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By Andre Damon 18 January 2018

Behind the backs of the US and world populations, social media companies have built up a massive censorship apparatus staffed by an army of content reviewers capable of seamlessly monitoring, tracking, and blocking millions of pieces of content.

The character of this apparatus was detailed in testimony Wednesday from representatives of Facebook, Twitter, and Googles YouTube before the United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, chaired by South Dakota Republican John Thune.

The hearing was called to review what technology companies are doing to shut down the communications of oppositional political organizations. It represented a significant escalation of the campaign, supported by both Democrats and Republicans, to establish unprecedented levels of censorship and control over the Internet.

Armed with increasingly powerful artificial intelligence systems, these technology companies are free to remove and block the communications of their users at the behest of the government, in a seamless alliance between Silicon Valley and the major US spy agencies.

Monika Bickert, head of Global Policy Management at Facebook, told lawmakers that the social media giant now employs a security team of 10,000 people, 7,500 of whom assess potentially violating content, and that, by the end of 2018 we will more than double the security team.

This group includes a dedicated counterterrorism team of former intelligence and law-enforcement officials and prosecutors who worked in the area of counterterrorism. In other words, there is a revolving door between the technology giants and the state intelligence and police forces, with one increasingly indistinguishable from the other.

Bickert pointed to the growing use of artificial intelligence to flag content, saying Facebook does not wait for these bad actors to upload content to Facebook before placing it into our detection systems, bragging that much of the propaganda removed from Facebook is content that we identify ourselves before anybody else has a chance to view it.

She added that Facebook has partnered with over a dozen other companies to maintain a blacklist of content, based on unique digital fingerprints. This means that if a piece of content, whether a video, image, or written statement, is flagged by any one of these companies, it will be banned from all social media. This database now includes some 50,000 pieces of content and is constantly growing, officials said.

In other words, the technology giants have created an all-pervasive system of censorship in which machines, trained to collaborate with the CIA, FBI, and other US intelligence agencies, are able to flag and block content even before it is posted.

Juniper Downs, global head of Public Policy and Government Relations at YouTube, likewise boasted that Google uses a mix of technology and humans to remove content, adding that YouTube relies on a trusted flagger program to provide actionable flags based on the flaggers experience with issues like hate speech and terrorism, words that imply that these trusted flaggers are connected to US intelligence agencies.

Machine learning is now helping our human reviewers remove nearly five times as many videos as they were before, Downs said, adding that Googles censorship machine is virtually automated. She said that this year there will be 10,000 people across Google working to address content that might violate our policies.

Downs declared that since June YouTube has removed 160,000 videos and terminated 30,000 channels for violent extremism. The company has reviewed over two million videos in its collaboration with law enforcement, government, and NGOs.

Downs stated that Google is actively engaged in promoting what she called counter-speech, that is, the promotion of propaganda narratives. She also pointed to Googles Jigsaw program as deploying targeted ads and YouTube videos to disrupt online radicalization, and redirecting users to content that Google approves of.

The hearing also featured the testimony of Clint Watts, a former FBI official, former US Army officer, fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, and a leading promoter of social media censorship.

Watts presented the hearing with an unhinged justification for what these massive powers might be used for, in a hypothetical scenario he dubbed Anwar Awlaki meets PizzaGate.

The greatest concern moving forward, he said, might likely be a foreign intelligence service, posing as Americans on social media, infiltrating one or both political extremes in the US and then recruiting unwitting Americans to undertake violence against a target of the foreign powers choosing.

In this formulation, social opposition, what he calls the political extremes, including left-wing politics, is the product of foreign intervention and therefore treasonous. It is also defined as terrorist in content and therefore criminal.

Watts expressed extreme fear over the widespread growth of opposition to the policies of US imperialism. He arrogantly decried, Lesser-educated populations around the world predominately arriving in cyberspace via mobile phones will be particularly vulnerable to social media manipulation.

The content of Thursdays testimony points the far-advanced preparations for the establishment of police state forms of rule.

The effort to control speech online is driven by a ruling elite that is immensely fearful of social opposition. Amid growing social inequality and the ever-mounting threat of world war, broad sections of the population, and in particular the working class, are increasingly disillusioned with the capitalist system. Having no social reform to offer, the ruling elites see censorship as the only means to prop up their rule.

Given the explosive content of the statements made at Thursdays hearing, it is extraordinary that they received no significant coverage in either the print or broadcast media.

The hearing took place just one day after the World Socialist Web Site carried its live webinar, Organizing Resistance to Internet Censorship, featuring WSWS chairperson David North and journalist Chris Hedges.

Google is blocking the World Socialist Web Site from search results.

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Facebook and Google outline unprecedented mass censorship at ...

A group of UMass Boston students, professors, and alumni as well as outside advocates are raising concerns about the Confucius Institute that operates on its campus, accusing it of promoting censorship abroad and undermining human rights.

The Chinese government oversees the center, one of more than 90 on campuses across the United States and abroad and one of two in the state.

Confucius Institutes use their foothold in prominent academic institutions to influence and steer academic discourse, the group said in a recent letter to interim chancellor Barry Mills, asking for a meeting to discuss their concerns.

The organizer of the objectors said she hopes to persuade the university to shut down the campus institute.

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The protest is part of a wave of opposition to these centers, which are advertised as tools for cultural exchange and Chinese languages education.

At the University of Massachusetts Boston, the protesters say they are concerned simply that an entity controlled by the communist Chinese government operates within the university. And, they say, they are worried that it recently helped to open similar centers in two local public high schools.

For several years, advocates for academic freedom have expressed alarm about Confucius centers. In 2009, they criticized North Carolina State University after it canceled a talk by the Dalai Lama, reportedly to avoid offending China, which funded a Confucius Institute at that school.

The letter to UMass said the Confucius centers shape public opinion on controversial issues such as Tibetan independence, Chinas relationship with Taiwan, and the Tiananmen Square massacre.

As a result of their presence on campus, whether through direct intervention, or pre-emptive self-censorship, important political and human rights issues are being silenced, the writers said.

A spokesman for the University of Massachusetts said in a statement that the center has contributed to the campus by providing Chinese languages and cultural appreciation programs.

We think the institute has filled the role envisioned when it was established in 2006, with the goal of advancing the mutual understanding of language and culture, said the statement from Bob Connolly.

The UMass center director, Baifeng Sun, declined to speak with the Globe. Gao Qing, executive director of the Confucius Institute US Center in Washington, D.C., which oversees institutes in the United States, said in an e-mail that the center is dedicated to promoting mutual understanding.

A great number of students, community members, and language teachers have been empowered by and benefited from our educational efforts, he wrote.

Unlike cultural institutes run by other foreign governments, such as the stand-alone LAlliance Franaise and Goethe-Institut, the Confucius Institutes are located on American campuses.

The center at UMass Boston offers non-credit Chinese languages and culture classes as well as grants for UMass students to study in China. The center also provides professional development programs for Chinese-language teachers in the region, sponsors a Chinese speech contest for high school students, and works to foster scholarly and business collaborations between China and the United States, according to a UMass spokesman. There is also an institute at Tufts University.

The UMass center operated with a budget of about half a million dollars last year, according to information from the university, including $100,000 from UMass and almost all of the remainder from the Chinese government, including the salary of five employees.

In 2013, UMass extended its original six-year agreement with the institute for another five years, according to a copy of the contract provided by the university.

Amid growing concerns about censorship and propaganda, the University of Chicago and Pennsylvania State University ended their partnerships with the Confucius Institute in 2014.

The center at Chicago closed after more than 100 professors signed a petition calling for the school to cut the center because it lacked control over hiring and training of teachers, according to the Wall Street Journal. When the school cut ties with the center, however, it did not cite academic freedom, instead saying that published remarks about the university by the leader of the Chinese governmental organization that oversees the institutes were incompatible with a continued equal partnership.

The school board of Toronto canceled a potential deal with a center the same year, and another Canadian university shut down its center after one of its teachers complained she was forced to hide her religious beliefs.

The UMass letter was signed by 17 people, including the president of the Boston Language Institute, the director of the Lam Rim Buddhist Center, and the chair of the international board of directors of Students for a Free Tibet, along with people affiliated with the university.

It was organized by Lhadon Tethong, the director of the Tibetan Action Institute, an advocacy organization.

This is the beginning of a campaign to get that Confucius Institute closed, Tethong said.

She said the group is horrified that the center has worked to open so-called Confucius Classrooms in two public schools, Brockton High School and Cambridge Rindge and Latin.

This is just one part of a very scary plan by the Chinese government, Tethong said.

In 2014, the American Association of University Professors published a study that found the centers function as an arm of the Chinese state and are allowed to ignore academic freedom.

The study recommended that Confucius Institutes be closed unless college administrators can ensure total control over academic matters.

Hank Reichman, who chairs a committee on academic freedom and tenure for the association, said the group hoped the study would prompt faculty on individual campuses to ask questions of their administrations.

Whats unusual about the Confucius Institute is this tendency where they provide the faculty, where they seem to have a say-so in curriculum, he said. Thats what is potentially really bothersome.

Michael Hartt, a music professor at UMass Boston, said he signed the letter because he is concerned about Chinese human rights issues that he worked on with Amnesty International.

Its really out of character with the kind of openness and free expression of ideas that one expects of an urban college like UMass Boston, he said.

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In Japan, Article 21 of the Japanese Constitution guarantees freedom of expression and prohibits formal censorship. What censorship does exist is often carried out through Article 175 of the Criminal Code of Japan. Historically the law has been interpreted in different waysrecently it has been interpreted to mean that all pornography must be at least partly censored; however, there have been very few arrests based on this law.[1]

As publishing became more popular in the Edo Period, the Tokugawa shogunate began to turn to censorship. Initial targets included Christianity, criticism of the shogunate, and information on the activities of the Tokugawa clan. With the Kansei Reforms, any material deemed to be disturbing the traditional way of life, as well as luxury publications came under scrutiny. Under the Temp Reforms, printing blocks of erotic literature, as well as the novels of Tamenaga Shunsui and Tanehiko Rytei were among those seized.

After the Meiji Restoration in 1868, which marked a major political shift in Japan, the government began heavy censorship of Western ideas, pornography and any political writings critical of the Emperor of Japan and government, wanting to control the spread of information. Censorship of materials increased from this point, often using ongoing wars to increase police powers and penalties. In 1928, the death penalty was added to the list of punishments deemed acceptable for certain violations. This continued, eventually to the Information and Propaganda Department (, Jhbu) being elevated to the Information Bureau (, Jh Kyoku) in 1940, which consolidated the previously separate information departments from the Army, Navy and Foreign Ministry under the aegis of the Home Ministry. The new Bureau had complete control over all news, advertising and public events. The following year revision of the National Mobilization Law (, Kokka Sdin H) eliminated freedom of the press entirely, doing things such as forcing papers in each prefecture to either merge into one paper or cease publication, with all articles by the paper having to be screened by government censors before they could be published.

After the surrender of Japan in 1945, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers abolished all forms of censorship and controls on Freedom of Speech, which was also integrated into Article 21 of the 1947 Constitution of Japan. However, press censorship remained a reality in the post-war era, especially in matters of pornography, and in political matters deemed subversive by the American government during the occupation of Japan.

According to Donald Keene:

Not only did Occupation censorship forbid criticism of the United States or other Allied nations, but the mention of censorship itself was forbidden. This means, as Donald Keene observes, that for some producers of texts "the Occupation censorship was even more exasperating than Japanese military censorship had been because it insisted that all traces of censorship be concealed. This meant that articles had to be rewritten in full, rather than merely submitting XXs for the offending phrases."

Due to the current interpretation of Article 175 of the Criminal Code of Japan, which forbids distributing "indecent" materials, it is believed that most pornography in Japan must be at least partially censored. The primary means is to put a digital mosaic over genitalia. There have, however, been very few arrests for violations of this law.[1]

The most recent trial based on this law, the first in 20 years, was the conviction of Suwa Yuuji in January 2004 for his hentai manga Misshitsu. He was originally fined 500,000 yen (about 4,900 USD) and avoided jail time by pleading guilty. When he appealed the case to the Supreme Court of Japan on arguments that the manga was not as indecent and explicit as much material on the Internet and that Article 175 violated the Japanese Constitution's protection of freedom of expression, the Court upheld the ruling and the fine was tripled to 1.5 million yen.[citation needed]

After Yuuji's conviction, a number of bookstores and chains removed their adults-only section. Their motivation has been attributed to chilling effect of the outcome.[3]

In July 2013, three people were arrested for selling "obscene images" with "insufficient censoring."[4][5] They later plead guilty in December 2013.[6]

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Censorship in Japan - Wikipedia

Officials of Guinea Bissaus public television channel, (TGB) have announced to the Information Directorate and to the Government that they will no longer accept the rising spate of news censorship in any shape or form.

Francisco Indeque, president of the TGB workers union, presented a petition signed by 88 out of the 141 employees of the station to the director of the countrys only television station.

The signatories bemoaned interference in the discharge of their professional duties and said they will no longer accept the status quo. A copy of the petition was also delivered to the Minister of Social Communication, Victor Pereira.

Of the 141 television employees, 88 have signed the petition. From now on we will not allow censorship of the work of any entity, be it political or social.

Of the 141 television employees, 88 have signed the petition. From now on we will not allow censorship of the work of any entity, be it political or social, noted Francisco Indeque.

According to him, since the creation of TGB in 1989, there has never been so much censorship as now.

TV officials even go to the studio behind the journalist to coerce him into the pieces of news they should cut, Indeque said, stressing that journalists had decided to say no more censorship. Efforts to contact TGBs management has so far proven futile.

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Guinea Bissau state TV employees kick against rising govt censorship - africanews

Tucker Carlson slammed Google's apparent censorship of content not politically agreeable to them company.

"Google seems to be letting politics dictate who is allowed to make money from their platform," Tucker said on his show Thursday.

Talk show hostDave Rubin claimed YouTube financially censored his videos when the platform "demonetized" them.

"It appears at least that there's some pretty shady stuff going on," the host of "The Rubin Report" told Tucker.

The mammoth video platform put out a statement claiming that 90 percent of Rubin's videos were monetized and those that weren't contained adult topics, which are objectionable to some advertisers.

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Rubin disputed this, saying that episodes of his "Larry King-esque" show with no sensitive content were demonetized.

"Unfortunately the lack of transparency there, it took me about two years to get on the phone with them," Rubin said. "I finally did about two weeks ago and didn't really get any answers."

"It sounds ominous," Tucker said. "Somebody needs to keep track of what Google is doing."

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Tucker Warns About 'Ominous' Google Censorship of Political Content - Fox News Insider