Google Caves On Russian Censorship

from the be-evil? dept

Late last year, we were among those disappointed by leaked news from Google that it was toying around with a censored search engine for China -- a country that the company had mostly left nearly a decade ago. After loud complaints both from people outside the company and many within, reports in late December said that the company had quietly halted efforts to build a censored Chinese search engine.

But now... the company may be dipping its toe in the evil pool again, as it has apparently agreed to cooperate with Russia's censors. This is a battle that's been going on for some time. Over the last few years, Russia has passed a number of internet censorship laws, and there have been lots of questions about how Google and other tech giants would respond. A year ago, we noted that Facebook/Instagram had decided to cave in and that ratcheted up the pressure on Google.

It should be noted that Russia has been on Google's case for a while, and the company had been resisting such pressure. Indeed, the company actually shut down its Russian office a few years back to try to protect itself (and its employees) from Russian legal threats.

But, apparently, something has changed:

The business news source Vedomosti is reporting that Google has struck a deal with Russian censors to continue operating in the country by deleting websites that are banned in Russia from its results. The government censorship agency Roskomnadzor maintains a registry of sites that may not be distributed on Russian territory, but Google is one of a few search engines that does not subscribe to that registry. However, the company regularly deletes links from its search results that Roskomnadzor has banned, sources within both Roskomnadzor and Google told Vedomosti.

The report notes that, previously, Roskomnadzor had just been fining Google for its failures, and the company had been simply paying the fines. Now, however, it will sign up to censor the official list of sites, which is large and constantly growing. Given what the company just went through with the whole China debacle, you would think the company would be more thoughtful about this kind of thing. This is an unfortunate decision.

Filed Under: censorship, roskomnadzor, russia, search results, site blocking
Companies: google

UK Cop Calls Up 74-Year-Old Woman To Ask Her To Stop Tweeting Mean Things

from the time-to-waste-and-money-to-burn dept

The policing of tweets continues in the UK. The literal policing of tweets.

Because there's apparently not enough people being stabbed on a daily basis, local law enforcement agencies have decided making house calls over reports of "hateful" tweeting is a worthwhile use of resources. This fairly recent law enforcement tradition dates back to at least 2014, but in recent weeks police have ramped up efforts to... well, it's unclear exactly what the endgame is.

Irish writer Graham Linehan was recently visited by a Scottish police officer over supposed harassment of a trans rights activist. There didn't appear to be any actual harassment. Instead, it appeared the alleged harassee wasn't satisfied with the Mute and Block options offered by Twitter, and decided to file a formal complaint about speech he didn't like.

The end result was a stupefying mix of force and futility. The officer asked Linehan to stop engaging with Adrian Harrop (the offended party). Linehan refused to do so. The officer left and Linehan got back on Twitter to talk about this bizarre waste of everyone's time.

More time is being wasted by UK law enforcement, this time in an attempt to persuade an elderly person she harbors some outdated ideas.

Margaret Nelson is a 74-year-old woman who lives in a village in Suffolk. On Monday morning she was woken by a telephone call. It was an officer from Suffolk police. The officer wanted to speak to Mrs Nelson about her Twitter account and her blog.

[...]

Among the statements she made on Twitter last month and which apparently concerned that police officer: ‘Gender is BS. Pass it on’.

Another:

‘Gender’s fashionable nonsense. Sex is real. I’ve no reason to feel ashamed of stating the truth. The bloody annoying ones are those who use words like ‘cis’ or ‘terf’ and other BS, and relegate biological women to a ‘subset’. Sorry you believe the mythology.’

The only way any public official should have felt "concerned" is if they know her personally and frequently attend social events where she's both present and vocal. That's a very low level of concern, one that could be mitigated by steering clear of these social functions. It shouldn't be "concerning" enough for law enforcement to get involved. No one should be getting phone calls from cops because they said something stupid on the internet.

This phone call was especially pointless. The officer asked Nelson to stop writing things other people found offensive. Nelson asked the officer if free speech was still something the officer considered important. The officer said she thought free speech was important and Nelson said that's exactly why she wouldn't stop writing things that mildly upset other people.

The oddest aspect of this futile interaction was the department's response on Twitter -- one that makes it appear as though officers have voluntarily deputized themselves on behalf of Twitter.

Hi Margaret, we had a number of people contact us on social media about the comments made online. A follow-up call was made for no other reason than to raise awareness of the complaints. Kind regards, Web Team.

No law enforcement agency needs to be wasting its time acting as a complaint box for social media. If Nelson's content violated the terms of use, Twitter (and her blog host) are free to do something about it. If readers don't like what they're reading, they can simply stop reading Nelson's posts. Twitter also allows users to block or mute other users. Reading blogs you don't like isn't mandatory. All anyone has to do is not navigate to sites containing content they dislike.

Instead, an unknown number of internet users chose to make this a police matter. We could blame this entirely on them if it wasn't for the fact that multiple UK police agencies have made it clear they'll investigate impolite speech if someone's willing to waste their own time filing a complaint. In the end, they can't do anything more than ask someone to stop making other people angry. But that's all they can do, so it becomes a waste of taxpayers' money on top of everything else, which should make people angrier than whatever happened to piss them off as it rolled through their timeline.

Filed Under: free speech, margaret nelson, police, tweeting, uk