Indian Gov't Orders YouTube To Block 20 Channels For 'Blasphemy' And 'Impinging On National Security'

from the wherein-Piss-Christ-is-the-same-thing-as-a-pipe-bomb dept

India's Information Technology Act has been problematic since its inception. Almost a decade ago, it was deployed to justify the arrest of an Indian citizen who'd done nothing more than criticize a politician, insinuating the politician had used his position to amass personal wealth.

Once the politician complained, the government ignored available libel law, which would have resulted in a civil case and opted to use a clause of the IT Act which allowed prosecution for "sending an email or other electronic message that causes annoyance or inconvenience." That's how the law was used in 2012.

The 2021 version of the law is much more dangerous. Folding into the act passed in 2000 are new rules about national security. This escalates the Act's abusability, since nearly anything can be called a threat to national security and drastically limits the defenses those targeted by this part of the act can raise.

Added into this revision are new mandates for social media companies, which allows the government to hold companies responsible for content created by their users. There's a long list of forbidden content that starts with child sexual abuse material and terroristic content and ends with things like "promoting tobacco use," "blasphemy," and "harms minors in any way."

It is those changes that have resulted in the banning of 20 supposedly "anti-India" YouTube channels.

India banned 20 YouTube channels and two websites on Monday for allegedly running anti-India propaganda from Pakistan, invoking for the first time the emergency powers under the newly notified intermediary guidelines and digital media ethics code in the IT Act.

I&B secretary Apurva Chandra wrote to YouTube and the Department of Telecom, directing them to immediately block the content as it affects the sovereignty and integrity of India, people aware of the development told ET on condition of anonymity.

According to officials, these channels were being run by a Pakistan government agency. The officials also made reference to fake news and reporting on farmers' protests. The first is another term as abusable as "national security." The latter is something the Indian government has expended a lot of effort to control the narrative, often through censorship.

This is censorship as well. Even if we accept the Indian government's assertions about the origin and intent of the banned channels, the government can't even decide why it's doing this. It claims two violations -- neither of which should have anything to do with each other.

The inquiry revealed that these websites were being run from Pakistan. The content run on these channels is blasphemous and hugely impinges on national security," said the official, who was part of the review.

If your national security and national religion are intertwined, a law addressing both is a censorial cudgel. And it won't make anyone safer or make your religion any more unassailable. What it will do is allow the government to disappear information and content it doesn't like with impunity.

This has been the point of the law all along. Every iteration gives the government more power and takes it away from the country's citizens and the services they use. It elevates the government, placing it on the same level as its preferred deities. When a government does that, it no longer serves the public. The public is now expected to serve (and revere) the government.

The Indian government has all the tools it needs to ensure its narrative is the most prominent. Even before these amendments affecting intermediary liability went into effect, the government had pulled the plug on the internet in areas where farmers' protests were taking place and threatened Twitter employees with arrest for restoring accounts and content the government had ordered removed. More assertions about god(s) and country are undoubtedly on their way, forcing those carrying third party content to give the Indian government control of the narrative or face fines, fees, and possible imprisonment.

Filed Under: blasphemy, censorship, content moderation, free speech, india, information technology act, national security, pakistan
Companies: youtube

There Are Several Good Reasons To End Entertainment Industry Subsidies, But Blasphemy Isn't One Of Them

from the free-speech-doesn't-work-that-way dept

There are a lot of arguments to be made against subsidizing movie/TV studios. The best argument is this: the payouts to visiting studios rarely pay off for local taxpayers. Politicians love the side benefits -- rubbing elbows with producers, actors, and other studio personnel -- but there's nothing to be gained financially by paying a studio to film in your town. In one case, a city was promised 3,600 additional jobs. In reality, only 200 jobs materialized, all but 14 of those temporary construction work.

Then there's the argument against using public funding to prop up an out-of-town industry. If there are extra tax dollars around, they're better spent locally, where they'll do the most good. Subsidizing businesses is always problematic. It skews incentives and allows governments to play favorites using the public's money.

But the worst argument someone can make against subsidies is this one: subsidies should be content-based. Two members of the clergy and a state politician are bent out of shape because a subsidized TV series shoot resulted in the depiction of a historical figure in compromising positions.

The AMC series "Preacher" has portrayed Christ in a graphic sex scene that combines blasphemy with pornography.

The August 21 episode titled, "Dirty Little Secret," showed an actor playing the role of Jesus having sex with a married woman in an extended, graphic scene with explicit vocals. The director used shadows and silhouettes to soften the two figures as they engaged in various sexual positions, but these cinematic techniques did not disguise the pornography.

We have laws governing porn which are mostly hands-off, provided producers follow several regulations. We certainly don't have blasphemy laws, thanks to a separation of church and state. But never mind the legal details. This small collective of pearl-clutchers wants legislators to pull funding solely because the imagery in this episode may have offended some members of one religion.

We respectfully request that the Administration, and the Office of Louisiana Economic Development, reject all efforts by AMC to obtain tax credits for the series "Preacher" and the episode which blasphemed Christ. We call upon the Administration and the Louisiana Office of Economic Development to flatly reject this request for a $16.2 million tax refund check.

The op-ed notes the state of Louisiana has a law prohibiting the use of public money to fund pornography. That's all well and good, but just because the writers call the images that offended them porn doesn't make them porn. To buttress this argument with talk of blasphemy only adds to the problem, ensuring that any state legislators attempting to follow through on this dubious suggestion will engage in multiple constitutional violations.

That's not all. The authors of the op-ed -- which include state senator John Milkovich -- claim their views are universal, something that's more factually-incorrect than everything leading up to it.

Thus, the larger truth is that there is never a good time to reward production companies that trash our Louisiana values, mock our beliefs– and dishonor Christ.

The state should definitely reject the request for a $16.2 million subsidy by AMC. If AMC is so keen on shooting scenes in Louisiana (or any other state), it should pay its own way. But it shouldn't do it for any of the reasons suggested here. It should end the subsidy program completely, rather than risk looking like it's making content-based decisions about what type of speech it's willing to fund.

Filed Under: blasphemy, first amendment, louisiana, movies, preacher, subsidies, tv
Companies: amc

Pakistan Sentences First Person To Death Over Social Media Posts

from the dislike dept

With the ubiquity of social media presence in people's daily lives, the past few years has seen the rise of concern over people's privacy of their social media accounts, as well as concern over how content shared on those accounts could be used against the account holder. In America, this commonly breaks mostly into concerns about prospective employers reviewing social media accounts during the hiring process and how government reviews social media accounts for law enforcement purposes. While there are real concerns to be had in both cases, however, it's useful to be reminded that there are places where it is so much worse. Useful in that it's good to be reminded what privacy advocates are fighting to keep us from. Such as death.

In Pakistan, the government there has reached the unfortunate milestone of sentencing its first ever person to death over content he put on Facebook.

On Saturday, 30-year-old Taimoor Raza became the first person to receive a death sentence in a Pakistan anti-terrorism court for "using derogatory remarks ... in respect of the Holy Prophet" on social media.

Amnesty International's Pakistan campaigner, Nadia Rahman, said in a statement the conviction set a "dangerous precedent."

"No one one should be hauled before an anti-terrorism court or any other court solely for peacefully exercising their rights to freedom of expression and freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief online," she said.

While the rules and laws of countries vary greatly, it should be an uncontroversial stance to state that no person should be sentenced to death over what amounts to speech and thought. Even those confused into thinking that supporting multiculturalism requires the absence of a moral stance on whether criticism of any particular faith ought to come with any punishment whatsoever must be capable of acknowledging that death sentences ought not be on the table for consideration. But, should someone want to argue that point, it should at least be understood that these kinds of laws pretty much have abuse of the law baked into them.

A 2016 report by Amnesty International found the laws are "open to abuse" and anyone who is accused is usually presumed to be guilty, leaving them open to mob retribution. There were 91 blasphemy cases concerning the Prophet or his companions registered between 2011 and 2015, the report said.

Specific blasphemy laws which punished perceived insults to Islam were introduced between 1980 and 1986, during a period of martial law under the military government of General Zia-ul-Haq. They were never removed once martial law ended.

The genesis of these laws should tell you all you need to know about their virtue, which is to say they have none. It also demonstrates the fear that regimes of this kind have in regards to the sort of wide-ranging communications tool that Facebook represents. This all comes down to controlling thought within the citizenry out of fear of a change in social opinion, which would deprive that regime of the power it wields so perniciously. With that in mind, actions taken by governments of this kind deserve the broadest and harshest condemnation, and damn well ought to weigh on foreign policy as well.

Put more simply, if governments, including America's, can't take a stand against death sentences over Facebook posts, it cedes the moral high ground to an astounding degree.

Filed Under: blasphemy, death penalty, free speech, pakistan, social media, taimoor raza

Ruslan Sokolovsky Gets 3 And A Half Years Suspended Sentence And A Conviction For Playing Pokemon In A Church

from the pokemon-go-to-jail dept

Update: After doing some hunting around, we were able to dig up additional reliable source material that indicates that Sokolovsky's conviction, troubling on its own, carries a suspended sentence that will keep him out of jail. We are updating the title of the post to reflect that, but will keep the original post in full below this update. While Solokovksy is obviously pleased to not be behind bars, it remains troubling that he has been convicted, forced to delete his videos, and spent months between house arrest and a detention center throughout this ordeal.

The better part of a year ago we discussed the story of atheist activist Ruslan Sokolovsky. Sokolovsky became something of the sequel story to the now infamous Pussy Riot debacle. Russian police detained Sokolovsky and put him on house arrest for the crime of playing Pokemon Go in a Russian church and uploading a mildly snarky video about it to YouTube. The Russian Orthodox Church was fully on board with his being detained, stating in true Christ-like fashion that the real crime was his not respecting the Church and being an atheist blogger.

Now, these stories out of Russia are taking a back seat to some of the grander geopolitical games currently being played, but it's worth your notice that the Russian government isn't dicking around when it comes to suppressing the speech of its own citizens. As evidence of that, we can point out that Sokolovsky has received three and a half years in prison, simply for producing a video the Russian Church didn't like.

Sokolovsky posted a video of himself playing the augmented reality game late last year in a way that Russian authorities said showed “disrespect for society.” Prosecutors had asked for a sentence of 3.5 years in prison. The judge in the case, Yekaterina Shoponyak, granted the prosecutors their wish and gave the blogger a 3.5-year suspended sentence.

“In accordance with the expert evaluation, the court found blogger Sokolovsky guilty of inciting hatred, violating religious feelings and illegal possession of special technical means - a pen with a video camera,” the judge said, according to the Russian news agency TASS.

We'll get to the weird bit about the spy-pen in a moment, but we must first note that nobody reporting on this seems to understand how Sokolovsky's previous detainment on house arrest will be factored in to his multi-year sentence. Regardless, given the timeline of events, it seems clear that he will spend a fair amount of time behind Russian bars, simply for engaging in speech that wouldn't cause an American to blink twice. Put into the context of the overall discussion with some of the new American leadership's affinity for overseas dictatorial regimes, Western citizens need to start paying attention to the actions of those regimes. After all, it's not as though the American government hasn't recently engaged in its own play to bow at multiple altars in the name of decency and respect for faith. There's no equivalence to any of this...yet. But attention needs to be paid to the consequences of starting down that pious road.

As for the spy-pen with the camera built in, it looks somewhat like the Russian police or government decided to build in a bit of fictitious intrigue to paint Sokolovsky as a sneaky, sneaky guy.

Strangely, there’s some confusion about the charge that Sokolovsky possessed an illegal camera that was disguised as a pen. During the trial he reportedly said that not only was the pen not his, but that it wasn’t a camera at all, but instead just a light bulb. Today’s news of his sentencing didn’t clarify any of the questions surrounding this strange aspect of an already bizarre trial.

Regardless, it seems a trivial thing, given that it changes nothing about the "crimes" he was actually charged with, which were essentially upsetting the state church. A three and a half year sentence will certainly produce a chilling effect on speech. These are not the kind of values we want to be consorting with.

Filed Under: blasphemy, free speech, pokemon go, ruslan sokolovsky, russia, russian orthodox church, satire

The Campaign To Dox Twitter Users In Islamic Countries For 'Blasphemy' And Supporting LGBT Rights

from the pure-evil dept

Nearly half a decade ago, we wondered publicly what a company like Twitter, a self-proclaimed advocate of free and open speech, would do if confronted by a government that is anything but. In that post, Mike discussed how Twitter had been used to rant against the government in Saudi Arabia, and wondered what would happen if Saudi Arabia decided to make such speech illegal. But what if it's not direct government action but that of other users that threatens such speech? While we have seen some governments routinely punish internet speech they don't like, we're now seeing signs of non-government individuals getting into the racket as well, as a way to silence the kind of barely-progressive speech a company like Twitter would likely say it wants to protect.

Late Sunday night, Twitter user @old_gaes tweeted a screenshot of one of @Pharaohoe’s tweets from February, which had replaced the word “domain” in a verse from the Quran with a slang word for vagina.

“This is the end of another atheist and we should continue exposing every Arab atheist child to their parents who do not know of their atheism,” @old_gaes wrote in Arabic above the tweet.

Several friends of @Pharaohoe on Twitter told The Daily Beast that she is 16 years old and lives in Kuwait.

@old_gaes has apparently been making a habit of this sort of thing, seeking out citizens of countries that would severely punish speech deemed to be blasphemous or in support of the LGBT community and reporting any speech like that, or encouraging followers to report it, to the authorities. That appears to be the only kind of tweeting the account does, in fact. Where this kind of harassment has very real consequences in nations like the United States, those consequences are not nearly as severe as might occur in other countries. And, lest you think that this kind of doxing nonsense would go unseen by the Islamic governments in question:

Dubai’s verified police account tweeted back to @old_gaes on Monday morning, asking him to “kindly send the details” about potential blasphemy along to a specific email address.

On Monday, @Pharaohoe tweeted “they fucking found me,” “im gonna puke,” then “i’m deactivating guys.” She then deleted her account.

In addition, there are many followers of this Twitter account and others like it, creating a network of like-minded individuals who could potentially out those using Twitter as a platform for speech. The targets mostly appear to be women in Islamic nations who make statements of atheism or of a faith other than strict Islam, or who make any noises in support of LGBT rights. And, according to those witnessing this doxing, Twitter isn't doing much about it.

“Twitter is absolutely useless. They don’t take this sort of thing seriously,” said the woman who asked to remain anonymous. “I don’t know what the solution is.”

“He’s so dangerous,” said Afra. “I don’t know how his account is still up.”

And, yet, what is Twitter to do? Certainly continued harassment can and should be addressed, but the fact is that Twitter operates internationally, including in countries where the law is not as friendly to secular values as it is in America. If the law in Dubai, for instance, is that blasphemous speech on Twitter should be reported and punished, then Twitter would be walking an interesting line in banning or blocking accounts for doing so. It could try to pull access from those countries, of course, but that would be technically challenging, wouldn't be in its business interests, and would only result in denying those people any voice at all. That doesn't seem like a likely solution. Attempts to get clarity from Twitter itself on how it would want to handle situations like this haven't resulted in much information.

When The Daily Beast reached out to Twitter to ask how accounts like @Old_gaes were allowed to remain active despite consistent reports of harassment, a spokesperson said that “we do not comment on individual accounts, for privacy and security reasons.”

When asked to “better outline how Twitter assesses threats to personal safety” after a violation of the rules that could leave its users in danger, the company did not respond to repeated requests at press time.

And so we have a speech tool co-opted by those wishing to oppress speech, with the company behind the tool seemingly paralyzed as to what to do about it. The good news is that, whatever steps backwards like these may occur, the flourishing of options for free and open speech typically also results in often unexpected change, however slow that change might occur.

Filed Under: blasphemy, doxxing, middle east, social media
Companies: twitter

Pakistan Internet Content Regulator Asks Twitter To Take Down A 'Blasphemous' Search

from the we-only-ask-for-the-impossible dept

As more countries enforce their local laws on offensive content, the Chilling Effects takedown clearinghouse is becoming a strange place to hang out. Russia's Roskomnadzor has been particularly active, targeting Twitter users and bloggers who post anything that violates that entity's sensibilities -- most of which seems to be related to drug use or suicide. The UK's elastic defamation laws have led to several requests for content removal, some of which are requested without any court decision in the requester's favor. The new EU court decision ordering Google to "forget" certain links will undoubtedly see an influx of whitewashing requests in the near future.

Pakistan's Telecommunications Authority (PTA) has started its own censorious efforts, mainly targeting anything that doesn't comply with the government-approved religion. A recent request by the PTA asks for the removal of "un-ethical" tweets and a "blasphemous URL." Its overreach knows no bounds.

The unethical tweets request targets accounts well out of its jurisdiction -- three accounts run by adult performers (all links NSFW-ish). Of these three, only one remains live -- possibly because she is a resident of the United States (and incredibly famous). The other two are suspended, but a cache inspection seems to indicate these are not of Pakistani origin.

But things go from merely annoying to truly bizarre when we get to the supposedly "blasphemous URL." The following seems to indicate the PTA really has very little idea how Twitter -- and the internet itself -- works. (link NSFW -- gore, death, nudity.)

https://twitter.com/search?q=burn%20quran&src=typd&mode=photos

Needless to say, the URL is still live. And will always be. You can't ask for the removal of a URL that performs an action that has dynamic results. You can't even ask to have every result returned to be removed unless you're willing to copy down each offending URL. Burning the Quran may be a blasphemous act (according to the PTA) but these search results aren't going anywhere. (This isn't an isolated incident. This one asks for the removal of a Twitter searches for photos of drawings of Muhammad as well as for the term "draw Muhammad day".)

The PTA could just not perform that search and save itself from witnessing blasphemy, and it would have more of an effect than petitioning Twitter to do something it can't actually do. The same goes for the three "unethical" accounts. No one's forcing anyone to visit those and someone working for the PTA has to spend a great deal of time viewing the religiously-unviewable in order to find something to complain about.

A larger problem is the fact that Twitter's willingness to oblige on a per-country basis makes it altogether too easy for governments to censor almost anything that offends them, as noted by Mathew Ingram at GigaOm.

For me, the troubling thing about Twitter’s selective content-blocking tool is that, like Google’s selective adjusting of the borders between countries based on where the user is located, it almost makes censorship too easy — just another feature box that can be checked — and that encourages governments like those in Turkey and Pakistan to use it for anything that seems even remotely offensive or irritating, a list that seems to grow by the day.

By selectively removing that content or changing the borders on maps for certain users, the world becomes a little less open, without most people even realizing that it is happening. [...] [M]aking censorship easier shouldn’t be the goal, I don’t think.

These requests are coming from a government entity that temporarily lifted a YouTube ban for three minutes before slamming that door shut once it realized blasphemous content was still available. This government has also blocked/banned Google, Yahoo, Hotmail, Bing, MSN, Amazon and any form of encryption. It seems almost redundant to be surfing Twitter for porn star accounts and pictures of burned books when it can just cut off the site entirely.

But this is what you get when you let government and religion freely intertwine -- lots and lots of outrage and very little common sense.

Filed Under: blasphemy, censorship, free speech, pakistan, search queries, takedowns
Companies: twitter