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GRAHAM A policy to regulate how comments and suggestions from the public are presented to the city council was adopted Tuesday, but not without at least one resident warning the action bordered on censorship.

The resolution was initially suggested in January by councilman Chip Turner following an acrimonious election season in Graham, particularly in the mayors race, in which members of the public stood to speak on occasion to blast the council and mayor for what they called lack of leadership.

The 11-point proposal calls, in part, for anyone wishing to speak to sign up from 15 minutes before the meeting until the time for comments to be heard, usually at the end of the meeting agenda. Items addressed by the public should not be items already on the agenda or items scheduled for closed-door considerations.

Comments would be limited to four minutes per speaker. Presentations should remain civil in their language and presentation. Speakers must address the council, not a particular member, and discussions between speakers and members of the audience will not be allowed. It is recommended that if there are several people wishing to speak to the same subject, they choose one person to speak for them all.

Speakers would not be allowed to discuss the candidacy of any person seeking public office, including the speaker. This item brought complaint from Ron James, who ran for the council in the November election.

Youre on dangerous ground, he said. This is close to censorship. He added that if a councilman worries about his character being defamated cq, he shouldnt have run for council.

Mayor Jerry Peterman countered that the policy is not censorship, but a way to keep meetings running smoothly and more efficiently.

Its not censorship, he said, adding comments in the meeting were not like comments made in public on a street corner.

Why would you want to come to the council and discuss someones candidacy anyway? councilman Turner asked.

James maintained any restriction on speech is censorship and should be avoided.

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Graham council changes policy on public comments

This past weekend, the Supreme Peoples Court (SPC) presented its work report which, as usual, was chock full of statistics and vague policy guidance language. There were also a number of accompanying speeches by officials and the usual Op/Eds commenting on everything. Quite a few potential topics there, but I want to briefly mention the issue of public opinion and its role in the judicial system.

Charlie Custer wrote a quick post about censorship and transparency aspects today, which is a good way to start this off:

Yesterday, Chinas Supreme Court president Wang Shengjun gave the Courts work report to Chinas National Peoples Congress. In it, he said something that has captured the attention of Chinese net users:

[...We must] place emphasis on listening to the opinions of the grassroots masses and other strata of society, we must place more emphasis on supervising public opinions about the news, we must pay more attention to the mood on the internet, respond quickly to the concerns of society, and unceasingly strengthen and improve the work of the Court.

Its a short statement, to be sure, but in the eyes of a Hunan Supreme Court justice who spoke with theBeijing Times, it is suggesting that the Court will push for tighter controls on the internet but that it also may open up some information about high-profile cases in response to the demands of the net-using public.

As is usually the case, whenever the government here discusses public opinion, the ensuing conversation focuses on censorship and transparency (the supervising part), with a special emphasis on Internet-based platforms like Weibo and bulletin board systems. No great surprise here given past efforts to manage such channels and current regulatory initiatives, including the various real name systems. Moreover, the governments continued emphasis on such management is obvious you cant swing a dead cat without hitting an official making a speech about the pernicious effects of online rumor-mongering.

But I always like to bring up another issue that is almost always ignored in these discussions, and that is the matter of judicial independence. Keep in mind that the SPC report and related commentary was primarily about the judiciary, and not public security or regulation of the Internet. And when we talk about public opinion, there are (at least) two issues here: the ability of citizens to make and access public statements, and how that information is then digested and used. Using the above language, the issues are supervision of and listening to public opinion.

The first issue, involving management of public opinion, is the one that gets the most attention generally; as the topic has political significance, this is appropriate. But the second issue is much more important in terms of the judiciary itself. As Ive pondered many times before in earlier posts, what is the role of public opinion when it comes to the judicial system? Or to put it another way, should judges be influenced by public opinion, and if so, how much weight should this be given?

Keep in mind that the topic of judicial independence is a complex and important one. Discussions of judicial independence in China usually focus on political influence, not the effects of public opinion. Obviously the former has much more influence on judicial action than the latter. That doesnt mean, however, that public opinion does not sway judges and prosecutors there have been several high-profile criminal cases in the past few years that illustrate this point quite well.

So when the judicial establishment talks about listening to the grassroots masses, this could refer to a number of things. Primarily it means paying attention to sensitive issues like local corruption, land misappropriation, environmental degradation disputes that lead to social instability. This sounds all well and good, since we want the judicial system to take an active role in solving these problem. But what does it really mean that the judiciary should listen?

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Public Opinion and the Judiciary: Moving Beyond Censorship

Published Date: March 12, 2012

Tags: censorship, extremist, Internet, Pakistan, religion

HUMAN rights activists have attacked Pakistans move to censor the internet, saying it is playing into the hands of extremists.

This is a horrible prospect we protested against crackdowns on news channels during past dictatorships and this democratic government is no different, said Saeda Deep, founder of the Institute of Peace and Secular Studies which is presently running an online petition against the move.

Restricting access to information and social media discussions will favor the agendas of extremists. Hackers will find access as always; government should concentrate [on] providing the poor with the basic necessities of life, she said.

The outcry comes after the government announced it wanted internet companies to introduce a nationwide filtering system and restrict access to 50 million web addresses. The aim is to block adult and blasphemous content.

Pakistan Telecommunication Authority says it has already blocked 13,000 porn sites, and thousands of websites with alleged blasphemous content deemed offensive to Islam, as well as hundreds of sites and blogs run by Baloch separatists.

Report from ucanews.com

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Pakistan activists criticize internet censorship

One of the enduring images of the final days of the Libyan civil war was Sky News reporting live from inside rebel trucks as they swept into Tripoli and finally ended Muammar Gaddafis stranglehold on the country.

The rebels were eager to engage with the international media to get their message out when they were fighting for freedom. Now that they are in power, the same media has started to scrutinise them and their policies, which is something the new temporary government initially found hard to deal with.

Their concerns, and how best to create a modern media framework, were some of the issues raised when a delegation from the National Transitional Council (NTC) met in Doha at Northwestern University Qatars campus to debate the issues and try and decide on how best to move forward.

After four decades of autocratic rule, Libya is now in a position to create an independent, national media system that meets the needs of its people, Abdulhafeedh Ghoga, vice chairman of the NTC and head of delegation, said at the time. These principles and action items will serve as guideposts as we seek to put in place the type of media environment required by a vibrant, modern state.

In January, Ghogas resignation made global headlines, something that Everette E Dennis, Dean and CEO of Northwestern University Qatar (NU-Q), says demonstrates how important the future of Libya is regarded internationally.

The departure of the vice president of a transitional government wouldnt have made a ripple [a few years ago] but now it is up there. People are watching these things.

The Libyan experience was fostered by cultivation work we were doing in the region and looking around at what was happening post-Arab Spring. It was evident Libya was the perfect case... Basically a devastated institution and infrastructure, it was a basket case and a place where all media was state-owned and not a lot was happening, Dennis says of the creation of the think tank designed to aid the new Libyan government.

What we talked about was some of the principles of why you need freedom of expression and what that helps a country do and match that up with what models might work. Is it going to be a private-sector model? Is it going to be a public service BBC-version model or some kind of state model, which is what they have now? So we worked through those.

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Rebels with a cause

Jakarta (The Jakarta Post/ANN) - Two leading Asian tech companies are looking to capitalize on the Indonesian market's zest for social networking this year, targeting to net at least 8 million local users for their products and services by the end of 2012.

Sean Zhang, Asia-Pacific director of Tencent Mobile Global, said that they planned to launch their products in the local market next month.

Tencent runs China's largest instant messenger service (IM), QQ, which had 711.7 million active users as of September 2011. The company also operates the web portal qq.com.

"Actually, the first thing for us this year is to introduce our QQ Browser and Qute," Zhang said.

Zhang added that the company's browser and its Qute messaging application would be "totally" cross-platform, as the products would be available for a variety of mobile phones, ranging from smartphones using the Android operating system to feature phones using Java.

He added that the QQ Browser would even allow users of lower-end feature phones to surf the Internet, while Qute would allow mobile phone users to message each other regardless of the model of their phones.

Only a few mobile instant messenger programs are in wide use in Indonesia, led by the popular BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) program, which supports messaging between BlackBerry smartphone users only.

Zhang added that Tencent was wanted to collaborate with local partners to ensure its products were usable by different mobile phone models.

"We try to cooperate with operators to provide very cost-effective products to end-users. There will be a data plan for the QQ Browser and Qute, so it will be very easy for users to use."

Zhang added that the data traffic generated by the products would translate into revenue for operators.

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Japanese, Chinese social media gamers mull entering Indonesia