Wikileaks releases 250,000 U.S. diplomatic cables. The whistle-blower site’s previous release of Afghani and Iraqi war documents inspired a lot of criticism, much of which was understandable even for those who did not agree. After all, lives were (arguably) at stake.
The current brouhaha over the diplomatic cables just seems like pique on behalf of the embarrassed governments. Wikileaks left its previous web host over an alleged denial-of-service attack. It moved to Amazon, who promptly dropped them. And now it’s lost its domain name.
So . . . Possibly contributing to the death of civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq is naughty, but we draw the line at embarrassing politicians and bureaucrats. Shameless much?
Facebook blocks Egyptian anti-torture page. A Facebook page following the case of a Alexandrian policemen who beat Khalid Said to death was disabled by Facebook. It was later restored.
Oregon Senator kills U.S. Internet censorship. Sen. Ron Wyden placed a procedural hold on the pending COICA bill, which would allow one-click censorship of any site that hosted copyrighted material without proper permissions.
Syria tries young woman in secret court. Tal Al-Mallouhi, a 19-year-old student, has been detained for just under a year for her blog and for a letter she sent to U.S. President Obama asking him to consider a more balanced approach to Israeli-Palestinian relations. She received an invitation to a U.S. holiday festival at the embassy in Cairo in return. Now she’s being tried as a U.S. spy.
U.S. government goes cuckoo-bananas on legalized censorship. Wyden notwithstanding, the number of stunts pulled by various representatives of different parts of the U.S. government this week are too many to do anything but name and link to.
Justice and DHS seize 82 websites for alleged copyright infractions. North Carolina’s Department of Revenue attempts to seize Amazon users’ personal information. Federal law enforcement track American citizens via credit cards without warrants. Texas and Virginia allow porno trolls to prosecute copyright lawsuits based on the threat of personal ID sharing instead of merit.
“Debate on Internet censorship censored” in China. Well, the headline pretty much sums it up.
Bolivia uses “protection” against racism to bolster the power of censorship. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, under Article 16 of the preposterously-named “Law Against Racism and All Other Forms of Discrimination”:
“‘(A)ny media outlet that endorses or publishes racist or discriminatory ideas will be liable to economic sanctions and the suspension of its operating license.’ Article 23 stipulates that individual journalists and media outlet owners who spread such ideas shall face aa prison sentence of one to five years’ and ‘will not be able to claim immunity or any other privilege.'”
As we’ve noted before, whenever a law “protecting” one group or another clashes with freedom of speech, both suffer.
