Benjamin Netanyahu, Hater Of Fake News And Purveyor Of Fake News

from the what-a-yahoo dept

As most of you will know, the term "fake news" has been so bastardized at this point so as to be more a moniker of quite literally the opposite of its original intended meaning. Once used to label the sort of nonsense news stories that people would share haphazardly on social media, the term is now almost exclusively used by government strong-men with paper-thin skin and entirely too much power. Still, the term does have a real meaning, if only we made a point of getting back to it.

Perhaps in one story, we can illustrate both sides of this. One of the aforementioned leaders that has enjoyed shouting "fake news!" at any media coverage he doesn't like has been Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu. You would think "fake news" would be something Netanyahu really hates. And, yet, Netanyahu also apparently gathered his cabinet members, sat them down, and then solemnly showed them video of Iranian government officials secretly dumping dead bodies in garbage dumps so as to conceal how many COVID-19 deaths the country was enduring.

There was just one tiny problem...

The backdrop: Iran has been Netanyahu's top foreign policy focus for 25 years. Israeli intelligence believes there have been up to five times more coronavirus deaths there than the 3,036 that have been officially acknowledged, an Israeli official tells me. Netanyahu thought he'd seen evidence of a cover-up.

Behind the scenes: Several hours later, Netanyahu's office realized the video had nothing to do with Iran, or with the coronavirus crisis. It was a clip from “Pandemic," a 2007 Hallmark Channel mini-series.

Whoops.

So, how does real, actual "fake news" happen? Well, usually it occurs when a relatively ignorant person, often of older age, encounters media or content that is easily shared and also aligns with their own pre-existing worldview and conceptions, and then that person does the sharing without bothering to vet the truth of the content at all. Were there a more perfect example of this than Netanyahu pushing a Hallmark movie clip as Iranian bad deeds, I cannot possibly imagine what it would be.

And Netanyahu's people aren't denying any of this.

The prime minister’s office didn’t deny this account. It said the video had only been sent to three Cabinet ministers who requested it and were told it came from social media and its authenticity was unclear.

Boy, if ever there were a time for Netanyahu to call a story fake news, I'd have thought this would be it.

Filed Under: benjamin netanyahu, covid-19, fake news, free speech, iran, israel

Senators Threaten Twitter For Allowing Iranian Official Who Helped De-Escalate Tensions Via Twitter To Tweet

from the politicians-censoring-politicians dept

It's somewhat amazing how quickly officials lean into the idea of censorship as the first response to other officials saying things they don't like. Rep. Nancy Pelosi's office asked both Twitter and Facebook to remove a tweet by Donald Trump (both companies refused). Trump's tweet showed a misleadingly cut video of Nancy Pelosi. Similarly, Rep. Ro Khanna -- who has done some great things, including looking into the harm caused by FOSTA -- demanded that Twitter delete that same tweet, falsely stating that "falsity has never been a part of the 1st Amendment," which is (to repeat myself), false.

Now, if you're a Trump supporter about to get up in arms over a Democratic politician asking Twitter to delete a tweet from the President, slow down a bit, because around the same time, four Republican Senators were in the process of sending an angry letter to Twitter, telling Jack Dorsey that his company was breaking the law by allowing Iranian officials to tweet. The letter, sent by Senators Ted Cruz, Marsha Blackburn, Tom Cotton, and Marco Rubio (all of whom, I assure you, have cynically claimed to support free speech in the past), notes that Trump signed an executive order last year putting sanctions on Iranian officials and preventing US companies from providing goods and services to them:

On June 24 2019, the President invoked his IEEPA powers through Executive Order 13876... blocking the property of "the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic [Ali Kamenei] of Iran and the Iranian Supreme Leader's Office" and well as persons who act or purport to act on the Supreme Leader's behalf. On July 31, 2019, OFAC designated Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif pursuant to E.O. 13876. All Americans -- including you and Twitter -- are prohibited from "the making of any contribution or provision of . . . goods[] or services" to them.

Note that in addition to the general prohibition on Americans providing services to SDNs, Section 1(a)(2)(C) of E.O. 13876 makes it a sanctionable offense for "any person" to have "provided... technological support for, or goods or services to" persons designated pursuant to that E.O.

Twitter continues to provide Internet-based communications services to Khamenei and Zarif. Twitter is aware of these accounts and their links to the Iranian regime. The Supreme Leader's English-language account, @khamenei_ir, has had tweets removed for advocating murder. The account follows less than 10 other accounts, including his office's Twitter feeds in Urdu, Arabic, French, Spanish, and Persian, which are straightforward to identify and locate. Zarif's account, @JZarif, is verified.

The letter also claims that the Ayatollah gets no free speech protections at all, while simultaneously saying that Twitter should never "censor" American's "political speech."

While the First Amendment protects the free speech rights of Americans -- and Twitter should not be censoring the political speech of Americans -- the Ayatollah enjoys zero protections from the United States Bill of Rights. And, as the leader of the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism -- directly responsible for the murder of hundreds of U.S. citizens -- the Ayatollah and any American companies providing him assistance are entirely subject to U.S. sanctions laws.

A Twitter account is a service. Neither GL D-1 nor any other authority exempts Twitter from American sanctions. We therefore call on you to comply with those sanctions by ceasing the provision of services to Khamenei, Zarif, and any other designated Iranian entity.

I'm no expert in the laws regarding U.S. sanctions, so I'm not sure of the legal responsibilities here. But it does seem patently ridiculous to think that merely publishing a foreign leader's speech should violate any such sanctions. It would certainly open up a lot of serious questions about what counts as providing "services" to sanctioned individuals.

But, even more to the point, is that this letter comes just a month after it was shown that Zarif -- who the Senators want Twitter to ban -- and Trump himself may have averted escalations with Iran thanks to both of them being on Twitter. That story highlighted how Zarif indicated via Twitter that Iran did not wish to escalate matters with the US, and Trump quickly tweeted a similar response. Diplomacy via tweet. Of course, if these Senators got their way, that would not be allowed.

Given all that, it makes you wonder why Senators Cruz, Blackburn, Cotton, and Rubio are looking to cut off that means of communication.

Filed Under: donald trump, free speech, iran, javad zarif, marco rubio, marsha blackburn, sanctions, services, ted cruz, tom cotton
Companies: twitter

Iran Accelerates Longstanding Quest To Cut Itself Off From The Internet

from the ill-communication dept

For much of the last decade, oppressive regimes like Iran have made ample noise about wanting to cut themselves off from the internet. Much like Russia, Iran isn't keen on this whole factual reality and free speech thing, so they've repeatedly floated the idea of severing Iranian internet access and replacing it with a local intranet -- one that's far easier to filter, censor, and otherwise disable during times of pesky democratic protest. You know, like last month, when at least 180 Iranian citizens protesting oil price hikes in Tehran were brutally murdered.

For five days Iran severed access to the internet as protests raged, though it did little to quell public anger or hamper overall protests. In response, Iran hopes to up the ante: a 2018 report (pdf) by the Center for Human Rights in Iran highlighted the country's quest to build a National Information Network (NIN) that would give Iranian leaders more granular control over what they clearly see as the most pressing threat to their control. Already under development, the effort directs citizens to heavily censored and often outright fabricated information:

"The NIN’s national search engines now systematically filter key words and phrases—and send users to sites that deliver only stateapproved and sometimes fabricated content. NIN tools and services facilitate the state’s ability to identify users and access their online communications, deeply compromising user privacy and security. The government steers Iranians toward use of the NIN and its search engines, security certificates, email services and video broadcasting services through price and internet speed incentives, violating net neutrality principles."

This week President Hassan Rouhani told Iran's parliament that the company would be dramatically expanding the development of the NIN in what's clearly a panicked response to unrest:

"Iran's intranet, known as the National Information Network, will be expanded so "people will not need foreign [networks] to meet their needs," President Rouhani said to Iran's parliament on Sunday, according to Radio Farda. The decree to bolster the NIN comes from Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei himself, Rouhani said."

And a few days back, a number of letters were sent by the Iranian government to state-run organisations and private companies, asking them which websites they most rely on, presumably to help develop a new white list of which websites will be formally approved as the country's internet clampdown accelerates:

"Many suspect that the authorities now want to move one step further and instead of having a "black list" of banned websites, there will be a "white list" of permissible ones, with all others blocked. Mahsa Alimardani, of human rights organisation Article 19, says that approach would be "in line with the worrying indications" that Iranian authorities want to restrict access to the uncensored internet to certain people "based on their professional and social circumstances."

Granted this effort to build an Iranian internet has been ongoing since 2005 or so. But as Russia has found, the effort is a lot easier said than done, not just because it's a technical nightmare to both implement and police, but because the filtering of what many now see as an essential utility only contributes to the unrest these governments are trying to (often violently) suppress. At the end of the day, such efforts are the last refuge of cowards terrified of their own citizens, and their ability to freely communicate about whatever idiotic, ham-fisted crackdown is coming down the pike.

Filed Under: censorship, internet, iran, national information network, oppression, private internet

While Trump Complains About Facebook Takedowns, Facebook Is Helping Trump Take Down Content He Doesn't Like

from the oh,-look-at-that dept

You might have noticed in the last week or two that President Trump has suddenly jumped on the silly bandwagon suggesting that internet platforms like Facebook and Twitter don't have a right to kick people off of their platforms. There have been a bunch of misleading tweets he's made, but we'll just post this one that kicked it all off:

In it, Trump says:

I am continuing to monitor the censorship of AMERICAN CITIZENS on social media platforms. This is the United States of America — and we have what's known as FREEDOM OF SPEECH! We are monitoring and watching, closely!!

Of course, "FREEDOM OF SPEECH" in the American context only applies to the government interfering with the rights of people to express themselves, and has no bearing on companies choosing to kick off people who it finds problematic. Indeed, part of the 1st Amendment is that it provides the platforms -- as private entities -- the right to determine who they associate with and who they don't.

But a new Wired article suggests that there's a striking contrast here, in that Facebook has someone who is quick to respond and to shut down the accounts of those designated by Trump's government as undesirable. It's difficult not to read this as somewhat hypocritical. The issue relates to another story we discussed last month, in which the Trump White House declared Iran's IRGC a "foreign terrorist organization." The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, is basically Iran's military/security/law enforcement wing -- and this is the first time that a governmental organization has been declared a foreign terrorist organization in the US. And Facebook immediately accepted this claim from the White House and banned any related accounts:

The day after Trump’s move, Instagram, a Facebook property, blocked the accounts of high-ranking Revolutionary Guard officers. And the next week The New York Times reported that Fishman had said Facebook would have zero tolerance for any group the US deems a terrorist organization.

In short, at the same time as Trump is incorrectly referencing the 1st Amendment with regards to Facebook's private moderation decisions, his own White House is effectively able to dictate to Facebook what accounts need to be taken down:

So basically Trump can tell Facebook to de-platform any part of any foreign government—including, presumably, an entire foreign government—and Fishman, along with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, will reply with a crisp salute? Under Facebook’s current policy, that would seem to be the case.

Wired's Robert Wright asks Facebook's "global head of counterterrorism policy," Brian Fishman, to defend this, and Fishman basically says "I'm just following orders"

When I asked Fishman to justify this policy, he said it’s designed to keep Facebook on the right side of the law, which prohibits Americans from providing “material support” to any group deemed a “Foreign Terrorist Organization.”

But, I replied, the law goes on to spell out the things that would constitute “material support,” and none of them sound much like “letting these groups post on your social media platform.” Fishman said, “I’m not a lawyer. I’m a policy guy.”

You can understand why Facebook might wish to avoid falling afoul of material support for terrorism laws (though the few attempts to hit social media companies with this law have all failed miserably), but the end result is this bizarre situation in which the President is whining about blocking accounts on Facebook (which are actions by a private company in which the government has no say), while his own government is using its (questionable powers) to have accounts banned on Facebook (which potentially do have more actual 1st Amendment implications).

Filed Under: brian fishman, content moderation, donald trump, foreign terrorist organization, iran, irgc, material support, social media

What Will Happen When Governments Disagree Over Who Is A Terrorist Organization... And Who Needs To Be Blocked Online?

from the a-big-mess dept

You may have heard the recent news that President Trump has decided to label the the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) a "foreign terrorist organization." The IRGC is Iran's powerful military/security/law enforcement apparatus -- that also owns a ton of businesses. As the White House itself admits, this is the first time a foreign government agency has been referred to as a foreign terrorist organization. This is big news in a huge variety of ways -- in large part because it could end up criminalizing lots of people and businesses who unwittingly do business with the IRGC including (checks notes) a firm called The Trump Organization.

But, leaving that aside, it raises some other issues as well. We've been talking about the impact of the terrible EU Terrorist Content Regulation that the EU Parliament will soon be voting on. But, as we've discussed in the past, there are lots of questions about who decides just what is "terrorist" content. Daphne Keller tweeted about the IRGC decision, wondering what happens when one country's laws demand the removal of content from another country's government and suggests (accurately) this is going to lead to a huge mess.

Of course, it also gets even more complex than that. On a recent On The Media episode, they discussed efforts by a few different websites to archive terrorist propaganda, both to learn about what's happening (in the form of open source intelligence), but also for the purpose of historical records. As the piece notes, many researchers and reporters find those archives to be incredibly valuable. And yet, they're dealing with issues of demands for the content to be taken down as "terrorist content."

This is not a new issue. For years, we've pointed out how demands to delete "terrorist content" online has regularly resulted in the silencing of human rights groups documenting war crimes.

Combine all of this together and we're creating a recipe for disaster. The EU is demanding that all "terrorist content" be deleted with one hour's notice. The US is designating government organizations as terrorist groups. And human rights groups trying to document war crimes are being kicked off the internet. None of this seems like a good way to actually fight terrorism. It really seems like a solution designed to pretend that terrorists can be swept under the rug, like if we don't know what they're doing out there, they'll just magically disappear.

Filed Under: donald trump, eu, foreign terrorist organization, iran, irgc, terrorism, terrorism designation, terrorist content, terrorist content regulation

Slack Banning Random Iranian Ex-Pats Shows Why Making Tech Companies Police The Internet Is Crazy Stupid

from the this-is-a-bad-idea dept

On Thursday morning, I started seeing a bunch of tweets pop up in my feed from people of Iranian backgrounds, who no longer lived in Iran, who were having their entire Slack groups shut down, with the company blaming US laws regarding sanctions on Iran.

There are a lot more reports like this, but that was just the first batch I found with a quick search. Slack's explanation to the press seems... lacking:

“We updated our system for applying geolocation information, which relies on IP addresses, and that led to the deactivations for accounts tied to embargoed countries,” the representative said. “We only utilize IP addresses to take these actions. We do not possess information about nationality or the ethnicity of our users. If users think we’ve made a mistake in blocking their access, please reach out to feedback@slack.com and we’ll review as soon as possible.”

All of the blocked people talking about it on Twitter note that they don't live in any sanctioned country -- though many admit to having visited those countries in the past (often years ago) and probably checking in on Slack while they were there. That... is not how the sanctions system is supposed to work. In another press statement Slack tries to pin the blame on the US government:

“Slack complies with the U.S. regulations related to embargoed countries and regions. As such, we prohibit unauthorized Slack use in Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria and the Crimea region of Ukraine. For more information, please see the US Department of Commerce Sanctioned Destinations , The U.S. Department of Treasury website, and the Bureau of Industry and Security website.”

But that's bullshit. The sanctions rules don't say you have to cut off completely anyone who ever connected from a sanctioned country. The Verge (linked above) spoke to an Oxford researcher with knowledge in this area:

“They are either incompetent at OFAC interpretation or racist,” said Oxford researcher Mahsa Alimardani, who specializes in communication tools in Iran.

[....]

“Detecting an Iranian IP address on a paid account (which is presumed to be for business) login as a violation of sanctions is a wrong interpretation of these regulations,” Alimardani says. “At best it’s over-regulation to prevent any sort of misunderstanding or possible future hassle with OFAC.”

Of course, as former Facebook Chief Security Officer Alex Stamos notes in his own tweet on this topic, this is exactly what happens when you have vague rules with strong punishment, and expect internet platforms to magically police the web:

And of course, we're seeing more and more and more of that. FOSTA does that in the US. The GDPR is doing that around the globe. The EU Copyright Directive will do that. The EU Terrorist Content Regulation will do it. And a bunch of other regulations targeting the internet as well. That's why some of us keep warning that these laws are going to lead to widespread censorship and suppression of free speech. Because that's how it always works out. If you threaten internet platforms with huge penalties for failing to block content, but leave the details pretty vague, they're going to make decisions like that and simply kick people off their services entirely, rather than face liability. It's a recipe for disaster -- and one that seems to be favored by tons of clueless regulators, politicians, and plenty of people who just don't realize how much harm they will cause.

Filed Under: iran, iranians, ofac, sanctions, technology
Companies: slack

When A 'Trade War' Involves Seizing And Imprisoning Foreign Execs, It's No Longer Just About Trade

from the it-kinda-leads-to-actual-wars dept

For years we've been writing about the weird US government infatuation with the Chinese telco equipment firm, Huawei. The company has built a widely successful business, but going back many years there's been a loud whisper campaign that the company's equipment would send information back to the Chinese government. Of course, when our own government investigated this, it could find no evidence at all that this was true. It also seems notable that Huawei itself asked for this investigation, claiming that it would clear the company's name, since it wasn't doing anything that people were accusing it of doing. This doesn't mean that the company isn't doing something nefarious, but such claims should have some sort of evidence to back them up, and so far they've been lacking.

Of course, this may have been one of those situations where people assumed that whatever we would do to others, others must be doing to us, because what we do know, is that the NSA broke into Huawei's computers and grabbed a bunch of emails and source code. That bit seems to get left out of all the fear mongering reporting about Huawei. Oh, and it later came out that much of the whisper campaign about Huawei spying for the Chinese government... originated from the US firm Cisco, which was seeing its market share eroded by Huawei.

So we've long taken the claims about Huawei with a large grain of salt, even as most in the media have been willing to repeat the allegations about Huawei without mentioning the lack of evidence, Cisco's involvement, or the fact that the US government swiped a bunch of stuff from Huawei, even though all of those things seem kinda relevant.

By now, of course, you've probably heard that Canadian officials arrested Huawei's CFO, Meng Wanzhou, who also happens to be the daughter of the founder, and there are plans to try to extradite her to the US. While no charges have been revealed, most people claim it has to do with violating US sanctions on Iran by shipping US made equipment to Iran. The details here will matter, but it's still incredibly unusual to have a friendly country arrest a top exec and then try to extradite them.

Even if the official charges have nothing to do with the ongoing trade war with China, as nearly everyone is pointing out, there's no way this doesn't create massive blowback on any new trade agreement. Remember it was just a few days ago (was it really just a few days?) that President Trump announced that he'd agreed to end the senseless trade war he'd started (which has created a massive import tax on American businesses and consumers). Of course, when the Chinese gave their version of the story, it sounded remarkably different than Trump's version.

But, at least it sounded like progress was being made, and maybe we could end the insanity. But, of course, by having an ally arrest a top exec, it's thrown everything up in the air. Imagine, for example, if Sheryl Sandberg was on a trip to Pakistan, and was arrested by authorities there and extradited to China to face criminal charges. That's kind of the equivalent of what the US has just done via Canada.

Then, take it a step further. White House officials have told the press that they believe Meng "could be used as leverage with China in trade talks," and you realize this has fuck all to do with Iranian sanctions. No, that's the White House more or less admitting that they've taken a hostage in a trade war. That's hellishly dangerous. Because China will not hesitate to retaliate. If I were an American business exec, I'd stay far away from China or any of its allies right about now.

Arresting an executive over such a thing, and then admitting you want to use her as "leverage," just as you're negotiating a complex trade deal is... the kind of thing that turns a trade war into an actual war. It's an incredibly dangerous move that should concern everyone.

Filed Under: arrests, china, donald trump, extradition, hostage, iran, meng wanzhou, surveillance, trade war, war
Companies: cisco, huawei

Dear HBO: Just Shut The Fuck Up About Trump's 'Game Of Thrones' Meme, Please

from the stupid-is-coming dept

There has been a drumbeat punctuating the past decade or so that goes something like: everything is political. It's not really true, of course, but that mantra is used by those who want to inject politics into everything as an excuse for doing so. That makes the world a much more tiresome place to exist. Unfortunately, it seems both that politics really does infect aspects of our lives it should not, as does intellectual property bullshit.

Which brings us to Donald Trump and his fairly lame Game of Thrones meme he tweeted out, apparently as a warning shot of TBA foreign policy towards Iran.

Herr Trump tweeted this out on November 2nd and did indeed follow up with new sanctions on Iran on the fifth. The analogy, of course, doesn't really work, since the "winter" from GoT refers to the whitewalker zombies and the whole phrase is a warning about what this evil army will do when they arrive, rather than being some kind of call to arms against an evil army... but I digress. Whatever you think of the meme or Iran sanctions generally, there was very little offense to find in any of this.

But there was a great deal of fun to be had by the internet in response.

Folks began responding with memes of their own—”Indictments Are Coming” etc.—and even the show’s cast got involved. Sophie Turner, who plays Sansa Stark, replied“Ew,” and Maisie Williams (Arya Stark), in perhaps the best Twitter drag of the day, retweeted the president and just added “Not today.” (“Not today,” for those who don’t remember, is what Arya Stark’s swordfighting instructor, Syrio Forel, told her is what she should say to the god of death.)

Pretty standard fare in our Twitter politpocaplyse through which we are all living. And, again, judging by other news cycles we're forced to endure on what feels like a weekly basis, this is pretty tame and non-offensive.

Which is what makes it strange that HBO decided to pretend there was a trademark issue in any of this.

Despite being a fan of the show, I don't know the answer to this question. Which doesn't really matter, because it's an irrelevant question to begin with. Nothing about Trump's tweet and meme is in any way trademark misappropriation or infringement. There is no public confusion. No common marketplace. This is purely fair use. And HBO should know as much, so litigious and bullying have they been in the past -- both generally and specifically when it comes to Game of Thrones.

So, HBO... just don't. It already seems like politics invades everything, and intellectual property invades everything. Combining the two? That's way worse than any army of whitewalkers.

Filed Under: donald trump, game of thrones, iran, politics, trademark