US: India, Stop Censoring Websites! India: Wikileaks, Hello? US: That's Different!
from the hypocrisy dept
We've argued for a while that the US's effort to censor websites at home while talking about internet freedom is hypocritical and takes away any moral high ground the US might have had with other countries concerning their efforts to censor the internet. What's stunning, unfortunately, is how rarely US officials seem to recognize this problem. When confronted on it -- they always revert to a "but that's different!" claim, missing that this is exactly the excuse that other countries use to justify their own censorship efforts.Case in point: there's been significant concern in India, as the government has been censoring Twitter accounts of certain journalists and political groups, as well as blocking certain websites (sometimes just blog posts, other times, full websites). As that last link explains, the content targeted for censorship tends to have to do with content around "communal issues and rioting," and thus there's an argument to be made that the censorship is for the benefit of the public, to prevent riots. Even so, of course, one can question whether or not such censorship is even effective, let alone the rather obvious temptation for those in power to overblock for their own benefit. Indeed, that last link explains that there have been "egregious mistakes" in how the blocks have been carried out.
And what about the US? With plenty of attention being paid to the debate over this Indian censorship, the US State Department spokesperson, Victoria Nuland, was asked her thoughts about what was happening, and trotted out the standard line about internet freedom:
"On the larger question of Internet freedom, you know where we are on that issue, and we are always on the side of full freedom of the Internet," she said.Which sounds great, of course, but if Nuland thought that such a blanket statement would let her off, she was mistaken. Reporters immediately hit back, pointing to examples of the US fighting against internet freedom in its own back yard. And Nuland apparently wasn't happy, and pulled out the "but that's different!" excuse:
But when she was probed on the issue of WikiLeaks, Nuland snapped: "WikiLeaks didn't have to do with freedom of the Internet. It had to do with the compromise of US government classified information."To be fair the US government has not "blocked" Wikileaks. It has blocked it on certain government computers and has used public pressure to have its hosting and payment processors cut it off. Whether or not that's to the same level as to what's happening in other countries may be debatable, but it certainly opens up the US to criticism on that point. And that's the real issue here. Even if you argue "but that's different," just the fact that the US has opened itself up to such an easy retort any time it argues for internet freedom in countries that espouse censorship, it makes it that much harder for the US to seriously push an internet freedom agenda abroad.
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Filed Under: censorship, diplomacy, hypocrisy, india, us
Companies: wikileaks
Reader Comments
The First Word
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Obama administration "leaks" without any witch hunting that they were involved with stuxnet (Very unusual based on the actions taken on any leaks before). Some diplomatic cables get leaked and the government won't even bother to pretend it is treating the person humanely.
The result of admitting stuxnet, putting every citizen and the US at risk for openly admitting cyber warfare is completely acceptable. The result of the cables, lots of embarassed politicians and shitloads of paperwork and brown nosing.
The more potentially harmful leak, was performed by the government with obvious intentions of manipulating elections, while the leak was performed by a person trying to show as much as they can what the government was doing wrong.
I'd say making your country a larger target to it's very vulnerable systems, on purpose, is more harmful than showing the "secret" messages among politicians. But then again, I'm not the asshat making decisions to look good instead of being good.
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Or how about Rojadirecta, a service that was renderede fully legal by numerous courts before being seized?
Or how about MU, which is still locked down because the US DoJ is dlaiming that it's Schroedinger's Copyright Infringement in its documentation?
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Though I thought they were arguing Copyright Infringement was a given. They were arguing for Schroedinger's Child Porn. "There may or many not be child porn on those servers, but we can't look, because looking at child porn is illegal."
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Which is kind of funny in a sad way, since many things are censored with the idea that being exposed it will cause a person to become corrupted in some way, like talking bad about a government. So by definition the Censor themself should be the worst deginerate possible, and at that point you couldn't trust their opinion, so....
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Ummm. It was an unauthorized disclosure of duly classified information by Bradley Manning perhaps (although I feel he should be shielded by whistle-blower laws).
Wikileaks merely published the info. No different than the New York Times publishing the Pentagon Papers.
If so-called "moral high ground" is diminished, then so be it.
Some of the "moral high ground" is also the fundamentals of our Constitution. Personally, it means more to me than something that is simply brushed aside with a wave of your hand.
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I agree. I wouldn't trust the US Government not to illegally detain such a person and whisk them off to Gitmo, never to be seen again.
Meanwhile, that moral high ground sinks ever lower.........
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Morally wrong? Irrelevant when you are talking about the government is attacking someone with no legal leg to stand on. If they want to make publishing information the government deems classified and a risk to national security they should outlaw it.
The person who had access to the information and gave it to someone else is very much on the wrong side of the law.
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- Classified information from government?
- Classified information from private companies?
- Copyright protection for works from private companies?
- Unlicensed use of patented products for private companies?
If you are saying yes to all those limitations, the question is: How far can you use these marks to censor?
- If an employee from the government leaks a document with no official classification yet?
- Lowly classified information with no general restriction of who gets to see them?
- Having the government pay for protecting a trade-secret for a private american company?
- Making the government pay for prosecution of people for illegal copying?
- Having the government investigate and break private companies confidentiality to produce evidence of them illegally using a patent held by another company?
Those are just a few of the ethical questions you have to answer because of "that is different" and if the answer is "it depends" you have to further specify where the line for censorship has to be drawn.
Any kind of deletion of information qualifies as censorship and trying to give the impression that the arbitrary lines drawn by USA or EU are more legitimate than those drawn by India and China is not a question of "internet freedom". It is a question of poorly thought through legislation and overreaching enforcement making something that should be simple very complicated and "that is different" is exactly the same as saying "it is complicated" in this context.
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Hahahahahahahaha! What a laugh riot!
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Washington is a Cancer and I am sick of these Corrupt A-Hole Politicians.
It is a laugh riot but the joke is on us.
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Godwin's law
NG: Jim Crow laws, hello?
US: That's different!
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Yeah, sure it has NOTHING to do with the freedom of the internet...
Other than pointing out the corruption of government and corporations and allowing the public to know what's going on.
Surely that wouldn't have negative effects on the internet...
Oh, wait, it does.
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And with the spelling ability of Elmo.
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We sure are heading towards a Police Type State.
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US: India, Stop Censoring Websites!...
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*Sigh*
You forget one tiny, LITTLE, very minor piece of information...
Government derives its power from the people.
What Wikileaks did here is nothing different than what "Deep Throat" did against Nixon.
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Re: US: India, Stop Censoring Websites!...
Please explain this statement. How is Wikileaks publishing the cables any different then the New York Times publishing the Pentagon Papers?
Also, the US pretty much encouraged Wikileaks' activity while it was exposing secrets in other governments.
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Wikileaks stole nothing, no espionage there dickhead, only exposure.
You are from the US i presume? When will YOU be paying the piper?
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Culpable for what? Exercising Freedom of the Press?
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The right to do so? No, the US does not. We give it the privilege of doing so, and when -- as the WL releases have shown -- that privilege is abused to hide wrongdoing, that privilege can and should be taken away until people get their shit together.
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Would this be the same legitimate way that was followed by William Binney and Thomas Drake? Sure worked out well for them following the legitimate way.
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India = Kettle
You should be able to figure out the rest.
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Either the internet is going to be an open playground where you punish the people doing wrong, or it is going to be excessively restricted trying to cater to every group that wants to play the parent role.
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Kudos to the reporters
Truly, to be able to stay straight-faced and laughter free in the presence of such hilarious levels of hypocrisy is an amazing skill indeed.
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The Last Word
“India = Kettle
You should be able to figure out the rest.