US Censorship News

Brief Statement from Josh Fox about The Public Theater cancellation of The Truth Has Changed

For the past week I have been performing my solo show THE TRUTH HAS CHANGED at The Public Theater's Under The Radar Festival.

The remainder of the show's run was cancelled today without notice nor any attempt to communicate clearly the reasons for the cancellation.

THE TRUTH HAS CHANGED is a highly political monologue that addresses our current crisis of truth and misinformation in this year's highly charged electoral atmosphere. It calls directly for non-violent political revolution and it addresses the connections between big oil, big data and white supremacy. The project is a clear, straightforward indictment of the politics of misinformation of Donald Trump, Facebook, and the oil industry, and it calls for direct audience reactions to its content. It is a vitally important work of art that nightly standing ovations, strong reviews, and vibrant public reaction prove needs to be seen. The Public Theater continually put up roadblocks to the show's success and promotion in the run up to the premiere and the staff was openly hostile towards the show in its brief tenure at the theater.

This includes verbal threats, coercion, angry tirades and physical intimidation by festival producers including Mark Russell, Jon Grenay and other Public staff members towards me personally and to members of our team. These clear violations of the code of conduct of the theater were noted, and we emailed 4 written statements to The Public Theater.. Our complaints were ignored and belittled. In response to acts of aggression towards me, I continually and passionately pleaded with Mark Russell, Ruth Sternberg and others, saying that we were feeling unsafe and that under present conditions we felt we could not do the show. I was accused of being too emotional, complaining too loudly, and then, without notice they cancelled the remaining run of the show.

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However, are undaunted in our desire to present THE TRUTH HAS CHANGED. We will be running performances of the show at our small rehearsal space in Brooklyn, WOW HAUS, on Saturday and Sunday evenings at 8pm. We can only fit about 50 people into our space, but we wish to honor all ticket holders for our remaining shows AND ANYONE ELSE who wants to come. Free of charge. We will be looking for theaters to continue the run of this show immediately.

We reserve the right to legal action against The Public Theater and the Under The Radar Staff for their actions.

The US Army has banned the use of popular Chinese social media video app TikTok, with Military.com first reporting it was due to security concerns. The US Navy have followed suit.

It is considered a cyber threat, a US Army spokesperson told Military.com . We do not allow it on government phones.

The ban comes in the wake of Democrat Senator Charles Schumer and Republican Senator Tom Cotton writing a letter to US Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire insisting an investigation into TikTok would be necessary to determine whether the Chinese-owned social media video app poses a risk to national security.

Given these concerns, we ask that the Intelligence Community conduct an assessment of the national security risks posed by TikTok and other China-based content platforms operating in the US and brief Congress on these findings, the letter said.

A new California law has come into effect that seems to have been inspired by the EU's box ticking nighmare, the GDPR. It give's Californians rights in determining how their data is used by large internet companies.

The law gives consumers the right to know about the personal data that companies have collected about them, to demand that it be deleted, and to prevent it from being sold to third parties.

Although privacy controls only are required for Californians it seems likely that large companies will provide the same controls to all Americans.

The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) will only apply to businesses that earn more than $25 million in gross revenue, that collect data on more than 50,000 people, or for which selling consumer data accounts for more than 50% of revenue.

In early December, Twitter rolled out a privacy center where users can learn more about the company's approach to the CCPA and navigate to a dashboard for customizing the types of info that the platform is allowed to use for ad targeting. Google has also created a protocol that blocks websites from transmitting data to the company. Facebook, meanwhile, is arguing that it does not need to change anything because it does not technically sell personal information. Companies must at least set up a webpage and a toll-free phone number for fielding data requests.

The personal data covered by the CCPA includes IP addresses, contact info, internet browsing history, biometrics (like facial recognition and fingerprint data), race, gender, purchasing behavior, and locations.

Many sections of the law are quite vague and awaiting further clarification in the final draft regulations, which the California attorney general's office is expected to release later in 2020.