Turkish President Visits UK To Remind Everyone He Still Wants To Punish Critical Speech

from the UK-speech-laws-really-don't-need-to-be-any-worse dept

I'm not sure why any nation with at least a passing respect for civil liberties would continue treating Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan as a world leader worth discussing ideas with. Erdogan rolled into the United States with his entourage of thugs and thought he could have critics beaten and unfriendly journalists tossed from press conferences. He continually petitions other countries to punish their own citizens for insulting him.

Back at home, Erdogan is jailing journalists by the hundreds, claiming they're terrorists. A failed coup set off the latest wave of censorial thuggery, with Erdogan bolstering his terrorist claims by pointing to criminal acts like… robbing ATMs. A massive backlog of "insulting the president" cases sit in the country's court system -- a system that's certainly aware it's not supposed to act as a check against executive power.

And yet, world leaders continue to act as though Erdogan is an equal, rather than an overachieving street thug with an amazingly fragile ego. UK Prime Minister Theresa May, hoping to strike a trade deal with Turkey, invited Erdogan to not only discuss a possible deal, but speak publicly.

May tried to keep Erdogan from being Erdogan…

May said that while it was right that those who sought to overthrow a democratically elected government were brought to justice, “it is also important that in the defence of democracy… Turkey does not lose sight of the values it is seeking to defend”.

May added: “That is why today I have underlined to President Erdoğan that we want to see democratic values and international human rights obligations upheld.”

But Erdogan was always going to be Erdogan:

At a press conference in Downing Street alongside May, Erdoğan made no reference to May’s remarks about human rights, but instead urged her to do more to extradite Turkish exiles from the Gulenist or Kurdish movements, saying that if she did not act act against terrorists, it would come back to bite her.

And went on to make it clear that by "terrorists," he also meant journalists who may or may not have been caught engaging in burglary, but otherwise can be assumed to be political targets jailed to ensure silence.

You can't keep treating an overgrown child like an adult. No one should be doing business with Turkey until it cleans up its civil rights violation record. And that's not going to happen as long as Erdogan is president. Gently nudging him towards not being a completely evil asshole obviously doesn't work. All it does is make the government's hosting his off-the-cuff remarks on censorship and jailing journalists look like enablers of oppression.

Filed Under: criticism, free speech, golum, insults, journalism, recep tayyip erdogan, theresa may, turkey

DOJ Still Wants To Lock People Up For Protesting The Government, Or Even Just Talking About It

from the thoughtcrime dept

The government is still trying to land a conviction from its mass arrest of participants in last year's Inauguration Day protests in Washington, DC. So far, it has nothing to show for its efforts but a far-too-casual disregard for civil liberties.

The prosecutions began with the government's breathtaking demand for the personal info of all 1 million+ visitors to the Disrupt J20 website. From there, things did not improve. The government's prosecutors accused protest participants of "hiding behind the First Amendment" while attempting to strip away First Amendment protections. One of those charged by the government with rioting was journalist Alexi Wood, who had filmed the protests and had the footage to show he wasn't a participant in violent or destructive acts.

The government compounded its unconstitutional behavior in court when its lawyer (Jennifer Kerkhoff) tried to downplay the significance of a foundational part of our justice system -- that the accusers must prove "beyond a reasonable doubt" the accused committed a crime.

Kerkhoff: The defense has talked to you a little bit about reasonable doubt. You're going to get an instruction from the Judge. And you can tell it's clearly written by a bunch of lawyers. It doesn't mean a whole lot. But look at the last line.

The Court: So wait...

Kerkhoff: I apologize.

The Court: I know she didn't mean to say what she just said. But --

Kerkhoff:: It means a lot.

The Court: I just need to say, ladies and gentlemen, you will be instructed on reasonable doubt. You must follow each and every word of my instructions on reasonable doubt.

Kerkhoff: Yes.

The Court: Ms. Kerkhoff did not mean to trivialize any portion of it, and it's just as important that you understand --

Kerkhoff: I apologize.

The Court: -- that every word of the reasonable doubt instructions, like all the rest of my instructions, are very important.

Kerkhoff: It's an important instruction.

After these horrendous actions and the acquittal of its first batch of J20 prosecutees, the DOJ is finally going to attempt something a bit more targeted.

After a DC Superior Court jury acquitted the first group, prosecutors announced they were dropping charges against 129 remaining defendants, saying they would focus on defendants who allegedly engaged in "identifiable acts of destruction, violence, or other assaultive conduct," who planned violence, or who participated in "black bloc" tactics to aid the property destruction that day.

Unfortunately, that still leaves a whole lot of defendants. The prosecutions began with more than 200 people charged. Only about a quarter of the original defendants are still awaiting their day in court.

[...]58 defendants remain charged and will face a judge and jury in at least nine more trials; jury selection for the next of these is scheduled to begin Monday.

The government is still giving itself plenty of leeway, though. It's not simply interested in jailing those who actually committed property destruction during the J20 protests, but anyone it thinks it can pin a conspiracy to riot charge on.

The "conspiracy" angle is only going to do more damage to First Amendment rights. Simply having contact with someone charged with property damage/rioting could net defendants jail time. This is an effective way to deter future dissent, as it casts a chill on participating in protests against the government simply because the possibility of some participants engaging in criminal activity will always exist.

Denver civil rights attorney Jason Flores-Williams was a legal observer at the demonstration, but was disqualified from representing arrested protesters because the court saw this as a conflict of interest. In his view the prosecution means to send an even more pernicious message, which is that protest of the sort that the defendants engaged in is prohibited full stop.

[...]

"The important aspect here is that they're going after fundamental associative rights. They implant the idea in the minds of the citizenry that even to discuss dissent or even 'like' a dissenting comment on Facebook can lead to prosecution. When that happens, democracy dies.”

It's highly unlikely the last 58 defendants all engaged in property damage or destruction. That means a lot of the government's targets will be facing nothing more than conspiracy charges. If the government succeeds in convincing a jury simply discussing participation in a protest that ultimately resulted in destructive acts from a small subset of participants is a criminal act in and of itself, the First Amendment is going to suffer. Given the history of these prosecutions, it's clear the government either isn't aware of the damage it's doing or, more likely, does not care.

Filed Under: doj, donald trump, free speech, inauguration, j20, prosecutions, protests

Stormy Daniels' Lawyer Sends Totally Bogus, Censorial Defamation Threat To Reporter He Doesn't Like

from the not-how-it-works,-jackass dept

No matter what you might think of the various legal fights involving Stormy Daniels, her lawyer, Michael Avenatti, is making quite a name for himself over the past couple of months -- partly for his legal strategy, partly for breaking news about Michael Cohen and Donald Trump, and partly for constantly appearing on TV at what appears to be every possible opportunity. Even if you happen to support his dogged focus on calling out Cohen and Trump, it is worth noting that Avenatti seems to fall into the camp of a few other lawyers in filing and threatening completely bogus defamation threats trying to silence people. Last month, there was some news when Daniels, represented by Avenatti, sued Donald Trump for defamation over a tweet of Trump's.

I could probably write 90,000 words just to give you a basic background of how we got here, but assuming you follow at least some of the news around this, the short version is that Daniels claimed on 60 Minutes that a few years back she was threatened in a parking lot by a man who told her to leave Trump alone. There was some dispute about the veracity of this claim, and Daniels eventually had a sketch artist draw what the guy looked like, leading Trump to then tweet: "A sketch years later about a nonexistent man. A total con job, playing the Fake News Media for Fools (but they know it)!" Daniels sued over this tweet, calling it defamatory.

As First Amendment lawyer Ken "Popehat" White notes, this is a "very weak" case, and there are a whole bunch of reasons why Trump is likely to get it dismissed -- including that previous courts have ruled that Trump's tweets can't be taken literally, and a fairly strong argument that Trump's tweets are opinions based on disclosed facts, rather than false factual statements themselves (not to mention the high bar needed to show that Trump's tweets involved knowledge of falsity or reckless disregard for the truth -- while Trump may, in general, have a reckless disregard for the truth, that's not going to meet the legal standard for a defamation case). First Amendment lawyer Marc Randazza went, shall we say, a bit further in suggesting that Avenatti's lawsuit was a bad idea. You can read that entire link on why the lawsuit may backfire on Daniels/Avenatti, or it can be summed up in the following tweet from Randazza:

If you can't read that, it's Randazza responding to Avenatti's tweet about the filing of the lawsuit with the following (*cough*) professional assessment:

You must be mentally impaired to have filed this stupid shit. I hope your malpractice insurance is paid up, Trump will be able to invoke the Texas anti-slap law against your client (last I checked she was a Texas resident). See Adelson v. Harris; Tobinick v. Novella.

Anyway, whatever happens with that case, it does not seem to have resulted in Avenatti becoming any more clued in on not abusing defamation law. Earlier this week he sent an angry defamation threat email to reporter Peter Hasson from the Daily Caller:

If you can't read that, it says:

Off the Record.

Let me be clear. If you and your colleagues do not stop with the hit pieces that are full of lies and defamatory statements, I will have no choice but to sue each of you and your publication for defamation. During that process, we will expose your publication for what it truly is. We will also recover significant damages against each of you that participated personally. So if I were you, I would tell Mr. Trump to find someone else to fabricate things about me.

If you think I'm kidding, you really don't know anything about me. This is the last warning.

All rights are expressly reserved.

Michael

So, first off, that's not how "Off the Record" works. You don't get to just chant it like an incantation and reporters have to abide by it. It is a negotiation, where you first must ask a reporter if they'll accept your statement off the record, and then it's established that it is (and, even then, some journalists will still choose to burn sources who give off the record statements, though at a potential cost of no longer getting quotes in the future). Even more bizarre is that, even after this, Avenatti appears to believe that him merely stating "off the record" carries some sort of magical requirements which don't actually exist:

“I sent an email off the record. It should remain off the record. It speaks for itself,” Avenatti told TheWrap on Monday.

Yeah, it speaks for itself that a press-hungry lawyer doesn't understand how "Off the Record" actually works.

But, more importantly, threatening journalists for reporting on you is... bad. I'm no fan of the Daily Caller myself, and think it's a hack publication that publishes misleading, fear mongering, junk, often to prop up our dunderhead of a President, but that doesn't mean it's defamatory.

The fact that Avenatti cites no actual false statement of fact, and is just screaming about generalities, tends to be the sign of someone looking to censor the press, rather than someone who has a legitimate defamation claim. Also, given that Avenatti's silly threat came just after the Daily Caller published an article about him, the email also serves as something of a Streisand Effect calling more attention to what the Daily Caller had to say.

Even worse, Avenatti went on TV (natch) to defend his bogus defamation threat, because (he claims) not all journalists are ethical:

“All journalists are not ethical, just because they’re a journalist. There’s good journalists and there’s bad journalists. There’s ethical journalists and unethical journalists,” said Avenatti on the Monday evening show.

“If we encounter journalists that don’t get their facts straight by design, don’t follow the basic rules of journalism, purposely skew stories to fit their own political dialogue of what they want the message to be, we’re going to continue to call them out on that. And there’s nothing wrong with that.”

Well, first, it's true that not all journalists are ethical. And it's true that there's "nothing wrong" with "calling out" journalists who you feel don't follow the basic rules of journalism. But "calling out" is not the same as "threatening with entirely bogus defamation lawsuits." And there's a pretty big difference there.

We've covered this ground for many years. People get annoyed or upset about lots of things said about them -- and sometimes that stuff appears in publications with large audiences (or small audiences). Threatening to sue people for defamation just because they said something you don't like is bad. It's abusive and censorial and bullying. If anything deserves being "called out" it's lawyers abusing defamation law or threats under defamation law to seek to intimidate reporters, no matter how ethical or unethical those reporters might be. If Avenatti believes that the Daily Caller's reporting on him is bogus, then respond to it and explain why it's bogus. Responding with a bullshit censorial threat, without any explanation of why the site's reporting is in error, suggests anger at being criticized, rather than any sort of legitimate complaint.

Filed Under: anti-slapp, censorial, defamation, donald trump, free speech, michael avenatti, michael cohen, peter hasson, reporting, slapp, stormy daniels, threats
Companies: daily caller

California Gov't Thinks It Might Be Able To Regulate Fake News Sometime Before 2020

from the JUST-STOP dept

Good lord. Somehow recent overseas efforts to regulate fake news, hate speech, etc. haven't managed to persuade US government officials to think two or three times before introducing the same sort of legislation. Whatever hasn't been turned into blatant vehicles for government censorship has produced a steady stream of embarrassing collateral damage.

In the United States, the First Amendment protects a wide variety of unpopular speech, but that isn't stopping California legislators from trying to govern their way through the "fake news" problem. Eric Goldman reports an effort has been started to put the state in the business of directly regulating online speech.

The bill has been heavily edited since its introduction in February. At that point, the Cali legislature wanted to compel social media services to inform users what steps it was taking to protect them from "fake news" as defined by the California government, if and when the government ever gets around to defining exactly what it thinks "fake news" is.

(a)As used in this section, “social media” means an electronic service or account, or electronic content, including, but not limited to, videos, still photographs, blogs, video blogs, podcasts, instant and text messages, e-mail, online services or accounts, or Internet Web site profiles or locations.

(b)Any person who operates a social media Internet Web site with a physical presence in California shall prominently display a link on the site to a disclosure informing users, in plain language, of all of the following:

(1)How, and on what basis, the social media Internet Web site determines what content to display to the user, the order in which content is displayed, and the format in which content is displayed.

(2) Whether the social media Internet Web site enables other parties to influence, through payment or the use of automated accounts, what content is displayed to a user, the order in which content is displayed, or the format in which content is displayed, and specifically how such influence may be exerted by the other party on the content displayed.

(3)Whether the social media Internet Web site allows the user to alter the settings that determine what content is displayed to the user, the order in which the content is displayed, or the format in which content is displayed, and how the user can alter these settings.

(4)Whether the social media Internet Web site utilizes factcheckers to verify the accuracy of news stories. If the social media Internet Web site utilizes factcheckers for that purpose, the disclosure shall state both of the following:

(A)What policies and practices the factcheckers use to determine whether news stories are accurate.

(B)What the social media Internet Web site does with content that its factcheckers determine is not accurate.

(5)The social media Internet Web site’s strategic plan to mitigate the spread of false information.

Fortunately, all of that language has been stricken from the bill. But what it's replaced with doesn't indicate the legislature has decided to lift the heavy hand of regulation. Instead, the new language has the unmistakably tinny sound of a can being kicked down the road.

The Attorney General shall, not later than April 1, 2019, establish an advisory group consisting of at least one member of the Department of Justice, Internet-based social media providers, civil liberties advocates, and First Amendment scholars, to do all of the following:

(a) Study the problem of the spread of false information through Internet-based social media platforms.

(b) Draft a model strategic plan for Internet-based social media platforms to use to mitigate the spread of false information through their platforms.

(c) Draft potential legislation for mitigating the spread of false information through social media, if the advisory group deems it appropriate. The advisory group may consult with the Legislative Counsel and the California Law Revision Commission, among others, for this purpose.

(d) Not later than December 31, 2019, present the results of the study, the model strategic plan, and the proposed legislation, if any, to the Legislature, pursuant to Section 9795 of the Government Code, and to the Assembly and Senate Committees on Judiciary.

It's basically an 18-month backburner with a slim chance of an Attorney General shrug being delivered to the legislature before everyone starts celebrating the beginning of a new decade. I say "slim chance" because it's unlikely the Attorney General will decide there's nothing the government (a) can do about it or (b) should do about it. The latent desire to govern speech never really goes away, no matter how many tax dollars are spent defending constitutionally-indefensible bills in state and federal courts. "Shall make no law," indeed.

Given the ultra-broad definition of "social media" -- which could encompass everything from Facebook to SMS messages -- the chances of a narrow definition of "fake news" seems unlikely. What this would do is force services to add personnel/algorithms to monitor "fake news" and otherwise expend resources to aid the California government's windmill tilts. Any efforts taken would be judged as "fake news" by those who saw their favorite news sources flagged as questionable. The added expense would do nothing to improve the spread of factual information and would push people further into their preferred echo chambers. Smaller services without the resources to comply would exit California or simply cease to exist.

"Fake news" is a no-win situation. The problem is far too many people think the government they don't trust should step in and fix the news they don't trust. And that mindset is only compounded in those who are employees of the government, who tend to find speech critical of them and their jobs the least trustworthy. It's broken, but for the love of [insert preferred deity here], let's not try to fix it this way.

Filed Under: california, fake news, free speech, regulation, social media

China Outlaws Telling The Truth About Communist Party 'Heroes And Martyrs'

from the no-one-does-Orwell-better dept

China's participation in the world market tends to portray the country as far more open than it actually is. China's does have some love for capitalism. Democracy, not so much. There's not much participation in the marketplace of ideas, thanks to continuous, ever-increasing censorship measures.

Nothing's going to change in the near future. The sitting president was just rewarded with the title appendage "for life," thanks to a bought-in (and possibly bought) parliament stripping away term limits earlier this year. Chinese citizens have been rewarded for their enforced loyalty with a government-controlled internet experience and a scoring system that grants/strips perks based on a perverse "morality" algorithm.

Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it, as the adage goes. The Chinese government is ensuring Cultural Revolution reruns by forcing the nation to forget inconvenient facts. A new law now makes it illegal to speak ill of the long-dead.

China’s Communist Party has always understood the importance of policing its history.

On Friday, it tightened the screws further with a new law banning the slander of “heroes and martyrs” — figures drawn from wartime propaganda said to have given their lives in defense of the Communist Party or the nation.

Chinese schoolchildren are taught about the heroic deeds of figures who fought against the Japanese during World War II, or who gave their lives for the Communist Party in the civil war with the Nationalists. Memorials to some of the most famous dot the country.

Now, it will be illegal to suggest that those tales might not be wholly factual.

The rewriting of China's history will require the involvement of everyone in the country. Beyond a long list of instructions for compulsory celebrations/commemorations at the local government level, there's also plenty of censorship and compelled speech to be had. Here's how the media will be used to burnish the reputation of "heroes" and "martyrs." (All translations via China Law Translate)

Article 18: The departments of culture, press, radio and television, film, Internet information, and so forth, shall encourage and support the production and promotion of excellent literary and artistic works, and radio or television programs, and publications and with the subject of publicizing or carrying forward, the spirit of heroes and martyrs.

Article 19: Radio stations, television stations, newspaper and periodical publishing units, and Internet information service providers shall widely publicize the deeds and spirit of heroes and martyrs by playing or publishing works on the theme of heroes and martyrs, public service advertisements, and special columns.

And here's what's forbidden:

The names, likenesses, reputation, and honor of heroes and martyrs are protected by law. The names, likenesses,reputations and honor of heroes and martyrs must not be insulted, defamed, or violated through other means by any person, either in public places, online, or through radio, television, film or publications. The names and likenesses of heroes and martyrs must not be used, or covertly used, by any organization or individual for trademarks or commercial advertisements, damaging the reputation and honor of heroes and martyrs.

And this is all tied together with a "see something, say something" program that mandates any attempted slurs of Communist martyrs must be reported to the government immediately and all efforts made to banish it from television screens, newspapers, and the web.

Even historical research must comply with the new law. If historians discover facts that conflict with the official narratives, the facts must go.

Yue Zhongming, a member of the standing committee, said at a news conference that although the law is not intended to restrict academic freedom, it does not give permission to harm the honor of the nation’s heroes.

“We often say there is no banned area of academic research, while there is a bottom line of law,” he said.

China's history will be nothing more than propaganda. The rest of the world should call it what it is: self-serving bullshit, backed by men with guns doing the bidding of government with no moral compass.

Filed Under: censorship, china, free speech, heroes, martyrs, truth

War Of Words Between Anti-Vaxxers Results In An Unconstitutional Gag Order

from the even-assholes-have-rights dept

Eugene Volokh, the EFF, and several members of First Amendment Clinic students and professors have filed a brief in a case involving an unconstitutional and apparently permanent injunction against an anti-vaxxer. Oddly enough, this injunction is the result of a civil action brought by another anti-vaccination activist. The details leading up to this "shut up" order are a bit convoluted (and explained in full at the Volokh Conspiracy) but the short version is this:

Anti-vaccination activist Kimberly McCauley blogs about her efforts and experiences. This includes frequent mentions of her daughter, who is now apparently being harmed by the state's vaccination requirements for students.

McCauley sued Matthew Phillips, a lawyer and another anti-vaccination activist. Apparently, Phillips believes McCauley isn't as anti-vaccination as she could be and has criticized her on Facebook. Phillips has also mentioned McCauley's daughter in his posts, but McCauley has put her daughter front-and-center in her anti-vaccination crusade.

While there is little doubt Phillips posts are antagonistic and filled with ridiculous conspiracy theories (the words "crisis actor" have been thrown around, along with accusations of shilling for pharmaceutical companies), it would appear the bulk of what he's posted is still protected speech. McCauley's full complaint can be read here and it details some disturbing trolling efforts by Phillips. This forms the basis of her request for a civil restraining order [PDF], which was granted, but demands nothing more than Phillips' silence on the subject of McCauley in perpetuity.

The trial court ordered Todd Phillips not to "post photographs, videos, or information about [Kimberly McCauley] to any internet site and to remove the same from any internet site over which he has access or control."

This is overbroad and a clear violation of the First Amendment, as Volokh argues in the brief [PDF]. It points out speech can be restricted for a handful of reasons, but this short order does more than deter future harassment. It effectively forbids Phillips from discussing any of his anti-vaccination efforts if they happen to include past (or future!) interactions with McCauley.

To be sure, there are some narrow categories of speech that can be restricted, such as libel and true threats of criminal conduct. And unwanted speech to a particular person can be restricted, which is why telephone harassment laws, for instance, are constitutional. But there is no general exception for opinions and accurate factual claims about a particular person. The injunction is thus an unconstitutional prior restraint.

This would be so even if the injunction simply suppressed purely personal criticisms; but here, the injunction is broad enough to cover a wide range of political advocacy as well, such as:

Phillips' writing a blog post that criticizes McCauley for her stance on vaccination laws, since any such criticism would necessarily include some "information about" McCauley.

Phillips' creating a Facebook page for a political campaign that advertises his commitment to anti-vaccination principles by recounting his past exchanges with McCauley.

Phillips' Tweeting about McCauley as an example of an anti-vaccination activist who has supposedly endangered her family through vaccination.

Phillips' criticizing McCauley on a Facebook page for seeking this injunction.

Phillips' criticizing the injunction online for preventing his speaking about McCauley, since such criticism would likewise have to include some information about McCauley.

Phillips' posting on an anti-vaccination message board that he is subject to this order, and explaining McCauley's rationale for getting the order, as a way of warning others about the possible consequences of their speech.

As is noted in the brief, speech that's unpleasant to the target isn't one of the narrow categories exempted from First Amendment protections. If McCauley finds statements libelous, she's welcome to sue. If she feels the speech constitutes criminal harassment, she can look to law enforcement for solutions. But what the court should not do is engage in prior restraint, simply because the speech appears to have disturbed the person bringing the complaint.

The brief cites prior Supreme Court decisions upholding speech deployed to ostracize others or coerce people into actions via public shaming. This has been held to be protected even if the target of the speech is a private individual.

Likewise, the inclusion of a minor does not automatically deprive it of First Amendment protections. Certain speech about minors is outside Constitutional coverage (child porn, sexually-themed speech directed at a minor), but what's covered here doesn't fall into any of these exceptions. The brief notes several state courts have struck down cyberbullying laws, finding the restrictions enacted to be unconstitutional, even when this speech is directed at minors.

As Volokh sums up, the order expands past the margins of First Amendment exceptions to effectively silence a citizen engaged in subject of great interest to many members of the public.

The injunction in this case bars Phillips from talking about McCauley, his political adversary, in the context of a heated debate on a public matter. It limits his ability to publicly explain his disagreement with her. It limits his ability to argue that she ought not be trusted. Indeed, it even limits his ability to condemn the injunction itself and her role in asking for this injunction.

This isn't about making sure unpleasant people with shitty debate skills can use Facebook to spread both ignorance and hate. It's about the fact our nation's free speech protections cover a whole lot of unpalatable speech. When courts blow calls on the First Amendment, bad things happen. They're not excusable just because they happened to bad people.

Filed Under: anti-vaccer, injunction, kimberly mccauley, matthew phillips, prior restraint, vaccinations

UN Celebrates World Press Freedom Day By Suppressing Presentation Of Turkey Suppressing Press

from the hello,-ambassador-streisand! dept

Hey, everyone, today is World Press Freedom Day, which is a day created by the UN to "celebrate the fundamental principles of press freedom," to "assess the state of press freedom throughout the world" and to "defend the media from attacks on their independence." Sounds good, right? So how is the UN itself celebrating World Press Freedom Day? Why, by refusing to allow a presentation to be heard that calls out Turkey for its suppression of press freedom.

For real.

The News Literacy Project -- which, as the name suggests, seeks to increase new literacy among students -- was all set to do a presentation at the UN's Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC) for World Press Freedom Day. However, just before the event, the UNAOC told NLP that it was "indefinitely postponing" their presentation unless references to the suppression of press freedoms in Turkey were removed. Really.

The United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC) indefinitely postponed an event at the U.N. tomorrow to observe World Press Freedom Day after the News Literacy Project (NLP) refused UNAOC’s request to remove references in our presentation to several countries where press freedom is limited.

The references are in videos from a new lesson on international press freedoms in our Checkology virtual classroom, which I was planning to introduce at the event. The videos include remarks, written for the lesson by NLP and presented by lesson host Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson of NPR, about severe restrictions on press freedom in Turkey, Mexico and Egypt and comments by Russian and Pakistani journalists describing the challenges they face.

NLP submitted the presentation to UNAOC on Monday so it would be ready to be shared with the audience. A UNAOC official then asked us to delete the reference to Turkey — which, along with Spain, had proposed the creation of UNAOC in 2005 — and the official later insisted that NLP not share any of the video clips.

Of course, all this is really doing is driving a hell of a lot more attention to (1) the suppression of press freedom in Turkey and (2) the out and out hypocrisy of the UN. We've certainly written a bunch about how Turkey has suppressed the media by throwing hundreds of journalists in jail and then calling them terrorists, and it has tried to export its journalist suppression elsewhere, including here in the US.

There are so many stories of Turkey throwing journalists in prison that it's tough to keep track of them all. And, frankly, most people would have never known about NLP's presentation, which only appears to mention Turkey's journalism suppression in passing, had the UN not tried to silence them.

So, it would certainly appear that inadvertently, in trying to stifle any mention of press censorship and intimidation by the Turkish government, the UN has successfully gotten a lot more attention to Turkey's attacks of press freedom. I guess that makes it a successful World Press Freedom Day... even if it also involved exposing the UN's own weak backbone on the very topic it claims to be celebrating.

Filed Under: censorship, free speech, journalism, turkey, world press freedom day
Companies: national literacy project, un, united nations

German Politician Decries Censorship, Follows It Up By Suing Facebook To Have A Critical Comment Deleted

from the dirty-AfD-swine dept

Germany's terrible speech laws continues to be tools for abuse and stupidity. A recently-enacted law holds service providers responsible for lingering "hate speech" to the tune of €50m per violation. Social media companies have shown a tendency to over-enforce, resulting in the preemptive removal of things even the badly-written law doesn't consider criminally hateful.

Whatever damage social media companies are doing in order to steer clear of massive fines, politicians are compounding by using the law to target opponents and critics. Courthouse News Service reports a German court has indulged a politician's hypocritical outrage to demand the disappearance of a critical, but hyperbolic, comment posted to Facebook.

A leading German nationalist politician has won a court injunction forcing Facebook to ensure a user’s slur against her can’t be seen in Germany.

In a post, a user had called Alice Weidel, co-leader of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, a “dirty Nazi swine” for reportedly opposing same-sex marriage.

Immediate blocking of the comment occurred in Germany, but Weidel's lawyers complained it hadn't been vanished hard enough, pointing out that German VPN users could still access the comment.

The court's injunction would apparently force Facebook to delete the comment entirely, despite its legality nearly everywhere else in the world. Facebook's only comment, via Reuters, was to note it had already blocked the content in Germany, which is all the law really requires.

This desperation to remove a comment referring to her as "dirty Nazi swine" is especially rich considering Weidel had previously complained about censorship of another AfD party member. The first collateral damage from the new hate speech law -- which occurred less than three days into its existence -- nuked a satirical magazine's mocking of AfD leader Beatrix Van Storch's anti-Muslim comments. Van Storch was blocked by both Facebook and Twitter for these comments, while the German law took down a satirical bystander. That prompted this response by Weidel and the AfD:

The AfD appears to want to make the new social media law a major issue by testing boundaries and provoking a response from social media companies and law enforcement authorities.

AfD parliamentary group leader Alice Weidel wrote on Facebook and Twitter defending her party colleague and lamenting what she called the "censorship law," while sharing the text of von Storch's deleted tweet and repeating her complaints, while referring to "migrant mobs" instead of Muslim men specifically.

I guess Alice Weidel only dislikes government censorship when it targets speech she likes.

Filed Under: alice weidel, censorship, comments, criticism, germany, hate speech, social media

Malaysian 'Fake News' Law Claims Its First Victim

from the badmouthing-law-enforcement?-that's-a-jailin' dept

The Malaysian government got a jump on the rest of the world by being the first to actually enact a "fake news" law. The government had several hundred million good reasons to do so, most them residing in the prime minister's bank account. Lawmakers cited concern for the public's well-being, but critics noted the law was just an efficient way for the government to shut down reporting it doesn't like.

The nation's Ministry of Truth (a.k.a., the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission) cited free speech champion Donald Trump as the inspiration for this new censorship tool.

“Fake news has become a global phenomenon, but Malaysia is at the tip of the spear in trying to fight it with an anti-fake news law,” said Fadhlullah Suhaimi Abdul Malek, a senior official with the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission. “When the American president made ‘fake news’ into a buzzword, the world woke up.”

The law has already rung up its first arrest for "fake news." And it's someone who's not even a Malaysian citizen.

Salah Salem Saleh Sulaiman seems like an improbable purveyor of “fake news.”

He doesn't run a troll farm or a website designed to spread propaganda. He's not on a mission to destroy a politician or artist. He's not even a journalist.

But this week, he was sentenced to a week in jail for a YouTube video he made, the first casualty of Malaysia's “fake news” law.

[...]

Sulaiman, a Danish citizen of Yemeni descent, said he'd been in Malaysia for less than two weeks when he was arrested.

The video that resulted in a one-week jail sentence dealt with the shooting of a Hamas lecturer, supposedly by Israel's spy agency. Sulaiman claimed it took an hour for an ambulance to arrive after he reported the shooting. The police claimed it only took them eight minutes for a patrol car to arrive. Two days after the video was posted, Sulaiman was arrested and charged with publishing "fake news." His inability to pay a $2,500 fine has increased his sentence to one month.

There's a difference between a police car and an ambulance, which may make the video technically correct. But that really shouldn't matter. Even if his claims were false, there's no way the government should have reacted with anything more than a statement denying Sulaiman's claims. The new law allows the government to arrest and fine anyone who publishes anything the government disagrees with. Six months in jail and fines up to $128,000 are one hell of a chilling effect. All the government seemingly needs to do to make charges stick is deny allegations made by citizens -- or in this case, a nonresident visitor who claims he did not know the government had recently outlawed 'fake news."

Those concerned about the state of speech protections around the world will view this as severely troubling. Those who actually have the power and desire to further restrict criticism and unfavorable reporting will see nothing but upsides for enacting legislation targeting "fake news."

Filed Under: censorship, criticism, fake news, malaysia, police, salah salem saleh sulaiman