19 Sep 2013 | Digital Freedom, News and features, Politics and Society, United States
David Carr recently reported in the New York Times that journalist Barrett Brown could face a 100-year prison term if he’s found guilty for linking to stolen information. He didn’t steal this information himself, nor did he post it online. He simply linked to it.
Brown is a dogged journalist who has done important and revealing reporting on the business of surveillance. His work has appeared in BusinessWeek, the Guardian, the Huffington Post and Vanity Fair. He has also served at times as a self-appointed spokesman for Anonymous, the leaderless Web collective of hackers and activists.
As a victim, he’s imperfect, Carr writes. Brown has struggled with substance abuse and by all accounts hasn’t always been easy to get along with. For example, he threatened an FBI agent and his family by name in a video he posted to YouTube.
Brown came to the government’s attention when he linked in a chat room to material Anonymous had posted online.
In recent years, Anonymous has hacked into the computer systems of a number of intelligence and surveillance firms who contract with the government and the biggest corporations. These firms helped craft elaborate campaigns to attack and discredit activists and journalists on behalf of corporate clients and have received huge government contracts for other projects.
By all accounts, Brown doesn’t have the technical ability or knowhow to have participated in the hacking that exposed these documents. But once they were released, Brown set up a research organization, Project PM, to sort through the documents and report on what they contained.
“The files contained revelations about close and perhaps inappropriate ties between government security agencies and private contractors,” Carr writes. But they also contained credit-card information and private emails.
When Brown linked to these files in a chat room, he “provided access” to stolen information, the government says. Prosecutors charged him with 12 counts related to identity theft.
The notion that linking to stolen material makes the linker a party to the original crime is absurd. And the severity of the charges is clearly meant to send a message to journalists and whistleblowers everywhere. Viewed in light of the Chelsea Manning case and the Edward Snowden leaks, the Brown case appears part and parcel of the government’s crackdown on activists who leak information and the journalists who report on them.
Carr reminds us that journalists frequently link to stolen documents. The Times’ most recent articleon the Snowden documents did so. The Electronic Frontier Foundation also points to a leak of congressional staffer passwords that many news organizations linked to. And this practice is only likely to expand.
“News organizations in receipt of leaked documents are increasingly confronting tough decisions about what to publish,” Carr writes, “and are defending their practices in court and in the court of public opinion, not to mention before an administration determined to aggressively prosecute leakers.”
The Committee to Protect Journalists responded in more forceful terms, arguing that the government’s handling of this case “threatens the nature of the Web, as well as the ethical duty of journalists to verify and report the truth.”
Indeed, in the U.S. and the U.K. we’ve seen shocking efforts to harass and intimidate journalistsworking on national security and surveillance issues. The Barrett Brown case follows a similar narrative.
When Brown posted the link to the Anonymous documents in a chat room, the government tracked him down at his mother’s home and tried to seize his laptop. When he and his mother refused to hand over the computer, the FBI threatened to throw Brown’s mother in jail. Here’s how the Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald describes the harassment:
Over the next several months, FBI agents continued to harass not only Brown but also his mother, repeatedly threatening to arrest her and indict her for obstruction of justice for harboring Brown and helping him conceal documents by letting him into her home.”
Brown’s mother eventually pled guilty but has yet to be sentenced. Brown lashed out at the FBI, threatening one agent by name, in the video he posted to YouTube. Those threats gave the FBI cause to arrest Brown and he has been in custody ever since.
While threats of this sort should be taken seriously, so too should the ongoing harassment of journalists and their families.
The New York Times story on Barrett Brown is important because it comes on the heels of a gag order that prohibits people involved in his case from speaking to the press. The legal fees for the case are expected to exceed $200,000 and an activist has established a defense fund.
Links are the connective tissue of the Internet. They enable us to share news, discover new information, dig deeper into issues and give credit to sources. The government’s effort to criminalize linking is akin to rewiring how the Internet works. It will have a chilling effect on how journalists report on sensitive government matters.
This case also has a bearing on all of us who post links to Facebook, tweet articles or blog about the news of the day.
This article was originally posted on 13 Sept 2013 at freepress.net and is reproduced here by permission.
10 Sep 2013 | China, Digital Freedom, News and features
(Photo illustration: Shutterstock)
A new Harvard study for the first time provides an inside look at the complex system of Chinese social media censorship. The report confirms a little-known theory: while messages referencing direct political action are banned, criticism of the communist leadership is often allowed.
To get behind the scenes of censorship, the researchers created their own social media website and signed up to 100 existing ones. These included ‘Chinese Twitter’ Sina Weibo (weibo.com) and Tencent Weibo (t.qq.com) which combined have over 500 million users, as well as blogging platforms that represent 87% of blog posts on the web.
They found that messages are either published immediately and reviewed by a censor within 24 hours, or automatically held for review before publication based on keywords used in the text. One list of such keywords, offered by software companies to clients running social media sites, included ‘go on the streets’, ‘Dalai Lama’ and ‘corruption’.
Sixty-six of the sites tested reviewed at least some of the messages; 41% of the 1,200 messages they posted were reviewed, and 63% of those did not make it online.
But in what may come as a surprise to some, the study found that criticism of leaders and the state are often allowed. The messages that are cracked down on are those related to ‘collective action potential’ – civil unrest that might stir citizens to act.
The report suggest authorities might even welcome such criticism, because it alerts them that an official is incompetent or corrupt and allows them to replace him or her, ‘maintaining stability, and the system can then be seen as responsive.’
The study also found that private company censors are more likely to censor after publication, as they are under less direct government control than state censors. But the extra care taken by state censors can backfire. Pre-publishing reviews are often based on keywords, like corruption, that can be used in both pro- and anti-government messages. In other words, even government praise is restricted by censorship.
This article was originally published on 10 Sept 2013 at indexoncensorship.org
9 Sep 2013 | Digital Freedom, News and features, Politics and Society, United States
(Photo: David von Blohn / Demotix)
It seems you can’t step away from the computer for more than a few hours these days without a story revealing previously secret information about the National Security Agency (NSA) setting the internet aflame. The scandal has sparked an investigative journalism renaissance with virtually every major news organisation in the country—not just the keepers of the Snowden files—getting in on the act.
Several stories of critical significance broke in the last two weeks. First, the Wall Street Journal reported that the NSA’s surveillance system, “has the capacity to reach roughly 75% of all U.S. internet traffic in the hunt for foreign intelligence, including a wide array of communications by foreigners and Americans.” The Journal detailed the NSA’s direct access to telecommunications’ fiber optic cables around the country and their extraordinary reach into many corners of the web.
The next day, the administration finally released the 2011 FISA court opinion ruling some NSA surveillance unconstitutional, making front-page news around the country. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, the organization for which I work, has been suing the Justice Department for its release for over a year. The ruling showed the NSA had vacuumed up more than a 150,000 Americans’ emails, only alerting the court to a collection method that had been in place for three years. The court also accused the NSA of “material misrepresentation regarding the scope of a major collection program” on two other occasions.
Until two weeks ago, the administration had stuck to the talking point that all the privacy violations were unintentional. That was already cold comfort to Americans, as the Washington Post had previously reported, based on Snowden documents, that the NSA has been committing thousands of privacy violations, however unintentional, affecting untold number of people per year. And the numbers seem to be increasing.
Soon after the FISA court opinion was released, Bloomberg News revealed that a still-classified NSA inspector general’s report documented “approximately a dozen” willful privacy over the last decade by the NSA. This contradicted many previous statements by government officials, including NSA chief Keith Alexander, who said “no one has wilfully or knowingly disobeyed the law or tried to invade your civil liberties or privacy” at a speech on August 8.
The Wall Street Journal followed up, detailing how many of these violations consisted of analysts following former spouses or partners (nicknamed “LOVEINT”). The Journal explained that most of the violations were self-reported. How many went unreported we will likely never know.
Couple this with the fact that NBC News reported how Edward Snowden was able to browse the NSA networks for months without detection, and you have an agency which claims it has strict internal oversight procedures in place, but seems to have only one real mechanism for enforcement: self policing.
Amazingly, all of these stories have come since President Obama was forced to address the issue at a press conference just three and a half weeks ago in response to the first wave of stories published by the Guardian and Washington Post. At that point, the sea change in public opinion about civil liberties and privacy had become clear and Congressmen in both parties had been pressuring the White House for weeks. Obama promised more transparency to programs (it’s important to remember he also promised more transparency six years ago when he was first running for president), but there were no concrete proposals for reining in the out-of-control powers of the NSA. He did not even mention the two major stories of the day, one in the Guardian, and the other in the New York Times. Obama did say this, however:
What I’m going to be pushing the [intelligence community] to do is rather than have a trunk come out here and leg come out there and a tail come out there, let’s just put the whole elephant out there so people know exactly what they’re looking at. Let’s examine what is working, what’s not, are there additional protections that can be put in place, and let’s move forward.”
While the full elephant is the only thing that will satisfy the public at this point, disturbingly, Sens. Ron Wyden and Mark Udall, the lone NSA critics on the Senate intelligence committee, cryptically said in a press release after Obama’s press conference that we’ve only learned “just the tip of a larger iceberg.”
Congress is currently on August recess, an annual break where members return to their home districts to hear from their constituents. We can expect some sort of action when they return. Eighteen bills have already been introduced, with many more on their way, and as Politico reported, members from both parties are listening to people at town halls voice their concerns about NSA surveillance, “a sign that fears about the ultra-secret National Security Agency have spread beyond the Beltway as lawmakers embark on their annual town-hall tours.”
Meanwhile, the reporting will only continue, as the Guardian is now sharing some of the Snowden documents with the New York Times and ProPublica after GCHQ disturbingly entered the Guardian offices in London and oversaw the destruction of a copy of the Snowden files.
Early on, the administration and its defenders may have hoped the story would disappear with the next news cycle. It won’t. The NSA scandal is destined to a prime issue in the fall Congressional session, carrying into next year’s midterm elections. The administration’s attempts to calm the public with transparency-after-the-fact PR measures won’t change the narrative.
What we want to see is this headline: “Obama reins in NSA surveillance authority.”
This article was originally published on 9 Sept, 2013 at indexoncensorship.org
28 Aug 2013 | China, News and features
(Photo illustration: Shutterstock)
Bo Xilai, the ousted former Chinese politician, continues to capture headlines even as Chinese authorities begin a highly concerted campaign to stifle online expression, Vincent Chao reports.
The trial of Bo Xilai, the once promising leader of China’s most populous city, ended on Monday with revelations about murder, corruption and torrid details of a love-triangle – offering the public a rare glimpse into the lives of China’s richest and most powerful politicians.
But outside the spotlight, authorities have directed an increasingly hostile campaign to limit free expression, especially online. Over the past few weeks, a growing number of journalists, bloggers and activists have been arrested or detained on vague and obscure charges. And last week, an official forum warned of new limits to what internet users should and should not say on social media.
Crackdowns on free press are not uncommon in China. Setting the latest actions apart is the concerted action to stifle online ‘opinion leaders’, whose posts are widely shared and distributed on Weibo – the Chinese equivalent of Twitter. The actions follow increasingly sophisticated censorship strategies ensured to block access to information on either government corruption or calls for collective action.
Liu Hu, a reporter for the Guangzhou-based New Express, is the latest individual to be detained, after he openly accused a senior government official of negligence in an online posting. In the widely shared report published last month, he quoted various sources to call for an investigation as to whether Ma Zhengchi, a former Chongqing vice mayor, deliberately undersold a publicly-run enterprise costing the state up to £2.6 million.
Interrogated in his home on Friday before his detention, Beijing police have since accused him of ‘fabricating false rumors’ which his lawyer denies.
Meanwhile, Charles Xue, a billionaire investor known for his 12 million Weibo followers, was also detained by police on Friday on charges of soliciting a prostitute. Commonly known by his alias, Xue Manzi, the naturalized US citizen routinely posted popular reform-minded content as well as commenting on other issues such as air quality and food safety, which was then widely shared.
His detention has triggered questions of whether the charges are politically motivated, given that Chinese authorities have used similar tactics to discredit commentators that fail to toe the official line in the past. In a post that was later erased, Hu Xijin, the editor of the state-run Global Times said: ‘Cannot rule out the possibility that authorities are arresting Xue Manzi with a prostitute to give him a hard time.’
The latest attempts to silence online expression appear to stem from China’s secretive Document No. 9, a copy of which the New York Times acquired earlier this month. Issued by the central party office, and believed to reflect the views of newly instated President Xi Jinping, the memo directed local party groups to suppress ideas of ‘western-inspired’ notions of media independence and civic participation, ostensibly in attempt to solidify the party’s grip on power.
It claimed that dissidents ‘have stirred up trouble about disclosing officials’ assets, using the Internet to fight corruption, media controls and other sensitive topics, to provoke discontent with the party and government.’
Since the release of the document in April, authorities have stepped up online controls by using a combination of hard and soft pressure against popular bloggers – the tiny minority of Weibo users believed to be responsible for the creation of more than 80 percent of original content. Invited to last week’s forum, several popular bloggers were reminded that posts must ‘uphold the socialist system’ and ‘guard the national interest.’
Such ideas have naturally attracted detractors, especially amongst China’s new and growing class of intellectuals eager to push the boundaries of government regulation. But those calls are becoming fewer and further between, especially in recent weeks.
Charges were laid earlier this month against Zhou Lubao, an activist famously known for exposing the lavish lifestyle enjoyed by a mayor of a provincial city, which included a £21,000 watch. Having went on to analyze the watches of other prominent officials, Zhou’s Weibo account has since been deactivated amid police accusations that he ‘extorted money’ from the subjects of his disclosures.
In addition, two other prominent bloggers have also since been detained for ‘spreading false rumors’ online.
The hardline approach against online expression comes amid some disappointment by earlier supporters of Xi, who was initially believed to be a supporter of gradual social and political reform. But it could also represent efforts to manage commentary as Xi consolidates power following Beijing’s once-a-decade leadership change and the Bo Xilai affair, its biggest political scandal in decades.
What’s more clear is that authorities are gaining a clearer definition of what the internet, now accessed by almost 600 million Chinese users, should – and should not – be used for. Both the high-profile detentions of Hu and Xue, announced by police on Weibo, appear to be designed to send a message that whistleblowing and political discussion have no place online, despite state-run media being initially supportive of such efforts.
A state-run People’s Daily editorial, for example, on Monday remarked that it wanted the internet to become a more ‘orderly’ place, where users were held ‘responsible for their remarks.’ The Global Times added that ‘the internet needs moral regulations’ with authorities handling prior cases ‘too softly, which has allowed rumor mongering to spiral out of control.’
These details come despite their own efforts by Chinese authorities to expand their use of social media as a medium of communication, as seen during the Bo Xilai trial.
For a major corruption case, the media frenzy was near unprecedented. Even official media, typically silent on major corruption cases, have lauded the ‘open and transparent’ trial, reported hour by hour on an official Weibo account, which it claims symbolizes more public scrutiny and an important guarantee of a fair trial.
This article was originally published on 28 Aug, 2013 at indexoncensorship.org
