Digital Tyranny
…“Evil WordPress shadow-bans Whatfinger News,” by Dr. Eowyn, Fellowship of the Minds, October 13, 2018…
And it gets weirder on twitter: apparently they are also now suspending accounts that are posting info about the sketchy Kashoggi disappearance/suspected murder --- anyone who disputes Turkey's version of events.
I don't know enough about this to know who's propaganda and who's reporting the facts, but it sure looks sketchy that twitter is taking a very pro-Turkey approach to censorship. …
This is just....wow. Twitter apparently suspended Pastor Brunson's account --- yesterday. WTF? Didn't want him to thank DJT via twitter upon returning to US soil?
https://twitter.com/BrunsonPastor
Here is my go-to Google search boilerplate when I am looking for news on a particular story:
"-site:cnn.com -site:nytimes.com -site:washingtonpost.com -site:cnbc.com -site:nbcnews.com -site:usatoday.com -site:latimes.com -site:abcnews.com -site:cbsnews.com -site:vanityfair.com -site:abcnews.go.com -site:bloomberg.com -site:independent.co.uk.com -site:vox.com"
Class Action lawsuit against Google for discrimination against conservatives, whites and males
Commenced by James Damore, Google employee terminated after release of internal memo on “Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber”…
“Google’s management goes to extreme — and illegal — lengths to encourage hiring managers to take protected categories such as race and/or gender into consideration as determinative hiring factors, to the detriment of Caucasian and male employees and potential employees at Google,” the suit reads.
FCC Commissioner Ajit Varadaraj Pai said mobile content such as music that some service providers exempt from data limits could be in violation of the agency’s new Internet conduct standard. …
…This is a dangerous bill, and the vague language here is almost Orwellian with what could be severe ramifications.…
According to reports from various industry sources, the Chinese government has begun the process of picking a national computer chip instruction set architecture (ISA). This ISA would have to be used for any projects backed with government money — which, in a communist country such as China, is a fairly long list of public and private enterprises and institutions, including China Mobile, the largest wireless carrier in the world. ... developing a brand new ISA — a daunting task, considering you have to create an entire software (compiler, developer, apps) and hardware (CPU, chipset, motherboard) ecosystem from scratch. But, there are benefits to building your own CPU architecture. ...silicon-level monitoring and censorship ...a ubiquitous, always-open backdoor that can be used by Chinese intelligence agencies... DNS and IP address blacklist [built] into the hardware itself ...implement a hardware-level 10pm curfew for video games... code that automatically turns negative mentions of Hu Jintao (the Chinese president) into positives, and inserts a few honorifics at the same time ...a latent botnet of hundreds of millions of computers that can be activated upon the commencement of World War III. Or, or, or… [The word "benefits," as employed here, is not value-oriented.]
FreeMarketAmerica released the video in response to Earth Day, which “fizzled badly” this year, in part because of the continued revelations regarding the hysteria rhetoric of Gaia catastrophists, and in part, I’m guessing, because people have other things to worry about, such as how to scrape together the money to pay for their mortgages, pay off their student loans, buy gas for their climate-destroying automobiles and oh my God will you freaking people please shut up? Because it went viral, I saw no need of posting it here . . . until Michelle Malkin and others were notified by the creators that YouTube has suspended their account ... Whether this was a matter that YouTube took up on its own volition, or whether it succumbed to lefty pressure is impossible to know without more information. Until I’m presented with evidence that this was an internal decision generated without any outside pressure, I’m inclined to give YouTube the benefit of the doubt.
The manner and progression in which the internet was cut reminds me of how both Iran and Egypt cut their internet during the height of their uprisings. This was a Chinese kill-switch test .... and yes .... it was successful.
In a speech to religious broadcasters that received a sustained ovation at his conclusion, he said free expression is under attack by a power structure in Washington populated with regulators who have never set foot inside a radio station or a television studio. "We see this threat in how the FCC is creeping further into the free market by trying to regulate the Internet," Mr. Boehner said. "The last thing we need, in my view, is the FCC serving as Internet traffic controller, and potentially running roughshod over local broadcasters who have been serving their communities with free content for decades...."
China has indefinitely delayed enforcement of a requirement that PC makers preinstall Green Dam-Youth Escort software that experts believe would have screened not just Internet pornography but also some online political content.
Beijing postpones a requirement that PC makers preinstall Green Dam software for filtering Internet content. But it may be just a temporary reprieve. Read this blog post by Stephen Shankland on Politics and Law.
Two major computer makers indicate that each will comply with a Chinese law requiring all computers shipped to the country include a particular type of web-filtering software. The recent moves by Acer Inc. (2353.TW) and Sony Corp. (SNE) to comply suggest some PC makers aren't willing to miss out on one of the world's biggest PC markets, despite concerns about abiding by an unpopular government policy, and the potential damage the software itself can do to their computers. [BOYCOTT ACER! BOYCOTT SONY!]
for the Chinese government there really is no difference. Political dissent and pornography are two sides of the same coin — negative forces that disrupt "wholesome society." That's why the same ministry deals with pornography and political speech.
Google Inc. said it's investigating reports that its Google.com Web site is inaccessible in China, a week after the company was criticized by the government for spreading pornography in the biggest Internet market by users.
poorly developed and puts users at risk of having their computers compromised, a security expert who examined the code said on Thursday.
The Chinese Health Ministry on Thursday ordered sharp restrictions on Internet access to medical research papers on sexual subjects. It is the latest move in what the ministry calls an antipornography campaign that many China experts see as a harbinger of a broader crackdown on freedom of expression and dissent.
There's not really any doubt that Green Dam is ripping off CyberSitter.... Last night, for the first time ever, Solid Oak suffered "server problems" so severe the machines had to be rebooted. While DiPasquale shied away from claiming a Chinese attack on the company, she said, "we suspect there's something being done. We've never had a problem until last night...."
"We have found that the English version of google.com has spread lots of pornographic, lewd and vulgar content, which is in serious violation of Chinese laws and regulations," said foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang at a news briefing. He said authorities summoned Google representatives and told them to "remove the material immediately." [HAHAHAHAHAHA]
In a move that could disrupt Google's growth in China, which now has more internet users than the US, the Chinese government said it had told Google to suspend foreign searches and a feature that automatically suggests multiple search results once typing commences in the search window.
The Beijing government's Spiritual Civilization Office says it is trying to recruit 10,000 volunteers to monitor net content. It's part of a plan of "purifying social civilization," said spokesman Ms. Guo... Meanwhile Chinese youth mock the Green Dam program, kidding each other that if they don't behave, "I'll youth-escort you." Anti-Green Dam websites and petitions are popular. And a Manga-style cartoon mocking the thought police has appeared: Green Dam Girl....
There was a time when American capitalists would have strongly protested totalitarian censorship, but that was before they became complicit in it. Moral indignation once again loses out to global profits... The best I found was a Dell spokesman saying they were "reviewing" the issue... When the Chinese people show themselves to love freedom more than American CEOs, there clearly is a problem. And it isn't in China....
One of the Chinese developers of the "Green Dam" filtering software pledged to patch the software's vulnerabilities, while intimating that he may take legal action against the authors of a U.S. report that discovered them. [BWAH HAHAHAHAHHA]
some of the blacklists the software uses to filter sites was taken from U.S.-based Solid Oak Software, maker of Cybersitter... It wasn't just that "blacklisted" URL addresses appeared to be copied directly from Cybersitter; "a news item, almost like a press release that Cybersitter sent to customers was included in the shipping version of Green Dam software," Halderman said. "It appeared to be copied into Green Dam by mistake."...
Several foreign news organisations complained Sunday that Iranian authorities were blocking their reporters from covering protests against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's re-election.
Despite China's claims that Green Dam Youth Escort... is merely a porn filter, it's now clear that the software filters a whole bunch of political content.... [OH, WHAT A SURPRISE!] ... The documents related to political stuff are very big — much, much bigger than those related to pornographic content... software also appears to communicate with a centralized server...
The first independent tests of screening software that will be installed on all Chinese computers finds it opens users to serious security risks.... communications between the software and the servers at the company that developed the program were unencrypted.... "...every computer in China potentially as part of a botnet..." system only runs on Microsoft Windows, allowing Mac and Linux users to bypass the software.... at least 3m computer users have already downloaded the software, opening them up to potential security problems.