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A group of researchers from the University of Michigan (UM) have published a global database of instances of internet censorship that shows an extremely aggressive growth of online interference on a world scale over a recent 20-month period.

The team used an automated global censorship tracking platform called Censored Planet, which was developed in 2018 by UM assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science Roya Ensafi. Between August 2018 and April 2020, the team collected 21.8 billion measurements of online censorship from 221 countries.

Among the key findings of the researchpresented at the Association of Computer Machinery (ACM) Conference on Computer and Communications Security on November 10was that censorship is increasing in 103 of the countries that were studied, including Norway, Japan, Italy, Israel and Poland.

A press release issued by the UM on November 17 described the findings contained in the teams research paper as The largest collection of public internet censorship data ever compiled, which shows that even citizens of the worlds freest countries are not safe from internet censorship. It also showed that among the countries where censorship is expanding are those rated as some of the freest in the world by advocacy group Freedom House.

The research reveals that, for the most part, the increasing internet censorship is driven by organizations or internet service providers filtering content and not nationwide censorship policies such as those in China, where online content is highly restricted by direct state intervention.

The UM press release says Assistant Professor Ensafi noted that, while the uptick in blocking activity in the US was small, the groundwork for such blocking has been put in place in the United States.

Ensafi explained further: When the United States repealed net neutrality, they created an environment in which it would be easy, from a technical standpoint, for internet service providers to interfere with or block internet traffic. She added, The architecture for greater censorship is already in place and we should all be concerned about heading down a slippery slope.

The five-member US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted 3-2 on December 14, 2017 in favor of ending net neutrality, and the new policy took effect on June 11, 2018, approximately two months before the Censored Planet data collection began. Net neutrality is the principle that internet service providers (ISPs)the companies that own the hardware infrastructure connecting consumers to the internet in the form of wired and wireless services, routers, switches and serversmust treat all content on their systems equally.

While the proponents of abolishing net neutrality argued that the change was necessary to modernize FCC policies and remove anti-competitive government intrusion into the corporate internet marketplace, the UM research shows that the logic of capitalist private property and nation-state-based interests in the global information infrastructure leads inexorably to undemocratic and repressive restrictions on public access to online content in a range of forms.

As the World Socialist Web Site has reported, the tech monopolies, including Google, Facebook and Twitter, have been engaged in censorship both within the US and internationally by targeting left-wing, anti-war and progressive websites and publishers with various types of internet content blocking, throttling and manipulation.

The WSWS itself and its affiliated organizations have been the target of this increasing censorship in the form of s uppression of search results by Google, banning and de-whitelisting by Reddit, account suspension by Twitter and event blocking by Facebook.

Another of the UM researchers, Ram Sundara Raman, a PhD candidate in computer science and engineering, said, What we see from our study is that no country is completely free. Today, many countries start with legislation that compels internet service providers to block something thats obviously bad like child sex abuse material. But once that blocking infrastructure is in place, governments can block any websites they choose, and its usually a very opaque process. Thats why censorship measurement is crucial, particularly continuous measurements that show trends over time.

In Norway, for example, laws were passed in early 2018 that require internet service providers to block some gambling and pornographic content. The Censored Planet data shows evidence of network inconsistencies across a broader range of content, including human rights websites like Human Rights Watch and online dating sites like match.com in Norway.

The Censored Planet automated monitoring platform is a novel approach to tracking online censorship. It uses public internet servers around the globe as data gathering nodes that monitor and report when access to websites is being blocked. It also uses artificial intelligence algorithms to filter the data, remove noise and recognize trends.

Previous censorship tracking methods have relied upon human activists to gather data manually. As the UM press release explains, Manual monitoring can be dangerous for volunteers, who may face reprisals from governments. The limited scope of these approaches also means that efforts are often focused on countries already known for censorship, enabling nations that are perceived as freer to fly under the radar.

The #KeepItOn campaign of the digital rights organization AccessNow, for example, tracks incidents of internet shutdowns annually in countries around the world. It uses some technical measurement tools and also relies upon news reports and personal accounts through a coalition of 210 organizations from 75 countries. The organization published its last report in 2019, which noted, The constraints of our methodology mean that there may be cases of internet shutdowns that have gone unnoticed or unreported, and numbers are likely to change if and when new information becomes available.

In describing their longitudinal censorship observatory, the UM researchers explain that they used four remote measurement techniques (Augur, Satellite/Iris, Quack, and Hyperquack) on six internet protocols to detect 15 prominent censorship events, two-thirds of which have not been reported previously. The reference to longitudinal measurement means that data points are gathered multiple times over an extended period of time.

Among the censorship methods that Censored Planet detects are internet shutdowns, Domain Name Server (DNS) manipulation, Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) blocking and Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) layer interference. Among the countries that were studied for specific censorship events by Censored Planet (in addition to the countries mentioned above) were Egypt, Iran, Sri Lanka, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Ecuador, India, Sudan and Cameroon.

The instance of censorship in Sri Lanka, following a series of bombings on April 21, 2019 that killed more than 250 people, highlights the power of Censored Planet platform. To previous reports of social media censorship, the study says, We observed 22 domains (compared to 7 reported previously) being blocked, including domains like twitter.com that were not reported. Five out of these 22 domains were only from the Alexa test list, showing that variety in test lists is important. After the initial peak, HTTPS censorship remained unusually high through April, and then spiked again in the week of May 12, 2019. This contrasts with most reports claiming that the social media ban was lifted by May 1st.

It is significant that amid the near-continuous reporting in the corporate media of the false allegations from right-wing organizations and individuals that conservatives are being singled out for online censorship, including US President Trumps complaints regarding the imposition of fact-checking labels on his Twitter account, not one of the major news organizations has reported on the Censored Planet study.

Along with publishing their methodology and disclosing the tools they are using for data collection, the UM researchers are making their data set available for further analysis by others. As Ensafi explained, We hope that the continued publication of Censored Planet data will enable researchers to continuously monitor the deployment of network interference technologies, track policy changes in censoring nations, and better understand the targets of interference. While Censored Planet does not attribute censorship to a particular entity, we hope that the massive data weve collected can help political and legal scholars determine intent.

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Censored Planet: University of Michigan research finds worldwide increase in internet censorship - WSWS

To quote the internet site, yourdictionary.com, censorship is the practice of limiting access to information, ideas or books in order to prevent knowledge or freedom of thought.

This has become the business practice of Facebook, Twitter, Google and with the so-called mainstream media. Unelected bureaucrats have the authority to stop these business practices. Thus far no action has been taken by any government agency with that authorization to stop these business practices.

It's up to all Americans to put a stop to this censorship by Facebook, Twitter, Google and the mainstream media. We can do this by discontinuing our use of Facebook, Twitter, Google products and by finding alternative information sources to the mainstream media.

Shopping, learning, and communicating with family and friends was possible before Facebook, Twitter, Google and mainstream media censorship. We can do this again by using cellphones, land lines, email, regular mail and a collection of more balanced information sources.

Wake up, America. We dont need Facebook, Twitter, Google and the mainstream media. Their censorship business practices will turn America into a banana republic instead of the thriving democratic republic it has become. Stopping this censorship is up to us.

John Hatch

League City

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It's time Americans wake up and stop the censorship - Galveston County Daily News

'Kennedy' host and panel break down hearing on Big Tech election interference and censorship

Twitter claims it has reversed its censorship of a link to the lawsuit filed by attorney Sidney Powell that seeks to change the outcome of Georgias 2020 election results.

The lawsuit, filed on Wednesday evening, alleges multiple constitutional violations, citing experts, fact witnesses and statistical improbabilities within the results. The plaintiffs seek to decertify the 2020 election results in the state and have Trump declared the winner.

The URL referenced was mistakenly marked under our unsafe links policy this action has now been reversed, a Twitter spokesperson told FOX Business. The warning still appeared when FOX Business clicked on the link.

Twitter says it sometimes takes action to block links to content outside Twitter. Links are blocked if they are deemed to be malicious and used to steal personal information, spamthat mislead people or disrupt their experience or violate Twitters rules.

Twitter, and other technology companies including Facebook and Google, have in recent months come under fire from Republican lawmakers who argue the companies unfairly target posts from conservatives.

CEO Jack Dorsey testified earlier this month that between Oct. 27 and Nov. 11 Twitter labeled or removed 300,000 false or misleading tweets about the election. More than 50 tweets from President Trump have been labeled since Election Day.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ON FOX BUSINESS

Twitters censorship of conservative voices has been a boon for competing social media platform Parler, which in the days after the election shot up to No. 1 in Apples AppStore for the first time.

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Twitter claims it has reversed ban of link to Sidney Powell's Georgia election lawsuit - Fox Business

Earlier this month, reacting to a decision by Indias highest court, prominent comedian Kunal Kamra tweeted that Indias Supreme Court is the most Supreme joke of this country.

The following day, local media reported that Attorney General K. K. Venugopal greenlighted court proceedings against the comedian, based on a few tweets criticizing the Supreme Court. The charge levied against him: contempt of court. Kamra has refused to apologize for his tweets and local reports indicate proceedings have yet to begin.

This should be shocking, but unfortunately its not. In India, speaking out on the Internet can be dangerous. Kamra told CoinDesk that public figures can receive threats on social media, noting that users leaked his phone number on Twitter multiple times. They dox people, they release information sometimes. Thats very normal, Kamra said.

With over 700 million internet users, Indias booming digital market collides with internet censorship or outright bans.

A similar dynamic plays out in Indias crypto market. Trade on Indian crypto exchanges exploded earlier this year after the Supreme Court ruled to reverse the decision by the countrys central bank (RBI) to ban local financial institutions from providing services to crypto firms. Now, just a few months later, the federal cabinet is reportedly discussing another potential ban.

While regulators havent clarified their stance on digital assets, they have expressed concern over the fiscal and monetary policy implications of fintech applications, including distributed ledger technology (DLT). Regulators have continued to push for local control over fintech payment platforms like WhatsApp Pay, which received approval from the Indian government only after owner Facebook agreed to store user data locally in India and not offshore.

This is part of a much broader trend. Kamras case is the latest in a series of targeted attacks on internet users in the country. In a 2019 report, Freedom House warned internet freedom in India had declined for the fourth year in a row due to increasing arrests for online activity and frequent internet shutdowns.

Localized internet shutdowns, restrictions on certain content (like pornography) and wholesale bans on select mobile applications are some of the more visible ways in which the Indian government has sought to control the internet. According to a report by local media outlet Mint, in 2017 and 2018 at least 50 individuals were arrested for comments made on social media, largely for posts considered offensive to politicians.

Digital India

Indias digital ecosystems, from cloud computing to digital payments, are expanding. According to a report by consulting firm McKinsey, core sectors of the digital economy could double their contribution to Indias GDP by 2025, adding up to $435 billion.

On Nov. 19, in his inaugural address at the Bengaluru Tech Summit, Indias Prime Minister Narendra Modi said his administrations governance model is technology first citing his Digital India initiative that launched five years ago.

Digital India has become a way of life, particularly for the poor, marginalized and for those in government, Prime Minister Modi said.

Yet, since 2014, government authorities have enforced about 450 regional internet shutdowns, with 134 in 2018 alone, according to a local internet shutdown tracker.

Reasons for the crackdowns range from anticipated public unrest to curbing malpractice in school examinations. This blunt-force approach can also lead to monetary loss for businesses and the disruption of web-based services.

If there is no internet, there is no cryptocurrency, there is no blockchain, there is no technology. The internet is the crux.

The longest internet shutdown ever recorded in a democracy was implemented by the Indian government in the disputed Kashmir region after the Modi government revoked the states semi-autonomous status in August 2019.

Indian officials justified the extended ban by calling it a necessary move to curb anticipated unrest that might have followed the administrative decision. While services were gradually restored, the blackout lasted over seven months and disrupted some 12 million peoples access to the internet.

Qazi Zaid, chief editor of Free Press Kashmir (FPK), a local media outlet, said his newsroom had to be shuttered during the blackout. The primarily online publication halted all coverage and risked losing its online readership of over 300,000 people, Zaid told CoinDesk.

When phone lines were restored, reporters called each other and dictated stories in an attempt to type and publish them, he added.

But then we also realized that our audience is not there, Zaid said.

While FPK managed to gradually come back online in May this year, the blackout had hit local businesses and dried up advertising revenue, Zaid said. He stressed that media censorship in Kashmir hasnt changed so much after last years decision to revoke the regions special status but it may have been further formalized under recent amendments to digital media policy, giving the government regulatory control over digital news and content providers.

Loopholes

When the Indian government wants to shut the internet down, it sometimes invokes a 135-year-old law: the Indian Telegraph Act of 1885. The act was created by the British rulers in colonial India to curb uprisings, Indian journalist Sonia Faleiro said in a recent MIT Technology Review podcast. The law gives the government authority over all forms of electronic communications (in 1885 that meant telegrams) in the event of a public emergency.

In 2017, the law was amended to specify that it allowed the temporary suspension of telecom services, Faleiro said.

One of the many problems with the law, Faleiro added, was it did not specify or define public emergency, thus allowing the government to label any incident as such and shut down communications.

Additionally, a controversial 2008 amendment to The Information Technology Act of 2000, Section 66A, allowed the government to imprison any person sending messages deemed offensive, menacing, false or causing annoyance through any electronic communications device. Using this law, in 2012 the government arrested two women for Facebook posts critical of the government.

In 2015, the Supreme Court of India shot down Section 66A, calling it unconstitutional. However, arrests over social media activity continued: In 2016, a Kashmiri man was charged with sedition for liking and sharing anti-India posts on Facebook.

The security argument

Amid a tense border standoff with China earlier this year, Indias government banned 60 China-based apps, including the popular social media platform Tik Tok.

When border tensions continued, leading to an Indian soldier reportedly being killed by a Chinese landmine, the Indian government restricted 118 more mobile applications from Chinese tech companies in September 2020.

The governments statement alleged it had received several reports of these applications misusing user data and surreptitiously transmitting it to servers located outside India.

Described as a move to ensure safety, security and sovereignty of Indian cyberspace in the governments September statement, the restrictions took aim at apps from WeChat, Baidu, Alipay and the popular mobile game PlayerUnknowns Battlegrounds (PUBG), which had over 33 million active users in India at the time.

While the restrictions could have been a knee-jerk reaction to a geopolitical situation that has since cooled down, concerns about the integrity of user data and government surveillance on the internet have persisted as India works on the proposed Personal Data Protection Bill (2019).

According to Anirudh Burman, associate fellow at Carnegie India, the draft law, introduced in December 2019, deploys an approach quite similar to the European Unions General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Burman explained that although both frameworks are based on a user-consent model, the Indian bill limits data storage outside the countrys borders and also creates compliance requirements that could burden small enterprises.

If there is a medium or small enterprise firm going to get a data protection officer or get an annual data protection audit, its a significant cost, Burman said.

The draft laws requirement to store certain types of data locally or always have a copy of it available on local servers has also stoked fears of increased state surveillance, according to a report by DW. Requiring platforms to store data locally could also afford easier access to local law enforcement which, if stored off-shore, would be subject to a different set of laws.

U.S. law permits the disclosure only of non-content data. So if you want detailed subscriber information or content data, then you have to go through the due process, said Burman. Content data here refers to data, processed or unprocessed, that can convey the substance of a communication.

The draft bill also provides for the creation of a dedicated body, the Data Protection Authority of India, to ensure compliance with the law. A portion of the legislation also grants the federal government the power to exempt any agency of Government from application of the Act, thereby creating broad loopholes for the state to duck requirements levied on private enterprises.

The draft law, Indias first attempt at creating a digital privacy and data management framework at the national level, is currently before a joint parliamentary committee. The committee also recently held discussions on law with representatives from companies including Amazon, Twitter, Mastercard, Visa and PayPal.

Reported to be in the final stages of discussion, the committee is expected to file its recommendations on the bill before the next session of parliament begins.

Sisyphus' boulder

Despite the Indian governments efforts to exercise control over cyberspace, internet policing can only go so far.

Vikram Subburaj and Arjun Vijay launched Indian crypto exchange Giottus in 2018, just a week after the central bank of India published a circular that banned crypto firms from having bank accounts. Confronted by the ban, they pivoted to setting up a peer-to-peer exchange.

In March 2020, the Supreme Court of India overruled the central bank circular and, according to the two founders, Giottus has enjoyed record growth in the last six months.

We have been growing at a phenomenal rate of 400% YTD and have been clocking a monthly trade volume of $33 million, Subburaj told CoinDesk via email.

Vijay doesnt believe internet censorship can stop web-based services from continuing to grow in India.

Censorship doesnt work with respect to the internet. With VPN and sorts, it just makes it more difficult for you to access something, but it doesnt prevent someone who wants to access it, Vijay told CoinDesk.

Even in Kashmir, where students had to make do with government-imposed low-speed internet for their online classes during the coronavirus pandemic, people found workarounds. According to an Al Jazeera report, two applications (Filo and Wise) created by educators Mubeen Masudi and Imbesat Ahmad helped students access the Internet.

Indias government seems to understand the Internet is essential for the countrys growth. While authorities sometimes lean toward stringent controls, the government will not completely stamp out digital innovation. This is good news for the crypto industry.

As Neeraj Khandelwal, co-founder of local crypto exchange CoinDCX, told CoinDesk, If there is no internet, there is no cryptocurrency, there is no blockchain, there is no technology. The internet is the crux.

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In India, a Clash of Digital Innovation and Internet Censorship - CoinDesk - Coindesk

WASHINGTON U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz set conservative Twitter on fire as he tore into Jack Dorsey, the platforms CEO, during a recent Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, creating the sort of viral moment senators crave from such high-profile exchanges.

Facebook and Twitter and Google have massive power. They have a monopoly on public discourse in the online arena, Cruz told Dorsey and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, whom the Texas Republican and other GOP members of the committee had subpoenaed to address what they view as censorship and suppression by Big Tech during the 2020 election.

Your policies are applied in a partisan and selective manner, Cruz said, demanding that Dorsey and Zuckerberg produce data showing how often they flag or block Republican candidates and elected officials as opposed to Democrats.

What a moment, right-wing commentator Dinesh DSouza tweeted, sharing a clip from the hearing with his 1.9 million followers.

This is almost TOO GOOD, tweeted Dan Bongino, another conservative commentator, urging his 2.7 million followers to Watch Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey absolutely squirm in his chair as Ted Cruz goes full trial lawyer on him.

IN-DEPTH: Cornyn, Cruz not holding out much hope for Trump to pull off re-election

As social media companies cracked down on misinformation during the election under pressure to prevent a repeat of 2016s Russian meddling they found themselves increasingly targeted by conservatives such as Cruz, who call it censorship when Twitter flags President Donald Trumps posts that falsely claim he won re-election, or when Facebook tries to stop its users from sharing a debunked story about President-elect Joe Bidens son.

Its a sign of how an area of bipartisan agreement the need to reform Big Tech has become increasingly politicized, worrying experts that it will be yet another effort mired in congressional bickering.

The fundamental question is what right does a social media platform have to label something posted on it as potentially untrue, said Chris Bronk, an expert in cyber geopolitics who is an associate professor at the University of Houston.

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Bronk said its become increasingly clear that reforms are needed to counter domestic hate groups and hostile foreign governments that use social media to ply the American public with disinformation.

But when the same politicians who regulate the industry are also being flagged for making false or misleading statements, Bronk sees little room for agreement.

I got a tweet this morning at seven whatever, the president put out there and it just said, I won the election. Is that true? said Bronk, a former foreign service officer with the State Department. The internet has allowed us to divorce ourselves from some sets of facts.

The debate centers on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which offers legal protections to online platforms that publish and circulate content created by others.

Cruz, Trump and Biden agree those protections need to go. But the reasons they cite couldnt be further apart.

Democrats such as Biden say social media platforms arent doing enough to combat misinformation and harmful content such as hate speech.

I recognize the steps theyre really baby steps that youve taken so far, and yet destructive, incendiary misinformation is still a scourge on both your platforms, U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., told Dorsey and Zuckerberg during the committee hearing a proceeding that Blumenthal deemed a political sideshow, a public tarring and feathering.

Republicans, including Cruz, say Twitter and Facebook have already gone too far.

Theyve had unchecked power to censor, restrict, edit, shape, hide, alter virtually any form of communication between private citizens or large public audiences, Trump said this year as he signed an executive order targeting the protections in place. Trump said fact-checking attempts by the platforms are one of the greatest dangers (free speech) has faced in American history.

Experts say theres actually little evidence that social media platforms unfairly target those on the right and that available data actually indicates that conservative social media tends to get more traffic online. For instance, the New York Times reported that Trumps official Facebook page got 130 million reactions, shares and comments over a 30-day stretch in the final leg of the presidential race, compared with 18 million for Bidens page.

Trump similarly eclipsed Biden on Instagram, and the gaps on both sites widened as the race came to an end, the Times reported.

Part of the tension on Capitol Hill is the Republicans continue to push this false narrative that tech is anti-conservative, said Hany Farid, a computer science professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who has testified before the Senate and advised congressional offices on potential legislation. There is no data to support this. The data that is there is in the other direction and says conservatives dominate social media.

Farid said some important if small steps are being taken. The Judiciary Committee this year passed a bill that would amend Section 230 to allow federal and state claims against platforms hosting content that sexually exploits children.

Farid said the relatively narrow bill targets a very serious problem, but its one of many, many really bad problems on the internet, including hate speech and terrorism. Once those other issues are brought up, Farid said, Republicans start to push back.

Its easy to be supportive of legislation that protects 4-year-olds from being sexually assaulted, Farid said. When it comes to things outside of child sex abuse, the Republicans have a problem, because a lot of their folks live on the side of white supremacists. When we start talking about cracking down on hate speech, they hear Republicans.

But Farid also questioned the wisdom of scrapping Section 230 altogether, as Biden has advocated, and said regulations on the algorithms that platforms use to decide what content gets promoted to their users would be a better approach.

Part of the problem, he said, is that few lawmakers have a deep understanding of the industry, and even some of their more tech-savvy staffers dont seem to have a firm grasp on the issue.

Unfortunately a lot of these hearings are not substantive, Farid said. They are for show. Theyre like flexing muscles.

Cruz, a former Texas solicitor general, was flexing at the hearing with Dorsey and Zuckerberg.

CRUZ STEPS INTO RING WITH TWITTER CEO, HITS HIM WITH 5 LEGALLY DEVASTATING FINISHING MOVES, read the text on a video the conservative Washington Examiner shared, with clips from Cruzs questioning of Dorsey.

In the past, Cruz has called for a criminal investigation into Twitter, accusing the social media company of violating U.S. sanctions on Iran by providing social media accounts to Iranian leaders.

He has urged the top U.S. trade official to scrap language in trade agreements that Cruz said offers near-blanket legal immunity to technology companies.

And he has accused Google of abusing its monopoly power in an effort to censor political speech with which it disagrees.

Cruz, like many Republicans, has also joined Parler, a social media network catering to conservatives.

At the hearing, Cruz vowed to put Twitters policies to the test by tweeting out statements about voter fraud, including findings from the Commission on Federal Election Reform, a bipartisan organization founded in 2004 by former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James Baker.

After the hearing, Cruz tweeted to his 4.1 million followers:

Twitter Test #1: Absentee ballots remain the largest source of potential voter fraud.

Twitter Test #2: Voter fraud is particularly possible where third party organizations, candidates, and political party activists are involved in handling absentee ballots.

Twitter Test #3: Voter fraud does exist. This is just one example, linking to a news report about a woman charged in Texas.

None of the tweets was flagged.

ben.wermund@chron.com

twitter.com/benjaminew

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Ted Cruz digs in for congressional battle over censorship on Twitter, Facebook - Houston Chronicle