Singapore Government Tests Out Its Fake News Law Against An Opposition Party Leader

from the who-didn't-see-this-coming dept

Singapore's new "fake news" law has been deployed for the first time. The law the government is using to expand domestic surveillance and minimize dissent is definitely doing the latter. Bhavan Jaipragas reports the initial recipient of a "fake news" citation is none other than opposition leader Brad Bowyer.

The supposedly "fake" news Bowyer posted to Facebook has been subjected to government scrutiny. The government's official rebuttal website -- unbelievably named "Factually" -- performs a point-by-point debunking of Bowyer's claims using its own set of facts. This should have been enough. The Singaporean government wields a great deal of power. This site proves the government doesn't need a fake news law, and yet it has one anyway, presumably because it provides so many side benefits.

Bowyer alleged the Singapore government controls or directs investment companies Temasek and GIC's investment decisions. While it's impossible to say for sure, there certainly is room for conjecture without sliding into "fake news." Both are owned entirely by the Singapore government. Temasek officials have stated publicly the government is not consulted on "day-to-day business" but other companies have complained the government engages in opaque bidding processes that favor government-owned corporations and has displayed other forms of favoritism.

So, Bowyer's implication could have been greeted by this response from the government and pointers to company statements to the contrary. Instead, it chose to invoke the law and issue a rebuttal -- one aimed at political opposition that has not held any significant amount of power in more than 50 years.

Other things Bowyer implied were similarly uncontroversial. He suggested some bad investments had been made by the government. This seems like a normal thing for opposition government officials to do. But the Singapore government isn't willing to be criticized without putting the force of law behind its response.

Fortunately, all the government ordered Bowyer to do is post a correction note on top of his original post with a link to the government's site. It's still government interference in political speech, but he wasn't fined, forced to issue a retraction, or otherwise told to stop talking about government-linked corporations.

But that doesn't make the law innocuous. The government has its own mouthpiece -- the "Factually" section of the government's website -- to issue rebuttals and corrections. This makes the law extraneous. But the government likes the law because it allows the party in power -- the one in power for decades -- to more easily control the narrative. And it allows the government to control what's seen online by turning service providers into extensions of its domestic surveillance programs.

This initial salvo may have been delivered with a light touch, but when things heat up around elections and the discussion of controversial legislation, expect the government's blows to land with a little more force.

Filed Under: brad bowyer, chilling effects, fake news, free speech, intimidation, politics, singapore

Thanks Blizzard: Riot Games Forced To Let Everyone Know They're Allowed To Use Hong Kong's LoL Team's Name

from the riot-riot-riot dept

The fallout from Blizzard's heavy-handed move on a professional Hearthstone player for voicing support for the ongoing Hong Kong protests on a livestream, which included ripping away prize money and issuing a 1 year ban on competing, continues to blaze. But while most of the backlash has been directed solely at Blizzard, the company's actions are having a ripple effect across the eSports landscape.

Depressingly, plenty of folks in the eSports industry are clearly frightened that they might accidentally cross some undefined line with gaming companies and find themselves on the losing end of an international public relations argument. One lovely example of this is Riot Games' League of Legends competitions and streams. There appear to be plenty of folks out there that are self-censoring mentions of Hong Kong to ridiculous levels, including attempts to avoid saying the name of a LoL team, the Hong Kong Attitude.

With all the protests going on in Hong Kong, League of Legends casters appear to be avoiding saying the team name “Hong Kong Attitude” and seem to even be catching themselves when they do. Riot Games, however, says that it has not banned casters from saying “Hong Kong.”

Chinese conglomerate Tencent owns Riot and has a stake in Blizzard.

It may be that last detail that has so many streamers spooked. Still, this all reached enough of a fever pitch that Riot Games decided to put out several statements clarifying that its streamers can in fact refer to a League of Legends team and, tangentially, use the name of one of the more populous cities on the planet. The fact that it had to do this at all is fairly crazy, but the detail here really drives that point home.

Again, this is crazy. A sentence that consists of "We aren't telling anyone to avoid saying 'Hong Kong'" shows just how effective Beijing's campaign of weaponized offense-taking has become. The entire point of the Chinese government's actions is to keep the Hong Kong protests out of the mouths of those that might be listened to. For this to morph into some of those people censoring themselves into not even mentioning the city's name for a competition that has an entrant from that city must feel like all of Xi Jinping's birthdays and Christmases came at once.

It is now long, long past time for these gaming companies, regardless of minority ownership stakes, to come out in support for the free expression of their employees and affiliates.

Filed Under: chilling effects, china, esports, free speech, heathstone, hong kong, hong kong attitude, league of legends
Companies: blizzard, riot games, tencent

Breitbart Snowflakes Threaten To Sue People Who Have Asked Advertisers To Stop Advertising On Breitbart

from the free-speech-hypocrites dept

Earlier this year, we wrote a story about the boutique law firm Clare Locke that appeared to specialize in intimidating news orgs with legal threats to try to get them to kill stories. One of the firm's partner, Elizabeth Locke, flat out says that she thinks there's too much press freedom:

"... the pendulum has swung too far in the direction of freedom of the press."

As we pointed out in that article, if you're a journalist hiring such a firm -- and a bunch of the #MeToo journalists have done so -- to try to stifle stories from other publications, it would suggest you're an incredible hypocrite. Journalists thrive on the First Amendment. If you're a journalist threatening to stifle others' free speech, you're a hypocrite.

Enter Breitbart. Because, of course it would be Breitbart. According to a Daily Beast article, Breitbart has hired Clare Locke to threaten a group of people who have been advocating for advertisers to drop their ads from Breitbart. I should say up front, that I think all of these attempts to push advertisers to drop ads is actually pretty silly. It's mostly symbolic and rarely has a real economic impact. It's just a silly game of tit for tat.

But, according to the letter written by Clare Locke's other partner, Thomas Clare, asking advertisers to stop advertising could be "unfair, fraudulent and deceptive." From the letter:

I write on behalf of my client, Breitbart News Network, LLC. As you of course know, Breitbart has been the target of a months-long smear campaign by the online activist group “Sleeping Giants.” It has recently been revealed that you are a founder and leader of this group. My client is considering potential legal action against you, and we therefore demand that you preserve and retain certain documents in your possession that may be relevant to potential civil claims.

These include potential claims concerning unfair, fraudulent, and deceptive practices intended to cause Breitbart economic harm. We believe that Sleeping Giants has sought to deceive the public and, in particular, purchasers of online advertising, by making false, deceptive, and disparaging claims about Breitbart and the news content it publishes — including, among other things, accusing Breitbart of distributing “anti-Semitic” propaganda, of promoting “white supremacy,” and of being a “neo-Nazi propaganda” website. Sleeping Giants has directed these and similar deceptive and misleading statements to companies that purportedly purchase advertisements appearing on Breitbart’s website — and has encouraged its members and others to do the same — in an effort to drive advertising revenue away from Breitbart, and to solicit donations and sell Sleeping Giants’ branded merchandise.

The letter goes on to angrily deny that it is any of those things (while also plugging the fact that the White House Chief of Staff reads it). It then goes on to concoct quite a fascinating conspiracy theory, arguing that "Sleeping Giants" is really designed for "commercial interests" because many of its founders apparently work in the ad tech business. How that creates any commercial advantage isn't exactly clear at all. It just implies that this somehow is a fraudulent practice.

Although, as stated above, the group and its organizers have long attempted to conduct these tortious actions behind a veil of anonymity, a recently-published article identified you, Matt Rivitz, as the founder of Sleeping Giants and the acknowledged proprietor of its social media accounts. That same article noted that you have long worked in online marketing and advertising. Notably, after your identity was involuntarily disclosed through investigative reporting, you claimed that you hid your identity and role with Sleeping Giants as an act of humility in order to “keep this about the mission rather than the individuals involved.” But your past, conflicting explanations for hiding your identity tell a different story. For example, in January 2017, an individual identified only as a Sleeping Giants “founder” — who cited biographical details specific to you — told the New York Times that Sleeping Giants was conducting its campaign targeting Breitbart’s advertisers anonymously because “some members of the group work in the digital-media industry.” Similarly, in March 2018, a Sleeping Giants “spokesman” acknowledged to GQ that “the people behind Sleeping Giants” elected to remain anonymous because they “work in marketing-related fields” and their targeting of online advertisers “might be perceived as creating some kind of conflict of interest.” These frank admissions, made at a time when you and your supporters in the ad tech world expected their identities to remain a secret, are extremely revealing and hint at a hidden and improper commercial motivation behind Sleeping Giants’ deceptive practices targeting Breitbart. It appears that the reason you and your backers did not want their identities known was because it would have revealed their shared economic interests and deceptive practices.

These unfair, fraudulent, and deceptive practices may give rise to civil liability both for you and the members of the online advertising and ad tech worlds that you coordinated with. These potential claims include, but certainly are not limited to, claims relating to violation of California’s Unfair Competition Law (Business and Professions Code Sections 17200, et seq.), fraud, violation of the Lanham Act, tortious interference with contract, and tortious interference with prospective economic advantage.

I'm trying to figure out what exactly the "shared economic interests" are in getting companies to stop advertising on a site? It seems that a much more logical (and obvious) explanation for why the Sleeping Giants folks wanted to remain anonymous was because working for an ad tech company while supporting advertising boycotts actually goes against their economic interests, and might make their own employers kinda pissed off. But, this letter assumes the exact opposite, without any actual explanation.

It then asks Rivitz to preserve all sorts of stuff, including communications with an insanely long list of individuals, organizations and companies -- including a bunch of Breitbart critics.

This seems like a pretty blatant intimidation tactic. And while the letter, hilariously, claims that this threat is really "about Sleeping Giants’ desire to stifle speech that does not adhere to its narrow liberal politics," it's hard to see how you can claim that when the whole point of the letter appears to be to stifle the speech of people asking for advertising boycotts.

And, of course, asking for advertising boycotts is pretty common on both sides of the traditional political divide. In fact, it's not difficult at all to find a whole host of Breitbart articles happily reporting on campaigns to pull ads from news orgs deemed "liberal." Separately, I'll note that it's fascinating to see a subtle shift in tone when Breitbart reports on similar campaigns targeted at Breitbart allies. Those stories suddenly talk about "liberal outrage," "liberal fascism," and "corporate warfare attacks from the left." Oddly, those earlier stories about removing ads from CNN, MSNBC, TBS and NBC don't have any of that kind of language. Indeed, they seem to focus on whatever "outrageous" thing done on those stations that lead to pressure to remove ads. Must be a coincidence, huh?

So, to be clear: ad boycotts are overrated, but if people want to do them, it is their First Amendment protected speech to call for such boycotts, no matter what the reason, no matter what their politics and no matter how silly. Threatening those who exercise their First Amendment speech in such a way with a lawsuit, however, is not supporting free speech. It is bullying censorial intimidation tactics, and Breitbart should be ashamed (if such a thing were possible). The site regularly likes to whine about liberals and universities stifling free speech, but apparently has no problem at all trying to stifle the speech of people who ask its own advertisers to stop advertising on the platform.

Either way, all this red team, blue team bullshit is getting pretty annoying. Silly people who identify as either left or right wing (which is a stupid designation anyway) will do stupid things. And silly people on the other side will generalize and stereotype based on those things, while doing the exact same things themselves. But, seriously, stop freaking out about one "side" doing the exact same thing your side is doing and then coming up with all sorts of silly rationalizations for why it's okay when your side does it, but a horrific violation of the law when the other side does it.

Filed Under: advertising, boycotts, chilling effects, first amendment, free speech, intimidation, sleeping giants, threats
Companies: breitbart, clare locke

Open Letter On Ending Attacks On Security Research

from the it's-too-important dept

The Center for Democracy and Technology has put together an important letter from experts on the importance of security research. This may sound obvious, but increasingly we're seeing attacks on security researchers, where the messenger is blamed for finding and/or disclosing bad security practices or breaches -- and that makes us all less safe by creating chilling effects.

On April 10, 2018, over fifty experts and expert advocates published a statement in support of security research and against efforts to chill or intimidate security researchers. Computer and network security research, white-hat hacking, and vulnerability disclosure are legal, legitimate, and needed now more than ever to understand flaws in the information systems that increasingly pervade our lives.

Security researchers hesitate to report vulnerabilities and weaknesses to companies for fear of facing legal retribution; these chilling effects invite the release of anonymous, public zero-day research instead of coordinated disclosure. The undersigned urge support for security researchers and reporters in their work, and decry those who oppose research and discussion of privacy and security risks. Harming these efforts harms us all.

I'm proud to have signed onto the letter, which you can read here (or embedded below). In it, we cite two legal cases in which a reporter and security researcher were sued for their work disclosing security vulnerabilities. These kinds of lawsuits are a disgrace and need to stop.

The most recent cases include Keeper v. Goodin and River City Media v. Kromtech ; in the first case, a reporter was sued for reporting on the details of a vulnerability, and in the second case a security researcher is being sued for investigating a publicly accessible spam server. These lawsuits not only endanger a free and open press but risk a “chilling effect” towards research designed to improve cybersecurity. Security researchers hesitate to report vulnerabilities and weaknesses to companies for fear of facing legal retribution; these chilling effects invite the release of anonymous, public zero-day research instead of coordinated disclosure.

It's kind of sad that this kind of letter is even needed, but these kinds of things are happening way too often.

Filed Under: cdt, chilling effects, open letter, security research

It Looks Like The FBI Thought About Prosecuting FOIA Requesters After Influx Of Automated Requests

from the nice-optics,-g-men dept

Emma Best of MuckRock has unearthed some disturbing details in an FBI response to an FOIA request: apparently the agency considered -- however briefly -- the investigation and prosecution of people filing requests.

The nature of the requests may shed some light on the FBI's thought process because the heavily-redacted email included in the response certainly doesn't. Each year, the FBI updates its Dead List -- the names of people the FBI has files on who have passed away. Death increases the chances of released files because this major life event tends to terminate investigations.

The FBI claims it can't find its updated Dead List. This seems odd, if not downright unbelievable, but the DOJ has backed the FBI's claim and FOIA requests for the latest copy are being rejected. No problem, said MuckRock. It went to work with an older version of the list which included 7,000 names.

To accomplish this, the names of the subjects were extracted from the Dead List and a simple script written to submit FOIA requests for them. The requests were submitted on February 29th 2016, with the script and data made available online so that others could make their own requests and trigger the DOJ’s “rule of three” for frequently requested records, which would see the files posted online by the FBI.

Rather than follow its own rule for publication of frequently-requested files, the FBI decided to stop responding altogether.

The FBI acknowledged a large number of them before they began ignoring them. Over a month later (after the Bureau had exceeded legal time limit), the FBI sent a letter stating that they had “received an exceedingly high volume of submissions” which they would not accept.

Which led to this amazing bit of government agency shitposting:

According to the Bureau, fulfilling the FOIA requests would have prevented the FBI from fulfilling FOIA requests. Their letter stated that the “manner of submission interfered with the FBI’s ability to perform its FOIA and PA statutory responsibilities as an agency. Accordingly, the FBI did not accept these submissions on February 29th, 2016.”

A new FOIA request was sent requesting communications discussing the voluminous requests for files on Dead List subjects. That's when things went from slightly obstructionist to downright ominous.

One of the emails contained in this document dump arrived with all but one word redacted. The FOIA exemption cited for the redaction of the entire body of the email was b(7)e: "techniques and procedures for law enforcement investigations or prosecutions." All that remained of the email is the word "Options." Everything underneath it was apparently a discussion about investigating/prosecuting FOIA requesters who participated in MuckRock's automated FOIA requests. CCed on the email are officials from the Criminal Justice Information Services, which handles the FBI's multiple criminal/investigation target databases.

No one knows for sure what basis the FBI thought it had for prosecuting FOIA requesters, but it's pretty easy to imagine it had something to with the CFAA. It's almost impossible to abuse the FOIA process in a fashion that would result in criminal charges, but give the government some automated computer activity it doesn't like, and the CFAA can be read imaginatively enough to support at least an investigation. Another email in the batch received by the requester contains a heading that appears to show the mass requests had been passed on to the government's ESOC (Enterprise Security Operations Center) as "suspicious."

But this isn't the end of the FBI's bad faith FOIA response "efforts." It took plenty of care to protect the people involved in this prosecution discussion but showed far less interest in protecting FOIA requesters when releasing this batch of documents.

Despite redacting the names and email addresses of the public servants handling the case, the FBI released not only the author’s name and address in the file (technically improper since there was no waiver, albeit understandable) but the name, email address and home address of another requester who also used the script to file requests. Their name along with their email and physical addresses were left unredacted not once, not twice, not thrice - but seven times, not including the email headers, several of which also showed their name and email address.

Given the nature of the FBI's response to the mass request for Dead List files, this careless redaction effort appears to be no accident.

It’s hard to imagine that the Bureau, which once hung a sign in their FOIA office instructing people that “when in doubt - cross it out” would fail to redact this information so many times by accident. In context, it’s hard to see it as anything but retaliatory.

On top of that, the FBI appears to have deliberately ignored the requester's supporting info for his fee waiver request, charged the requester duplication fees for documents it had previously compiled and released to other requesters, and stated -- with the DOJ's support -- there was no "public interest" in Dead List documents, despite the massive number of requests (the ones the FBI chose to ignore en masse) clearly showing otherwise.

This is nasty, petty stuff and it's coming from one of the most powerful law enforcement agencies in the world. People with access to vast databases of information on American citizens are seeking to leverage this access to chill First Amendment-protected activity. The government as a whole barely fulfills it obligations (and almost never in a timely fashion) when it comes to the Freedom of Information Act. Agencies like the FBI are taking it several steps further, shirking obligations while engaging in small-scale vindictive acts.

Filed Under: chilling effects, fbi, foia, prosecution, transparency