Internet News

The encrypted messaging app Telegram has published a new privacy policy in which it stated: If Telegram receives a court order that confirms you're a terror suspect, we may disclose your IP address and phone number to the relevant authorities.

So far, this has never happened, the policy noted. When it does, we will include it in a semi-annual transparency report .

In a Telegram post on Tuesday founder Pavel Durov said the policy has been revised to belatedly comply with Europe's new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and Telegram was reserving the right to comply with court orders.

Regardless of whether we ever use this right, the measure should make Telegram less attractive for those who are engaged in sending out terrorist propaganda here, he noted.

Tumblr is changing its censorship rules to more explicitly ban hate speech, glorifying violence, and revenge porn. The new rules go into effect on September 10th:

We won't tolerate hate speech

We believe in a free and open internet but we can't ignore that the internet is being exploited by hate groups to organize, recruit, and radicalize with horrifying efficiency. Updating our Community Guidelines and internal procedures is necessary to address a very real threat to members of the Tumblr community.

When it comes to hate speech, we're redrawing the line between what's uncomfortable and what's unacceptable, and have struck 41 words of gray area from this section in the Community Guidelines. It now reads:

Hate Speech: Don't encourage violence or hatred. Don't post content for the purpose of promoting or inciting the hatred of, or dehumanizing, individuals or groups based on race, ethnic or national origin, religion, gender, gender identity, age, veteran status, sexual orientation, disability or disease. If you encounter content that violates our hate speech policies, please report it.

[DELETED: If you encounter negative speech that doesn't rise to the level of violence or threats of violence, we encourage you to dismantle negative speech through argument rather than censorship. That said, if you encounter anything especially heinous, tell us about it.]

Keep in mind that a post might be mean, tasteless, or offensive without necessarily encouraging violence or hatred. In cases like that, you can always block the person who made the post--or, if you're up for it, you can express your concerns to them directly, or use Tumblr to speak up, challenge ideas, raise awareness or generate discussion and debate.

While the deleted language was well-intentioned (and we still need your help reporting hate speech) a post shouldn't have to be "especially heinous" to merit reporting.

We're also banning the glorification of violence and its perpetrators

Not all violence is motivated by racial or ethnic hatred, but the glorification of mass murders like Columbine, Sandy Hook, and Parkland could inspire copycat violence. With that in mind, we're revising the Community Guidelines on violent content by adding new language to specifically ban the glorification of violent acts or the perpetrators of those acts:

Violent Content and Threats, Gore, Mutilation: Don't post content that includes violent threats toward individuals or groups--this includes threats of theft, property damage, or financial harm. Don't post violent content or gore just to be shocking. Don't showcase the mutilation or torture of human beings, animals (including bestiality), or their remains. Don't post content that encourages or incites violence, or glorifies acts of violence or the perpetrators.

Lastly, we're eliminating any ambiguity in our zero-tolerance policy on non-consensual sexual images

We're adding a very simple statement (in bold below) to our existing policy on harassment to remove any uncertainty:

Harassment . Don't engage in targeted abuse or harassment. Don't engage in the unwanted sexualization or sexual harassment of others .

Posting sexually explicit photos of people without their consent was never allowed on Tumblr, but with the invention of deepfakes and the proliferation of non-consensual creepshots, we are updating our Community Guidelines to more clearly address new technologies that can be used to humiliate and threaten other people.

In 15 days' time, MEPs will again vote on censorship machines and link tax in copyright proposals of Article 13. The legislation would see platforms such as YouTube compelled to introduce upload filters, to prevent unlicensed content being offered to the public. A new 'Love Music' campaign, bankrolled by powerful industry players, aims to ensure a thumbs-up from MEPs. But the opposition is out, in force.

In 2016, the European Commission announced plans to modernize EU copyright law, something that was to later develop into a worldwide controversy. A major part of the proposal is Article 13, a text that aims to make online services liable for uploaded content unless they take effective and proportionate measures to prevent copyright infringements. The implication is that platforms such as YouTube would be compelled to implement upload filtering and then proactively monitor to prevent future infringing uploads.

The #LOVEMUSIC campaign site asks visitors to add their signature to the Make Internet Fair petition, which calls on EU decision-makers to recognize that platforms like YouTube are involved in reproducing and making our works available under copyright laws and ensure that the safe harbor non-liability regime does not apply to them as it is meant for technical intermediaries only.

While most protests are taking place on the Internet, the platform that will be most affected by Article 13, opponents of the proposed legislation have been urged to gather in public too. Julia Reda MEP previously published details of a day of action to take place yesterday in various locations around Europe, but that will be just the tip of the protest iceberg as September 12th draws closer.

Following their shock defeat in July, major players in the music industry called foul, claiming that the protests had been automated and organized by big tech, something addressed by Reda recently. She wrote:

They're claiming the protest was all fake, generated by bots and orchestrated by big internet companies. According to them, Europeans don't actually care about their freedom of expression.

We don't actually care about EU lawmaking enough to make our voices heard. We will just stand idly by as our internet is restricted to serve corporate interests.

To prove these predictions wrong, one of the focal points of the 'NO' campaign is a Change.org petition . At the time of writing it has in excess of 951,000 signatories, with the million target probably just a few days away.

But it is not just the music companies that are 'Love Censorship'. Journalists from 20 countries joined the call for European MPs to approve the censorship proposals. News companies also see the article 13 censorship rules as helping them to claim more money from the internet giants.

An open letter signed by more than 100 prominent journalists from major news outlets warns that the internet companies are fleecing of the media of their rightful revenue was morally and democratically unjustifiable. The letter written by AFP foreign correspondent Sammy Ketz says:

We have become targets and our reporting missions cost more and more. Yet, even though (the media) pay for the content and send the journalists who will risk their lives to produce a trustworthy, thorough and diverse news service, it is not they who reap the profits but the internet platforms, which help themselves without paying a cent.

It is as if a stranger came along and shamelessly snatched the fruits of your labour.

Critics, however, argue the reform will lead to blanket censorship by tech platforms that have become an online hub for creativity, especially YouTube. They say it will also restrict the usage of memes and remixes by everyday internet surfers.

Unfortunately the numbers taking to the street in protests yesterday weren't too great. Between 80 and 150 people came to the protest in Berlin, according to various estimates, but most other events seemed to have fewer than two dozen. Based on photographs shared online, it seems that all of the protests combined drew between 500 and 800 people in total.

It would be foolish to expect a million people to take to the streets over copyright legislation, and the lack of protest doesn't prove that Europeans don't object to Article 13. Certainly, some do. But the actual number seems smaller than hoped.

The US Supreme Court has been asked to take a look at a critical piece of internet law that shields ISPs and websites from legal action when their users pirate copyrighted stuff.

Porn studio Ventura Content has asked the court to review the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ( DMCA ) for the first time since it was introduced 20 years ago, arguing that the legislation is outdated and needs reform.

The application comes as the law is being tested nationwide. This week, large internet provider Cox settled out of court on the eve of a long-running and critical trial on the same issue: whether an organization can be held liable when people use its website, service, or platform to illegally access or distribute copyrighted work.

The copyright holders are arguing that websites and ISPs are paying lip-service to anti-piracy laws and failing to fulfill their obligations under DMCA. Under that law, if an ISP or website owner can be shown to be warning users that they are infringing copyright, with the threat of account termination, the businesses are given legal protection against being held liable for copyright infringement.

Ventura has appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing that the law as currently applied gives too much deference to ISPs and websites, producing a staggering dissonance between online and offline liability standards.

yesterday, journalist and bestselling author Salena Zito reported that Facebook seemed to be censoring a story she wrote for the New York Post detailing why many Trump supporters won't be shaken by the Paul Manafort conviction or the Michael Cohen plea deal.

Some of her readers reported that it was being marked as spam. Others told her that Facebook was reporting that the article did not follow its Community Standards.

Then, suddenly, the posts reappeared. In both instances there has been no satisfactory explanation from Facebook for its censorship.

Read the full article from nationalreview.com

Amazon has banned a book that provided the code to create a 3D printed gun.

The book, a 584-page tome called The Liberator Code Book: An Exercise in the Freedom of Speech , contained computer code that could reportedly be fed to a 3D printer to create a plastic gun called The Liberator. The book was selling at $20 prior to being removed from the store

Author CJ Awelow wrote on Amazon

The purpose of this exercise is to give a physical analogy between computer code and books. Code is speech. This is a printed copy of .step files for the Liberator. and not much else. Don't expect a gripping narrative: that's being played out in the news and the courts. Proceeds from this book will be used to fight for free speech and the right to keep and bear arms.

According to The Washington Post, the book had appeared on Amazon on August 1, just a day after a federal judge had issued a temporary restraining order, blocking the public availability of the code in question.

Amazon took down the listing noting that it violated Amazon's content guidelines, but would not elaborate further.

In April, Google and Amazon both dropped domain fronting from their web hosting services. Domain fronting is a technique used to bypass internet censorship, in places such as Iran , Russia, and China. Website requests to a censored site start their journey across the internet as requests to Google or Amazon app servers. The final routing to the blocked site is only revealed once an encrypted connection is established. Of course internet censors can block Google and Amazon but this may displease large numbers of internet users. Russia for example had to ban massive numbers of sites in attempt to block the encrypted messaging app Telegram which was employing domain fronting options.

Now, encrypted messaging platform Wickr is starting to roll out a service to its users that includes domain fronting spread across a variety of infrastructure, meaning that customers and soon free users should be able to use the feature to circumvent censorship. Wickr CEO Joel Wallenstrom told Motherboard:

On top of encryption, there's also the availability part of security. You can't have one without the other.

And today's daily act of censorship is to take down 652 accounts and pages connected to Russia and Iran that published political propaganda.

Facebook said in a blog post that the errant accounts were first uncovered by the cybersecurity firm FireEye, and have links to Russia and Iran. CEO Mark Zuckerberg said:

These were networks of accounts that were misleading people about who they were and what they were doing. We ban this kind of behavior because authenticity matters. People need to be able to trust the connections they make on Facebook.

In July, FireEye tipped Facebook off to the existence of a network of pages known as Liberty Front Press. The network included 70 accounts, three Facebook groups, and 76 Instagram accounts, which had 155,000 Facebook followers and 48,000 Instagram followers. Not exactly impressive figures though. And the paltry $6,000 spent since 2015 rather suggests that these a small fry.

Liberty Free Press also was linked to a set of pages that posed as news organizations while also hacking people's accounts and spread malware, Facebook said. That network included 12 pages and 66 accounts, plus nine Instagram accounts. They had about 15,000 Facebook followers and 1,100 Instagram followers, and did not buy advertising or events.

Iran-linked accounts and pages created in 2011 shared posts about politics in the Middle East, United Kingdom, and United States. That campaign had 168 pages and 140 Facebook accounts, as well as 31 Instagram accounts, and had 813,000 Facebook followers and 10,000 Instagram followers. Again the total advertising spend was just $6,000.

Russian accounts taken down in the Facebook action were focused on politics in Syria and Ukraine, but did not target the United States.

Facebook's reputation ratings

See article from bbc.co.uk

Facebook has confirmed that it has started scoring some of its members on a trustworthiness scale.The Washington Post revealed that the social network had developed the system over the past year.

The tech firm says it has been developed to help handle reports of false news on its platform, but it has declined to reveal how the score is calculated or the limits of its use. Critics are concerned that users have no apparent way to obtain their rating. The BBC understands that at present only Facebook's misinformation team makes use of the measurement.

Perhaps the scheme works on 1 to 5 scale with the bottom rating of 1, being as trustworthy as Facebook, a lowly score of 2 for being twice as trustworthy as Facebook, whilst top of the scale is 5 times as trustworthy as Facebook.

Facebook objected the scale being described in the Washington Post as being a 'reputation' score. Facebook said that this was just plain wrong claiming:

What we're actually doing: We developed a process to protect against people indiscriminately flagging news as fake and attempting to game the system. The reason we do this is to make sure that our fight against misinformation is as effective as possible.

No doubt armies of Indian SEO workers will now redirect their efforts at improving website's Facebook reputation ratings.

Seeking refuge in blaming Facebook

See article from nytimes.com

Meanwhile Warwick University research suggests that anti refugee troubles are worse in German towns where Facebook usage is more than the national average. Facebook are taking a lot of stick lately but it seems a little much to start blaming them for all the world's ills. If Facebook were to be banned tomorrow, would the world suddenly become a less fractious place? What do you think?

Internet companies will have to delete content claimed to be extremist on their platforms within an hour or face being fined, under new censorship plans by the European Commission.

The proposals will be set out in draft regulation due to be published next month, according to The Financial Times.

Julian King, the EU's commissioner for security, told the newspaper that Brussels had not seen enough progress, when it came to the sites clamping down on terror-related material.

Under the rules, which would have to be agreed by a majority of EU member states, the platforms would have an hour to remove the material, a senior official told the newspaper.

The rules would apply to all websites, regardless of their size. King told the FT:

The difference in size and resources means platforms have differing capabilities to act against terrorist content and their policies for doing so are not always transparent.

All this leads to such content continuing to proliferate across the internet, reappearing once deleted and spreading from platform to platform.

Of course the stringent requirements are totally impractical for small companies, and so no doubt will further strengthen the monopolies of US companies with massive workforces.

And of course a one hour turn around gives absolutely no one time to even consider whether the censorship requests are fair or reasonable and so translates into a tool for direct state censorship of the internet.

President Donald Trump took to Twitter to complain that social media companies are discriminating against prominent conservatives, saying we won't let that happen. He tweeted:

Social Media is totally discriminating against Republican/Conservative voices. Speaking loudly and clearly for the Trump Administration, we won't let that happen. They are closing down the opinions of many people on the RIGHT, while at the same time doing nothing to others.

.....Censorship is a very dangerous thing & absolutely impossible to police. If you are weeding out Fake News, there is nothing so Fake as CNN & MSNBC, & yet I do not ask that their sick behavior be removed. I get used to it and watch with a grain of salt, or don't watch at all.

The president later added:

....Too many voices are being destroyed, some good & some bad, and that cannot be allowed to happen. Who is making the choices, because I can already tell you that too many mistakes are being made. Let everybody participate, good & bad, and we will all just have to figure it out!

Trump in July said his administration will look into the practice of shadow banning on Twitter, or reducing the visibility of certain people or groups on the platform, which he alleged was happening to prominent conservative voices.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has signed a new law that tightens controls over the internet.

The legislation means websites can be blocked in Egypt if deemed to constitute a threat to national security or the economy. Anyone found guilty of running, or just visiting, such sites could face prison or a fine.

Authorities claim the new measures are needed to tackle instability and terrorism.

But human rights groups say the government of trying to crush all political dissent in the country. The Cairo-based Association of Freedom of Thought and Expression said more than 500 websites had already been blocked in Egypt prior to the new law being signed.

Last month another bill was passed by parliament, yet to be approved by President Sisi, that would allow any social media accounts with more than 5,000 followers to be placed under supervision.

Azerbaijan's government has begun to block internet pornography sites. While this is far from the first time the country has tried to control what websites its citizens access, it does appear to be the first time it's restricting pornography.

The blocking was carried out by the Electronic Security Service of the Azerbaijani Ministry of Transport, Communications and High Technologies. The move was reportedly made due to a local court decision, but no further details were released.

In December last year, Azerbaijan's parliament adopted a new set of laws penalizing the online dissemination of banned materials. The legislation referred to a list of prohibited information that was first put into use by Azerbaijani courts in May 2017 authorizing the government to censor online information including terrorist propaganda, suicide videos, pornography and weapons-production manuals, but also gambling and defamation.

It's not clear why the ban on pornography was implemented, but it has generated some speculation online. Journalist Habib Muntazir of Meydan TV noted that on August 15, a Facebook parody page, Politicians of à ayxana, photoshopped the logo of the pornographic website Pornhub onto a picture of President Ilham Aliyev reprimanding the head of the state energy company for the country's recent blackouts. The caption read: Boss punishes sexy secretary.