White House admits US government works with Facebook to censor free-speech
Press Secretary says Biden admin is “flagging disinformation” which social media giant then removes
By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | July 24, 2021
Government agencies are flagging posts as “misinformation” for Facebook. Essentially telling internet companies who to censor. We’ve always suspected as much, but now they’ve actually admitted it.
Jen Psaki, Biden’s Press Secretary, said as much in a press briefing last week:
We are flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation”
If true – and that’s never a given when Psaki is talking – it’s a frank admission that the White House is actively breaching the first amendment rights of US citizens (and potentially the human rights of foreign nationals too).
The issue of censorship on the internet is one we have discussed at length at OffG. It has been slowly and steadily increasing for over a decade, with marked acceleration after the Ukraine conflict kicked it to the top of the to-do list in 2015.
Every act of terrorism, every controversy, every election… every “pandemic” is new excuse to place fresh restrictions on who is allowed to say what, where.
This culminated in every single social media and internet platform coordinating to completely remove the incumbent President of the United States from the internet.
News that X celebrity, Y journalist or Z website has been deleted or demonetized or de-platformed is an everyday occurrence now. The internet, or at least the mainstream internet, has become a quasi-police state. The digital Gestapo knock on doors in the middle of the night and *poof*… the dissident voice is quieted.
The mainstream media is, of course, fine with this. They outright refuse to talk about “censorship”. Instead choosing to talk about “free speech having consequences”, or arguing that “free speech needs a new definition in the age of social media”.
The “liberal” or “progressive” stance has always been that free speech is only about state suppression, not about private companies or individuals.
The argument has always been that Facebook/Twitter/Google etc. are private companies that have every right to decide what appears on their platforms. Of course, if the state is actively instructing the private companies on what to remove… that argument crumbles to dust.
Psaki’s casual revelation means this sophistry is no longer simply logically flawed, it is now inherently dishonest.
It also confirms that the pantomime of government vs social media is just that…, a pantomime. Every time a politician rails against Facebook for allowing hate speech, or bemoans the lack of regulations for internet giants, they are lying.
It’s a false conflict. A constructed PR exercise designed to hide a basic truth – The government tells Facebook what to remove, and Facebook removes it.
They said it, and they can’t unsay it… but they’ll probably try to stop us repeating it.
Banned by the Twitter Totalitarians
By Rob Slane | The Blog Mire | July 23, 2021
I have just been handed my second stint in the Social Media Outer Darkness by the Twitter Totalitarians. The first was because I told the truth about the experimental gene therapies masquerading as vaccines, particularly the fact that they have not completed the clinical trials (which they haven’t), and that they are causing a huge amount of adverse reactions and deaths (which they are). On that occasion I was slapped on the wrist for 12 hours, but this time — presumably to teach me a lesson good and proper — the sentence has been increased to a whole week. Will it be the death sentence next?
And the crime m’lud? This was the Tweet that did it:
“The “Covid emergency” is a manufactured crisis, held up by 2 monumental lies: Asymptomatic Transmission + Fraudulent PCR Tests. The “Pingdemic” is thus part of the same manufactured crisis. Remember that when you struggle to put food on the table.”
Bearing in mind that they allow all sorts of scandalous, libelous, hateful content on their platform, which part of this in particular did the Twitter Totalitarians think was unpalatable? Note that I did not dispute the existence of a respiratory illness, which has proved deadly to some people. What I did was to state that a “crisis” was manufactured, chiefly by the use of two falsehoods, one being the claim that healthy people with no symptoms transmit the illness to others, and the other that the RT-PCR test can diagnose infection.
On the first point, numerous studies, along with basic common sense, show that so-called asymptomatic transmission is a myth (see here and here). On the second, this document details conclusively why the RT-PCR test is unfit for use as a clinical diagnostic tool, and on one of the rare occasions this has been allowed to be tested in court, the judgement of a Portuguese court showed beyond doubt that the test is unable to detect infection and therefore not fit for purpose. Yet the Lockdowns, the masking, the bizarre restrictions, the anti-social distancing and everything else has been based on these two lies.
As for the rest of the Tweet, well the so-called Pingdemic, which magically started happening big-time on what was billed as “Freedom Day”, is downstream from these two monumental rivers of lies. The pinging of the app to tell people to self-isolate, which has then been causing whole businesses to close, is the result of the fraudulent tests and the absurd idea that people who aren’t ill can spread the illness they haven’t got. As for the food shortages? There are indeed signs of these starting to occur, and of course if they do happen on a big scale they will be blamed like everything else on Covid! Except it won’t be Covid, but the utterly unnecessary pinging of an unnecessary app, telling people to do unnecessary things, because of a manufactured crisis based on false claims.
The walls are not just closing in free speech; more than that they are closing in on truth-telling. It has been very noticeable that those getting censored have been people who have used facts and truth to challenge the manufactured crisis we’ve experienced since the start of 2020. The purpose of that manufactured crisis has been to lead humanity to a hideous dystopian Biosecurity State, run by Global Technocrats. The purpose of the censorship is to stop those who would hinder the creation of this Transhumanist Hellhole. If you can’t see either of these things yet, it really is time to wake up, since you too will have to live in the nightmare they are building for us.
Surgeon General says “equity” is the reason COVID “misinformation” needs to be censored online
By Dan Frieth | Reclaim the Net | July 23, 2021
In his address on the administration’s concerns about online health “misinformation” surrounding the pandemic, Biden’s Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said the misinformation concerns were focused on “equity.”
The White House has come under fire for its plans for a direct approach regarding online censorship, especially when it emerged that it was flagging posts on Facebook.
“Misinformation is a threat to our health, and the speed, scale and sophistication with which it is spreading is unprecedented,” Murthy said in the Thursday morning address. “I will not hesitate to say that and to call for greater accountability and action to address health misinformation.”
“A word about equity though,” he continued. “We recognize that equity must be at the center of our work to confront health misinformation. Here’s why: Because unequal access to the health care system, education and technology, means that some people have less access to accurate health information than others. And when those people instead encounter health misinformation, it can worsen their health outcomes, which exacerbates health inequity in what becomes a vicious cycle.”
The Surgeon General also highlighted what individuals can do to stop the spread of health misinformation.
“Last week, I issued a Surgeon General’s Advisory to call the nation’s attention to the threat of health misinformation. Since then, we have continued to emphasize what individuals can do to stop health misinformation in its tracks. That includes asking everyone to raise their own bar for sharing health information by checking to make sure it’s backed by credible scientific sources. As we say in the Advisory, if you’re not sure, don’t share.
“And we’ll continue to say that, on social media and in a video PSA we’ve created and released and in conversations we’re convening with people around the country. We’re also mobilizing other stakeholders to address misinformation. From technology companies and healthcare professionals, to researchers and community-based organizations. In fact, right after this briefing, my office will be hosting a conversation with community organizations around the country to address the steps that they can take to stop the spread of health misinformation.”
Murthy’s address was met with criticism on some social media quarters, especially considering the administration’s remarks on fighting the “health misinformation” over the past week.
Last week, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki revealed that the administration would be flagging vaccine misinformation content on behalf of Facebook. On Friday, Biden said Facebook was “killing people” by allowing vaccine misinformation to thrive on its platform.
On Monday, Psaki doubled down on her earlier remarks, saying the administration has not “taken any options off the table.”
She added that it was “up to Congress to determine how they want to proceed going forward. We are not in a war, or battle, with Facebook. We are in a battle with the virus.”
President Biden was himself this week accused of promoting misinformation when he falsely stated on a CNN town hall that those who are vaccinated won’t get COVID.
“We’re not in the position where we think that any virus, including the Delta virus, which is much more transmissible and more deadly in terms of unvaccinated people, the – the various shots that people are getting now cover that,” Biden said in Cincinnati, Ohio on Wednesday.
“You’re OK,” he suggested. “You’re not going to – you’re not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations.”
Biden’s statements would fall foul of his and The Surgeon General’s censorship proposals and have not been censored online.
UK law commission recommends making speech offenses based on “likely psychological harm”
The vague terms used to suppress speech
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim the Net | July 22, 2021
Recommendations unveiled by the UK’s Law Commission are seeking to establish a new offense by criminalizing communications that could cause “likely psychological harms.”
Another offense that is recommended in the document concerns “knowingly false communications.” This is a serious threat to freedom of expression, and a chance for the authorities to get the last word on what is perceived as true and false.
The recommendation defines “harm” as something that causes “serious distress,” while “psychological harm” is also being mentioned. As for defining “serious distress” – the Commission refers to the Protection from Harassment Act 1997.
The proposed reforms are aimed at protecting victims of online abuse, but there are fears that the vague language and prioritizing subjective perception of speech over objective content could have dangerous consequences.
And the fact that identity and characteristics of the recipient of a communication is also given center stage leaves the door wide open for censorship based on identity politics.
Ironically, in presenting and explaining the recommendations, the Commission justifies them as necessary to right precisely the wrongs that critics are now pointing out this type of reform could introduce. Namely, the Commission says that rules that currently define what constitutes for serious crimes from online abuse are “vague” and sometimes interfere with free speech.
“Grossly offensive” and “indecent” are some examples of what the Commission sees as “vague” – and they would instead “clarify” matters by criminalizing “likely psychological harm.”
Earlier drafts of the recommendations even toyed with the idea of criminalizing communications that are perceived as causing “emotional distress.”
And the document’s authors claim that their take on how to better protect people from abuse online will actually protect freedom of expression more effectively. The rationale here is that the proposals would narrow the reach of the criminal law – rather than, as those critical of the whole thing say, set a very low threshold.
The organization’s Criminal Law Commissioner Penney Lewis is quoted as saying that the goal of the recommendations is to prevent “untold harm” that can arise from online behavior, singling out cyberflashing and pile-on harassment.
People found to be “knowingly” posting false communications would face criminal charges if their action is found to have caused “non-trivial emotional, psychological, or physical harm to the likely audience, without a reasonable excuse.”
National Park Service To Spy On Picnics, Family Gatherings, Weddings And Much More
credit: Wikimedia
Massprivatei – July 20, 2021
According to a notice published in the Federal Register, the Department of the Interior (DOI) is turning the National Park Service (NPS) into a mirror image of the NSA, FBI, DHS and every other three-letter spy agency you can think of.
“Pursuant to the provisions of the Privacy Act of 1974, as amended, the Interior DOI is issuing a public notice of its intent to modify the National Park Service (NPS) Privacy Act system of records, INTERIOR/NPS-1, Special Use Permits.”
This so-called modification of special records permits will allow law enforcement to collect a disturbing amount of personal information on national park visitors.
As Nextgov points out, anyone wishing to get a permit to use one of America’s 423 national parks will have all their personal information sent to the White House.
“The NPS is making it easier to share more data with the White House and other federal agencies on applications and approvals of special use permits for parks spaces.”
America’s absurd War on Terror is now targeting picnics, family gatherings, weddings etc.
“People interested in using a park for a specific purpose at a specific time generally have to obtain a special use permit. NPS issues permits for three types of uses: standard events like weddings, sports, picnics and family gatherings; special events like demonstrations, races, tournaments and the like; and construction, research and utility work.”
When park users apply for such permits, the system collects a wealth of data needed to process the application, including:
- Name, organization, Social Security number, Tax Identification Number, date of birth, address, telephone number, fax number, email address, person’s position title.
- Information of proposed activity including park alpha code, permit number, date, location, number of participants and vehicles, type of use, equipment, support personnel for the activity, company, project name and type, fees, liability insurance information.
- Payment information including amounts paid, credit card number, credit card expiration date, check number, money order number, bank or financial institution, account number, payment reference number and tracking ID number.
- Information on special activities including number of minors, livestock, aircraft type, special effects, special effect technician’s license and permit number, stunts, unusual or hazardous activities.
- Information on driver’s license including number, state and expiration date.
- Vehicle information including year, make, color, weight, plate number and insurance information.
According to the notice in the Federal Register, the purpose in collecting everyone’s personal information is “to provide park superintendents with information to approve or deny requests for activities on NPS managed park lands.”
Does anyone really believe that park rangers or campground hosts need visitors SSN’s, DOBs, bank account numbers etc., so they can approve or deny a person’s request to use our national park[s]?
Nextgov does a great job of describing the NPS collecting park visitors personal information as being an innocuous “update”; it is not.
Page 7 of the notice reveals that the NPS will routinely send everyone’s personal information to numerous federal agencies.
“In addition to those disclosures generally permitted under 5 U.S.C. 552a(b) of the Privacy Act, all or a portion of the records or information contained in this system may be disclosed outside DOI as a routine use pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 552a(b)(3).”
Below is an abbreviated description of the federal agencies that will routinely have access to permit application park visitors personal information:
A. The Department of Justice (DOJ), including Offices of the U.S. Attorneys, or other Federal agency. Any other Federal agency appearing before the Office of Hearings and Appeals.
B. A congressional office when requesting information on behalf of, and at the request of, the individual who is the subject of the record.
C. The Executive Office of the President.
D. Any criminal, civil, or regulatory law enforcement authority (whether Federal, state, territorial, local, tribal or foreign) when a record, either alone or in conjunction with other information, indicates a violation or potential violation of law – criminal, civil, or regulatory in nature, and the disclosure is compatible with the purpose for which the records were compiled.
E. An official of another Federal agency.
F. Federal, state, territorial, local, tribal, or foreign agencies that have requested information relevant or necessary to the hiring, firing or retention of an employee or contractor, or the issuance of a security clearance, license, contract, grant or other benefit, when the disclosure is compatible with the purpose for which the records were compiled.
G. Representatives of the National Archives and Records Administration.
H. State, territorial and local governments and tribal organizations to provide information needed in response to a court order.
I. An expert, consultant, grantee, or contractor (including employees of the contractor) of DOI that performs services requiring access to these records on DOI’s behalf to carry out the purposes of the system.
J. Appropriate agencies, entities of the Federal Government.
K. To another Federal agency or Federal entity, when DOI determines that information from this system of records is reasonably necessary to assist the recipient agency.
L. The Office of Management and Budget.
N. The news media and the public, with the approval of the Public Affairs Officer in consultation with counsel and the Senior Agency Official for Privacy.
According to the memo, the NPS and will keep everyone’s personal information for 15 years at which time they promise to delete or shred it.
“Retention of records with short-term operational value and not considered essential for the ongoing management of land and cultural and natural resources are destroyed 15 years after closure. Paper records are disposed of by shredding or pulping, and records contained on electronic media are degaussed or erased in accordance with 384 Departmental Manual 1.”
Does anyone really think that picnics, family gatherings and weddings pose a threat to our Homeland?
There is one bit of good news to come out of turning the NPS into a spy agency: national park visitors can request a copy of what records the Feds have on them if they include the specific bureau or office that keeps those records in an information request.
“An individual requesting records on himself or herself should send a signed, written inquiry to the applicable System Manager identified above. The request must include the specific bureau or office that maintains the record to facilitate location of the applicable records. The request envelope and letter should both be clearly marked “PRIVACY ACT REQUEST FOR ACCESS.”
And as you can see from the list above, it is going to be a crapshoot to guess which specific federal agency or which branch of law enforcement was spying on your picnic, family gathering or wedding.
It is hard to imagine that when Congress created the National Park Service in 1872 they would have envisioned that the White House would turn it into a spy agency.
As Americans everywhere rush to visit our national parks how many of them will care that the Feds are collecting vast amounts of personal information about them and storing it for 15 years?
Do Americans care enough to stop DHS from turning formerly benign government institutions like the U.S. Postal Service and the National Park Service into federal spying agencies? Only time will tell.
Israeli Firm Helped Governments Target Journalists, Activists with 0-Days and Spyware
By Ravie Lakshmanan | The Hacker News | July 16, 2021
Two of the zero-day Windows flaws rectified by Microsoft as part of its Patch Tuesday update earlier this week were weaponized by an Israel-based company called Candiru in a series of “precision attacks” to hack more than 100 journalists, academics, activists, and political dissidents globally.
The spyware vendor was also formally identified as the commercial surveillance company that Google’s Threat Analysis Group (TAG) revealed as exploiting multiple zero-day vulnerabilities in Chrome browser to target victims located in Armenia, according to a report published by the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab.
“Candiru‘s apparent widespread presence, and the use of its surveillance technology against global civil society, is a potent reminder that the mercenary spyware industry contains many players and is prone to widespread abuse,” Citizen Lab researchers said. “This case demonstrates, yet again, that in the absence of any international safeguards or strong government export controls, spyware vendors will sell to government clients who will routinely abuse their services.”
Founded in 2014, the private-sector offensive actor (PSOA) — codenamed “Sourgum” by Microsoft — is said to be the developer of an espionage toolkit dubbed DevilsTongue that’s exclusively sold to governments and is capable of infecting and monitoring a broad range of devices across different platforms, including iPhones, Androids, Macs, PCs, and cloud accounts.
Citizen Lab said it was able to recover a copy of Candiru’s Windows spyware after obtaining a hard drive from “a politically active victim in Western Europe,” which was then reverse engineered to identify two never-before-seen Windows zero-day exploits for vulnerabilities tracked as CVE-2021-31979 and CVE-2021-33771 that were leveraged to install malware on victim boxes.
The infection chain relied on a mix of browser and Windows exploits, with the former served via single-use URLs sent to targets on messaging applications such as WhatsApp. Microsoft addressed both the privilege escalation flaws, which enable an adversary to escape browser sandboxes and gain kernel code execution, on July 13.
The intrusions culminated in the deployment of DevilsTongue, a modular C/C++-based backdoor equipped with a number of capabilities, including exfiltrating files, exporting messages saved in the encrypted messaging app Signal, and stealing cookies and passwords from Chrome, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, and Opera browsers.
Microsoft’s analysis of the digital weapon also found that it could abuse the stolen cookies from logged-in email and social media accounts like Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, Yahoo, Mail.ru, Odnoklassniki, and Vkontakte to collect information, read the victim’s messages, retrieve photos, and even send messages on their behalf, thus allowing the threat actor to send malicious links directly from a compromised user’s computer.
Separately, the Citizen Lab report also tied the two Google Chrome vulnerabilities disclosed by the search giant on Wednesday — CVE-2021-21166 and CVE-2021-30551 — to the Tel Aviv company, noting overlaps in the websites that were used to distribute the exploits.
Furthermore, 764 domains linked to Candiru’s spyware infrastructure were uncovered, with many of the domains masquerading as advocacy organizations such as Amnesty International, the Black Lives Matter movement, as well as media companies, and other civil-society themed entities. Some of the systems under their control were operated from Saudi Arabia, Israel, U.A.E., Hungary, and Indonesia.
Over 100 victims of SOURGUM’s malware have been identified to date, with targets located in Palestine, Israel, Iran, Lebanon, Yemen, Spain (Catalonia), United Kingdom, Turkey, Armenia, and Singapore. “These attacks have largely targeted consumer accounts, indicating Sourgum’s customers were pursuing particular individuals,” Microsoft’s General Manager of Digital Security Unit, Cristin Goodwin, said.
The latest report arrives as TAG researchers Maddie Stone and Clement Lecigne noted a surge in attackers using more zero-day exploits in their cyber offensives, in part fueled by more commercial vendors selling access to zero-days than in the early 2010s.
“Private-sector offensive actors are private companies that manufacture and sell cyberweapons in hacking-as-a-service packages, often to government agencies around the world, to hack into their targets’ computers, phones, network infrastructure, and other devices,” Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC) said in a technical rundown.
“With these hacking packages, usually the government agencies choose the targets and run the actual operations themselves. The tools, tactics, and procedures used by these companies only adds to the complexity, scale, and sophistication of attacks,” MSTIC added.
Canada’s Heritage Minister says free speech online ‘undermines democracy’
By Dan Frieth | Reclaim the Net | July 17, 2021
Offensive remarks on social media are legal, but Canada’s Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault says they “undermine democracy.”
The government is promoting the internet censorship bill C-36, which seeks to obligate social media platforms to mass censor.
In a briefing, reviewed by Blacklock’s Reporter, the Heritage Ministry argued for censorship of offensive Twitter messages because he says they prevent “a truly democratic debate.”
“This content steals and damages lives,” the briefing read. “It intimidates and obscures valuable voices, preventing a truly democratic debate.”
In late June, the cabinet introduced Bill C-36, which threatens social media users with house arrests and fines of up to $50,000 for sharing content that promotes “detestation or vilification.”
“Our objective is to ensure more accountability and transparency from online platforms while respecting the Canadian Charter Of Rights And Freedoms,” said the June 16 briefing note.
“The mandate of the Department of Canadian Heritage includes the promotion of a greater understanding of human rights.”
Under Canada’s Criminal Code, so-called “hate speech” (open to interpretation) is a crime. What Bill C-36 does is make hate speech illegal even when there is no evidence of a crime.
“Social media platforms such as Facebook or Twitter are increasingly central to participation in democratic, cultural and public life,” said the briefing note.
“However, social media platforms can also be used to threaten, intimidate, bully and harass people or used to promote racist, anti-Semitic, Islamophobic, misogynist and homophobic views that target communities, put people’s safety at risk and undermine Canada’s social cohesion or democracy.”
White House: If you’re banned for “misinformation” on one platform, you should be banned from ALL platforms
More calls for censorship from the Federal Government
By Tom Parker | Reclaim the Net | July 16, 2021
After making the shocking admission that the Federal Government is flagging content for Facebook to censor in yesterday’s White House Press Briefing, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki doubled down on the censorship rhetoric in today’s Press Briefing by calling for users to be banned from all platforms if they post “misinformation” and dismissing concerns that the Biden administration is acting as “Big Brother.”
During the Press Briefing, Psaki was asked to elaborate on the Biden administration’s flagging of misinformation to Facebook and to respond to a CNN report about the Biden administration’s “frustration with what they view as Facebook’s failures to uphold its own policies on vaccine misinformation.”
Psaki responded by framing the flagging issue as simply staying in “regular touch with social media platforms” to make them “aware of the latest narratives dangerous to public health” and engaging with them to “better understand the enforcement of social platform policy.”
She insisted that the social media platforms make the decisions when it comes to content moderation.
Of course, Psaki failed to mention that while Facebook is technically free to make its own content moderation decisions, this outreach about so-called dangerous public health narratives is coming from the same Federal Government that is placing huge amounts of pressure on Facebook’s business through an antitrust lawsuit.
When pressed on whether Facebook’s censorship has been as proactive as the White House would like, Psaki said there are “more steps everyone can take” and suggested that one step that “could be constructive for public health” is for social media platforms to coordinate and implement cross-platform censorship when users post alleged misinformation.
“You shouldn’t be banned from one platform and not others…for providing misinformation,” Psaki added.
After she was told that Facebook had already removed 18 million pieces of “COVID misinformation” and connected more than two billion people to “reliable information,” Psaki was asked whether the White House finds this “sufficient.”
“Clearly not,” Psaki responded.
She added: “They’re a private sector company, they’re gonna make decisions about additional steps they can take, it’s clear there are more that can be taken.”
Psaki also dismissed Fox News reporter Pete Doocy’s question about a lot of people on Facebook being concerned about “Big Brother watching you” now that they know the White House flags posts to Facebook to be censored.
“They’re more concerned about that than people dying across the country because of a pandemic where misinformation is traveling on social media platforms?” Psaki said. “That seems unlikely to me. If you have the data to back that up, I’m happy to discuss it.”
When Doocy raised the double standard with which The White House flags and censors so-called misinformation, Psaki again dismissed the concerns.
“There are videos of Dr. Fauci from 2020 before anybody had a vaccine and he’s out there saying there’s no reason to be walking around with a mask,” Doocy said. “So, is the administration going to contact Facebook and take that down?”
Psaki responded by arguing that Fauci said: “Science evolves, information evolves.”
But when she discussed other claims that she doesn’t approve of during the Press Briefing, such as claims that the vaccines cause infertility, Psaki framed it as “information that is irresponsibly traveling” and pushed social media platforms to let the White House know that they’re “taking steps to address it.”
The White House Press Secretary’s comments are yet another example of the increasing collaboration between public officials and private companies that are raising First Amendment violation flags.
Prior to Psaki’s recent statements, numerous reports have pointed to similar public-private sector censorship collaborations. These include a recent lawsuit showing that Democrats have worked with Twitter to flag tweets and get them taken down and a recent letter from Republicans accusing Fauci of advising Facebook to censor lab leak theories.
Social media misinformation ‘killing people,’ Biden says, as White House doubles down on private censorship
RT | July 16, 2021
US President Joe Biden claimed social media platforms are “killing people” with misinformation about Covid-19, as his press secretary Jen Psaki made a case for deplatforming ‘offenders’ across the ostensibly private networks.
“They’re killing people,” Biden told reporters who asked him to send a message to platforms like Facebook. “The only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated. And they’re killing people,” he shouted, over the noise of a helicopter outside the White House on Friday.
On Thursday, US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued an advisory against health “misinformation,” calling it “an imminent and insidious threat to our nation’s health.” He defined it as information that is “false, inaccurate, or misleading according to the best available evidence” and claimed 67% of unvaccinated Americans had heard at least one “myth” about Covid-19 vaccines.
At the same press conference, Psaki admitted the government was “flagging problematic posts for Facebook,” causing a stir among some civil libertarians.
Insisting that it was these ostensibly private companies doing the censorship and not the federal government – thereby trying to dodge the thorny issue of the First Amendment – Psaki then doubled down on Friday, saying that platforms should coordinate their rules and terms of service so that a person “shouldn’t be banned from one platform and not others… for providing misinformation out there.”
Her announcement raised more than a few eyebrows across the political spectrum. Journalist Glenn Greenwald, responsible for publishing NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden’s revelations in 2013, called the entire line of White House thinking “pernicious.”
Psaki was “issuing decrees on who should and shouldn’t be allowed to use social media, then smugly scoffing at the notion that this should concern anyone on the ground that we’re going to die if we don’t submit to the White House’s orders,” Greenwald added, summarizing her exchange with Fox News’ Peter Doocy.
In a video making rounds on social media, Psaki tells Doocy that everyone, including journalists, ought to be more concerned about “the number of people who are dying around the country” due to misinformation rather than any Big Brother-like behavior by the government. When he argued the opposite, she replied, “That feels unlikely to me.”
“We don’t take anything down… Facebook makes decisions,” she insisted.
Asked politely by Philip Wegmann of RealClearPolitics to explain how often and how long the White House has been flagging “misinformation,” and if she could define it, Psaki responded with generalizations and claims that all this information is “publicly available” on social networks.
Psaki’s remarks amounted to an admission that the government is coordinating with private corporations to ban people from social media, podcast host Jack Murphy pointed out, calling it “literal fascism before our eyes.”
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) was conspicuously silent about this threat to freedom of expression, Greenwald noted, and was instead tweeting about transgender issues.
Meanwhile, a UK-based nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) claimed the White House relied on their research in identifying the people producing alleged “misinformation,” and promoted their CEO Imran Ahmed’s TV appearance in which he spoke about online “superspreaders.”
CCDH first drew attention in June 2020, when NBC – one of the big three broadcast TV networks in the US – cited their research in a story trying to pressure Google into demonetizing the blog ZeroHedge and the conservative-leaning online magazine Federalist.
US Surgeon General advises “clear consequences” for online “misinformation super-spreaders”
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim the Net | July 16, 2021
The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has released its general Covid advisory on “confronting health misinformation” signed by US Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy.
We obtained a copy of the report for you here.
For the purposes of the advisory, health misinformation is defined as information that is false, inaccurate, or misleading “according to the best available evidence at the time.”
And among those who are urged and given suggestions on how to act to suppress this kind of information are technology platforms, who are advised to devise “clear consequences” for users who are branded as “misinformation super-spreaders.”
Technology platforms are told to assess the benefits and harms of their platforms and products, and then “take responsibility for addressing the harms.”
And those who are found to be “super-spreaders” and “repeat offenders” in posting misinformation should be faced with “clear consequences” that tech platforms are supposed to devise and impose on their users.
Tech companies are also expected to commit to long-term investments for the purpose combating misinformation that can include changing their products – such as redesigning recommendation algorithms. The idea here is to tweak these algorithms so that unwanted medical information is down ranked and difficult to discover.
The surgeon general also wants tech platforms to put more “frictions” in place – like labels and warnings that now appear on many social media posts in order to dissuade users from interacting with the content in question, or direct them towards “trusted sources.”
Next, unspecified researchers should be given access to Big Tech’s data so that they can learn “what people see and hear, not just what they engage with.” Another reason is for “researchers” to be sure how platforms are moderating and censoring content – some methods mentioned are labeling, removing, and downranking.
Privacy is also paid lip service in a remark that says user data “can be” anonymized while provided with user consent – but the advisory is not explicit that this “must be” the case.
And not all medical (mis)information is happening in English, so these US platforms are recommended to “increase staffing of multilingual content moderation teams and improve the effectiveness of machine learning algorithms in languages other than English.”
The advisory also wants platforms to amplify, i.e. direct users even more aggressively towards “trusted and credible sources” and those who are accepted as experts.
Then there’s – as the advisory phrased it – the “unintended consequences” of censorship. And that’s not about free speech suppression or anything similar – it’s “migration of users to less-moderated platforms.”
And that is another thing, the US surgeon general writes, that tech platforms should “work to understand.”
Governments are using credit card purchase data as “contact tracing’ COVID surveillance
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim the Net | July 16, 2021
The ongoing “war on cash” that far preceded the pandemic, whose goal is to steer people towards using traceable forms of payment, is coming in very handy in the COVID era precisely for the reason the policy is criticized in the first place – it makes it easy for authorities to keep tabs on individuals who use card transactions.
Reports now mention instances of Australian residents receiving a mandate to quarantine after using their credit card to pay at an establishment, where somebody known to be infected with the virus had stayed.
Credit card receipts led back to the person that was then forced to self-isolate (although they did not have coronavirus) – and apparently led the person to consider what, if anything, is left of their privacy in a world where more and more people leave long “data trails” behind them.
Stop-gap measures like switching to alternative browsers etc (while probably running it on Windows) aside – the takeaway is that the only way to regain some privacy in the world of mass surveillance and tracking is to turn to alternatives – but do it consistently, and be prepared to pay for the privilege of removing oneself from the closed ecosystems like those ruled with an iron fist by Google, Apple, or Microsoft.
As for using card transactions to do COVID contact tracing, Australia is far from being the only country that is doing it. In fact, those lauded as most successful in even getting their contact tracing efforts off the ground, like South Korea, pioneered the practice. Data surveillance, reports said, was used by authorities there to make sure that people who were either unable or unwilling to share their every move are eventually forced into doing it.
Australia has “distinguished” itself for being willing to jeopardize people’s privacy with a series of COVID surveillance and control measures over the past 18 months, and last November, the National Contact Tracing Review, whose chair is Australia’s Chief Scientist Alan Finkel, recommended using consumer credit card data for track and trace purposes.
But what about privacy? Privacy rules will apply – until they don’t, seems to be the gist of it.
“Privacy rules will apply,” the Review said, but then added, “and in some jurisdictions legislative change may be required.”
North Carolina Henderson County Board of Commissioners look for new platform after YouTube censorship
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim the Net | July 15, 2021
Once again YouTube has decided that it has the right to silence elected officials in the US in a bid to prevent them from making their policies and decisions known, particularly concerning COVID.
When North Carolina’ Henderson County Board of Commissioners met to discuss whether to spend taxpayer money to promote Covid vaccination, and decided against the idea, passing a relevant resolution, YouTube was quick to delete the video taken during the meeting.
The commissioners’ meeting and vote not to spend county dollars to push for people to get the jab was followed by citizens, vaccine skeptics, expressing their opinion on the issue by saying that they believed the inoculation project was put together by the government, the media, and pharmaceutical companies who have a “hidden agenda.”
The Google company also swiftly rejected the appeal filed by the commissioners, stating that the the content had been reviewed “carefully,” but that YouTube censors still found the video in violation of the medical misinformation policy.
Two days after this happened, the County held another vote and decided to remove YouTube as the video platform its officials use, and look for alternatives.
Vice chair Rebecca McCall and other commissioners called YouTube’s decision an act of censorship, and questioned whether such a widely used platform, even if privately owned, should be allowed to do that – or be the judge of what medical information is acceptable.
YouTube has a long list of things its users are not allowed to utter on the platform, often not even as part of a debate among scientists and doctors, as YouTube believes these things pose “a serious risk of egregious harm.”
This includes recommending Ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine for Covid treatment (even though critics of the use of these drugs speak about their inefficacy rather than potential harm), and making claims that Covid vaccines can make people ill. Contradicting local health authorities or the WHO is also prohibited, where it comes to treatment, prevention, transmission, or orders of restrictive measures such as mask wearing and social distancing.
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Book Review
The Greatest Threat to World Peace? A Review of Daniele Ganser’s ‘USA: The Ruthless Empire’
Review by Marilyn Langlois | November 10, 2023
If you regard the United States as perhaps flawed but overall a force for good in the world . . .
If you scoff at the notion that the US, a republic founded on principles of freedom and democracy, has morphed into a world empire, perpetrating assassinations, coups d’état, acts of terror and illegal warfare . . .
If you want to promote peace but haven’t yet explored deceptive events that precipitate US warmongering . . .
. . . here is a volume that will clear the air and paint an honest picture of the significant, not-so-rosy impact US foreign policy and actions have had in the world around us.
USA: The Ruthless Empire, by Swiss historian and peace researcher Daniele Ganser, is the newly published English language translation of his book Imperium USA, originally written in German and published in 2020. Here is a summary of key points — including some lesser-known ones — along with remedies for a more peaceful future, that are covered in the book. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Argentina’s Javier Milei sells out his country for Israel
- Putting Nukes in Finland Won’t Make Country Safer, Finnish Politician Cautions
- Ukrainian drone strike kills worker at Europe’s largest nuclear power plant
- What the West Hides About Soviet Role in De-Colonization
- Villains of Judea: Douglas Feith
- US pension fund invests hundreds of millions in weapons firms supplying Israel
- US bill to grant Americans serving in Israeli army same rights as US troops
- What a president, a movie star, a congressman, and a cell phone all dared to say
- ‘An entire nation is being humiliated by the Iranian leadership’: Merz
- Pakistan Throws Open Its Gates for Iran’s Transit Trade to Third Countries
- If Americans Knew
- Palestinians in Gaza Want to Rebuild Food Systems. Israel Isn’t Letting Them.
- Under Trump, Green Card Seekers Face New Scrutiny for Views on Israel
- Sheep Theft Sent Shockwaves Through a Palestinian Village. Then, a 12-year-old Boy Was Shot Dead
- Trump alum helps Israel mount AI influence campaign
- Dispatches From Catastrophe
- Despite Denials, AIPAC Is Now Funding Campaign of Ala Stanford In Philadelphia
- Israel’s neighbors are irate about its treatment of religious sites
- Israel escalates in Gaza: killing, torture, hunger – Daily Update
- Six Months into Gaza Ceasefire, Setting the Record Straight About Aid
- ‘Silent suffering’: Why children in Gaza are losing their ability to speak
- No Tricks Zone
- New Study: Extreme Heat Records, Heatwaves, Extreme Cold Records Declining Across US Since 1899
- It’s The Cold, Stupid! Cold 20 Times More Lethal Than Heat, Multiple Studies Show
- European Institute For Climate And Energy: “Climate Debate is Seldom About Science”
- New Study: The Climate May Be 5 Times More Sensitive To Solar Forcing Than Commonly Assumed
- EV Industry Reached $70 Billion In Losses In 2024 Due To Delusional Green Ideologies
- Reality Check: Maldives Have Actually Grown In Size Or Remained Stable Over Recent Decades
- Abrupt Climate Change Also Occurred NATURALLY In The Past …25 Times During Last Ice Age
- Cave Discovery Reveals Today’s Desert Climates Were Recently Far Warmer, Wetter, Teeming With Life
- German Expert: Heat Dome Led To Record Temps In Western USA…Warmer In 1934, 1936
- New Study: No Linear Warming Or Glacier Retreat Along Northern Antarctic Peninsula Since 1980s
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