athens in 1994, one parent complained about the profanity God damn uttered by a crusty character in The Red Pony, the classic novel by Nobel Prize-winning writer John Steinbeck that was included in Oconee County school libraries. The ensuing book-banning battle attracted state and national attention, but Steinbecks novel remained available in the county. Flash forward nearly 30 years, to 2023, and Oconee County was again the scene of challenges to libraries from self-anointed censors in high dudgeon over books in the local library that mentioned LGBTQ relationships.
Those parents who would circumscribe the reading rights of all in favor of the ideology of a few are people who would prevent your children from reading a book just because they dont want their own children to read it. They should read the wise words of playwright and diplomat Clare Boothe Luce: Censorship, like charity, should begin at home; but, unlike charity, it should end there.
Writer Ray Bradbury was correct when he said, Without libraries, what have we? We have no past and no future. Bradburys love of books and libraries was a source for perhaps his most famous novel, Fahrenheit 451, a dystopian tale of a totalitarian society that burns books, as did Hitlers Nazi regime in Germany. As a young and struggling writer, Bradbury wrote his book on a coin-operated typewriter in a university library. American printer and patriot Benjamin Franklin spearheaded the creation of public libraries in America nearly 300 years ago, and ever since then libraries have provided information and inspiration for writers like Bradbury and for all this nations citizens.
Libraries are under attack today as a torrent of anti-intellectualism, extremism and divisiveness threatens to drown the American body politic in a flood of fear, repression and regression. Past U.S. presidents knew the role of the library in stemming the tide of ignorance and intolerance. Thomas Jefferson said, A democratic society depends upon an informed and educated citizenry. As fascism was on the march and book burnings raged in Germany, Franklin Roosevelt reminded his fellow Americans that, Libraries are great symbols of the freedom of the mind The library is central to our free society. It is a critical element in the free exchange of information at the heart of our democracy. President Dwight D. Eisenhower said that libraries should be places where free and inquiring minds can freely seek the whole truth, unvarnished by fashion and uncompromised by expediency.
When I was a young person in the small town Jim Crow South of the 1950s and 60s, the town library was a place for the free and inquiring minds of people of every age and race. Though strict segregation ruled the rest of the town, the local librarian opened her doors to citizens of any color, and books with titles like Facts of Life for Boys and Facts of Life for Girls were accessible on the librarys bookshelves. That librarian was a quiet hero like the fictional librarian in The Obsolete Man, a 1961 episode of The Twilight Zone TV series written by Rod Serling. In the episode, actor Burgess Meredith portrays a librarian who stands up to an authoritarian state in which logic is an enemy and truth is a menace.
Support your local library and support your local librarians. The Athens-Clarke County Library on Baxter Street offers thousands of books, and it was one of the first libraries in Georgia to provide internet access for its patrons. It is the site of public meetings and book signings, and is an invaluable resource for genealogy researchers and history buffs.
In these times of overflowing online misinformation, libraries and librarians are more important than ever. They prove what writer Neil Gaiman meant when he said, Google can bring you back 100,000 answers. A librarian can bring you back the right one.
Like what you just read? Support Flagpole by making a donation today. Every dollar you give helps fund our ongoing mission to provide Athens with quality, independent journalism.
See original here:
Libraries, Beacons of Freedom, Now Face the Dangers of Censorship - Flagpole - Flagpole Magazine
Tags:
An Argument for Free Speech, the Lifeblood of Democracy – Tufts Now
You devote the first part of the book to Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. and his journey into skepticism about universal morality. To whom is that relevant today?
Many of todays students have a keen thirst for social justice, which I admire. When Holmes was their age, he shared that thirst, dropping out of college to enlist in the Union Army in a war against slavery, in which he was nearly killed several times.
He became very skeptical of people who believe they have unique access to universal, absolute truth, who view their adversaries as evil incarnate. That, he believed, leads ultimately to violence.
All of us today need to approach public debate with a bit of humility, recognizing that none of us is infallible and that rigid moral certitude leads down a dangerous path.
We know from centuries of experience, in many countries, that censorship inevitably backfires. It discredits the censors, who are seen as patronizing elites. It demeans listeners who are told they cant handle the truth. It makes martyrs and heroes out of the censored and drives their speech underground where its harder to rebut.
Suffragettes, civil rights leaders, and LGBTQ+ activists all have relied on free speech to get their messages out. Censorship alienates the public, generates distrust, fosters social division, and sparks political instability.
Its not that some speech isnt harmfulits that trying to suppress it causes greater harm.
Not all hateful speech is protected. Incitement to violence, fighting words, defamation, and true threats are all often hateful yet that speech is not protected. But other hateful speech is protected, for several reasons.
Hatred is a viewpoint. Its for the individual to think and feel as he or she wishes; its only when the individual crosses the line between thought and action to incite violence or defame or threaten someone that the state can intervene.
Hate speech laws are also invariably vague and overbroad, leading to arbitrary and abusive enforcement. In the real world, speech rarely gets punished because it hurts dominant majorities. It gets punished because it hurts disadvantaged minorities.
The ultimate problem with banning falsehoods is that to do so youd need an official Ministry of Truth, which could come up with an endless list of officially banned falsehoods. Not only would that list inevitably be self-serving, but it could be wrong.
Even when it comes to clear falsehoods, there are reasons to leave them up. [Former President Donald] Trump claimed, for example, that the size of the crowd at his inauguration was larger than [former President Barack] Obamas, which was indisputably false. But the statement had the effect of calling into question not only Trumps veracity but also his mental soundness, which is important for voters to assess.
They were wrong to apply a norm of international human rights law in banning hima supposed prohibition against glorifying violence. Thats a vague, overly broad standard that can pick up everything from praising Medal of Honor winners to producing Top Gun.
Were dealing here with an American president speaking from the White House to the American people, so I say the proper standard should have been the U.S. First Amendment and whether Trump intended to incite imminent violence and whether that violence was likely. Under that test, I think its a close case.
Justice Louis Brandeis [who served on the Supreme Court from 1916 to 1939] said that the fitting remedy for evil counsels is good ones.
If someone counsels drinking bleach to cure COVID, the remedy is not to suppress itits to point out why thats wrong. But over and over, the governments remedy for speech it didnt like was to strongarm social media platforms to take it down.
The government wouldnt have lost so much credibility if it had only said, This is our best guess based on available evidence. Instead, it spoke ex cathedra on masks, lockdowns, school closings, vaccine efficacy, infection rates, myocarditis, social distancing, you name itclaims that often turned out to be untenableand then it bullied the platforms to censor prominent experts who took issue with its misinformation.
The remedy for falsehoods is more speech, not enforced silence. If someone thinks a social media post contains altered imagery or audio, the initial solution is simply to say that and let the marketplace of ideas sort it out.
Obviously counter-speech isnt always the answer: You still run into eleventh-hour deep fakes that theres no time to rebut. People do have privacy rights and interference with elections undercuts democracy.
The trick is to write legislation that catches malign fakery but doesnt also pick up satire and humor that is obviously bogus. Thats not easy. Well-intended but sloppy laws often trigger serious unintended consequences.
See the article here:
An Argument for Free Speech, the Lifeblood of Democracy - Tufts Now
Tags: