03 Apr 18 | Awards, China, Digital Freedom, Fellowship, Fellowship 2016, News and features
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_video link=”https://youtu.be/aT1dO5oekso”][vc_column_text]
GreatFire are the 2016 Digital Activism Fellow
In a speech given this past February at an invitation-only Index event, Index 2016 Digital Awards Fellow GreatFire asked the audience whether “the global internet is bringing free speech, or is China bringing censorship to the global internet?”
Trying to do its part in bringing free speech to Chinese internet users, the anonymous nonprofit recently launched its Patreon crowdfunding campaign on March 30.
In the wake of the March National People’s Congress, which swept away presidential term limits, and Apple’s deal to have state-owned enterprise Guizhou-Cloud Big Data (GCBD) host its data, the fight against Chinese censorship is facing an uncertain future.
“Xi Jinping wants to make sure that all criticism, at home and abroad, can be silenced,” said Charlie Smith, GreatFire co-founder.
Apple is helping Xi Jinping and the Communist Party do just that, according to Smith. In the February speech, GreatFire said, “China’s Communist Party has surprised everyone by becoming experts at censorship technology.”
Smith wouldn’t be surprised if “Apple shared private user information about Apple customers outside of China with the Chinese authorities, in cases where those users may be ‘stirring up trouble’ against China.”
GreatFire’s February speech also cited that “when pressured by a letter from two US senators last year, Apple admitted to having censored more than 700 apps just in the VPN category.”
“Apple is working hand-in-hand with the Chinese authorities to implement censorship, not just in China, but around the world,” said Smith. “At the moment, this mainly affects Chinese [customers] but the writing is on the wall – all Apple customers will soon find that it will become increasingly more difficult and perhaps impossible to access negative information about the ruling Communist Party and party officials.”
However, Smith hopes other big-name companies like Google will re-enter China’s market without having to censor and not follow Apple’s footsteps. In 2010, Google shut down its operations after Chinese human-rights activists had their Gmails hacked, and the company has yet to come back.
“Google has the technical know-how, the expertise and the money to be able to offer an uncensored version of its search engine to an audience in China,” said Smith. “Google has the power to offer a 100% uncensored service to China’s 700 million plus internet users. If we can do it, they can do it.”
[/vc_column_text][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/4″][vc_single_image image=”98218″ img_size=”medium” onclick=”custom_link” link=”https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2018/03/amazing-banned-memes-china/”][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”3/4″][vc_column_text]
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/4″][vc_single_image image=”85698″ img_size=”medium” onclick=”custom_link” link=”https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2017/02/six-sites-blocked-by-chinas-great-firewall”][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”3/4″][vc_column_text]
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_column_text]The February speech also noted that following Google’s departure, “the vast majority of Chinese internet users exclusively use domestic services that are completely controlled by the Communist Party.”
If Google were to re-enter the market without censoring itself, it would destroy “a firewall that is preventing more than 700 million people from freely accessing information [and] would be the most important development in the history since the development of the internet itself,” said Smith.
Unlike his optimism for Google, Smith wishes China had lost Apple to Chinese censorship instead of it mixing its business with GCBD.
“Apple will likely not share transparency reports about requests that the Chinese authorities are making for private information,” said Smith. “People who get detained by the authorities for ‘stirring up trouble,’ which is a common, catch-all description for those who express their displeasure about anything related to the Communist Party, may not even know that they ended up in detention because Apple shared their private information with the authorities.”
With the stage set for the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, journalists, tourists and athletes will be hitting China’s Great Firewall “if companies and individuals do not stand up to [China’s] censorship,” said Smith, adding that “the situation will only get worse.”
Unable to fund its operations directly from Chinese users because of official intimidation, GreatFire’s Patreon launch looks to individuals for financial help, hopefully shifting itself away from reliance on funding organisations.
Because “most internet freedom funding is for shiny new things,” GreatFire is utilizing Patreon to fund its ongoing projects and not new ones, said Smith. Patreon, a member-subscription platform to generate funds for content creators, will allow GreatFire to maintain its existing sites and continue to combat China’s Great Firewall.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1522746056610-05bb1437-96d7-5″ taxonomies=”8199″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
28 Jan 16 | Mapping Media Freedom, News and features, Russia
(Image: /Demotix)
Russia’s media freedom has declined under the government of Vladimir Putin. The president and his allies have used a cloak of legislative legitimacy to target potential opposition to his rule. Mapping Media Freedom correspondents Ekaterina Buchneva and Andrey Kalikh explore what this means for two important sectors of the Russian media.
Print and broadcast media
By Ekaterina Buchneva, Mapping Media Correspondent
Under Russia’s law on mass media amended in autumn 2014, foreign owners are restricted to 20% of shares in media organisations in the country. Its authors said that the legislation would halt the West’s “cold information war”. The law has triggered major changes in the Russian media market and, as critics warned when the law was passed, was used to replace international investors with locals loyal to the Kremlin.
The Russian edition of Forbes magazine, formerly owned by German media conglomerate Axel Springer and known for its independent editorial policy, was sold to businessman Alexey Fedotov, who immediately said that the publication was “too focused on politics” and should cover more business news. In January 2016, the magazine named Nikolay Uskov as its new editor-in-chief. Uslov, a former editor-in-chief of the Russian edition of GQ, has never worked in business journalism.
Finland’s Sonoma Independent Media, America’s Dow Jones and the UK’s Pearson also had to sell their shares in Vedomosti, the main business newspaper known for its critical opinion pieces. Now the paper’s new — and only — owner is Demian Kudryavtsev, a business partner of oligarch Boris Berezovsky, who died in 2013, and a former chief executive of major Russian publishing house Kommersant. Kudryavtsev also purchased The Moscow Times, the country’s only English-language daily. Some journalists were concerned about the origin of the money Kudryavtsev used in the deal and suggested that there was another buyer behind him.
The media ownership law also affected a number of glossy magazines, which, as one of the law’s author said, “squeeze articles favorable to the West and the fifth column in between news about cars and glamorous watches”, and entertainment television channels. CTC Media sold 75% of its shares to loyal to the Kremlin oligarch Alisher Usmanov, who also owns the Kommersant publishing house.
The Russian broadcasters of CNN, Cartoon Network and Boomerang, as well as 11 television channels of Discovery group, came under the control of Media Alliance, 80% of which belongs to National Media Group. The president of NMG, which also owns a number of Russian media organisations, including RenTV, Channel Five, Izvestia newspaper and 25% of Сhannel One, is Kirill Kovalchuk, a nephew of Putin’s old friend Yuri Kovalchuk.
Tightening control over foreign publishers
In addition, in December 2015, another bill with new amendments to the “law about mass media” was introduced into the Russian State Duma. It contains more limitations for media organisations, some of them refer to foreign publishers.
The bill suggests new legal background — violation of anti-extremism legislation — for denying or revoking distribution permit for foreign publishers. Among the ones that now have such permits are Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, China Daily, European Weekly, GQ, Cosmopolitan, Esquire, Tatler, Vogue, and some papers from CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) countries, including Expert.Ukraine magazine.
“The problem is vagueness and inconsistency of the anti-extremism legislation itself and the practice of its implementation by the Russian authorities,” says Damir Gainutdinov, lawyer of Inter-regional Association of Human Rights Organisations “Agora”.
“It is primarily about Article 1 of the Federal Law on Countering Extremist Activity, which gives a definition of extremism, extremist materials, etc. In practice, this definition is used not only for hate crimes but also, for example, criticism of the Russian authorities. Condemnation of the Crimea annexation is recognised as calls for infringement of the territorial integrity of Russia, as it was in the case of Rafis Kashapov (Tatar activist from Tatarstan, who was convinced in September 2015 to three years in jail for posting informational materials criticising Crimea annexation), and criticism of the United Russia is recognised as the incitement of hatred to a social group, as it was in the case of prohibition of video clips by Navalny (a few activists were found guilty of distribution of extremist materials for posting a video by opposition leader Alexey Navalny titled ‘Let’s recall manifest-2002 to crooks and thieves’, on social media). Therefore, any unenthusiastic article published by foreign media may be recognised as a violation of anti-extremist legislation. Another thing is that this applies only to the print media. Since February 2014, it works much easier with websites; they can be just blocked by orders of the general prosecutor office.”
According to the bill, the foreign publishers also will have to pay a fee for issuing a distribution permit. The authors explained that it would “eliminate the unfair advantage of the founders of foreign publications that provides them with more favorable business conditions”.
Another bill, that was already approved by the State Duma, requires Russian media organisations to inform Roskomnadzor (The Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of Telecom, Information Technologies and Mass Communications) about foreign funding, including funding from foreign states, international organisations and Russian NGOs that were considered “foreign agents”. The minimum amount of money that should be declared is 15,000 roubles (less than $200). Penalties for not notifying Roskomnadzor will be fines of 30-50,000 roubles (about $400-600) for officials and the amount of money received for companies. A repeated violation will be punished with a fine of 80,000 roubles (about $1,000) and triples amount of money received.
This bill resembles the one adopted in June 2012 by the Russian State Duma, requiring NGOs to register as “foreign agents”, says Damir Gainutdinov. “First, it is a simple registration and then more and more new burdens will be introduced, for example, state bodies will deny accreditation of such media organisations, officials will be banned from giving them interviews and answering their questions … An additional mandatory audit and special checks of staff could be introduced, who knows what else.”
The bill about foreign funding could affect a number of media platforms – from Colta.ru that cover art and culture to Mediazonа that highlights problems of the Russian justice and the penal system.
Limitations for founders of media organisations
Another block of amendments introduces a new restriction for media founders. It suggests that those, who have unspent or unexpunged convictions for crimes against the constitutional order, public security and public safety, can not found a media organisation.
Those crimes include a number of criminal articles – from hooliganism and repeated violation of rules of organising or holding rallies and demonstrations to espionage and treason. But the most tricky ones are incitement of hatred and abasement of human dignity (Article 282 of the Criminal Code of Russia), public calls for extremism (Article 280) and public calls for infringement of the territorial integrity of Russia (Article 280.1), says Damir Gainutdinov. “These articles are used for persecution of dissenters. In absolute numbers, there are not many cases like this against journalists, but such practice is developing gradually – Stomaknih, Yushkov, Kashapov”.
However, these limitations could not prevent dissenters from taking part in media management at different positions. For example, Pussy Riot members Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alekhina, who were convinced for hooliganism, founded Mediazona platform, but as Tolokonnikova told RBC newspaper, they were not officially registered as founders as they had foreseen possible legal problems.
Internet
By Andrey Kalikh, Mapping Media Correspondent
Russia’s environment for freedom of expression on the internet has declined precipitously since 2002 when the law on Counteracting Extremism was adopted. The definition of extremism used in the law is vague and overly broad, according to Aleksandr Verkhovski, an expert on extremism from the SOVA Information and Analytical Centre in Moscow. Verkhovski said that the law was written to keep independent media, oppositional political parties, and “not official” religious confessions under control.
In 2012, the anti-extremism law was amended to empower Roskomnadzor, the state media and communication watchdog, to launch the United Register of Banned Websites. The modifications also enabled the agency to add websites that have “extremist content” without judicial approval. Once a site is added to the list, Russia’s internet services providers are obliged to block it. Within days of the changes, several independent media outlets and political opposition sites websites and blogs — Grani.ru, Ej.ru, Alexei Navalny’s blog — were blacklisted in the country.
On 30 December 2015 a district court in the Siberian city of Tomsk sentenced blogger Vadim Tyumentsev to five years in prison for two videos he posted on his YouTube page.
In the first video, the blogger criticised the local government’s decision to raise the cost of fares on the city’s public transport. In the second video, he said that authorities help refugees from eastern Ukraine more than they help local residents.
The court recognised both of Tyumentcev’s videos as “having extremist character”. Ekaterina Galyautdinova, the presiding judge, gave Tyumentsev a sentence even longer than the prosecutor had pursued. She also banned Tyumentsev from posting online for three years.
The Tyumentcev case is far from the first time that a blogger has been subjected to a prosecution. In 2007, Savva Terentyev, a blogger from the Siberian city of Syktyvkar, was sentenced to a large fine for “offending a social group” – in this case, the local police force – by writing about bad behaviour and human rights abuses committed by officers. In 2012, Maxim Efimov, a blogger from Petrozavodsk, Republic of Karelia, faced prosecution after he posted an article under the headline.
In 2012, Maxim Efimov, a blogger from Petrozavodsk, Republic of Karelia, faced prosecution after he posted an article under the headline “Karelia is tired of priests”, in which he criticised the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church. Efimov left Russia and was subsequently granted political asylum in Estonia.
That same year the Prosecutor General Office blocked the website and blog of Alexei Navalny, blogger and opposition leader, for allegedly calling “for mass disorders”. Navalny was sentenced to the administrative detention for 15 days and faced other accusations related to his political activities.
“Bloggers law”
In August 2014, the Russian State Duma adopted a number of amendments to communication legislation. The so-called “bloggers law” required sites with more than 3,000 visitors a day to register with Roskomnadzor and observe the same rules as much larger media outlets.
Under the amendments, all site owners and social media users are required to disclose their names and email address on their websites. Owners and users must keep all the information published on the web including personal data for at least six months and immediately submit to the law enforcement bodies on demand.
Moreover, Roskomnadzor received the right to request personal information from all site owners and users.
Most recently, as of 1 January 2016, the “bloggers law” requires all websites and social media platforms to keep all personal data of Russian users on servers within Russian territory. Failing to do this means Roskomnadzor can block the site or service. Companies can either comply or cease doing business in Russia.
According to the Roskomnadzor spokesman Vladimir Ampelonski, some foreign companies submitted to the requirement and brought their servers to Russia. However, some companies — Google, Facebook and Apple — have defied implementing this change. Facebook representatives met with the authority’s deputy chief, Aleksandr Zharov. At the meeting the company said it will not observe the law because it is “economically disadvantageous”, the Vedomosti newspaper reported.
Empowering the FSB
After Putin’s re-election in 2012, Russian security service FSB’s powers were considerably expanded. Articles of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation on high treason, espionage and disclosure of state secrets were widened and made ever more vague by introducing language on cooperation with any “foreign organisation, or their representatives in hostile activities to the detriment of the external security of the Russian Federation”.
The FSB has further tried to make investigative journalism more by lobbying members of the State Duma to pass a draft law limiting access to information on commercial real estate transactions. If passed, the law would make it impossible to uncover cases of illicit enrichment by government officials.
This article was originally published on Index on Censorship.
22 Apr 15 | mobile, News and features, United Kingdom
On 27 March 2015, a group of claimants in the United Kingdom, including myself, won what is being called a “landmark victory” against Google Inc. It handles three billion searches a day globally, exercises a virtual monopoly and is valued at around £250 billion. It is also among the world’s biggest advertising agencies with revenue in 2013 of some £49 billion.
After fighting the claim for over two years, Google has been ordered to appear in court in the UK to answer the charges of invasion of privacy by the tracking and collation of browser generated information (BGI) via Apple’s Safari browser. In other words, “hacking” computer searches by getting behind the protections built into Safari on Apple devices – iPhone, iPad and Mac computers – in order to track the user’s browsing preferences. Google is thereby able to determine private information such as age, health issues, gender, sexual interests and preferences, and to sell this information to advertisers who can target the users. This is no different from what is commonly called “stalking”, only on a global scale.
But let’s begin at the beginning. In 2012, Simon Davies, one of the UK’s leading voices on the virtues of privacy, contacted me about the possibility of suing the internet search giant for the invasion of privacy. Three years later, after much to-ing and fro-ing in the British courts, what began as a speculative long-shot has taken wing in the legal imagination, becoming an important test case for the boundaries of privacy law in the UK and, by extension, the EU. This concerns not only the nature of privacy as understood in the context of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, but the definition of the term “damages’ in the context of the Data Protection Act (DPA) of 1988. For many in the legal profession, the chief significance of the case is in the possibility it opens up of suing non-resident companies and individuals in English courts on privacy-related grounds. This is a game changer and could set a precedent in UK law.
“You have a Mac, don’t you?” said Simon. “Yes, and an iPhone,” I replied. “Have you done much searching on Safari recently?” “More than usual as it happens. My car insurance, driving license and road tax were all up for renewal in November. And I’ve been shopping online, not something I usually do, but with grandchildren’s very specific Christmas demands only available there, I’ve been more active than usual in territory I don’t normally venture into.” All this in addition to my standard use of the internet in pursuit of facts, figures and data-checking familiar to any journalist or editor.
He went on to ask if I’d had been receiving an unusual amount of targeted advertising. Indeed I had! Given that Apple boasts of the superior security of its Safari browser, this was not only unusual, it was alarming. What had been going on? It seemed that Google had circumvented Safari’s default setting whereby cookies – small chunks of text with unique information such as the time of a user’s visit to a site – are accepted only if they come directly from the sites that users are browsing.
According to The Guardian, “Google wanted to use its DoubleClick and other ad systems to track where people go online, so that it can serve ‘relevant’ ads. It also wanted to be able to integrate its Google+ data into that information.” As the US-based Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) noted: “That had the side effect of completely undoing all of Safari’s protections against doubleclick.net.” It was, it added, “Like a balloon popped with a pinprick, all of Safari’s protections against DoubleClick were gone.”
Playing catch-up
The thought of making a claim, any claim, against Google was laughable. This was several years before Edward Snowden’s revelations of the NSA and GCHQ snooping activities in June 2013 raised privacy issues to a new level and put them squarely on the public agenda. It also preceded Google’s subsequent settlement with the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for the same offence. But it coincided with the revelation of News International’s massive phone hacking of celebrities, politicians, the Royal Family and, above all, of the murdered schoolgirl Millie Dowler. It was this that excited the public imagination and raised the matter of privacy to a new level. Suddenly it mattered in a different way; more personal, more threatening to the ordinary person in the street. The Leveson Inquiry kept the issue on the front pages through much of 2011 and 2012.
What is at stake here? How should we understand privacy in the different contexts in which we live and interact online? What powers should consumers have over their data? How can the power of corporations and advertisers be reined in? We are urgently in need of new definitions and concepts; those that served us even a decade ago are no longer adequate given the exponential advance of digital technology. What does “territoriality” or “residence” mean when Google can stretch out its hand from California and rifle through our data as we sit at our computers thousands of miles away? How can “jurisdiction” be confined to a geographical entity in the age of cyber crime and the global reach of search engines and browsers? What do we mean by “privacy” online when people are giving it away freely, not to say promiscuously, on social networking sites such as Facebook, Instagram and YouTube? And finally, though the case was not brought with this in mind, can “damages” be limited to pecuniary loss alone as apparently determined by the DPA?
The case against Google is not only about holding Google to account, but about beginning to clarify and modernise rules and definitions. Most important, it is about creating the laws needed to hold Google et. al. to account. As Guy Aitchison wrote in Open Democracy: “We are to a great extent playing catch-up. The rapidity of technological change has vastly outpaced the development of our laws, institutions and regulatory systems, along with the articulation of the ethical categories and principles with which to understand and evaluate them.”
Or, as Tim Berners Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, put it: we need an “online Magna Carta” to protect the web. His “Web We Want” campaign was launched on UN Human Rights Day last year and calls on “ordinary people” to take control of the web and challenge “those who seek to control [it] for their own purposes”. It is within that context that we decided to pursue the present case.
A landmark judgment
It was not until June 2013 that we were allowed to serve our claim on Google to appear in a UK court to answer our accusations. Google was quick to point out that since it was not domiciled in the UK and did not pay taxes here, the courts had no authority to try the case and it would not answer our summons. We were, it said dismissively, entirely welcome to confront them on its home ground in California and set about getting this decision reversed. It did not deny the charges; on the contrary, Google admitted in February 2012 in the US that it had done precisely what we claimed. For this it had been fined by the FTC a record 22.5 million dollars for breaching the privacy of US users. In 2013, it paid a further 17m dollars to 37 US states plus the District of Columbia for the same offence. Following these judgements, Google promised not to repeat the activity and said it was taking all necessary measures to put right the damage it had caused.
In August 2013, Google was granted permission to challenge the decision and in January 2014 appeared before London’s High Court. Mr Justice Tugendhat rejected all Google’s arguments, namely that:
1. the cause of action was not a “tort” (see below);
2. there was no serious issue to be tried in relation to the claim in misuse of private information/breach of confidence;
3. there was no serious issue to be tried in relation to the claim for breach of the Data Protection Act 1998;
4. the claimants had not shown that England was clearly the most appropriate forum for the trial of the claims;
5. “damage’ means significant physical or economic harm and no such damage was alleged by the claimants.
Under the UK’s complex legal system, Google was able up the stakes and go one higher in its effort to evade UK justice. In the hope that it would reverse Tugendhat’s ruling, it went to the Court of Appeal.
And, for almost a year we waited; the courts of England are second only to the “mills of God” in the speed of their actions. Finally, in December 2014, we returned to court, but the single day allowed for the hearing proved inadequate and again we waited. It was not until March 2015 that the Appeal hearing was concluded over a further two days. Listening to the legal jargon, the citation of innumerable precedents and the complexities of the technical issues involved was mind-numbing: a six-hour-long address by the counsel for Google on the definition of the word “tort” came close to watching the proverbial paint dry. On later investigation, this word so crucial to the case turned out to mean a civil wrong causing damage to the persons involved and demanding redress in court. Because the invasion of privacy had previously never been considered a tort, Google argued that it could not be tried as a civil offence in a UK court.
Once again, the judge dismissed all Google’s claims, leaving us open to pursue the case. Announced on 27 March, it was a famous victory or, in the words of the lawyers involved, “a landmark judgment”. The Master of the Rolls, the Right Honourable Lord Dyson concluded in brief that:
On the face of it, these claims raise serious issues which merit a trial. They concern what is alleged to have been the secret and blanket tracking and collation of information, often of an extremely private nature, as specified in the confidential schedules, about and associated with the claimants’ internet use, and the subsequent use of that information for about nine months. The case relates to the anxiety and distress this intrusion upon autonomy has caused.
In addition to determining the matter of “serving out” on non-residents, it clarifies some important issues – the nature of privacy and its definition in law, the definition of damages – and prepares the ground for the determination of future law in this area, a change that reflects the changing nature of “privacy” in the world of global information technology.
What next?
Yet the so-called “landmark judgment” aroused little excitement in the UK media. Could it be that everyone is simply waiting for the next chapter? Or do the suspicions in some quarters that even the media is running scared of Google have some traction?
Much depends on what Google does next. Will it choose to up the ante once more by going to the Supreme Court? Or will it acknowledge the error of its ways and face trial? In the event that the Supreme Court refuses an appeal, will it settle out of court to avoid a potentially damaging judgement?
We shall see. Meanwhile, it’s only fair to acknowledge that Google is not entirely the monster this case presents it as. Not only does it provide a service without which most of us would be ineptly fumbling our way around the web, it is an employer of 50,000. Their terms and condition of employment are such as to foster the envy of their peers. But the utopian dystopia of Dave Eggers 2013 novel The Circle, whose inhabitants lead an isolated cult-like existence reminiscent of some of the more bizarre sects in the US might be nearer the mark.
And it can acknowledge fault, even though it has defended its record on privacy by claiming that much of its illicit information gathering was “by mistake”. As Google’s head of “people operations”, aka human resources, Lazlo Bock admitted in an interview in The Guardian: “There’s a lot of responsibility that comes with having a global brand and the kind of footprint we have and the kind of impact we have and we need to live up to that.”
Corporate responsibility is one thing, however, and abiding by the law another. The days when Google was free to roam the unregulated territories of the internet are slowly, but surely, coming to an end.
A full account of the appeal judgement in Vidal-Hall et al. v Google, including technical and legal terms and definitions, plus details of the claim are available at: www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2015/311.html
Editor’s Note: Google is a funder of Index on Censorship
This article was originally posted at Eurozine
02 Dec 11 | Uncategorized
Apple responded yesterday to accusations that it had in some way censored content on the iPhone 4S software Siri, which until recently largely omitted any information on contraception. The ACLU has started a petition urging Apple to fix the problem by giving the endowing “personal assistant” with knowledge about reproductive services, such as birth control and abortion. Apple adamantly denied any claim of censorship. Natalie Karris, a spokesperson for Apple said in a phone interview: “Our customers want to use Siri to find out all types of information, and while it can find a lot, it doesn’t always find what you want. These are not intentional omissions meant to offend anyone. It simply means that as we bring Siri from beta to a final product, we find places where we can do better, and we will in the coming weeks.”
The absence of information on contraception would not have been so glaring if it were not for the host of other random facts and quippy responses that Siri is capable of pontificating, including information on Viagra. (When asked to “beam me up,” Siri responds “stand still.” It also responds helpfully to the questions “Where should I dump a body?” and “How much wood could a wood chuck chuck?”)
The glitch was first reported on a blog called “the Abortioneers.” Several upset users have accused Apple of being pro-life, pointing to Siri’s knowledge of adoption centers, baby stores and pregnancy resource centers. Apple denies any bias on the issue, saying that the program is in no way intentionally leaving out information, but simply a work in progress. Normal Winarsky, one of the founders of Siri before Apple bought it in 2010, says Siri was designed to obtain response data from third-party services, and that this could be responsible for the disconnect.
